"Paul wished for a child," she said quietly. "He must have been disappointed when you told him I had lost it."
"I am sure he would have been more concerned if he had lost you," the doctor said, and though his English was not as fluent as Paul's, Domini understood each polite and stilted word. She studied her hands on the lap of her silk robe, and the doctor watched her and marvelled at her composure. A Greek girl would have wept brokenly over losing her first child, but this cool and lovely English girl sat dry-eyed, seemingly unmoved. Metros Suiza thrust a cigarette between his lips and reflected that it was as Paul had said — this girl with the cool blue eyes and the regal young head was not in love with her husband.
They sat out on the piazza, where Turkish tea in tall glasses was brought to them by Yannis. There were also finely cut sandwiches with various fillings on the trolley, and a selection of pastries. Paul had gone down to his aunt's in the car; he was bringing Kara back with him.
"You must try a sandwich," Metros urged, as Domini sipped her tea and made no attempt to fill a plate. "Come, I will serve you."
"I'm not really hungry, doctor," Domini protested.
"But you must eat, my child, otherwise you will take longer to get well. There, a sandwich of chicken and another of paté. Very nourishing, and I insist that you eat every mouthful."
The doctor was too kind and friendly to be denied and Domini found herself eating the sandwiches and exchanging impressions of Greece with him. She also learned that he was a widower with one son who was at medical school in Athens.
"He will not be content to be a doctor on an island, " Dr. Suiza smiled. "But me, I am suited here. I have my I work at the children's clinic which your husband has endowed, and affluent patients like him help to make up for the shore folk who find it harder to meet their bills."
"Do you treat Paul for his headaches, Dr. Suiza?" Domini asked.
The doctor was choosing a pastry, his consideration of the delectable cakes a more ponderous one than the occasion seemed to demand. The fork was poised in his fingers for at least a minute, then as he made his selection he shot a look at Domini under bristling brows. "Has Paul talked to you about his—headaches?" he asked.
"Not really. It seems to rattle him if I bring up the subject," she said. "Being so strong apart from the headaches, I suppose he hates to admit to a weakness."
"Perhaps." The doctor forked pastry into his mouth, and was intently watching the bees at their honey-plunder in a nearby mesh of wall-trailing flowers.
"Paul is very much a Greek," Metros said suddenly. "And Greeks are never easy of understanding. They are like icebergs, one might say, with more of them in the depths than is showing."
"Icebergs can cause a lot of damage," Domini murmured.
"But they can melt—ice is not iron."
"I imagine it would take considerable heat," Domini laughed.
The doctor smiled at the sound, and the sudden vivid loveliness which laughter brought to the face he had seen only in pain, and in cool composure. His eyes lit up. He saw now that he had been wrong to think her cool—ah, how those eyes of hers reflected the blue of sea and sky, and what a delicious curve there was to her mouth. She was but a child really, sensitive, shy, not the sort to show her feelings openly.
He leant forward and looked directly at her. "There is one flame that can consume everything," he said. "There is very little that can withstand its full force."
"Is this a riddle, Dr. Suiza?" she smiled.
"One might indeed call it a riddle, my child. The most complex in the world, and not really fathomed even after all the years since Eve first handed the forbidden apple to Adam."
"I see." Her hands came together as though seeking comfort of each other. "You are talking about love, doctor."
"Do you not agree that it is a fascinating subject, madame?"
She glanced away from him and wondered for a wild moment if in her pain and delirium she had revealed herself to him. He was kind, mature, he reminded her a little of Uncle Martin, but to confide in another was only a temporary relief followed by embarrassment, regret at having lowered your guard.
"I wonder why the apple was forbidden?" he murmured. "If Eve had not been daring enough to pluck it, even Eden would have been a rather dull place."
"She and her husband were banished from Eden," Domini reminded the doctor.
"Would you not say that they found another that was far more exciting?" he chuckled. "Come, to play like children in a garden is fun, but to enter a jungle and to live every fraught and unexpected moment—why, that is living."
Domini looked at the doctor then, and the shrewd glint in his eye told her that he did know something. She and Barry had played like children in a garden . . . had she mentioned Barry during those dark hours following the cave-in?
Dr. Suiza got to his feet, announcing with reluctance that he had some more patients to visit. When he took Domini's hand, he gave it a meaning squeeze. "We must talk together again," he smiled. "Soon, eh? When you feel ready?"
"What about, doctor?" she asked, not quite sure she understood him.
"About the things we cannot escape from, my child. The inevitable things, like birth, love—and death."
She gazed at him, wide-eyed, lost. His dark eyes held hers, then he bent his grey-streaked head and kissed her hand. He wished her goodbye in Greek and half a minute later the piazza was empty but for herself. She-sat very still, in the grip of an acute sense of loneliness. The house beyond the windows of the piazza was very quiet, for this was siesta time, when even the birds seemed to snooze in the branches of the trees.
Domini leaned back against a cushion and closed her eyes. The pine trees rustled, the sea whispered, and her dead baby seemed to tug at her heart. Gone was the love he would have brought and given, and a tear stole down Domini's cheek.
She slept for a short while, and awoke suddenly to a sense of coldness. The sun was no longer shining on to the piazza, and Domini saw that during her nap the haze that had overhung the sea for most of the day had crept inland and formed a belt around the headland and the house.
Domini had been warned to expect these fogs, but she had had no idea they could shroud this end of the island so suddenly, so completely. A trifle unnerved, she slipped off the lounger and went to the end of the piazza to look down over the cliffs to the sea. She could barely perceive it, though far below she could hear the hollow lap of the water on the rocks. Slow curls of mist drifted up to form in globules on her hair, and she had an empty sensation of being suspended with the house in the clouds.
She heard footfalls, a man's, but when she glanced around it was Yannis who was coming towards her. "We seem to be cut off up here, Yannis!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, madame." He nodded gravely. "It is very damp out here—you should come indoors."
"Yes, I am coming indoors, Yannis." She felt warmed by his concern for her. "Up here I feel rather like Helen walking the ramparts of Troy — will the fog last long, do you think?"
"Several hours, I would say, madame."
"Oh—then that might delay my husband and his sister. Do you think it might? That is a steep and twisting road leading up here—with visibility cut down by the fog I don't suppose Paul would chance driving home until it clears, not with Kara as a passenger."
"I doubt it, madame." Yannis held open the door of the salotto and Domini entered the large room, pooled with shadows, warmed where a logwood fire burned orange-bright.
"You pet, Yannis, you lit a fire!" Domini caught at the silk folds of her robe and hurried to the glow. Still bruised and stiff, she couldn't curl down as she liked to on the big, dark bearskin rug, so she sat down instead in Paul's winged chair and held her hands to the warmth of the crackling logs. Lita was preparing a special meal to greet Kara, but as it seemed only too likely they would be delayed by the fog, Domini told Yannis that she would have a snack here by the fire at about seven o'clock. She added that she hoped Lita wouldn't mind delaying the main meal.
He smiled and shook his head. "Our pleasure is that you are well again," he murmured. "Would you like a cup of English tea right now, madame?"
"Mmm." She nodded gratefully, her eyes misty with tears as she watched Yannis go from the room. Greek kindness, so utter, so without any motive but that of wanting to ease a burden. Domini had to blink hard, for in that moment she could have given way completely to the tears banked about her heart.
Her cup of tea was lovely, there by the fire, with her feet slipped out of her mules and her toes buried in the fur of the bearskin rug. The fog had stolen closer to the windows, and the firelight gleamed on the dark-wood surfaces, and lit to red the stone frieze of flute-players, centaurs, and maidens with torches. An antique loving-cup on a side table shone in the shadows, and there was the topaz gleam of foot-crushed wine in a flagon of crystal. All that was needed was the soft, cosy purr of a cat.
In a while a little carved clock chimed the hour and Domini decided to go upstairs and put on a dress. She felt tired, achy, but was determined not to go to bed. The fog would clear in a while, and it would be more of a cosy greeting for Kara and Paul to find her awaiting them.
She put on a blue dress with long sleeves, for Kara would be distressed enough about the results of the accident without seeing the bruises on Domini's arms. Her reflected face in the mirror was pale, with crescents of shadow still outlining her eyes, and she applied makeup to hide the ravages—fading now, thank goodness!
Um, the dress looked a little plain and needed a necklace to brighten it up. Domini opened the drawer in which she kept her jewellery—and there in place of the plain leather case was a filigree box carved all over with delightful imps and fauns, fishes and shells, and birds on the wing. Domini opened the box—yes, her jewellery was inside, arranged in a nest of artful little drawers.
The antique jewel-box was a gift from Paul. A silent token of his sympathy, she supposed, for not once in the past eight days had he mentioned the loss of the child. His manner, in fact, had been curiously withdrawn.
She touched the intricate carving of his gift, aware of a tactile pleasure that did not penetrate her heart. She took out the simple row of pearls that had been her mother's and as she clipped them on she thought of her wedding day. Pearls were unlucky for a bride, but she had expected tears for every pearl that day and it hadn't seemed to matter that she was challenging fate.
On her way downstairs she paused at the lyre window at the bend of the gallery and saw that the fog was still impenetrable. There was a ghostly rattle of leaves and boughs from the direction of the pine woods, and the house felt hollow and empty. She was glad to find Yannis in the salotto, drawing the curtains with a cosy swish, swish. The lamps were alight, and a log turned over with a hiss of resin and flames.
Tension seemed to lose the sharp edge of its talons in the warmth and cosiness of this room, and Domini fingered with a smile the spray of flowers that Yannis had placed on the small table set for one beside the fireplace. He had switched on the radio and Les Sylphides came in gentle waves across the fog-bound sea from Athens.
"Does the fog seem any thicker, Yannis?" Domini slipped into the chair he drew out for her.
"I would say it is about the same, madame." He poured her a fluted glass of wine . . . the Cretan wine that Paul always said should be taken with wild figs and honey-cakes, for no love supper of old had ever been complete without them.
She gave a little shiver as she seemed to hear his laughter, and warmed herself with a sip of the wine.
"I am sure Monsieur Stephanos will not attempt driving home in the fog, madame." Yannis scattered juniper needles on to the burning logs and their scent wafted out like an incense. "Now I will bring the soup."
Domini ate the meal to please Yannis and his wife rather than out of appetite, and the table had been taken away and she was drinking her coffee, seated in Paul's winged chair, when there were several loud knocks on the front door. Domini's heart beat with agitation, and she was standing up when the door of the salotto burst open and Nikos Stephanos came hurrying in . . . followed by tall, blond Barry Sothern.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NIKOS, his black hair damply curled by the fog, made straight to Domini and caught at her hands. Her hands were cold and trembly in his, she knew something awful had happened — Paul and Kara had had an accident in the car coming home. Her eyes, flashed to Barry, as though in appeal, then she said to Nikos:
"It's Kara and Paul, isn't it? They crashed in the car?"
Nikos bit his lip, while Barry jammed his hands down hard in the pockets of his driving jacket. The collar was up about his hair, mussing it, and his eyes looked very dark as they met Domini's.
"Tell me!" Her fingernails bit into the backs of Nikos' hands.
"Kara is all right," he said. "Paul—he has been taken to hospital—"
Domini's breath caught sharply. "Has he been badly hurt?"
Nikos shot a look at Barry, then he pressed Domini down into a chair, while Barry strode over to the cabinet on which stood decanters. There came a clink as he removed a stopper, assured himself that the container held brandy and poured out a peg. As he came back across the room with it, Nikos said to Domini: "There has not been a car crash. Paul has been taken ill—very critically ill—" -
"Drink this, honey." Barry put a warm hand over her shoulder and the rim of the glass to her lips. She drank, knowing that he gave her brandy because Nikos was about to add something worse to what he had already told her.
He stood looking down at her, his young face pale and distressed above the black rolled collar of his sweater. "My cousin is not expected to live," he said huskily. "The doctors have given him only a few hours, and I thought you would like to be with him, Domini."
Paul was dying? She glanced up at Nikos, unbelievingly.
"It would not have been right for you to hear such news over the telephone," he went on, distressed and not quite sure what one said on occasions like this. "Barry was at the house, so we came together here in the car. The fog was bad lower down the slopes, but it is a little clearer now—"
Fog, Domini thought dazedly. What did the fog matter?
She jumped to her feet and saw Yannis hovering anxiously in the doorway; it was plain from his face that he had overheard what Nikos had said about Paul. He was shaking his head to himself as he went to fetch her coat and scarf, the beautiful ocelot into which Barry helped her, buttoning it for her and pulling the big collar up about her head, which she swathed in the silk scarf she had bought off a pedlar in the Plaka— the stepped Plaka which she had explored with Paul...
Paul—dying!
She found herself installed in the car with Barry seated beside her on the back seat. Yannis and Lita stood in the doorway of the house, watching quiet as ghosts as Nikos swung the car to face the fog-bound gradient. Lita's head was swathed in a dark shawl and her eyes were wet.
Domini's were quite dry, but they felt as though they were burning in her head, as if she had been peering through a fog for a long while and was at last beginning to see a little clearer.
Paul had known for months that this illness was coming on him—those headaches had been his warning, and his reason for some of the things he had done, and said.
Paul had known for a long while that he was going to die!
Domini felt Barry's hand close in warm comfort about hers. The car was making slow progress down the gradient, moving forward for a few yards, then coming almost to a halt as Nikos felt the wheels on the grass at the edge of the steep road. Driving here with Paul the other night, the car had seemed to hang suspended in the stars—like Apollo's chariot. Now there wasn't a star to be seen, only the wandering mist and the wraithlike shapes of trees.
In a while Nikos told them over his shoulder that he had glimpsed the circling beacon of the lighthouse midway between Andelos and a neighbouring island. This meant that they were nearing the harbour, and the hospital.
Domini's heart beat wi
th the quick, heavy stroke of physical and mental tension. She was leaning against Barry's shoulder, grateful for his strong, silent company. What was he thinking as he sat quietly holding her hand? That fate was winding in a little more of the cord, binding them close again as the life ebbed out of the man who had come between them?
"What happened, Barry?" Her tight throat had unlocked. "Were you at Aunt Sophula's house when— when Paul was taken ill?"
"I had been out sailing with the Vanhusens—and Alexis," he explained. "The fog began to thicken, so we headed back into harbour. Alexis and I had a drink at the Vanhusens' place, then I walked her home as the fog had grown pretty dense. We arrived at her house just as the ambulance was leaving with Paul. Kara and her aunt went with him. Nikos was at the house to explain the situation to us—Alexis and myself."
"Poor little Kara must have been very upset," Domini murmured, picturing the distress of the girl who adored Paul.
"She went with him without tears." Nikos was peering intently through the half moons made by the windscreen wipers, "She seemed suddenly grown up."
No tears, Domini thought, for the Greeks who cry for joy and face sternly the anguish in their hearts. All the same, it was a good thing that Kara had Nikos to turn to.
Their journey through the fog to the hospital took almost two hours, but at long last they were pulling into the forecourt of the building and Nikos was helping Domini to alight from the car. The three of them walked across to the entrance, where a uniformed attendant directed them to the staircase that led to the floor on which Monsieur Stephanos' private room was situated. "Do you want me to come up with you?" Barry said to Domini. She nodded, and it wasn't until the three of them were mounting the stairs that she noticed she was still wearing her flat-heeled Greek slippers. They were gaily embroidered, incongruous against the sombre stone stairs.
The corridor was dimly lit. Paul's room was about halfway down, and as they neared the door a nurse came out, carrying a small instrument tray covered by a white cloth. Nikos went up to her and asked if the patient's wife could go in to see him. The nurse turned to Domini and said something to her, but she spoke in Greek and Nikos had to explain that Madame Stephanos was English. He then informed Domini of what the nurse had said, that the doctors were with Paul at the moment and would they please join the other relatives in the waiting-room. The nurse pointed it out to them, a room with glazed doors a few yards farther along the corridor.
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