Apollo's Seed

by Anne Mather

  ‘If you can bear to live with a man who was fool enough to abandon you, then I suppose the answer’s yes!’ declared Sarah contemptuously, and with a groan of compulsion, Roger erupted angrily.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sarah!’ he swore furiously, his angular face flushed and rueful. ‘I didn’t want to say this, but I’m going to have to. Dion would never have accused Martha of having a lover without your intervention!’

  There was silence after his accusation, a silence that was only broken by Josy’s whispered pleas as to what was the matter, and Alex moved quickly, taking the little girl’s hand and suggesting that if she put on her bathing suit, he would teach her a new game in the pool.

  Josy hesitated, but was diverted, and Martha let her go with a sick feeling of confusion. She didn’t understand any of this, and she wished someone would explain.

  Roger raked back his hair now with unsteady fingers, gazing at Dion entreatingly, appealing for his understanding. Then, when the other man still said nothing, he continued awkwardly: ‘Martha has to be told, Dion. It’s the only way.’

  ‘Told? Told what?’ Martha pleaded now, turning to her husband with bewildered eyes. ‘This has to do with what your mother said earlier, hasn’t it? Oh, Dion, tell me, tell me! Don’t make Roger do it for you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Sarah chokingly, her hands clenched on the arms of her chair. ‘If you want to know, I’ll tell you, although Dion swore me to silence when he came to the house two months ago.’

  Martha shook her head. ‘Dion swore you to silence?’ she echoed, and her husband sighed.

  ‘I saw no reason why you should be hurt any more than you had been,’ he declared heavily. ‘But if Sarah wants to tell you, I cannot stop her.’

  ‘So noble!’ snapped Sarah spitefully, but Roger’s hand upon her shoulder prevented any harsher outburst. ‘Anyway, you may as well know—I never wanted you to marry him,’ she declared offhandedly. ‘But then you did know that, didn’t you?’

  ‘You didn’t aprove,’ agreed Martha, frowning. ‘But what has that to do with this?’

  Sarah shrugged, and then, as if deciding only honesty would suffice, she said: ‘I hated you, Martha. I hated you for tricking me and sucking up to Dion whenever my back was turned—’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ protested Martha in horror, but her sister was already going on.

  ‘—and I hated you most of all when you got him to marry you by the oldest method in the book!’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  Martha was sickened, but she felt Dion’s hand squeeze her shoulder insistently, and realised it was just the outpourings of her sister’s jealous mind…as he had always said.

  ‘Well, you married him,’ said Sarah grimly, ‘and for a while I thought there was nothing I could do. But then,’ she paused, ‘Dion became involved with the company, and you began to get bored—’

  ‘Not bored!’

  ‘Restless, then. Jealous of the time he spent away from you. Eager to do something—anything—to make him notice you again.’ She shrugged. ‘It was easy. I encouraged you to come to London. Roger was always around. It was simple to convince Dion that you came to see him.’

  ‘But how could you convince Dion of a thing like that?’ asked Martha blankly, unable to comprehend, and with an oath her husband supplied the answer.

  ‘She wrote me,’ he declared, his fingers biting into her shoulder. ‘Look, need we go on? I think the situation has been satisfactorily explained. I was a fool—I think we are all agreed on that. But I can assure you, I have learnt my lesson well.’

  Martha licked her lips. ‘But what did—she say in her letters?’ she protested faintly. ‘Dion, Roger was her friend, not mine.’

  ‘I know that now,’ Dion whispered wearily. ‘My darling, we have more to thank Roger for than you know.’ He paused. ‘When he discovered that Sarah had written to me, he devised this plan to get you to contact me. He guessed that my father would show me your letter, and he was right.’

  ‘But how did you find out Sarah had written to Dion?’ exclaimed Martha helplessly. ‘Surely she didn’t tell you?’

  Roger shook his head. ‘You know when we went to the Scillies last summer?’ he said. ‘I helped Sarah to unpack on our return. I found some papers at the bottom of her wardrobe—’

  ‘—and he looked at them!’ declared Sarah resentfully.

  ‘I thought they were mine,’ Roger protested steadily. ‘Martha had been collating my notes for me. I thought they must have got mixed up with Sarah’s belongings by mistake.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah!’ Martha could hardly bear to look at her. ‘I could have found them myself at any time!’

  ‘I like to think she hoped you would,’ said Roger, sighing. ‘Anyway, you know now, and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Yes.’ Martha looked entreatingly at her husband. ‘Oh, Dion, I don’t know what to say to you.’

  ‘Do not say anything,’ he advised her gently. ‘Like you said, we all make mistakes.’

  ‘But you should have told me! When you found out, you should have told me.’

  ‘I did not care to be the one to tell you such things,’ he said heavily. ‘Sarah and I—well, we were never destined to be friends. How could I destroy your trust in her? I thought—I hoped it would not be necessary.’

  ‘Don’t give me any handouts, Dion,’ snapped Sarah malevolently. ‘I don’t need anything from you.’

  ‘Sarah!’ Roger’s tone was a warning. Then he looked at Dion. ‘We’re leaving, actually. We’ve just been waiting for you two to come back to tell you. Sarah doesn’t get along with Jill, and I guess I’ve done all the exploring I need on Mycos. We’re moving on to Santorini. I’m hoping to meet up with the chaps who are working at Akrotiri. But thanks anyway, for letting me have this time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dion fervently, his grim features breaking into a faint smile. ‘I know I said I did not want this to happen, but perhaps it is better this way.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Roger appreciated the gesture. ‘I’m sure we’ll all get over it in time.’

  ‘I won’t,’ declared Sarah vehemently, and Martha doubted she could either.

  Alone in their room later, Martha found it impossible to justify Sarah’s behaviour towards her husband. He had done nothing to warrant such hatred in her sister, and she wished there was some way she could make up to him for all that he had suffered.

  ‘I can’t understand why I never suspected anything,’ she fretted now, seated before the vanity unit, unhappily regarding her reflection in the mirror. ‘In all those years I never dreamt she might have been involved.’

  ‘Why would you?’ Dion countered gently, coming to stand behind her. ‘So far as you were concerned, Sarah was on your side. She had agreed with you, sympathised with you, done everything to make you believe she had only your well-being at heart. Why should you suspect her?’

  Martha shook her head. ‘I should have remembered how she acted when I told her we were getting married. But I thought she had got over that.’ Then she frowned. ‘Tell me about the letters. How could you believe what she wrote, knowing how she felt about you?’

  Dion sighed, drawing her back against his thighs. ‘I suppose she played on our weakness for one another,’ he said at last. ‘She was clever, I see that now.’

  ‘But when did she contact you? When did you begin to suspect me?’

  Dion hesitated. ‘Well, if you insist on hearing it all…’ He frowned. ‘I suppose the first time she wrote to me was about a year before our separation—’

  ‘A year!’ Martha was horrified, and Dion shook his head.

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’ he demanded huskily. ‘It is all over now.’

  ‘No.’ Martha held up her head. ‘I want to know—I have to know. Go on, please. I’m sorry I interrupted you.’

  Dion’s mouth compressed, but after a moment he continued: ‘It was just after a visit you had made to London. She wrote that—oh, that you had
been seeing Scott while you were in London, and that naturally she was upset. They were thinking of getting engaged, the explained, and—well, you were trying to split them up.’

  ‘No!’

  Martha’s lips parted in dismay, and Dion’s hands slid possessively over her shoulders. ‘Would you rather I did not go on?’ he exclaimed. ‘Martha, there is no point in torturing yourself this way.’

  ‘If only you’d told me!’ she protested tremulously, and he nodded his head slowly, in acknowledgement of his own doubts in not doing so. ‘So—what happened then?’

  ‘Kala,’ Dion made an impatient gesture, ‘that was when I tried to stop you from visiting London so frequently.’

  ‘And I thought you were jealous,’ murmured Martha wonderingly, and his mouth assumed a mocking curve.

  ‘Oh, I was,’ he assured her, his hands caressing. ‘Very jealous. Increasingly so, when you persistently ignored my requests.’

  Martha was appalled. ‘Sarah knows me. She knows me so well. She knew if you tried to stop me from doing something I would rebel against it.’

  Dion shrugged. ‘Well, I need not elaborate. There was more of the same, and over a period of time I could not help but believe what was happening, particularly when you seemed so eager to visit your sister.’

  ‘Sarah encouraged me. She said she was lonely. She said that since I’d got married, she had no one.’

  ‘She had Scott,’ declared Dion heavily. ‘Only I was too blind to see it.’

  ‘So—so when Josy was born with—with red hair—’

  Dion nodded. ‘Disaster!’

  ‘But—but Sarah’s hair is auburn!’

  ‘I know.’ Dion sighed again. ‘I guess I was not thinking with my brain, only with my emotions.’

  ‘And Sarah told you the child was Roger’s?’

  ‘Oh, no, she was too clever for that. But she had hinted in one of her letters how embarrassing it would be for you if the child had red hair.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  Martha buried her face in her hands, and felt his hands moving on her neck. ‘So you see why Sarah and I have no love for one another,’ he said gently. ‘She knew once I had seen Josy again there was no way she could continue deceiving me, on that score at least.’

  ‘And—and the rest? My relationship with—with Roger?’

  ‘Learning that Josy was mine put an entirely new light on the situation. And once I had met—Roger, I guessed where his sympathies lay.’

  ‘Oh, Dion!’

  ‘It is strange how these things happen, is it not?’ he mused. ‘Maybe if Sarah had not had the accident, you would not have moved into Roger’s house, no?’

  ‘Possibly not, although we needed more space, for—for the baby.’

  ‘Our baby,’ agreed Dion, with some satisfaction.

  ‘Our daughter,’ murmured Martha huskily. ‘Darling, I don’t know how to make it up to you.’

  ‘It is enough that you were prepared to accept me without knowing the whole truth of the situation,’ he declared roughly. ‘But now all is clear between us. We can start again.’

  * * *

  Six months later, Dion came to find Martha as she was dressing for dinner one evening, a telegram in his hand.

  ‘This has just arrived,’ he said, handing it to her, and she turned her back for him to fasten her zipper while she read the telegram’s contents.

  The message was from Roger, short and simple—he and Sarah had been married that morning, at the register office in Wimbledon, with only a couple of his colleagues and their wives as witnesses.

  Dion turned her to face him as she looked up from the paper, the arch of his brows indicating the enquiry in her eyes.

  ‘You are not sorry, are you?’ he asked, lifting her chin with his finger, and she caught his fingers with hers, and carried them to her lips.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It was much too soon. And Roger will understand that if Sarah doesn’t.’

  ‘I would have gone with you,’ Dion told her quietly. ‘It you had really wished to attend—’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Martha, holding his palm against her cheek. ‘Maybe when they have their first baby, then it will be different.’

  ‘Roger says in his letter that the therapy is working,’ remarked Dion gently, his fingers sliding round her nape. ‘Who knows, one day she may walk again and confound us all. Anyway, I hope she is happy.’

  ‘You’re very generous,’ said Martha with a sigh the agony of the past still too close to dismiss, but Dion only shook his head.

  ‘Why should I not be?’ he countered, drawing her to him. ‘With the most beautiful wife in Athens, and a daughter who fills her grandparents with delight.’ His hand probed the swelling roundness of her stomach beneath the generously proportioned gown. ‘Not to mention the reason why I have delegated most of my travelling to Alex until the spring, when you can join me again.’

  Martha nestled against him, loving the feel of his hands on her body. ‘Josy is so excited. Do you think she’ll really adjust to the baby without feeling put out?’

  ‘The way my mother dotes on her, you would think she had no other grandchildren,’ asserted Dion dryly, his lips seeking the curve of her cheek. ‘Now, do we go down for dinner, or do I unzip this most beautiful gown once again? I warn you, if you continue to move against me as you are doing, you may have no choice in the matter.’

  Martha’s low laughter was warm and intimate. ‘Oh Dion, I’m so happy,’ she whispered, and he took a few moments to show his appreciation.

  ISBN-13: 9781460347546

  APOLLO’S SEED

  © 1979 Anne Mather

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