Charity felt quite dazed with happiness. She sat back against the cushions and watched him go, her mind leaping ahead to his return. She heard the door close behind him and smiled at her mother-in-law with a new confidence. Then another thought struck her and she started to her feet.
'He doesn't know where Colin is!' she exclaimed.
Xenia smiled a small, enigmatic smile; the smile that the Greeks have always been famous for. 'He will find him,' she said.
Xenia suggested that Charity should rest in her room, but she didn't want to lie alone on the bed she had shared with Loukos.
'You have no need to worry, my daughter, he will exact a just revenge for the hurt that has been done to you,' her mother-in-law said in her awkward, slow English.
'But Colin might hurt him!'
Xenia dismissed that with the contempt it deserved.
'Loukos is a man, my dear. This Colin of yours is only a greedy boy. How can he hurt Loukos?'
Charity acknowledged the justice of this. She knew that it was Colin she ought to be worrying about, but she was too tired to do more than hope that Loukos wouldn't actually break his neck. How bloodthirsty she was becoming, she rebuked herself, with such Greek ideas about vengeance. She was not at all the civilized young woman she had thought herself to be! She looked up and met Xenia's amused eyes.
'Will Loukos hurt him?' she asked.
Xenia patted her arm. 'Of course. He will find a way. Did you think your husband would do less when another man has done this to you?'
Charity tried not to be pleased by the thought. 'I suppose it wouldn't matter if he'd bruised me and torn my clothes himself?'
Xenia accepted this without batting an eye. 'He is your husband,' she said indifferently. 'You look exhausted, my dear. Why don't you rest awhile? Or at least change your clothes and wash your poor face? Electra will make you something to eat, and I will put some ointment on the scratches on your legs. Yes?'
Charity rose reluctantly to her feet, pulling a face when she looked down and saw the sad state of her stockings. 'I'm not very hungry,' she said. 'My head aches and I'm stiff!'
'A hot bath will revive you,' Xenia insisted. She waited until Charity was almost at the door and then lifted a commanding hand. 'By the way,' she said, her eyes on the sewing on her knee, 'Ariadne is to be married to some man in Corinth. Go and have your bath, my dear, and Electra will talk to you while you eat. She finds it easier to speak in English than I. Our conversations will have to wait until you speak my language!'
And that would be a long time hence, Charity thought to herself, mildly irritated because she was beginning to think
that Xenia's English was quite as good as her sister's and only needed a little practice to perfect it, whereas her Greek was non-existent. Why, if she couldn't even get a taxi-driver to understand a simple address, what on earth could make her mother-in-law imagine that they would ever be able to hold cosy conversations together in that language?
The hot water was comforting to her ill-used body after all and she felt considerably better by the time she had bathed and changed. Even her head had stopped aching unless she was jolted, or bent down to pick up something off the floor. She was hungry too, despite her earlier denials. She went into the kitchen with a shamed expression on her face, and smiled at Electra who was giving Alexander the last of his bottle.
On the table was Loukos' shirt, the missing button neatly replaced. Charity fingered the collar thoughtfully. 'You should have left it for me to do,' she said. 'It's my job now.' She thought how she had thrown the shirt on the floor and coloured a little. ''I would have done it in the end!'
'You did the washing,' Electra answered.
Yes, Charity thought, she had done the washing! And if she knew anything about it, she had done it so badly that Electra had probably had to do it all over again.
Electra finished feeding Alexander and murmured to him in Greek as she got awkwardly to her feet. 'Will you put him in his cot while I heat you some soup?' she asked Charity.
Charity accepted the task with alacrity. 'If I didn't care for myself, I should have thought about him before charging out of here this morning. Colin doesn't see him as a person at all. He doesn't care
'Now, now, stop your fretting,' Electra advised. 'You brought him back safe enough!'
Charity hesitated. 'Did Nikos leave Alexander a lot of money?' she asked bluntly.
Electra's dark eyes flew to her face. 'What if he did?'
'I thought he and Faith didn't have any money. The
house they were living in at Arachova looked so dreadfully poor!'
'Iphigenia's house? Iphigenia has no money. Where would she get money from? She has been a widow ever since her husband was killed in the war. It has not been easy for her. It has not been easy for any of us who were left alone, even those of us who had our families to support us.'
Charity was startled. 'But I thought Faith had been living there?'
'Iphigenia's is a clean house!'
'Yes, I know. I'm not being critical, only I can't think where they all slept - and if Nikos had so much money, surely they could have found somewhere a little more comfortable?'
'They went first to a hotel,' Electra explained grimly, 'but your sister didn't like to live in public in her condition. Nikos was naturally welcome in every house in both Delphi and Arachova and he was out a great deal. Faith would not learn to speak Greek, so there was no point in her visiting with the other women as she would have been welcome to do. She wanted Nikos with her morning, noon and night, but Nikos was not that kind of a man. She thought, no doubt, if they had a house he would stay in with her more. Iphigenia was in need of the money and so she agreed for them to have her house, while she went to live with her daughter further down the hill. But Nikos saw no reason to spend his evenings at home even then.'
'I think that was mean!' Charity burst out.
Electra shrugged. 'He came home in the end. It was for Faith to learn Greek and to interest herself in the women's affairs in the village.'
'Perhaps she didn't feel able to while she was pregnant,' Charity defended her dead sister. 'Some women don't want to do anything at that time.'
'Perhaps.' Electra poured the hot soup into a bowl. 'Perhaps not.'
' 'You still blame her, don't you?'
Electra put the saucepan in the sink, turning her back on Charity and making a great noise with the water as she poured it into the dirty pan. 'None of us can know what happened at the last. Perhaps she had reason to behave as she did and go rushing off to Athens, sending for you, and planning to run away from her husband. But most of her troubles were of her own making. She made it impossible for us to help her, and impossible for us to defend her against others too. She would not make allowances for our customs, and that angered many of our friends. We may be Greek and old-fashioned in our ways, but we are not always wrong!'
'But, if Nikos had so much money'
Electra cut up some bread and put it on the tray beside the bowl of soup. 'When he left the company, Loukos forbade him to use any of the shares he held in the shipping line. Producing plays at Delphi couldn't go on for ever, and then what was he going to do? He would have a wife and child to support and he had to remember that. He would have gone back to the family business in the end.'
Charity transferred Alexander from one arm to the other. 'Did Faith know that?' she asked.
Electra came over to her and whisked the baby away from her. 'Faith? Why should she know anything about it? It was between Loukos and Nikos!' She laughed harshly and carried Alexander away to his cot without a backward look.
Charity carried her tray into the living-room, avoiding her mother-in-law's inquiring glance as to what she and Electra had been talking about. 'Do you think Loukos will be long?' she asked involuntarily.
Xenia merely went on with her sewing. Charity drank her soup, amusing herself by tearing up the bread into pieces and dunking it into the liquid. 'I don't think it's much fun being a woman, if
all one has to do is sit around and wait all the time!' she went on. 'How you keep so calm when - when anythingmight be happening, I don't know!'
Xenia smiled. 'Loukos said you were to rest' 'No, he didn't! He said he expected me to be looking better, which isn't the same thing at all!' 'And are you feeling better?'
Charity nodded, a little ashamed of her outburst. She sighed. 'Do you think he will be long?'
'You have already asked me that,' her mother-in-law returned with a smile. ''I think he will be too long for me to have to watch you prowling about like a - what is the word? - like a tigger.You should have a hobby to keep you occupied when these things happen.'
Charity burst into delighted laughter. ''I hope they won't happen very often!' She broke off, suddenly nervous again. 'Supposing - supposing something has happened to him? I'd never forgive myself! I wish he'd taken me with him!'
'That would have been quite unsuitable!' Xenia glanced across at her. 'Is there nothing you can do to amuse yourself? What do you do to amuse yourself when you are at home in England?'
''I don't know,' Charity admitted. ''I walk, and I like looking at places, things like that.'
Xenia gave her a brilliant smile, so like her son's that Charity felt quite bemused. 'Then go now and look at the Acropolis! We shall be very happy not to have you here, looking like a ghost, and starting at every sound in case it is Loukos! Go out and enjoy yourself, my dear!'
Charity was tempted. 'But Loukos will come back here,' she objected.
'Electra and I will be here. We will send him to find you the moment he returns.' She gave her daughter-in-law an ironic look. 'There will be no family there to witness what he says to you. Sometimes it is good for a man and his wife to speak alone, no?'
'You're a darling!' Charity said warmly. She flung her arms around Xenia's dumpy form and kissed her cheek. 'But you will tell Loukos it was your idea, won't you?' She
grinned. 'He did say that I was to do everything you told me to!'
Xenia repaired her ruffled dignity with a faint smile. 'I will explain to him exactly,'she promised. 'Now, please go before I stick this needle into myself, or do one of us a worse injury!'
Charity chuckled. 'I'm already gone!' she claimed, and she rushed down the corridor to collect her coat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They told her the Acropolis was due to close at sunset. It was already half past four, so that gave her, at most, just over half an hour in which to make her first pilgrimage to the Athenian citadel of the gods, the high place of the city, where the ancient Greeks had always placed their temples and religious buildings. Charity refused to consider that she might have to leave before Loukos came to join her there. It was, though she didn't know why, terribly important to her that he should come to her there, where the heroes of Athens had always come.
She stood at the foot of the southern slope looking upwards and wondered at her own callousness that could allow her to enjoy such a sight while her husband was out exacting revenge on her behalf from a man she had always liked until that day. Yet, if she felt anything, it was not compassion for Colin, it was a fierce pride that because she was Loukos' wife he would allow no harm to come to her from anyone else without paying a heavy penalty for daring to touch her. It was a rough kind of loving, but it was all she had.
The zig-zag path led upwards to the Propylaea, the magnificent entrance to the Acropolis, over rough slabs of marble that must have once made sense, but now lay, higgledy-piggledy, making one watch one's footsteps as one climbed steadily to the top. For more than the first two thousand years of its existence, the Propylaea had remained remarkably intact. The Turks had used it as a munitions store, and unfortunately some of the munitions had blown up, taking the roof and some of the supporting walls with it. Some very good restoration had been done to show what it must have been like, though, and Charity had no difficulty in
imagining what it had been like in the days of Pericles, when it had just been built, and a stream of worshippers had come and gone through its portals, some of them leading the animals doomed to be sacrificed, their feet slithering on the grooved marble pavements.
She thought she would get the best view of the city beneath her from the Temple of the Wingless Victory and wandered across the rough ground to the platform where the comparatively small temple stood. In the days when the gods had walked the earth, both Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Athene, the goddess of wisdom, had wanted Athens for their own. Poseidon had beaten the ground with his trident, giving Athens her access to the sea. Athene had offered the people the olive tree, which was sacred to her cult, and had gained their allegiance to her cause and had given her name to the city which was now considered hers. So the temple had once housed her statue, holding the owl, the symbol of wisdom, in one hand, and the Victory in the other. Most Victories were depicted with wings on their backs, but this one had been carved out of olive wood and had had no wings. It was said that the Athenians had clipped its wings to make sure it stayed amongst them. It had been lost a long, long time ago, but the temple remained, its perfect proportions visible for miles across the city.
Charity had hoped to see the eastern side of the Parthenon and the frieze which depicted Apollo, just as she had seen it on the cover of the book. There was very little left of the eastern wall, however. She could see, across the way, the hill from which the Venetians had blasted the building during their seige of the city two or three hundred years ago, with a total disregard for the historical value of the site that had been characteristic of their age.
It was harder to imagine what the Parthenon had been like in the full flush of its prime. Now only the skeleton was left, with none of the gold and scarlet and black that had once covered the exterior. Charity had been told that the
Parthenon represented Athene in her masculine guise, dressed in armour, and ready to defend her city; the third temple, the Erechtheum, had held her statue dressed in a more feminine guise, a gentleness which lingers on in the six statues of the famous Caryatids, the dancing maidens, one of which was taken away by Lord Elgin to the British Museum, causing such distress amongst her sisters that they are said to have moaned in sympathy all through the night. She has been replaced by a cast made from the original, but the substitute is cracking under the strain and is easy to pick out from the others.
Charity spent a long time looking at the Parthenon. It pleased her that no two pillars were quite the same and that the spaces between them varied enormously, and yet, taken as a whole, the proportions looked exactly right and were far more satisfying then any mathematical design.
It was in the museum that Charity discovered the statue of Apollo she had wanted to see. He sat at his ease between Poseidon and Artemis, his head turned towards the sea-god as if they were having a friendly conversation. Close to, the resemblance to Loukos was astonishing. Perhaps Apollo's face was softer and his chin less firm, but that might have been no more than the weathering of centuries. The likeness was sufficiendy strong to bring the tears starting to Charity's eyes and her heart dissolved within her at the sight of him. Would he never come?
She stood in front of the remnant of the frieze, wishing that she could touch the marble face in front of her, but sure that such an action would not be popular with the custodian who was standing not far away from her. She thought of the coin and the piece of laurel that she left as an offering for Apollo at his shrine in Delphi.
'You failed me,' she told him.
Apollo went on with his conversation with Poseidon, ignoring the female who stood before him. What had Pericles said of the women of ancient Athens?Thatavirtuouswoman
was one about whom nothing was said, either to her praise or blame, or words to that effect? Athenian women had been married for their fortunes, had been kept closely confined to their homes, and had provided their husbands with their legitimate children. When their men had wanted female companionship, they had gone elsewhere, to the women of other cities, who might have been less respectable
, but who seemed to have a great deal more fun. Like Ariadne!
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