by Anne Mather
Martha’s eyes went automatically to Josy at this admission, but the little girl hadn’t noticed his lapse, or if she had, she did not associate it with her mother. Instead, she was sitting looking rather pensive, and Martha guessed she was still mulling over his earlier statement. This apartment, such as it was, had always spelled security to Josy, and she was too young to worry about anything else.
At least his words had shocked Sarah into silence, and she was staring moodily down at her plate. The atmosphere around the table had thickened with their individual tension, and although Martha knew her sister was really to blame, she couldn’t help acknowledging that without Dion’s presence, the situation would never have arisen.
This time it was Josy who retrieved a sense of normality, saying curiously: ‘Where do you live, Uncle Dion? Do you have a house like Roger? Or just an apartment like us?’ Dion’s hard features softened. It was amazing how indulgent he could be when it suited his purpose, Martha thought rather maliciously, realising that Josy was enjoying her unexpected popularity.
‘I have several houses—and an apartment,’ her father admitted after a moment. ‘But houses do not mean a lot. It is the—the people who live in them who matter.’
Martha’s knuckles clenched about her knife and fork, and she had to bite her tongue not to respond to that particular piece of propaganda. Those had been her words to Dion, during one of their frequently heated arguments, and he was deliberately using them against her now.
‘Several houses…’ Josy sounded impressed, her eyes wide with wonder, the rest of her salad neglected on her plate. ‘That’s more than one, isn’t it? Do you live in all of them?’
‘Your—er—Uncle Dion is a wealthy man, Josy,’ Martha interposed shortly, resenting his influence. ‘He can afford to buy anything he likes.’
‘Including people,’ remarked Sarah almost inaudibly, pushing her chair away from the table. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’
‘We do not.’ Dion rose to his feet as Sarah would have left them, and she glanced back at him resentfully, aware like Martha of his overpowering arrogance. ‘Before you leave us, Sarah, I want you to know that I intend to get my own way in this.’
‘Don’t you always?’ she countered bitterly, and he essayed a polite bow in her direction.
‘As you say,’ he agreed, acknowledging the irony. ‘But I should also like your compliance with my arrangements.’
Sarah’s lips worked silently for a few moments, then she said: ‘You can’t force me to come with you, Dion. Whatever you threaten.’
Dion’s eyes narrowed. ‘I do not intend to threaten you, Sarah. I merely wish to make it clear that Martha owes her allegiance to me first—and you second. Do you understand?’
Sarah sniffed. ‘That sounds remarkably like a threat to me,’ she exclaimed.
‘Sarah!’ It was Roger who spoke now, but she jerked away from his restraining hand, and Dion shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
‘It is your decision, of course,’ he said, meeting Martha’s frustrated gaze, and then, as if suddenly having an idea, he added: ‘I have been thinking. Perhaps I could persuade my father to allow—Scott access to the island. Providing he is alone, I see no reason why that might not be arranged.’ He ignored Roger’s excited exclamation, and went on: ‘It might be convenient for all of us to spend some time at the villa.’
Martha dragged her eyes away from his, her heart pounding heavily in her ears. Oh, he was clever, she thought bitterly, very clever! By inviting Roger to Mycos, he was destroying Sarah’s one chance of remaining alone in London. Without Roger’s help she could never look after herself, and gradually he was eroding any opposition she might make to his plana.
Sarah was looking at her across the table, and Martha could see that the same thought had occurred to her. But Sarah was not his wife, and she still retained some thread of independence.
‘I know what you’re trying to do, Dion,’ she declared, tremulously, her hands clutching and unclutching the arms of her chair. ‘You think if Roger leaves, too, I’ll be forced to do the same!’
‘And will you not?’ asked Dion quietly, while Josy stared from one to the other of them, scarcely comprehending the half of this.
‘No.’ Sarah swallowed convulsively. ‘I—I—there’s a woman who looks after Josy sometimes—Mrs Bennett. I—I’ll get her to come in when I need her.’
‘Oh, Sarah…’ began Martha helplessly, but Josy was not so tactful.
‘Mrs Bennett won’t come if Mummy’s not here,’ she exclaimed innocently. ‘You know what she said—’
‘That will do, Josy!’
Martha started to correct her, but Dion still had the last word. ‘What if I say—your Mr Scott’s permission hinges on your accepting the arrangements, Sarah?’ he ventured softly, bringing a groan of protest from Roger. ‘Can you deny him this opportunity, after all he has done for you?’
And Martha knew that Sarah could not.
CHAPTER SIX
MARTHA listened to the sound of childish laughter coming from the direction of the swimming pool, and shifted rather restlessly on the cushioned lounger. It was amazing how easily her daughter had adapted to this change in her surroundings, and Martha assumed, somewhat ruefully, that she must be more like her father than she had thought. Josy had taken to the life at the villa like a duck to water, and in addition, despite the fairness of her skin, she was already losing that delicate pallor.
They owed a lot to Alex, of course, Martha reflected, hearing his teasing banter over the splashing sound of the water. Without his companionship, these first few days on Mycos would have been empty indeed, and his patience with Josy seemed never-ending. Whether he had guessed the child’s true identity, she could not be sure, for they did not discuss it. But at least their relationship had improved since he had learned of Dion’s intentions of taking her back again, although again it was not something they actually discussed. In the evenings, when Roger returned from his day’s exploration at Simos, at the north end of the island, and they all joined together for dinner here on the patio, conversation was always impersonal, and she herself had postponed precipitating explanations until she felt more capable of handling them.
Of course, had Dion been there it would have been different. But she ought to have realised that his schedule would not allow him more than a perfunctory interest in their establishment, and apart from a phone call the day after their arrival, they had had no word from him.
In one way, she had been relieved. It had enabled her to get her bearings without the constant anxiety of wondering exactly what he might demand of her. Even so, there were times when she could have wished that obstacle might be faced, and she couldn’t prevent the weakening rush of blood that accompanied such anticipation. If only the flesh was as controllable as the mind, she thought, and then chided herself for being such a fool. She had to remember that this was the man who had doubted his own child’s paternity, and who had been prepared to believe that she had lied to him all along. How had things got so bad between them that such a conversation should ever take place?
Her visits to London had not helped. Indeed, they had been the seed from which Dion’s core of suspicion had grown. But how could he expect her to abandon Sarah after they were married, knowing as he did that until Martha’s marriage they had been so close? Sarah had expected her to visit, and because she had refused to come to Greece, Martha had been obliged to make the trip to England. She had thought she understood Sarah’s feelings about seeing Dion. After all, she had been so attracted to him in the beginning, and his preference for her sister must have been hard to bear. But Sarah’s dislike of her husband had hardened into something more than mere resentment, and when things began to turn sour for Martha, Sarah had always been there to reassure her.
It would be easy, she thought, to attribute some of the blame to Sarah’s attitude. Easy to make Sarah the scapegoat for what had, ultimately, become an impossible situation. But if it had not been Sarah, it wou
ld likely have been someone else, some other excuse for Dion to exhibit his almost pathological jealousy. He had bought her, she thought bitterly, and he thought he owned her, that she should have no will outside that which he decreed. And because she had become pregnant, at a time when she had stated that they ought to wait a few more years, he had immediately suspected the worst.
Martha stretched her arms above her head, noticing as she did so that her skin, too, was turning a becoming shade of honey. She had been quite brown when she lived with Dion, and the blending of her skin and hair tones had always enchanted him. He was so dark, the hairs on his arms and legs so great a contrast to hers.
A curious pain twisted inside her. Had it never occurred to him to contemplate the circumstances of Josy’s conception? In the heat of his anger, had he never speculated that he might have been responsible? Had he forgotten so quickly that weekend they had spent at Delphi? That fleeting weekend they had snatched from his hectic schedules, in an attempt to recapture the relationship they had shared before work, and their families, came between them.
Martha had wanted to visit the temple of Apollo, and Dion had agreed to indulge her. They had driven up in the late afternoon, when the air was soft and muted by mountain shadow, and the slopes below Parnassus seemed to quiver with the expectancy of myth and legend. Any moment one might see the goat-like Pan, and his homed satyrs, or glimpse the muses in their sacred groves, and Delphi itself rose from antiquity, like ‘the navel of the earth’ which was what the ancients had called it.
Their hotel had been small and intimate, the manager an associate of Dion’s, and quite prepared to offer them the very best of his hospitality. And they had done what the other tourists had done, and visited the Temple of Apollo, and the sanctuary of Apollo, and the Kastalian spring. They had even wandered round the museum, and dined on the terrace overlooking the Pleistos gorge and the gulf of Itea beyond, and tasted the enormous juicy Amfissa olives, which were reputed to be among the best in the world.
But it was later, in their bedroom, on the square, iron-posted bed, with its rough cotton sheets and hand-woven spread, that Dion had made love to her, and beneath the spell of that enchanted place, Martha had had no mind to think of anything but him. The chances of her becoming pregnant had seemed so remote, and besides, intoxicated by his presence and drugged by the urgency of his kisses, she could have denied him nothing. She was on fire with love for him, satiated by his passion, and totally incapable of thinking beyond those ecstatic hours.
Of course, the enchantment had not lasted. Back in Athens his father had been fretting over an abortive attempt to gain control of a fleet of oil tankers, and Dion was despatched to the Persian Gulf to speak with some obscure ruler who had offered to make a deal with them. Martha’s plea to go with her husband had been refused outright. A desert sheikdom was not the place for a woman, she was told, and she had returned to their apartment alone—and lonely.
The whisper of the wheels of Sarah’s chair brought her abruptly back to the present, as her sister came out of the villa and propelled herself across the mosaic tiling towards her. Even Sarah had been unable to entirely avoid the mellowing warmth of the sun, and her skin was already acquiring a pinkish tinge. Sarah never tanned. She was too fair for that, but a healthy glow was warming her pale cheeks.
‘Did you enjoy your rest?’ Martha was self-conscious about the briefness of her shorts when compared to the cotton slacks that covered her sister’s thin, useless legs. Swinging her feet to the floor, she sat up, and Sarah positioned the wheelchair close beside her.
‘It’s very hot,’ declared Sarah peevishly, loosening another button of her white cotton shirt. ‘I’ll never get used to this climate. Never in a million years!’
‘Of course you will.’ Martha sighed. ‘Why don’t you do as Roger suggested, and go in the pool? At least the water—’
‘If you think I’m going to make a laughing stock of myself by putting on a bathing suit, you’re very much mistaken,’ replied her sister shortly. ‘You know Roger. He’d never let me forget it.’
‘Oh, you’re mistaken—honestly.’ Martha leaned across and squeezed Sarah’s arm. ‘Roger is very fond of you, you know that. He only teases you, because you always rise to the bait. He doesn’t mean any harm by it.’
Sarah sniffed. ‘Roger wouldn’t be half so friendly if you weren’t Dionysus Myconos’ wife,’ she retorted, and Martha felt a surge of impatience.
‘That’s not true, and you know it!’ she exclaimed. ‘Good Lord! Do you really think he’s been waiting for the last five years for Dion to come back into my life?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘Well…’ She pulled a long face. ‘You can’t deny that without his encouragement we wouldn’t be here now.’
Martha paused. ‘No. No, that’s true,’ she agreed slowly. ‘But let’s face it, if anyone’s responsible for Roger being here, it’s you.’
Sarah nodded. ‘I know. But even so—’
‘Sarah, can’t you just try and get something out of this?’ Martha’s tone was strained now. ‘What you say about Roger encouraging me to speak to Dion’s father is true, but you know, it’s possible that sooner or later I’d have to tell Dion the truth.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Martha stared at the other girl. ‘Why, because he’s her father, of course. I have to think about Josy, too. She’s my daughter, but her father’s blood runs in her veins as well. How do you think she might have reacted in—say ten years’ time, if she somehow learned who she was from someone else?’
Sarah hesitated. ‘I think you underestimate yourself, Martha,’ she said at last. ‘And probably you underestimate Josy, too. Why, in her position I’d feel pretty strongly towards a man who abandoned my mother when I was born.’
‘But Dion didn’t do that, did he?’ asked Martha impatiently. ‘I left him.’
‘Because he disowned the child!’
‘Oh, Sarah! It wasn’t that simple. He—I—he was suspicious. He knew I’d been seeing Roger while I was in London. He never bothered to discover that you were the one Roger always wanted to see.’
‘That’s not true!’ Sarah’s cheeks flushed.
‘It is true.’ Martha pushed back the few tendrils of hair which had come loose on her forehead with a weary hand. ‘We both know it. Somehow Dion got it into his head that Roger was the reason I was visiting London so often, and when the baby had red hair…’ She sighed. ‘He didn’t bother to consider that your hair is auburn, too, and that babies often lose all the hair they’re born with.’
‘But you told him!’ exclaimed Sarah, still red-faced, and Martha gave her a sideways glance.
‘You know what happened, Sarah. You know how stubborn I can be.’ She sighed again, ‘Maybe, after I’d had time to consider—if he’d come after me…But he didn’t. He told me his family stopped him, that they persuaded him to use the business as a palliative.’ She bent her head. ‘Some palliative!’
‘I still think it was for the best,’ said Sarah tautly. ‘I don’t know why you ever married him—’
‘I loved him!’ exclaimed Martha forcefully, lifting her head, and as she did so, she realised that Alex and Josy were walking barefoot across the patio towards them.
If Alex had heard what she said, he gave no sign of it, and Josy as usual was too absorbed in what she had to say to pay any attention to her mother’s outburst.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’ she cried, as soon as Martha noticed her. ‘I can swim, I can swim! Uncle Alex has taught me how to swim!’
Martha made a supreme effort and got to her feet. ‘Why, that’s wonderful, darling,’ she exclaimed, and really meant it, her eyes turning automatically to Alex for his reactions. ‘Is it true? Can she really swim? It hardly seems possible, after only these few days.’
‘She has a natural ability,’ he answered modestly. ‘And in these waters…’ he smiled, ‘anything is possible.’
‘I swam right across the pool,’ went on Josy importantly, and her uncle p
ulled a wry face.
‘Let us say you kept afloat,’ he teased, pulling a strand of wet dark hair that straggled over one of Josy’s slim shoulders, and she turned to wrinkle her nose at him.
‘Well, I think that’s wonderful!’ said Martha, relaxing as the tension between herself and Sarah eased. ‘Now we won’t have to worry about you falling in the pool accidentally. You won’t drown, whatever happens.’
Josy basked in her mother’s affection, and Alex turned his attention to Sarah. ‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted her politely. ‘It is another lovely day, is it not? Are you sure you will not change your mind and join us in the water?’
Sarah shook her head, her lips tightening ominously. But she could not be rude to Alex, who had shown her nothing but kindness, and with a thin smile she said: ‘I’d really rather not, if you don’t mind. I’m quite happy sitting here.’
That was blatantly not true, but Alex did not argue, excusing himself instead on the pretext of having some telephone calls to make. Josy watched him go with faint regret, but then she turned to her mother, eager to induce her to come and watch her prowess.
‘Will you come?’ Martha asked her sister, but Sarah refused again, reaching for the magazine she had tucked down the side of her chair, and with a regretful shrug Martha followed her daughter through the garden to the swimming pool.
After watching Josy paddle her way across the pool a couple of times, Martha decided the little giri was tiring, and suggested instead that they drive down to the village. Alex had put a station wagon at her disposal, and once or twice in the past days she and Josy and Sarah had taken drives about the island. The roads were not good—little more than cart tracks in places—but the outings were very enjoyable, enabling them to appreciate more fully the peace and isolation of Mycos.
Josy was quite willing to abandon the pool in favour of a trip to the village, and while the little girl changed her bathing suit for a pair of shorts and a matching vest, like her mother, Martha asked Sarah to join them.