by Anne Weale
SOUTH FROM SOUNION
Anne Weale
Lucia didn't like and didn't trust her sister's boyfriend Nicholas Curzon from the first moment she met him -- and it was with much misgiving that she agreed to accompany the pair of them on a holiday to Greece.
But as her distrust of Nicholas increased, so, alas, did her unwilling attraction to him . .
CHAPTER ONE
Coming out of the cinema into the bitter cold February night, Lucia Gresham shivered, and turned up the collar of her shabby tweed coat. The coat was three winters old, and she had planned to buy a new one during the January sales. But then Cathy, her younger sister, had set her heart on a glittering, sequinned evening top to wear at New Year parties. So Lucia had agreed to postpone buying a new coat until next autumn.
Lucia was a teacher in the Infants' Department of the Alderman Evans Primary School in the unbeautiful north London suburb where she had spent the greater part of her life. She taught a class of nearly forty six-year-olds. On open day, her pupils' mothers often said they didn't know how she could cope with so many obstreperous youngsters. But, although she would have preferred a smaller class, in order to give each member more individual attention, Lucia found the children easy to manage. It was her wayward, twenty-year-old sister who taxed her patience, and caused her many restless nights.
As she walked briskly home to the large, ugly Victorian-Gothic villa built by Great-Grandfather Gresham, the problem of Cathy made her sigh and wrinkle her forehead.
If only Cathy would fall in love with some nice, steady boy, she thought longingly. But, at the moment, everything about her sister was calculated to put off nice, steady boys, and to attract quite the opposite kind. It was Lucia's nightmare that, if Cathy continued to pursue her present course, she might end up wrecking her life. Yet how was one to stop her! Any attempt to curb her only made her even more reckless.
It was not a long way from the local cinema to the quiet tree-lined side road where the two girls lived. As Lucia reached the gates of Montrose, she was alarmed to see a car parked in the driveway. Not an ordinary car, but a dashing dark blue Lancia Flaminia convertible.
For some years now, Montrose had been divided into two flats. The tenants of the top flat were a young married couple, Peter and Janet Sanders. Lucia often 'sat' for them. They had a three-year-old son, and a second child on the way. She felt certain the car had nothing to do with them. Their friends, if they had cars, drove Minis. So the Lancia must belong to one of Cathy's escorts.
Her heart sank. The raffish young man with the scarlet Austin-Healey had been bad enough. But a man who drove a sleek, de luxe Lancia seemed likely to be even more of a menace.
Entering the house by way of the back door, she took off her coat and hung it up. Then, shivering, for it was almost as cold in the stone-flagged passage as it was out of doors, she went into the kitchen, and put on the kettle for coffee.
The kitchen had two doors; the one through which she had just passed, and another leading into the hall. When she had attended to the kettle, she opened the hall door, expecting to hear voices from the drawing-room.
All was silence. Puzzled, she walked down the hall to the foot of the wide, Turkey-carpeted staircase. A man's overcoat and dark silk scarf had been tossed carelessly over the rail against the thick newel post. On the table, near the drawing-room door, lay a pair of gloves - gloves of thin, supple leather with cut-out knuckles, the kind racing drivers wore.
There was still no sound of conversation, or of music. Usually, her sister's first act on coming home was to put on the radio, or her record-player.
Yet, even though it seemed odd that Cathy and her unknown companion were not talking, Lucia was unprepared for the scene which met her eyes when she opened the drawing-room door.
The only light in the room was that given out by the bars of a portable electric fire set down close to the brocaded settee which faced the empty fireplace. Cathy was sitting on the setter, but all that could be seen of her was a pair of long, slender legs, and a fashionably brief skirt. Her face, and the upper part of her body, were obscured by the dark head and broad back of the man leaning over her, kissing her.
Lucia's immediate reaction was that of anyone unwittingly intruding on two people locked in an ardent embrace. Her instinct was to retreat, if possible unseen.
But this reflex was swiftly displaced by a thrust of anger at Cathy's folly in letting the man make love to her. To the best of Lucia's knowledge, she could only have met him very recently. A fortnight ago, she had been gadding about with Roger, the Austin-Healey driver.
However, before she could think of anything to say, the man on the settee raised his head, and Cathy caught sight of her.
"Lucia!" With a squeak of mingled shock and dismay, she pushed free of his arms, and jumped up. "Oh - you gave me such a fright. I thought I was seeing things. What are you doing back so early? I thought you'd be out till eleven."
Lucia did not reply, but reached out her hand to switch on the overhead light. Briefly, she took in her sister's dishevelled blonde hair, and smudged lipstick. Then, hoping he would register the hostility in her eyes, she looked coldly and critically at the man.
By now, he also had risen. But he showed no sign of sharing Cathy's discomfiture. Casually straightening his tie, he returned Lucia's frosty stare as calmly as if she had found them discussing the weather.
His composure heightened her antagonism. For it seemed to her that any decent man would have the grace to look embarrassed. Not only was he unembarrassed, he had the audacity to walk towards her, hold Out his hand, and say pleasantly, "I'm Nicholas Curzon. How d'you do?"
Lucia ignored his hand. "Good evening," she answered icily. Then, to Cathy, she said, "I've put the kettle on. Go and make some coffee, will you, please?"
In normal circumstances, Cathy would have resented this curt request, and told her sister to do it herself. But, for once, she did meekly as she was bidden. Lucia and Nicholas Curzon were left alone together.
"You look half frozen," he said, smiling at her. "Come to the fire and get warm. It's damned cold out tonight, isn't it?"
Much as she longed to toast her chilled hands and feet, she had no intention of allowing him to disarm her with affable small talk. "Yes," she said crisply, and sat down in a high-backed wing chair.
He moved the electric fire to where it would warm her. Then he straightened, and glanced round the room. Evidently it was the first time he had taken any notice of his surroundings.
The unflatteringly hard glare from the overhead light revealed a large, high-ceilinged room, which had not been redecorated or refurnished since before the war. Once a month, Lucia dusted, and vacuumed the huge, faded carpet. And each spring she climbed to the top of the household step-ladder to dust the elaborate plaster cornice, and the tasselled lambrequins at the top of the heavy, interlined brocatelle curtains. But the two girls rarely sat in the drawing-room. Cathy was seldom at home and, when Lucia had time to relax, she did so in her great-grandfather's book-lined study across the hall. The dining- and morning-rooms were now their bedrooms and the downstairs cloakroom had been converted into a bathroom.
"That's a fine piece you have over there." Nicholas Curzon Crossed the room to examine a French, pilastered bureau-bookcase standing against the far wall.
It was the only really valuable piece of furniture in the house, and Lucia took particular care of it against the day when they might need to sell it. She was a good deal surprised that he had the discernment to recognize its worth.
While he was looking at the bureau, she scrutinized him. He was not a tall man, nor was he a good-looking one. Indeed, as she noted his lack of height, and his swarthiness, she was surprised that Cathy wished to be kissed by him.
She would have expected her sister to find him rather repulsive. In spite of his surname, he obviously had a strong strain of foreign blood in him. No Englishman ever had such thick, black hair, and his nose was a big, bony beak jutting out between his high cheekbones. In profile, with that Punch-like nose, and an equally prominent chin, he looked quite ugly.
Then he turned, and strolled back towards her, smiling a little, as if her antipathy amused him. And, as she met his twinkling dark eyes, Lucia realized with dismay that there was something about him far more potent than mere handsomeness. She could not define it precisely, but she felt it like the warmth of the fire. Suddenly, she was afraid. For she knew then that, if he chose, this stranger with his money and his magnetism could be the instrument of Cathy's downfall.
He offered his cigarette case.
"I don't smoke," she informed him frigidly.
"Wise girl. Do you mind if I do?"
She shook her head, and watched him light up, and sit on the arm of the settee. She knew he must be got rid of, but how was she to go about it ?
"You and your sister are not at all alike," he remarked, after some moments of silence.
"We are only half-sisters," she said. "My mother died when I was born. Cathy's mother was my father's second wife."
Why her father had married a shallow creature like Connie was something she would never fathom. It was hard to conceive of a more ill-assorted partnership and, from as far back as she could remember, they had made life misery for each other - or would have done, if her father had not been away from home for long periods.
"How long have you known my sister, Mr. Curzon?" she asked him.
"We met last week at the Maybury" - this was the West End hotel where Cathy worked as a florist. "I was waiting for someone in the lounge, and she was changing the flowers."
Lucia said bluntly, "In other words, you picked her up."
The lines round his dark eyes crinkled. It was difficult to judge his age, but he was certainly well over thirty - much too old for a girl of twenty. "You could say so - yes," he agreed. "But life would be very dull if one never spoke to anyone without a formal introduction, don't you think?" And then, before she could reply, "How do you earn your living, Miss Gresham?"
"I'm a teacher," she said stiffly. ''What do you do?" Besides preying on foolish, impressionable girls, she added mentally.
"I make containers - aerosols mainly. You probably have some in the house. Your hair spray, perhaps, or your furniture polish."
"I see." She wondered if he actually ran the business, or if he had inherited a directorship, and spent most of his time squandering the profits on high-powered cars, and wining and dining girls like Cathy.
Her sister came back with the coffee, and he got up to take the tray from her. While she had been out of the room, Cathy had tidied her hair, retouched her make-up and put on a long dress. She had also recovered her poise.
"We're going to an after-theatre party," she told Lucia, with a glance which defied the older girl to object.
Lucia bit her lip. She could not forbid Cathy to go with him, as a parent might have done. (Not Connie Gresham - she would have encouraged her. It was she who had given Cathy her misguided values.) Yet she felt as responsible as a parent.
Unexpectedly, Nicholas Curzon said, "Would you care to come with us, Miss Gresham?"
"Oh, Lucia loathes parties, and meeting people," Cathy put in. "Where is the worthy Bernard tonight?" she asked her sister.
"He's starting a cold, so he decided to go to bed early."
Cathy made a slight grimace. She despised Bernard Fisher, and could not understand Lucia's friendship with him. Secretly Lucia herself found him a little stolid and unimaginative. But they had some things in common - he was also a teacher - and it was really a case of half a loaf being better than no bread at all. Every Friday, they went to the cinema together, and had supper at the local Chinese restaurant.
"So that's why you're back early. I suppose you didn't dare go to the Soo Chow alone in case someone tried to pick you up," said Cathy, not without malice.
Lucia flushed, and ignored the remark. She knew it was ridiculously old-fashioned, but she did not like eating out at night without someone with her. What made her scruples even more absurd was that she was not the kind of girl men tried to pick up. Nevertheless, going to a restaurant alone would have been more of an ordeal than a pleasure to her.
"I wouldn't have thought you were a shy person, Miss Gresham," said Nicholas Curzon, as she handed him a cup of coffee. His dark eyes glinted with mockery. "You seem to me rather formidable."
"I'm not shy," she said, looking away. "I'm merely old- fashioned. I believe in the conventions. Most of them are simple common sense. Where is this party you are going to? Are they your friends, Cathy? Or yours, Mr. Curzon?"
"For heaven's sake, Lucia, I'm not a child," Cathy said, with a flash of anger. And indeed, in her sophisticated dress, with her face rather heavily made up, she did look older than she was, and well able to take care of herself.
Nicholas Curzon laughed, and reached for her hand. "You didn't tell me you had a Guardian Sister, Cathy." He caressed her soft fingers. "I thought you lived on your own."
"The subject didn't come up," she said, with a shrug.
"No, it didn't, did it?" Again he laughed, his teeth very white against his gipsy-dark skin.
Cathy laughed with him, but a little uncertainly, as if she were not quite sure what the joke was.
He turned to Lucia. "The friends are mine, Miss Gresham, and you have my word that they are entirely respectable, and the party will not develop into an orgy. To allay any other doubts you may have, I am not married, and I never drink when I'm driving. You may rest assured that your sister will come home quite unscathed. If you still don't trust me, I can only suggest that you chaperone us."
For a moment, Lucia was tempted to call his bluff. She felt sure it was only a bluff. But then she realized that going to the party with them would probably only worsen matters. Cathy would be so furious that she might carry out her threat to leave Montrose, and set up on her own. It was a threat she flung at Lucia every time they had a row. This time she might really do it.
Not that she would be able to maintain her independence for long. She was incurably extravagant, and had no idea of budgeting her wages. But if she did leave home, even for a few weeks, it might precipitate the ultimate act of folly which Lucia had always dreaded, and hoped to avert.
Aloud, she said, "I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Curzon. But when you bring Cathy home, I'd be grateful if you'd be as quiet as possible. We have tenants living upstairs. Mrs. Sanders is expecting a baby, and she doesn't sleep well just now. It would be a pity if your car disturbed her unnecessarily."
"Don't worry. We shan't wake her." He glanced at his watch. "We'd better be on our way, Cathy." He helped her to put on her evening coat. "Goodnight, Miss Gresham. I expect we shall meet again." With a bow, and that annoying gleam of humour, he took his leave.
After the car had purred off into the night, Lucia collected the cups, and turned out the fire. As she crossed the hall to take the tray to the kitchen, Janet Sanders peered down from the landing.
"Are you just off to bed? Or do you feel like a natter?"
Lucia smiled up at her. "Hello, Janet. How goes it? I'll just dump this in the kitchen, and then I'll come up."
"Peter's gone to bed, but I stayed up to finish this jacket," said Janet, holding up a tiny white matinee coat, as Lucia came into her sitting-room. She grinned. "Also I'm dying to know about Cathy's latest. What a gorgeous car! What is its owner like? We looked out of the window when it drove up, thinking it must be someone coming to see us. Then we saw Cathy getting out. But I only glimpsed the top of her boy-friend's head."
Lucia sat down by the fire. "Oh, Janet, what am I to do with her?" she said, rather desperately. "She's just waltzed off to a party with a man who's got wolf written all over him. When I came home, they were in the drawing-r
oom, kissing each other. She only met him last week. He picked her up at the Maybury. She can't know anything about him."
It was Janet's private opinion that Cathy Gresham was a thoroughly spoilt little baggage, and that Lucia was much Coo soft with her. For instance, it was quite abominable the way Cathy never raised a finger to help keep their fiat, or the large back garden, in order. She treated her home as if it were an hotel, and Lucia a willing drudge. Every cent she earned, she spent on herself. And when she had frittered through her wages, she sponged on her sister. Poor Lucia had hardly a decent rag to her back. Yet, to a discriminating eye, she was no less attractive than the younger girl. Her trouble was that she was nearly always tired and worried. But when she was relaxed, when her grey eyes lit up with pleasure, and she showed her beautiful teeth in that rare, radiant smile of hers, she could look charming, thought Janet.
"You worry too much about her, my dear," she said. "After all, she's nearly twenty-one now. If she makes a hash of her life, it's her responsibility, not yours."
"Yes, I suppose so," Lucia agreed, with a sigh. "But she's so mixed up, Janet. She thinks clothes, and parties, and gadding about are the most important things in life."
"Maybe they are for her. Everyone is different, and it's hopeless to try and impose our ideas on other people," Janet said wisely. "Some people's idea of happiness is having a bigger and better washing machine. Other people want to climb mountains, or go to Australia. What I would like is a rambling old house in the country, and five or six children. But I'm afraid we won't be able to afford any more after this one is born" - patting the bulge under her house- smock. "You can't change Cathy's nature, Lucia. She'll never be like you - not in a million years."
"I don't want her to be like me. I only want her to be happy."
"What about your own happiness? Isn't that equally important?"
"But I am happy," Lucia said quickly.
Janet looked sceptical. "Are you?"
"Of course I am. Why shouldn't I be? I enjoy my work, and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I have quite a few friends. I expect I'll get married one day. What more could I want?"