'It is,' she had murmured weakly.
'Never mind, love, I'll be there in person tomorrow. What's the name of your hotel? Book me a room there, will you?'
She had told him the name of the hotel, unaccountably relieved that he seemed to expect to have a room to himself. For a moment she had wondered But she might have known that Colin was not like that. He was the most solid, respectable person that she knew. He would believe in marriage and allthe old virtues as naturally as other people breathed air. It would be good to see him again. She knew where she was with him. He would never confuse her, as Loukos confused her, constantly reminding her that she was a woman and that therefore her opinions were of no account, and yet making her glad that she was a woman, more glad than she could say. Colin saw her as a person, a responsible person, as capable as he was to look after herself. Hewould never want to make her decisions for her! Surely that was something to admire him for?
When he did come, all she felt was a disappointing lack of excitement. She had gone early into dinner, hoping to escape to her room before she was waylaid by some other English tourist in the bar. It was not that she disliked talking to her compatriots, but she had found herself strangely reluctant to tell anyone what she was doing in Greece and, as they were only too willing to tell her every detail of all they had seen in Corinth, or in the shops in the Plaka, she had felt that she was doing less than her stuff by keeping a defensive silence about her own affairs. Anyway, she looked up to thank the waiter for filling her glass with the delicious cold water that one never has to ask for anywhere in Greece, and at that moment Colin had walked into the dining-room, looking tired and out of temper.
'Colin!' she exclaimed.
He saw her then and came over to her table, throwing himself into the chair at right angles to hers. ''I never
thought Athens would be like this!' he exclaimed. 'Like what?'
'Oh, I don't know. I caught a glimpse of the Acropolis coming along. It's rather disappointing, don't you think? It's smaller than I'd imagined, and the rest of Athens didn't look anything much!'
Charity swallowed. 'It's quite a modern city,' she said.
'With ancient trimmings? Have you been to look at them yet?'
She shook her head. 'Not yet.' She took a deep breath, willing him to share the glory of this particular piece of information: 'I've been to Delphi!'
'Good for you!' he said. 'More ruins?'
She nodded, bereft of words. She sought for some change of subject, feeling somehow responsible for his disappointment in the city she had brought him to. 'It was nice of you to come,' she said.
'It wasn't particularly convenient.' He studied her face with a faint smile. 'To tell the truth, I hadn't realized we'd quite reached this point of our relationship. Obviously absence makes the heart grow fonder as far as you're concerned! It does mean what I think it means, doesn't it?'
'I suppose so.'
Colin stopped smiling. 'What does that mean?'
'I don't know,' she confessed. 'Oh, Colin, I know I ought to be able to tell you exactly how I feel, but I only feel numb - except as far as Alexander is concerned! He's an adorable baby! And he's the only piece of Faith I have left.'
'That doesn't seem much loss,' Colin said frankly. 'You haven't seen her for years, and you didn't have much in common with her when you did see her.'
'Colin!'
He muttered an apology. 'But you must admit it's true all the same! I know it was a shock to you to find Faith had been killed, but you aren't usually maudlin about that sort of thing'
'What sort of thing?' Charity demanded, feeling cold and hurt.
'Well, you took your father's death pretty well,' he pointed out. 'It isn't like you to rave about some baby you know nothing about!'
'He's my nephew!'
Colin accepted the menu from the waiter and waved it in the air. It was apedantic rather than a forceful gesture, quite different from the clever way in which Loukos used his hands to make a point. 'Good lord, Charity, I have half a dozen nephews and nieces, and I don't care a row of beans for any of them! I mean, I send them a few bob at Christmas time - that sort of thing, but I don't go on about them! They're not mychildren. I daresay I'll feel differendy about my own. Well, one does, doesn't one?'
'Does one?' Charity retorted. 'I couldn't say, never having had any!'
Colin actually grinned at her. 'That's probably what you need! You wouldn't carry on about Alexander then.'
''I am not carrying on about anything!' Charity informed him slowly and clearly, so that the whole dining-room could hear her.
'Ssh!' he begged her. 'People are looking at you!' 'I don't care if they are!'
Colin looked grimly at her. 'I don't think being in Greece has improved you. You'd never have called attention to yourself in this way in London!'
'I never needed to! Oh, Colin, please don't let's quarrel! I know you don't understand why I should feel like I do about Alexander, but you will when I tell you all about it. He's so alone, poor little mite. The Papandreous family hated Faith, so what sort of life can he look forward to? There's Loukos, of course, but I'm sure he doesn't really care. None of them do, not like I do!'
'Who's Loukos?' Colin asked.
'Faith's brother-in-law, and you should have seen the
house where Faith had been living in Arachova! I'm not surprised she wanted to run away, though that was awful too'
''I thought you said she'd been killed near Delphi?' said Colin, who liked to get things straight.
'It's a village just beside Delphi,' Charity explained patiently.
'Not that I know where Delphi is,' Colin went on, 'but I can always look it up on a map. What made Faith go off the road?'
''I don't know,' Charity said. 'Nikos was killed too. I suppose they were both driving too fast.' She blinked. 'Loukos says that being thrown off the cliffs of Parnassus was the punishment for sacrilege against the shrine. It made me think of that terrible piece by Euripides. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind ever since. "Seize her! Throw her from Parnassus, send her bounding down the cliff-ledges, let the crags comb out her dainty hair!" '
'Good God!' said Colin. 'Serve you right for reading such stuff!'
Charity looked at him with affection. 'Oh, Colin, it is good to see you! You're so - so normal!And you will ask Loukos if we can have Alexander, won't you?'
Colin's face took on a pink shine of pleasure. 'I've always thought you were pretty normal too,' he said. 'I expect all this has been a shock to you.'
'You see,' Charity said, doggedly pursuing her point, 'Loukos won't even talkto me about Alexander. He has a very old-fashioned idea about women'
'Thinks they're only good for the one thing?' Colin suggested with a grin.
Charity coloured, remembering that she had had some pretty extraordinary ideas herself about Loukos. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder what it would be like to feel Colin's lips on hers, but then she thought she knew. She looked at him critically across the table and wondered why
it should irritate her that he should look so pale, and that his mouth should seem to her to be tense more than firm. It wasn't his fault that he worked in London and not in the warm sunshine of the Aegean.
'Well?' said Colin. ''I gather he tried it on with you?'
'Of course not!' Charity denied, shocked. 'It's only that he feels that women should be protected. You know, that their men should look after them - that sort of thing! He practically thinks that a woman belongsto her husband!' she added indignantly. -
'And it matters what he thinks? Who exactly is Loukos?' Colin inquired.
'Loukos Papandreous. He's Nikos' brother.'
Colin gave her a jaunty smile, looking relieved. 'He stands as close to Alexander as you do, then? Doesn't he want the child? If his ideas about women are as peculiar as you say they are, I should have thought he'd think it his duty to bring up his brother's child? Same name, and all that. Why should you be saddled with the infant?'
&
nbsp; 'But that's just it! He says I can't have Alexander because he's Greek like his father and has to be brought up in Greece. But Faith wanted him to be English! She wanted meto have him!'
'Have you told Loukos that?' Colin asked sharply.
'Of course I have! But he won't even discuss it with me.He says he'll talk to you about it'
Colin laughed. 'Cheer up, Charity! He'd have to talk to me about it anyway if I'm going to marry you. He'd have to safeguard the child. I might not want him, or refuse to support him'
'You wouldn't?' Charity exclaimed, going white.
'Of course not, silly! Not that I do want him much. But I want you enough to put up with him, I dare say.'
Charity was touched by his honesty. 'And you will talk to Loukos?' she prompted him.
'I don't see why not,' Colin said. He blew out his cheeks
and patted his stomach with an important air. 'He'll have a hard time getting the better of me! It's an English speciality, sorting out the Greeks, starting with Lord Byron and going right up through the last war. Greece is part of the Balkans, you know. They've never been able to work anything out by themselves.'
Charity's jaw dropped. She reminded herself that Colin hadn't yet met Loukos, but even so, she had never thought of him as insularbefore. He seemed like a stranger, far more foreign than - some people who really were foreigners. Some people? Loukos!She caught herself up hastily, more than a little put out at the way her thoughts were going. Anxiously she forced a smile and burst into speech: 'Quite right! He's bound to give way if you talk to him.'
Colin merely nodded and went on eating his food. Charity wished she had not stooped to trying to flatter him. Trying to? She had flattered him! She stared across the table at him. How odd it was. She had never flattered Loukos, despite his views on her sex, so why should she feel obliged to butter up Colin when he was the one who believed in women thinking and doing for themselves?
'It was nice of you to come,' she said again. 'Was it terribly expensive? I - I booked you a room here. It's on a different floor from mine, but it has a better view. You can see right across Athens, and the lights, and everything!'
'Sounds a bit noisy,' Colin commented.
'Oh, Colin!'
'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm tired, that's the trouble. Though, as it's really only six o'clock now, I ought to be full of beans. It's probably the strain of flying and all that.'
Charity, who had thoroughly enjoyed her own flight only a few days before, agreed that it was very tiring and that perhaps he had better have an early night, while she let Loukos know that he had arrived and would like to see him. 'Will any time do?' she added. 'He may be working most of
the day.'
Colin shrugged his shoulders amiably. 'As long as it isn't in the middle of the night! I loathe the way foreigners turn the night into day. I like to get off to sleep at a proper hour.'
Charity sighed. 'I'll do my best,' she promised. 'I'll go and phone him now.'
'Okay, sweetheart. I'll order something for you at the bar and then we can go on up. What will you have? Your usual sherry?'
Charity had already nodded when she suddenly rebelled against any drink that was considered her usual anything. If she hadn't disliked the aniseed flavour of ouzo so much, she would have asked for that. Instead she asked for the next best thing. 'I'll have some retsina. I'm getting to quite like it.'
'Isn't that resinated wine? I'm told it tastes disgusting!'
'Why don't you try some?' Charity suggested, but Colin was appalled by the very idea.
'I'll stick to whisky,' he said. 'Safer.'
Charity picked up her handbag. She wished earnestly that she didn't have red hair and that she had a better control over her volatile temper. 'It'll cost you,' she warned him.
'It'll be worth it,' he said dourly. 'I'll put it against the economy I'll make by your drinking the native stuff and it won't seem so bad!'
Charity's eyes flashed, but she said nothing. She hurried up the stairs to the reception desk and stood for a long time looking at the notices that had been stuck up on one of the walls in the entrance lobby, giving details of the various tours that were available to the hotel's guests.
'Can I help you, madame?' one of the young men behind the desk asked her.
'Yes. I want to make a telephone call. Can you get the number for me? I want to speak to Kyrios Loukos Papandreous, but if anyone else answers, I don't speak
Greek.'
'Of course, madame. Have you the number?'
She searched in her handbag and drew out Loukos' card, giving it to the man. 'Thank you very much,' she said.
Loukos himself answered the phone. Charity put the receiver to her ear and felt a wave of relief sweep through her at the sound of his voice. 'It's me,' she said. 'Ch-Charity.'
'Pos isthe,Charity?'
'Wh-what?'
'I asked you how you are? Do you always stammer on the telephone?'
'No, of course not. Only I was a bit nervous of having to speak to someone else. I mean, you might have been out, or there might have been someone else there?'
'If you are asking me if I am alone, no, I am not,' he said in an amused tone of voice. ''I have Alexandros here - and Electra. It was not a success leaving him with my parents. His crying disturbed my mother'
'But he doesn't cry! He didn't cry on the journey from Delphi, not once!'
'Perhaps he prefers your touch to Electra's! Well, Charity, and how can I help you? Have you grown bored with your own society?'
Charity ignored that. 'Colin is here.'
'Ah!' The long-drawn-out syllable was full of significance and Charity grew more hot and bothered than she was already. She had a feeling that Loukos wasn't going to like Colin and she wanted, quite passionately and for some obscure reason that she wasn't prepared to question, that he would admire her taste in men, and even if he were to like Colin, there was nothing much to admire in him, and she was beginning to wish that there was no reason for the two men to ever meet.
'He wants Alexander as much as I do!' she went on.
'That I take leave to doubt,' Loukos answered. He still sounded amused, almost as if he knew the state of nervous
anticipation she had worked herself into. 'When are you bringing him to see me?'
'Can you manage tomorrow?'
'Of course. Shall we say half past two? My office is closed until four o'clock for lunch. Oh, and Charity, you will leave your young man alone with me, is that understood? You can talk to Electra and Alexandros in the other room.'
'Oh, but Colin'
'I will see him alone,' Loukos repeated. 'This has nothing to do with Alexandros. We have first to decide that he stands some chance of making you a good husband, and that will be easier for us both if you are not present.'
'But you can't!' Charity gasped. 'Colin wouldn't understand! Loukos, it's nothing to do with you!'
'I think Colin will understand very well. I am beginning to think it is you who are not very sure of him.'
Charity stared miserably at the receiver in her hand. How could he do this to her? Colin was bound to be rude to him and then he would neverallow them to have Alexander. Loukos wasn't the sort of man one was rude to twice!
'Of course I'm sure of him!' she claimed, sounding pitifully unsure even to her own ears. 'We'll bothbe there at half past two.'
The Tower of the Winds Page 8