by Sara Craven
It was a pleasant street, lined with trees, the terraces of the single-storey houses which bordered it alive with flowers. Andreas pulled into the shade and stopped the engine.
Gemma asked, ‘Shall I wait here for you?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how long I shall be,’ he said. ‘There’s a taverna in the square. Go and get yourself a drink.’ He took some money from his back pocket and handed it to her, before striding away purposefully up the street.
She watched him arrive at his destination—a
small pink-washed house, shaded by an enormous
fig tree. Two women were sitting under the tree, clad in the traditional black, their heads bent over their embroidery. As he went in at the gate, they looked up, then rose to their feet, exclaiming in what seemed to be pleasure.
Andreas shook hands with them both with a certain amount of ceremony, then all three of them vanished into the house.
Gemma turned away in the direction he’d indicated as leading to the square, with a little mental shrug. They couldn’t be part of his harem, she told herself ironically. Even from a distance, she could see they were both old enough to be his mother, if not his grandmother. So—perhaps they were something to do with his business. Maybe he was an entrepreneur in handwoven cloth and embroideries, and they were part of his workforce. And maybe too it was none of her business, she decided as she arrived in the square.
There was another surprise waiting for her here. It wasn’t a large square, but it was a positive hive of activity. Outside the taverna long tables had been set up covered in snowy cloths, and people were milling around them adding cutlery, crockery and flowers, bringing chairs and laughing and talking at the tops of their voices.
The taverna owner seemed slightly harassed, but he brought the fresh lemonade she haltingly asked for. His English wasn’t very fluent, but she managed to make enough of her questions understood to learn that there was a wedding. That the couple were in church that very moment, and that when they emerged there would be a big celebration.
Gemma said ‘Oh?’, and smiled and wished she’d stayed with the jeep after all. She felt very much as if she was intruding on a private occasion, and her fairness made her feel conspicuous, and deeply aware of the curious though friendly glances which were coming her way.
She lingered over her lemonade, wishing that Andreas would come and whisk her away, but by the time her glass was empty he still hadn’t come to join her, and almost in desperation, she ordered another.
As the taverna owner set it down on the table, she heard him give a roar of pleasure and looking up she saw Andreas walking towards them, his face set and grim. At once he was surrounded by a grinning group of men, all vigorously shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.
Definitely an entrepreneur, and a successful one, Gemma thought judiciously. He probably kept the village supplied with work, but today he was annoyed because the two women had told him they couldn’t manage some rush order.
It was some minutes before he disengaged himself and came to join her, dropping into a chair, and stretching his long legs in front of him.
He gave her a bleak look. ‘Our trip to Aghios Nikolaos will be delayed,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘Hara and Petros are being married, and we are expected to stay and join the celebrations for a while.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ Gemma protested.
His brows drew together icily. ‘May I know why?’
‘I should have thought it was obvious,’ she said tightly. ‘These are your friends, and it’s a family occasion. I hardly think they’d welcome me if they knew the truth.’
‘What truth is this?’
She bit her lip. ‘That I’m—your mistress.’
He shrugged. ‘You think not? Yet perhaps they are not as naive, or as narrow-minded as you seem to suggest.’
In other words, they were probably quite used to seeing him with some enslaved female in tow, she thought raggedly.
He said on a mocking note, ‘Don’t look so stricken, Gemma mou. You are being asked to pass an hour or two in eating, drinking and dancing. Is that really so bad?’
Almost as bad as it could be, she thought. She didn’t want to be with him like this, as if they were a couple and belonged together.
Besides, a wedding was altogether too intimate an occasion for them to share even on its fringe—too evocative of all the secret absurd dreams she hardly dared acknowledge even to herself.
‘But perhaps the entertainment offered is a little too unsophisticated for your taste?’ his voice continued remorselessly, flicking her on the raw. ‘You were, after all, looking forward to the cosmopolitan delights of Aghios Nikolaos.’
She said unsteadily, ‘Damn you, you know that isn’t true. I’m looking forward to nothing.’ As soon as the words were uttered, she regretted them, wondering if she had given away too much, but he seemed unaware of her slip.
‘Not even to being reunited with your beloved brother? I thought you would be waiting eagerly to meet him again—almost as eagerly as I am myself,’ he added grimly.
‘Why?’ she asked bitterly.
The firm lips were tautly compressed. ‘So that I can be sure that justice has been done,’ he said, half to himself.
‘And how will you do that?’ Her hands clenched together in her lap. ‘By comparing scores—to ensure you’ve had me as many times as Mike had Maria?’
She could feel his anger as his mouth curled in a mirthless smile. ‘An intriguing notion, Gemma mou. Are you now admitting that your brother is not the paragon you have always claimed? That you believe he did indeed seduce her and has been hiding like a coward on the mountain ever since, leaving you to pay the penalty?’
Gemma bent her head. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more,’ she said wearily. ‘All I know is that I’m not really in the mood for a celebration.’ ‘No more than myself,’ he said coldly. ‘Nevertheless, we must stay for a while at least. To leave when we have been invited would give offence, and these are good people.’
‘Crete is full of them according to you,’ she muttered, not looking at him. She sighed. ‘All right then—we stay.’
She still felt agonisingly conspicuous as she sat and watched him move among the various groups who were gathering, seeing the pleasure and respect with which he was greeted, and wondering about it. He was still almost a total enigma to her, she realised unhappily. She’d begun to know his body intimately, but his mind was still closed to her.
This was the first time she’d seen him in association with other people—the first time she’d been obliged to think of him as a person in his own right with a life completely divorced from the Villa lone and all its connotations. He had a family, friends, business associates while she—she belonged in a separate compartment of his life, and one that could be easily jettisoned when the time came, she reminded herself painfully.
She could hear music in the distance at first, then growing louder, and a few minutes later the musicians came into sight round the corner from the church, walking ahead of the bridal procession.
In spite of herself, Gemma felt her spirits lift at the intrinsic joyousness of it all. Everyone was happy, wreathed in smiles. The bride Hara was plump and not dazzlingly pretty by any means, but her dark eyes sparkled like the sun as she looked adoringly at the thickset young man by her side, and his protective air as he led her to the seat of honour at the table enclosed them both in a kind of beauty which went deeper than any surface charm.
Everyone was moving to the tables now, taking their places, but Gemma hung back feeling more of a stranger with every second that passed.
Andreas said harshly, ‘Do you mean to sit there all day?’ and pulled her to her feet in one easy movement, his hand firm on her waist as he guided her to a seat. People were grinning in welcome, making room for them, and Gemma’s hand was shaken a dozen times or more. She was being swept along on a tide of goodwill which was almost overwhelming, absorbed into what seemed
a vast group of women clustering around her. Their chattering voices rose and fell like birdsong, and the fact that she didn’t understand a word of what they were seeing seemed irrelevant. With little admiring noises, they stroked her blonde hair, pointed to the fairness of her skin, and fingered the fabric of her dress, making it clear to her that she was welcome, and that they found her beautiful.
She had no idea what, if anything, they made of the fact she was there with Andreas. Probably it was just her own over-sensitivity which made her feel so wretched about the whole situation.
She found her glass being filled with wine, then filled again. Great platters of lamb baked in the oven with herbs and meltingly tender, were being brought from the taverna, with bowls of salad, and dishes of steaming fried potatoes fragrant with lemon. In spite of her half-hearted protests, her plate was heaped with food. Eat, she was urged mischievously in sign language, because a strong man like the kyrie needs a strong woman, they added with laughter, and Gemma found she was laughing too. That in spite of the agonies of heartache and worry, her mouth was watering for the food. And that never in her life had she tasted anything so delicious.
He was sitting further along the table from her, on the opposite side, among the men, and she found her glance straying to him over and over again. He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself particularly. He was smiling and joining in the conversation around him with what was clearly an effort, and in between his face still held that brooding bleakness. Was it just business worries, she wondered, or was the quarrel they’d had earlier getting to him?
She bit her lip, remembering his anger with her, his contempt. The memories hurt, and she wished that the pain could be deep enough to stop her loving him. She wished something could bum out of her for ever and ever the agony of this one-sided relationship—destroy it and make her whole again.
The music which had been playing quietly all during the meal suddenly swelled in volume, taking on a more pronounced rhythm, and she realised, as she was urged to her feet, that it was time for the dancing. Amid laughter and hand-clapping, the bridal couple led the way into the middle of the square, and the others swarmed around them forming an enormous circle, hands joined. Gemma felt lost at first, her feet unable to copy the intricate steps she was being shown, but after a couple of circuits of the square, her body began to adapt itself instinctively to the dipping, swaying rhythm, and she was laughing, absurdly pleased with herself when the dance came to an end, and the rhythm changed.
Now, it was time to watch, because the men—or some half-dozen of them were dancing alone, and with a wrench of the heart, Gemma saw that Andreas was one of them.
Everyone around her was clapping, accentuating the beat of the music, and she joined in too, unable to help herself. It was very different, she discovered, from the exhibition dancing staged for tourists in the Heraklion tavernas. This was no folklore demonstration, but a joyous, strangely powerful assertion of their masculinity by men occupying what was still, primarily, a man’s world. The dance expressed their pride in their strength and their virility with every sure, confident movement, the muscular bodies an extension of the music’s rhythm. It was alien to anything Gemma had ever experienced, alien even to her own tentative beliefs about the equality of the sexes, yet it moved her to her soul.
This pride, this certainty about the world and his place in it was part of his birthright, she thought, her mind faltering a little at the realisation. That was why there was no self-consciousness about the way the Greeks danced. It was an expression of their belief in life itself.
She could feel tears springing in her eyes, and turned away hurriedly, afraid that someone would see. When she had control again, the dance had ended and another circle was forming, but this time she returned to her place at the table and sat sipping her wine.
She knew she was being watched suddenly, and turned her head. Her glance met his; locked. They could have been alone. It was as if every sight and sound around them had removed to some vague distance, enclosing them in a golden bubble of timelessness which, she knew dazedly, she never wanted to leave.
No one else existed. And she knew that no one ever would for her, and it made no difference at all that in terms of sanity they had known each other for such a brief time.
The passage of actual hours and days was only another irrelevancy, she realised with a kind of shock. And if at this moment, she was seeing him for the first time, she knew she would still want him as fiercely—a wanting that transcended mere physical desire.
She shared his bed, but what she wanted was to share his life, however alien to her, with utter completeness, and the depth and passion of that wanting frightened her, especially when she knew it applied to her alone.
There was no future in their relationship. None. And she was all kinds of a fool to even consider the possibility. She’d begun by fighting him. She’d even won some kind of hollow victory, then ruined everything by her rapturous, mindless surrender to his unexpected tenderness. He’d seduced her after all, she thought baldly, and she’d let it happen. In fact, she’d gloried in it, allowing herself to forget briefly exactly why he was taking her.
Only, she hadn’t been permitted to forget for too long, she thought painfully.
Perhaps the harshness of his reminder to her of the stark reasons for his possession had been quite deliberate. Maybe, he was being cruel to be kind, stripping away any foolish illusions she might be harbouring about their relationship, and making her face reality.
He was an experienced man. She’d probably betrayed her true feelings to him a dozen times as she lay in his arms—but never more so than at this moment, she realised with anguish.
With a supreme effort of willpower, she tore her gaze from his, concentrating her attention fiercely on the frankly unintelligible conversations going on around her, refusing with a kind of defiance to look his way again.
She’d succeeded so well that she almost jumped out of her skin when his voice beside her said almost laconically, ‘It is time we were going.’
The dark eyes were aloof again, his face forbidding.
She said, ‘Oh,’ and paused. ‘Then may I say goodbye. Everyone’s been so kind to me ...?’ Her voice trailed away in appeal, and he nodded briefly before turning away, and striding off in the direction of the jeep.
They all seemed sorry to see her go. Even though verbal communication had been minimal between them, Gemma managed to establish that she was sorry too. One of the women darted away and returned breathlessly with a small flat package which she presented ceremoniously to Gemma. She could see she was expected to open it there and then, and did so. It was a tablecloth, she discovered, made of handwoven lace, produced with the skill and care of generations somewhere in this village. On the open market, it would cost a great deal, but this was a gift to her—a gift which it would cause offence to refuse.
And not just any gift either. The smiles and signs and gestures all around her were signifying that the present was intended for when she herself became a bride.
She was blushing painfully, her throat constricted as she managed, ‘Efharisto—efharisto poli.’
Her cheeks were still burning when she arrived back at the jeep. She’d bundled the cloth back into its wrapping, but all the same she was aware of Andreas eyeing it as she climbed into the passenger seat, his face coldly cynical as he did so.
‘They have taken you to their hearts,’ he said, as he started the engine.
‘Yes,’ she forced a smile. ‘They shouldn’t have done this.’ She gestured almost helplessly towards her parcel. ‘Obviously they’d made it to sell and...’ She swallowed. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my accepting it.’
‘Why should I mind?’ His brows rose. ‘I am glad you had the sensitivity not to offer to pay for it.’
‘Did you think I would?’ she demanded, stung.
He shrugged. ‘It has been known. Your countrymen seem sometimes embarrassed by the generosity they are shown here, and try to respond by prod
ucing their cheque books.’
Gemma shook her head, ‘Not me, I’m afraid,’ she said too brightly. ‘I priced some of the textiles during the first few days I was here, and a cloth like this would be totally beyond my means.’
‘This job you have is poorly paid?’
Gemma shook her head. ‘Not at all, but I can’t afford to splash every penny I have on a holiday. I have to support myself when it’s over, after all.’
‘You live alone?’
‘No, I live with my parents, but I pay my share of the bills. And I was thinking of finding a place of my own—in the autumn perhaps,’ she added, remembering with a kind of amazement all the plans she’d been making in what seemed a lifetime before.
Hurriedly, she changed the subject. ‘Where are we going now?’
‘To Aghios Nikolaos.’ His mouth curled a little. ‘You will find it in complete contrast to the village we have just left.’
‘And is that where you work? Where you sell your textiles?’
His sideways glance at her was sharp. ‘What gives you the notion that I deal in textiles?’
She shrugged. ‘It was just a guess. Those ladies you were visiting—I thought perhaps they might work for you.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think I saw them at the wedding. Were they there?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They were not. Neither do they work for me in any way. I visited them because Soula used to live in Loussenas and I wanted news of her family.’ There was sudden harshness in his voice. ‘Does that satisfy your curiosity?’
She said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘Does that mean no more questions?’ he asked derisively, and she flushed.
‘You ask enough,’ she muttered defensively.
It was his turn to shrug. ‘You are not obliged to answer,’ he pointed out casually, as if it was of little interest to him whether she did or not, and Gemma subsided, biting her lip in chagrin.