Icon of Gold

by Icon of Gold (retail) (epub)

  Cathy was quiet for a very long time. He glanced up at her, fearing he had offended or upset her with the direct question. She shook her head, unsmiling. ‘Same answer, I think. Not permanently.’

  ‘You know that Pa…?‘ he stopped, shrugged, wishing, too late, that he had not started the conversation.

  She sat down, quartered her sandwich very neatly and precisely, lifted her eyes to his. ‘Nikos,’ she said, patiently, and for the first time he glimpsed the depth of the anger beneath her calm, ‘at the moment what your father does or does not want, does or does not intend to do is -’ she hesitated ‘- shall we say is not my most pressing concern. I have a home. It’s here. Leon knows where I am. Which is more,’ she added, drily, ‘than I can say about him. When he comes back from wherever he is, which I suppose at some point he will, then we’ll talk about it.’ Seeing the faintly disconcerted look on his face she smiled, lightening the moment, ‘That’ll be after I’ve thrown a fit and a few plates, of course, rather than before.’

  The conversation stayed with her as she walked the windy beach, the dogs dashing to and fro about her heels, pouncing on the waves and occasionally on each other in a flurry of high spirits. In her determination to keep busy, not to let the festival be spoiled, she had hardly herself realised the strength of her resentment at this latest betrayal — for that was certainly how she saw it - of Leon’s. Once again she heard Adam’s words when he had spoken of the Greek house: ‘Your life is with your husband, isn’t it?’ She bent and picked up a smooth, heavy pebble, hurled it with all her strength out into the grey, churning sea. Heavy clouds had built up, the afternoon was darkening and there was rain now in the wind. Blindly she walked on. Your life is with your husband. Your life is with your husband, that is, when he cares to tell you where he is and what he’s doing. And, come to that, who he’s doing it with. Your life is with him even if over and over he blandly and brutally and apparently without thought tramples on your heart and on your self-esteem and thinks he can make up for it with a casual, expensive trinket. ‘Sandy, come away from there!’ The little dog was up on the dunes, that were thick with sea holly and riddled with rabbit holes and was busy excavating, damp sand flying from beneath his scrabbling paws. Cathy stood for a moment, the wind in her face, looking around her. Resentment burned deeper. This was where her life was. This was where she belonged. If the charming, ruthless, womanising, unreliable man she had married could treat her so cavalierly here, how much worse might not her situation become if she agreed to abandon her independence altogether and follow him to Greece?

  The rain was steady now and suddenly very heavy, blowing in from the sea, sheeting in torrents across the beach. She whistled sharply. The bedraggled dogs came to her, even their high spirits a little quelled by the downpour. ‘Come on, boys. Enough’s enough; we’d best get back before we drown.’

  *

  Nikos had thoroughly enjoyed his bath. As Cathy had said the kitchen was warm and cosy and there was no shortage of hot water. He had taken the liberty of helping himself to a drink. He lay in somnolent comfort listening to the rain that drove against the window. His earlier, perhaps perverse, feeling of contentment had returned. He sipped his whisky, leaned his head back, his eyelids drooping. The glass tilted and he jumped awake, half laughing. He sat up, tossed back the last of the drink and reached for the towel.

  He was dried, half dressed and rubbing at his damp hair when he heard the front door open and close, and Cathy’s voice called, ‘Hello, Nikos? It’s only me.’

  Shirtless and still holding the towel he stepped to the door and opened it. ‘It’s OK. I’m finished. Oh, good Lord!’ The last words came in laughter.

  Cathy stood, unbuttoning her sodden macintosh, dripping indiscriminately on polished floorboards and rug. She looked like a drowned rat, her drenched hair plastered to her head, water dripping down her neck and running down her face. ‘My hat blew off,’ she said crossly, ‘and I couldn’t catch it. And what good it is having two dogs with you when they let your hat get away without so much as trying to fetch it I don’t know! Call yourself a dog?’ This last was addressed to Sandy who, wet as his mistress, had leapt on to his chair beside the fire and was peaceably licking himself dry. ‘I’d take you back and change you for a cat if I could be bothered, you knuckle-headed know—nothing pooch! And what do you think you’re laughing at?’

  ‘It’s not a what it’s a who! A very wet who!’ Nikos could not contain his laughter. ‘You should see yourself! Here —’ he threw the towel around his neck, came to her and helped her out of the saturated coat. The rain had been so fierce it had driven through the shoulders to dampen her pullover. She dragged it off over her head, still muttering ill-temperedly.

  ‘Bloody trousers — look at them - I might as well have been paddling!’ She scrubbed at her wet face with the jumper, lifted her head, eyed him repressively. ‘Nikos, it really isn’t that funny!’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Watching her, bedraggled and grumbling like a wet child, an unexpected and completely uncontrollable surge of tenderness engulfed him and his laughter died. He felt for a moment that his heart had stopped. He could not take his eyes from hers. There was a sudden long moment of silence. Cathy’s movements stilled. He took the towel from around his neck, and instead of handing it to her said softly, ‘Turn around.’ Her disconcerted gaze held his for a moment longer, then, very slowly, she turned her back to him. With infinite gentleness he began to rub at her soaked and dripping hair, massaging her scalp through the damp thickness of the towel. He felt her relax, leaning against him. She lifted her head a little; he sensed that she had closed her eyes, mesmerised. Sandy, his own ablutions complete, settled himself into his chair, put his nose on his paw and watched them with tranquil interest. The room was very quiet.

  He felt the change in her, the sudden tension that gripped her and pulled her from him. As she turned abruptly back to face him his fingers tangled in her hair. She put up a hand to steady herself; her cold hand on his warm skin was like an electric shock. His hand was still in her hair. More than anything he had wanted in his life before he wanted to kiss her.

  She ducked her head; he disentangled his fingers. She took the towel from him and buried her face in it, rubbing her head roughly. He stepped back When she finally emerged from the towel there were two high spots of colour on her cheeks. She did not look at him. ‘I’d better go up and change into something a little less likely to give me pneumonia.’ She tossed the towel on to a chair and, very straight-backed, walked to the door that led to the stairs. As she disappeared through it, closing it very quietly behind her he put his head back, closing his eyes for a second and running a hand through his dishevelled hair. After a moment he spun on his heel, snatched up the towel and went back into the kitchen. He leaned for a long moment on the table, palms flat, head bowed. ‘Fool!’ he whispered quietly, through gritted teeth ‘You fool!’ and then, as the extent of the damage he had self-evidently inflicted sank in, his hand hit the table, hard, ‘Oh, Jesus, you fool!’ The words were soft, and savage, and verged on despair.

  Upstairs, very composedly, Cathy went about the business of changing her clothes; studiously avoiding meeting her own eyes in the mirror as she did so. Even when, warm and dry in fresh slacks and jumper she picked up a hair brush and began to drag it, painfully fiercely, through the damp tangle of her hair she did it looking out of the window to where the marshes behind the cottage glinted like polished pewter in the grey afternoon. It had stopped raining. She turned to put the brush on the dressing table; and this time could not avoid her reflection in the minor. Steeling herself she faced it, steadily. Her cheeks burned. Her eyes, about which the years had pencilled the fine lines of laughter and of tears glowed as if lit by a candle. The usually unremarked streak of silver in her hair looked like a carelessly applied splash of paint.

  Nikos had wanted to kiss her. She had felt it, sensed it, known it as surely as if his lips had actually touched hers.

  But worse — mu
ch worse —— she had wanted it too. She could not deny it.

  Shaken to the core she stared at that face that suddenly seemed the face of a stranger. She could not have been more shocked if the solid, trusted ground beneath her feet had suddenly and treacherously yawned to a chasm. A series of apparently unconnected incidents flickered in her memory. Nikos, crying on the beach, his hand in hers, her face on his spray-damp hair. The almost imperceptible trembling of his fingers as he had led her on to the dance floor at the Savoy. His body against hers as they had danced. The enchantment of Mahler. Had she encouraged him? Had she? She stared, long and blankly, at the reflected stranger. Then, ‘Mince pies,’ she said aloud, with a kind of manic calm. ‘I’ve got to make the mince pies.’

  For one sweetly terrible moment she allowed herself to wonder what his kiss would have been like.

  She looked at her watch. A couple of hours and Nikos would leave to pick up Adam from the station. Then they would no longer be alone and everything would return to normal; this crazy looking-glass world that she seemed so suddenly to have stepped into would revert to its usual rational and manageable self. ‘Mince pies,’ she said again, a lunatic mantra, an invocation of common sense. ‘I’ve got to make the mince pies. Adam’s coming. Adam likes mince pies.’

  *

  Nikos drove into Ipswich in the foulest mood possible. The past hour or so had been the most difficult of his life. He and his stepmother had been excessively and courteously careful not to catch each other’s eyes, not to come near each other, not to speak of anything that touched on the personal. He had tasted and complimented her on her mince pies, she had asked him polite questions about his Christmases in New York with his grandmother. Every few minutes he had glanced at the clock, willing the hands to move. In the end he had left at least half an hour too early. He stood now waiting at the barrier as the train steamed in, watching for Adam’s tall figure amongst the crowds, for the first time actually pleased that Cathy’s sometimes graceless but often diverting son was coming to join them. If he were honest he could not have said that he very greatly cared for Adam; the least that could be said was that he would probably not have gone out of his way to make a friend of him if it had not been for the family connection, and he suspected that Adam felt the same. But after this afternoon’s disaster — for that was certainly the way Nikos saw it — the devil himself would have been welcome to ease the atmosphere between himself and Cathy. One thing was certain: under no circumstances could he, Nikos, allow himself to be left alone with her over the next couple of days. Adam did not know it, he found himself thinking a little grimly, but he had just acquired a shadow for the duration of the holiday.

  The station, and the crowds, were festive. People hurried past carrying bags and parcels, happy to be home at the start of the unusually long Christmas break. A small Salvation Army band played Christmas carols; a child shook a tin, collecting money. Nikos dropped a sixpence in it, then looked up to see Adam striding along the platform deep in conversation with another man, a small, thin-faced man in a shabby overcoat and a dark trilby hat. Adam was carrying a couple of parcels under his arm. Just before he came to the barrier he stopped, hunting in his pocket for his ticket. The smaller man stopped with him, still talking earnestly, gesturing with thin hands, as if giving directions. Adam nodded. The other man slipped something into Adam’s pocket, smiled and winked and then disappeared into the flow of people going through the barrier like a fish into a muddied stream. Adam lifted his head and saw Nikos, lifted a hand in casual greeting. A few minutes later they were in the car and heading through the town. Nikos got the impression that Adam was in high spirits, pleased with himself; an impression confirmed when Adam, lighting a cigarette, said, ‘Well — it looks as if Christmas in the country might not be quite such a pain after all.’

  ‘Oh?’ Nikos’ eyes were on the road. He felt the man beside him stretch a little, making himself comfortable, his arm across the back of Nikos’ seat. It was one of the things he envied Adam — this effortless ability somehow to take charge of his surroundings, to treat any place or situation as if it were his own natural domain. Nikos had never seen him ill at ease, or awkward.

  ‘Met a guy on the train.’ Adam put his head back to expel a long stream of smoke. ‘There’s a meeting. On Boxing Day. At Huntingdon.’

  Nikos glanced at him, blankly. ‘A meeting? What sort of meeting?’

  Adam laughed. ‘A race meeting. Over the sticks. The guy on the train was a bookie.’ He patted his pocket. ‘He gave me his card.‘

  Nikos glanced at him. ‘Boxing Day?’ he said. ‘You can’t go anywhere on Boxing Day!’

  Adam looked at him in genuine surprise. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You - you’re supposed to be here for Christmas. Cathy will be terribly disappointed if you disappear on Boxing Day —’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft. She’s got Leon and you to keep her company — unless you’d like to come along, of course?’

  ‘She hasn’t,’ Nikos said.

  ‘Hasn’t what?’

  ‘Cathy doesn’t have Pa. He isn’t here. He isn’t coming.‘

  There was a long silence. Adam let out a very soft whistle. ‘Well I’ll be damned. The old bastard! Where is he?’

  ‘In Athens I think. Somewhere in Greece at any rate. A man turned up a couple of days ago. There was some sort of deal — I don’t know. Anyway it seems it couldn’t wait. Pa flew to Greece yesterday. There’s no way he’ll be back in time to join us.’

  ‘The old bastard!’ Adam repeated, and this time there was a trace of admiration in his tone. He turned again to look at Nikos in the flickering light. ‘Is that really where he’s gone?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re sure there isn’t —’ Adam stopped, shrugged ‘- a little hanky panky going on?’

  Nikos’ hands tightened on the steering wheel. He waited for a moment before saying, shortly and simply, ‘If you mean is he with another woman then no, I don’t believe he is. I was there when the arrangements were made. It isn’t a woman. It’s money.’

  ‘Fair enough, fair enough.’ Adam was conciliatory. ‘I just wondered, that’s all. We all know Leon has a way with the ladies.’ He sat in silence for a moment, watching through the window as the lights grew fewer and the car sped on into the dark countryside. ‘Boy oh boy,’ he said at last, ‘I’ll bet she was mad.’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be in Leon’s shoes when he does turn up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’d just better bring her back something extra special, I guess.’

  ‘If he does she’ll throw it at him.’

  ‘That bad?

  ‘That bad.’

  Nikos sensed the other man’s shrug. ‘Oh, well. That’s their problem, isn’t it? I don’t see why it should stop me from having a bit of fun on Boxing Day.’

  ‘Adam—!’

  Adam interrupted, an edge of fierceness in his voice. ‘Listen — this happy family Christmas in the country wasn’t my idea in the first place, if you remember? It’s Wednesday bloody night. The damned weekend is tacked on to the holiday. I won’t be back in London until Sunday. I’ve got to do something to stay sane in this God-forsaken hole. I’m going racing on Boxing Day and that’s that.’

  They had covered a couple of miles before Nikos broke the slightly hostile silence that had fallen between them. ‘This Huntingdon place,’ he asked, tentatively. ‘Is it far? Could we get there and back in an afternoon?’

  Adam turned his head to look at him. Nikos kept his eyes on the road ahead. He sensed the other man’s sudden, sly smile. ‘Yes,’ Adam said. ‘We can. Quite easily.’

  Chapter Seven

  With a skill that Nikos, whilst resenting it, could not help but admire, Adam set about charming and manipulating his mother from the moment he stepped over the threshold of Sandlings. ‘Leave it to me, old boy,’ he had said in the car. ‘Just leave it to me. We’ll be at that meeting on Friday or
my name isn’t Adam Sinclair. You’ll see. But just leave me to broach the subject, OK?’

  It did not harm his cause that Cathy was so openly glad to see him. She threw her arms about him and hugged him. ‘Happy Christmas, darling.’

  ‘And to you.’ He bent to kiss her, straightened, looking around the room. ‘The place looks great. It’s something I always remember about Christmas — the way you always made things look so good, even during the war.‘ He set the parcels he carried under the tree, turned back to her, put an arm about her shoulder. ‘Damn shame Leon couldn’t make it after all.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never mind. We’ll manage.’ He lifted his head, scenting the air. ‘Something smells good.’

  She smiled. ‘Supper. It’s waiting.’ She glanced at her watch; the serviceable old one, Nikos noticed, not the beautiful thing that had been his father’s gift to her. ‘I wondered, after we’ve eaten, if you’d like to come down to the carol service at St Peter’s? Only if you aren’t too tired,’ she added quickly. ‘If you’d rather stay here?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. Christmas comes but once a year and all that. And I know Christmas Eve has always been your favourite part of it. We’ll do whatever you want, eh, Nikos?’

  Nikos nodded.

  Cathy slipped her arm through her son’s. ‘Come and eat. I want to hear all about where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. Are you still seeing Dorothy? What was the trip from town like? Were the trains very crowded?’ Not once since the two young men had entered the room had she so much as glanced at Nikos. In an unhappy silence he followed them through to the kitchen. He was called on to make very little contribution to the conversation during the meal; Adam’s entire attention was focused on his mother, and she made little or no attempt to involve Nikos in their exchanges. The meal finished, Adam insisted that he and Nikos should wash up whilst Cathy got ready to go out. On their own in the kitchen he tossed a tea towel to Nikos, winked and stuck up a thumb. ‘It’s in the bag.’