The Moonspinners (11 page)

All the same, I would have been the happier for something to lighten the look he gave me. It wasn't that the distrust had come back; it was something far less positive than that, and slighly more disconcerting. Say, rather, that confidence had been withdrawn. I was back on the outside.

I wondered what he and Mark had been saying.

I found Mark sitting at the back of the ledge, leaning against the rock, staring out over the open hillside. He turned with a start when I spoke.

‘Here's the thermos,' I said. ‘Lambis says there's soup in it. There, have the mug, I'll use the top of the thermos. Get yours straight away, will you? I'm going to light the fire again, for coffee.'

I waited for his protest, but it didn't come. He took the flask from me without speaking. I added, hesitatingly: ‘I – I'm sorry Lambis didn't have better news.'

The thermos top seemed to have stuck. He gave it a wrench with his good hand, and it came. ‘Well, it's what I expected.' He glanced up then, but I had the impression that I wasn't fully in focus. ‘Don't worry any more, Nicola.' A smile, that looked like something taken out to wear, that one wasn't used to. ‘Sufficient unto the day. Let's eat first, shall we?'

I left him carefully pouring soup, and hurried into the cleft to get the fire going.

It was a wonderful meal. We had the soup first, then corned beef, sandwiched between the thick Abernethy biscuits; some cake stiff with fruit; chocolate; and then the coffee, scalding hot, and sweetened with the tinned milk. I ate ravenously; Lambis, who had fed himself on the boat, took very little; Mark, making, after the first few mouthfuls, an obvious effort, did very well. When at last he sat cradling his half-empty cup of coffee between his hands, as if treasuring the last of its warmth, I thought he looked very much better.

When I said so, he seemed to come with a jerk out of his thoughts. ‘Well, yes, I'm fine now, thanks to you and Lambis. And now, it's time we thought about what happens next.'

Lambis said nothing. I waited.

Mark blew a cloud of smoke, and watched it feather to nothing in the bright air. ‘Lambis says this man was almost certainly making for Agios Georgios, and – since it's the nearest – it does seem only reasonable to suppose that, whoever these blighters are, they come from there. That makes it at once easier, and more complicated. I mean, we know where to start looking, but it's certain, now, that we can't go down there for official help.' He shot a quick glance at me, as if prepared for a protest, but I said nothing. He went on: ‘All the same, obviously, the first step is to get down there – somehow – and find out about my brother. I'm not such a fool as to think—' this with a touch of weary hopelessness – ‘that I could do very much myself yet, but even if I can't make it, Lambis will go.'

Lambis made no reply; indeed, he hardly seemed to be listening. I realized, suddenly, that between the two men, everything that had to be said had already been said. The council of war had been held already – while I had been sent to get the food – and its first conclusions reached. I thought I knew what they were.

‘And so,' Mark was saying smoothly, without looking at me, like someone trying out a delicate tape-recorder set somewhere in the middle distance, ‘will Nicola, of course.'

I had been right. First order in council:
Women and camp-followers, out of the way; the campaign's about to start
.

He was addressing me directly now. ‘Your cousin's coming today, isn't she? You'll have to be there, or there'll be questions asked. You could be down at the hotel, and checked in . . .' a glance at his wrist . . . ‘good heavens, by lunchtime, probably. Then you can – well, forget all this, and get on with that holiday of yours, that Lambis interrupted.'

I regarded him. Here we were again, I thought: the smile, friendly, but worn as a vizard to anxiety; the obstinate mouth; the general wariness of manner which meant ‘thank you very much, and now, please go away – and stay away.'

‘Of course,' I said. I pulled my canvas bag towards me over the juniper needles, and began putting my things into it, rather at random. He was perfectly right, I knew that; and anyway, there was nothing more I could do. With Frances coming today, I would have to get out, and keep out. Moreover – I was rather sharply honest with myself here – I wasn't exactly eager to run into any more situations such as I had met last night and today, with their tensions, discomforts, and moments of extreme fear. Nor was I prepared to be regarded – as Mark, once on his feet, would obviously regard me – as a responsibility, even a liability.

So I smiled rather tightly at him, and pushed things into my bag.

‘Bless you.' The smile he gave me now was one of swift and genuine relief. ‘You've been wonderful, I don't have to tell you how wonderful, and I don't want to seem filthily ungrateful now, after all you've done, but – well, you've seen something of what's going on, and it's obvious that if I can keep you out of it, I must.'

‘It's all right, you don't have to bother. I'm the world's crawlingest coward anyway, and I've had enough excitement to last me a lifetime. I shan't cramp your style. You won't see me for dust once I get within sight of the hotel.'

‘I hope to heaven your luggage is still where you left it. If it's not, you'll have to be thinking up some story to account for it. Let me see . . .'

‘I'll dream up something, something they can't disprove till I've left. Good heavens, you don't have to start worrying about that! That's
my
affair.'

If he noticed that one, he let it pass. He was crushing out his cigarette, frowning down at it, withdrawing into those dark thoughts again.

‘There's one thing, and its desperately important, Nicola. If you do see Lambis – or even me – around in the village, or anywhere else for that matter, you don't know us.'

‘Well, of course not.'

‘I had to mention it.'

‘That's okay.' I hesitated. ‘But you will let me know somehow – sometime – what happens, won't you? I shall worry, who wouldn't?'

‘Of course. Will the British Embassy in Athens find you?'

‘The British Embassy?' Lambis had looked up sharply.

‘Yes.' Mark's eyes met his, in that now-familiar, excluding look. ‘It's where she works.' Then, to me, ‘I can get you there?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll write to you. Another thing . . .'

‘What?'

He wasn't looking at me, he was fingering the stones beside him. ‘You'll have to promise me something, for the sake of my peace of mind.'

‘What is it?'

‘You won't go near the police.'

‘If I'm getting out of your affairs, I'm not likely to complicate them by doing that. But I still can't see why you don't go at least to the headman in Agios Georgios. Personally, I'm all for doing the simplest thing, and going straight to the authorities, wherever I am. But it's your affair.' I looked from one man to the other. They sat in uncompromising silence. I went on, slowly, feeling more than ever an intruder: ‘Mark, you know, you haven't done anything wrong. Surely, now they realize you're just an English tourist—'

‘That won't hold water.' He spoke dryly. ‘If they didn't realize on Saturday night, they did on Sunday, and this morning. And still our friend's looking for me with a gun.'

Lambis said: ‘You're forgetting Colin. He is the reason for this.' His gesture took in the ledge, the scraps of food, all the evidence of our rough-and-ready camp. ‘Until we know where Colin is, how can we do anything? If he is still alive, he is their – I do not know the word –
ó ómeros
.'

‘Hostage,' said Mark.

‘Yes, of course. I – I'm sorry. Well . . .' My voice faded feebly, as I looked from one to the other; Mark wooden, Lambis sullen and withdrawn once more. Suddenly I was conscious of nothing but a longing to escape, to be away down the mountainside, back to yesterday – the lemon grove in the sunshine, the egret, the point where I came in . . .

I got up, and Lambis rose with me.

I said: ‘Are you coming too?'

‘I will see you part of the way.'

I didn't demur this time; didn't want to. Besides, I supposed he would want to make his own way into the village, once he had seen me, so to speak, off his pitch. I turned to Mark. ‘Don't get up, don't be silly.' I smiled, and put down a hand, which he took. ‘Well, I'll say goodbye. And good luck, of course.'

‘You got your cardigan?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm sorry I couldn't return your petticoat.'

‘That's all right. I hope your arm will soon be better. And of course I hope . . . well, that things will turn out right.' I lifted my bag and slung it over my shoulder. ‘I'll be going. I expect in a couple of days' time I'll think all this has been a dream.'

He smiled. ‘Pretend it has.'

‘All right.' But I still hesitated. ‘You can trust me not to do anything silly; for one thing, I'd be too scared. But you can't expect me to shut my eyes and ears. You see, if Agios Georgios
is
the guilty village, then I'm bound to see that man with the rifle, and find out who he is, and all about him. And I'm bound to find out who speaks English. I certainly won't bother you, unless I hear something terribly important. But if I do, I – I think I ought to know where to find you. Where's the boat?'

Lambis looked swiftly at Mark. Mark hesitated, then said, across me, in Greek: ‘We'd better tell her. It can do no harm. She knows nothing, and—'

‘She understands Greek,' said Lambis sharply.

‘Eh?' Mark threw a startled, incredulous look at me.

‘She speaks it almost as well as you do.'

‘
Does
she?' I saw his eyes flicker, as he did a bit of rapid back-thinking, and, for the first time, a trace of colour came up under his skin.

‘It's all right,' I said blandly, in Greek. ‘You haven't given much away.'

‘Oh well,' said Mark, ‘it serves me right for being rude. I'm sorry.'

‘That's all right. Are you going to tell me about the boat? After all, you never know,
I
might need help. I'd feel better, if I knew where to find you.'

‘Well,' said Mark, ‘of course,' and he began to give me instructions as to how to reach the caique from the ruined Byzantine church. ‘And you could ask anyone the way over to the church itself, that would be quite a normal trip for an English visitor to want to make. I think that's clear enough? Yes? But I hope it won't be necessary for you to come.'

‘That,' I said, ‘has been made awfully clear. Well, goodbye again. All the best.'

Lambis went first. My last glimpse of Mark was of him sitting stiffly, as if braced against the warm rock, with the empty mug beside him, and that grey look of worry still draining the youth from his face.

7

Oh mistress, by the gods, do nothing rash!

MATTHEW ARNOLD
:
Merope

Lambis spoke very little on the way down through the ravine. He kept a short way ahead of me, reconnoitring with some caution at the corners, but most of the time we walked as fast as the roughness of the path would allow. We met nobody, and came in good time through the tangle of young oaks above the lemon groves. Already, through the boughs, I could see the white flanks of a windmill, and the gleam of sunlight on the open water of the stream.

Lambis stopped in a patch of sunlight, and waited for me to catch up with him.

Beside the path where he stood was a little wayside shrine. This was merely a wooden box, wedged somehow back among a pile of rocks, with primitive little oil lamps burning in front of a brightly coloured plaque of the Panaghia, the Virgin who is at once Mother of God, and the Mother herself, the ancient Goddess of the earth. A beer bottle, standing to one side, held oil for the lamps. Verbena grew near, and violets.

Lambis gestured towards the lit lamps, and the small bunch of flowers that stood there in a rusty tin.

‘I will leave you here. People come this way, and I must not be seen.'

I said goodbye, wished him luck again, and, leaving him there, went down through the lemon groves towards the open sunlight with, it must be confessed, a definite lightening of the spirits.

It was about noon, and the heat of the day. The breeze had dropped, and even the silky poppyheads, and the quakergrass that bordered the path, hung motionless. The white sails of the windmills rested still and slack. A donkey browsed beside a tumbledown wall, in the shade of an ilex. Flies buzzed over the dust.

There was nobody about. People would be at home for the midday meal, or eating it in the fields, somewhere in the shade. I could see no one except a boy, sprawled sleepily in the sun while his goats cropped the vetches, and one man, working a field away, beyond a thick barrier of sugarcane. Neither looked up as I passed.

I stopped for a moment, gratefully, as I reached the spare shade of the pines at the edge of the lower valley. I looked back.

There it all lay, the hot fields, the lemon trees, the wooded gorge leading up into the silver wilderness of rock.

From here, there could be seen no sign of life in that empty landscape. Lambis had long since disappeared; the lemon trees hung without a quiver; above them the mountainside was dead, empty of all motion. But this time yesterday . . .

There was the movement of wings over the gorge. For a split second I stared, incredulous. But this time the wings weren't white: what had caught my eye was the slow wheel of enormous brown feathers climbing the sky. An eagle? More likely a vulture, I thought; perhaps the lammergeier itself. At any other time I would have watched with excitement. Now, because the big bird had reminded me of the white egret, and of yesterday, I felt the tears rising in my throat.