Pagan Adversary

Alex Marcos had heard the child too. He was no longer holding her so tightly, and she was able to sit up and draw away from him, combing shaking fingers through her fair hair.

Her legs were trembling, but she made herself stand up, nervously ramming her disordered blouse back into the waist of her skirt. She stole a sidelong glance at him, biting her lip.

He was leaning back watching her. His tie was loosened, and the black hair was dishevelled. His dark eyes were brilliant, not with thwarted passion, but with stinging, cynical mockery.

He said softly, ‘You were saying something about your immunity, I think.’

Hot colour flooded her face, and she lifted her hands, pressing them almost helplessly to her burning cheeks. Then, as Nicky’s whimper threatened to develop into a wail, she walked across the room and lifted him out of his cot. Thumb in his mouth, still half asleep, he hitched a chubby arm round her neck as she carried him towards the centre of the room. Alex Marcos stood waiting, hands on hips. Nicky lifted his head and stared at him.

Harriet said gently, ‘This is your uncle Alex, Nicky. Say hello.’

He wasn’t good with strangers. He didn’t always oblige. Perhaps in her secret heart, Harriet hoped this would be one of those times, and that he would either become silent and clinging or—which was more likely—roar with temper.

But he did neither. He summoned a shy engaging smile and said, ‘ ’Lo,’ before burying his face in Harriet’s shoulder.

Alex spoke to him in Greek, and Harriet felt the little body in her arms stiffen as if the soft words had sparked off an association, an elusive memory he was trying to recapture. Eventually a small muffled voice said uncertainly, ‘Papa?’

Harriet felt tears prick at her eyes.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she demanded.

‘He is half Greek,’ Alex said flatly. ‘It is right he should remember and learn to speak his father’s tongue.’

‘You heard what he said. He thinks you’re his father.’ Harriet spoke fiercely.

‘As far as he is concerned, that is what I shall be. Explanations can wait until he is old enough to understand.’

‘And the succession of surrogate “mothers” in his life? How old will he be before you explain them?’

He said silkily, ‘Guard your tongue, my little English wasp, or you may have cause to regret it. Yes, I enjoy the company of women, in bed and out of it. Why should I deny it? Perhaps you have forgotten that if Nicos had not woken when he did I might well have persuaded you to share some of that—enjoyment.’

Harriet’s lips parted in impetuous denial—and closed again in silence.

Alex smiled faintly. ‘Very wise,’ he approved. ‘I hope you behave with equal wisdom during the rest of our dealings together.’

Harriet stared at the floor. She said, ‘I would prefer to deal with Mr Philippides.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ he said sardonically. ‘Now, I wish to get to know my nephew, and preferably without your sheltering arms around him. Would it be convenient for him to spend the weekend with me?’

She glanced up. ‘You have a house in London?’

‘I have a hotel suite.’

‘And you’re going to look after him?’ Harriet shook her head. ‘He—he still wears nappies a lot of the time….’

‘I’ve brought a nursemaid with me from Greece,’ he said impatiently. ‘She will deal with such matters, not I.’

‘I see.’ She did see too. She saw his power, and the certainty and arrogance which that power bestowed, and she hated it. So sure of his ultimate victory that he’d even brought a nanny, she thought. ‘And if I refuse?’

He lifted his brows. ‘Are you sure that you can? You may resist my claim to total rights, but as his uncle surely I can demand rights that are equal to yours at least.’ He paused. ‘I give you my word I will not attempt to take the boy out of the country. Will that satisfy you?’

Harriet moved her shoulders wearily. ‘I doubt if I could stop you, whatever you wanted to do,’ she said. ‘When would you want to collect him? Tomorrow afternoon? If you give me a time, I’ll have his things ready.’

‘Shall we say three o’clock? And I’ll return him to you on Sunday evening.’

‘Very well,’ she agreed dully. It was the beginning of the end, she knew. He wouldn’t snatch Nicky away as she’d first thought, but detach the child from her by degrees. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

He said, ‘Until tomorrow, then.’ He put out a hand and ruffled Nicky’s curls, then ran a finger down his cheek. For a shocked moment, Harriet wondered if he was going to try the same caress on her, because she wasn’t at all confident that her reaction would have the necessary cool, but he made no attempt to touch her again.

He said, ‘Herete’, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Harriet stood holding Nicky, her arms tightening round him until he wriggled in protest, demanding to be set down and given his tea. Toast, he wanted, and Marmite and ‘ronge’.

‘Yes, darling,’ she promised penitently, because usually he’d been fed by now at Manda’s. But she didn’t put him down at once. She carried him over to the window and pulled back the shrouding net curtain, looking into the street below.

Alex Marcos was just about to get into the car. As she watched, he turned and looked up at the window, lifting a hand in mocking acknowledgment of her presence. Furious with herself, Harriet let the curtain fall hurriedly into place, and moved away, wishing that she’d been strong-minded enough to ignore his departure—and wondering why she had failed….

Friday was a miserable day. Harriet had phoned the personnel officer at work first thing and received a sympathetic response when she gave family troubles as the reason for her hasty departure the previous day, and for her continued absence. Then she phoned Manda and told her what had happened, or at least an edited version.

She still found it hard to believe that she had behaved as she did. She had let a man who was almost a stranger, and certainly her enemy, kiss her and arouse feelings within her which had kept her awake and restless most of the night. The warm, airless atmosphere of the room hadn’t helped either, and more than once Harriet had found herself wishing wryly for the cliché comfort of a cold shower. But it was only people with money and private bathrooms who could afford such luxuries, she thought regretfully. The bathroom she shared had nothing so sophisticated as a shower in any temperature, and the old-fashioned plumbing made such an infernal din that except in cases of emergency the residents tried to use it as little as possible at night.

Manda heard her explanation of why Nicky would not be spending the day with her without much comment. When Harriet had finished she merely asked, ‘And what’s he like—Alex Marcos?’

Even in her own ears, Harriet’s laugh sounded artificial and she hoped fervently that Manda would assume it was some distortion on the line. ‘Oh—just as you’d imagine, I suppose. The answer to the maiden’s prayer.’

‘Depending, of course,’ Manda said gravely, ‘on what the maiden happened to be praying for. See you, love. Take care now.’

As she replaced the receiver, Harriet pondered on the real note of warning in Manda’s voice, and reflected rather despondently that it was no use trying to fool her, even at a distance.

She tidied and cleaned the flat again almost compulsively, then tucked Nicky into the buggy and took him to the nearby shops which he loved. The sun was shining, and the Italian greengrocer gave him an orange, and Harriet, in a moment of weakness, bought him some sweets. While she was in the newsagents’ she treated herself to a daily paper, and some magazines, because she had a whole weekend to fill for once.

Of course she didn’t have to stay in the flat, she told herself robustly. She had always promised herself that one day she would do the whole tourist bit—go to the British Museum, or the Zoo, or take a boat down to Greenwich—but she had always put the idea to the back of her mind, telling herself it could wait till Nicky was older and could enjoy it with her. Well, there seemed little point in delaying any longer, she thought, with a kind of unhappy resolution.

She cooked Nicky’s favourite food for lunch—fish fingers, baked beans and oven chips. Manda, who believed in wholefoods and a balanced diet, would have frowned a little, but Nicky was jubilant and ate every scrap, including the ice cream which followed.

Harriet tried to explain to him that he was going to have a little holiday with his uncle, but wasn’t sure how much she’d got through to him, because he seemed far more interested in his toy cars than in the fact that she was packing his night things and the best of his clothes in a small case.

He’s only a baby, she thought as she watched him play, quite oblivious to her own mental and emotional turmoil. He’s too little to be taken from all the security he knows, and be made to speak Greek, and all the other things he’ll have to learn.

Yet on the other hand there was the very real danger that out of love and inexperience she might keep him a baby too long, might try too hard to protect him from the world which he was as much a part of as she was herself. A man’s influence in his life was probably essential, Harriet thought—but what would be the effect of someone like Alex Marcos, wealthy, cynical and amoral, on the mind of an impressionable child?

It was inevitable that when she sat down with the newspaper and a cup of coffee while Nicky played on the carpet at her feet, Alex’s picture should be the first to leap out at her. And, again, inevitably, it was the gossip column, and he wasn’t alone. He was sitting at a table in a restaurant or a night club—Harriet didn’t recognise the name anyway—and the girl beside him, smiling radiantly at the camera had her arm through his and her head on his shoulder.

Her red head on his shoulder, Harriet discovered as she read through the piece that accompanied the photograph. Alex, it said, was in London on business and lovely model Vicky Hanlon was just the girl to help him unwind from his busy schedule.

After an unctuous dwelling on Vicky Hanlon’s physical attributes which would have had even the mildest Women’s Libber spitting carpet tacks and reaching for the telephone, the columnist quoted her as saying, ‘Poor Alex leads such a hectic life. I just want to help him relax as much as possible.’

‘Yuck!’ said Harriet violently, dropping the paper as if it had bitten her. She marched down the passage to the bathroom and washed her face and cleaned her teeth thoroughly which, while a relatively futile gesture, nevertheless made her feel better.

She was increasingly on edge as three o’clock approached. Nicky had grown tired of his toys and demanded a story, and she was just following The Little Gingerbread Man with the Three Billy Goats Gruff when she heard the sound of a car door slam in the street below.

Her voice hesitated and died away right in the middle of the troll’s threat, and her whole body tensed. Nicky bounced plaintively and said, ‘Troll.’

She hugged him fiercely. ‘Another time, darling. Your—your uncle’s come to fetch you, and you’re going to have a wonderful time.’

She remembered what Alex had said the previous day about her sheltering arms and was careful to let Nicky walk beside her to the door as the buzzer sounded imperatively.

Her palms were damp, and her mouth was dry. She had brushed her hair until it shone, and the dress she was wearing, although simple and sleeveless, was the most becoming in her wardrobe, its cool blues and greens accentuating her fairness, and the very fact that she had chosen to wear it was evidence enough that she was on the verge of making a complete and utter fool of herself.

She made herself reach out and release the Yale knob and turn the handle.

There was a man outside, stockily built and swarthy in a chauffeur’s uniform, his cap under one arm, and accompanied by a middle-aged woman with greying black hair who looked nervous.

It was the woman who spoke. ‘Thespinis Masters—I am Yannina. I have come from Kyrios Marcos to fetch his nephew, the little Nicos.’ Her anxious expression splintered into a broad smile as she spied Nicky, who had relapsed into instant shyness at the sight of strangers and who was peering at them from behind Harriet’s skirt.

She crouched down, holding out her arms and murmuring encouragingly in Greek, and slowly Nicky edged towards her.

Harriet picked up his case and handed it to the chauffeur, who nodded respectfully to her.

‘Kyrios Marcos wishes to assure you that the boy will be returned to you on Sunday evening, not later than six o’clock,’ he said in careful heavily accented English.

‘Thank you.’ Harriet hesitated. ‘I—I thought he would be coming to fetch Nicky himself.’

The chauffeur looked surprised. ‘He is waiting below in the car, thespinis. If you have a message for him, I would be glad to convey it.’

Not, Harriet thought, the sort of message I have in mind. She forced a smile and shook her head, and stepped backward as Yannina took Nicky’s hand and began to lead him away. He looked back once and grinned and waved, and Harriet felt a lump rise in her throat as she shut the door between them.

This time, wild horses weren’t going to drag her to the window to watch them go.

So he’d decided to stay downstairs in the car, which was a delicate way of telling her not to read too much into a kiss. Had he sensed something in her untutored, unguarded response to what he would regard as quite a casual caress that had warned him it might be kinder to keep his distance?

The thought shamed her to the core. She felt sick and empty, and although she tried to blame this on Nicky’s carefree departure, she knew she was fooling herself.

The unpalatable truth she had to face was that every nerve, every pulse beat in her body had been counting away the hours, the minutes, the seconds before she saw Alex Marcos again. She knew too that the ache beginning inside her now was deeper and more wounding than mere disappointment or injured pride, and she remembered Manda’s warning, and was frightened.

CHAPTER THREE

HARRIET felt pleasantly tired as she walked back towards the house late on Saturday evening. She had done all the things she had promised herself to do, and had managed to fill her day too full for thought, even treating herself to the pure luxury of afternoon tea at a hotel.

When Becca had been carrying Nicky, she had once laughingly remarked that when you were pregnant, every second person you met seemed to be in the same condition. Paradoxically, Harriet thought, when you were alone, everyone else seemed to be in couples. But then London had always been a bad place in which to be solitary.

But she didn’t have to be alone, she told herself. If and when Nicky went to Greece, she would find a flat to share with girls of her own age. There were plenty advertised.

She opened the front door and walked into the hall, to be pounced on by one of the downstairs tenants, looking severe. ‘Three times!’ she announced with a kind of annoyed triumph. ‘That’s how many times the phone has rung for you in the past hour and a half, Miss Masters, and you not here!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet in bewilderment. ‘Was there a message?’

Mrs Robertson produced a slip of paper. ‘You’re to ring this number and ask for this extension. And now if I might get back to my television programme,’ she added aggressively as if she suspected Harriet of being in league with the unknown caller to keep her from the last few minutes of ‘Dynasty’.

Harriet dialled, and was answered from the switchboard of a famous London hotel. Faintly she gave the extension number, thinking frantically, ‘Nicky—my God, something’s happened to Nicky!’

Alex Marcos answered so promptly that he might have been waiting by the phone. Her heart gave the oddest bound when she heard his voice, and then she was aware of something else—background noises which were quite unmistakably Nicky screaming with temper.

She asked in swift alarm, ‘Is he ill?’

‘His health is perfect,’ Alex Marcos said grimly. ‘I wish I could say the same for his disposition. He seems to have been thoroughly spoilt. Last night, Yannina managed to get him to sleep with difficulty. This evening it has been quite impossible. Everything she has tried with him has failed. He merely screams all the louder and cries for you.’

‘He’s not at all spoilt,’ Harriet said indignantly. ‘I really don’t know what else you expected. He’s far too young to take such a complete change in his environment in his stride. He’s in a strange room with strange faces round him, and he’s frightened.’

‘You have missed your vocation, Miss Masters. You should clearly have been a child psychologist,’ he drawled. ‘Did it occur to you to warn Yannina that he might react in this way?’

Harriet sighed. ‘I honestly didn’t know. He—he went with her willingly enough. And I tried to explain that it was a little holiday….’

He said tightly, ‘Very well, Miss Masters, you are absolved. He is, as you say, a very young child, and he is deeply distressed. If I send my car for you, will you come to him?’

Harriet swallowed. ‘Of course.’

She heard his phone go down, and replaced her own receiver.

She went upstairs to the flat and stood looking round rather helplessly, wondering what she should do. She didn’t know whether or not she should pack a bag with some overnight essentials. Nothing had been said about her staying the night with Nicky, and perhaps she would just be expected to get him calm and off to sleep before she was chauffeured back here again.

In the end, she compromised by tucking some clean undies and her toothbrush into the bottom of her biggest shoulder bag.

The car was at the door almost before it seemed possible. She would have preferred to sit in the front with the driver, but she was gravely ushered into the back, and even offered a rug to put round her, which she declined.

It had all happened so fast that she hadn’t time to be nervous or consider the implications of what she was doing, or not until now. Sitting alone in the car’s unaccustomed luxury, she tried to compose her thoughts and emotions, reminding herself over and over again that she was only seeing Alex Marcos again because Nicky needed her, and that her concern must be for him.

She even began to wonder whether Alex might be having second thoughts about taking Nicky to Greece, with the prospect of nightly scenes to contend with.

The suite Alex occupied was on the second floor of the hotel, and as soon as Harriet left the lift, she could hear Nicky roaring.

The chauffeur led her along the corridor and knocked deferentially. Alex opened the door himself. He was casually dressed in close-fitting dark slacks and a loose sweatshirt, and in spite of his ill-temper, he looked more attractive than ever, Harriet thought, her stomach tying itself in knots.

She said insanely, ‘We should have called him Macbeth!’

He stared at her. ‘What in the name of God are you talking about?’

‘It’s the play,’ she said quickly. ‘By Shakespeare. Macbeth murdered sleep in it, when he murdered Duncan.’

His mouth twisted. ‘I imagine my unfortunate neighbours in the adjoining suites may well be contemplating the same solution. There have already been discreet enquiries from the management, you understand.’ He shook her head. ‘I never knew a child’s lungs could have such power!’

There was a cot in Nicky’s room and he was standing up in it, gripping the bars with small desperate fists, his face swollen and blubbered with weeping. Yannina sat on a chair facing him, her motherly face contorted with a kind of despair as she talked to him in a swift monotone. A congealing cup of milk on a side table, and various untouched fruit drinks, bore mute witness to her attempts to find some form of pacification. As she entered the room, Harriet’s foot turned against something soft and she looked down to see Nicky’s teddy bear. She bent and retrieved it. Hurling his beloved toy across the room was the ultimate in despairing gestures as far as Nicky was concerned.

He was quiet as Harriet approached the cot, his whole being indrawn, intent on producing the next explosion of anguish at the maximum volume. And then he saw her. He screamed again, but on a different note, and his arms reached for her imperatively.

As she lifted him, he clutched at her fiercely, clinging like a damp limpet.

‘Thespinis Masters, I am sorry, so sorry.’ Yannina was almost weeping herself. ‘He wanted nothing and no one only you.’

Harriet gave her a reassuring smile and began walking up and down the room with Nicky, holding him tightly and crooning wordlessly to him, as Becca had done when he was teething. Slowly the convulsive sobs tearing at his body began to weaken until he was quiet, except for the occasional hiccup. Gradually one hand relinquished its painful hold on her neck, and she knew instinctively that his thumb had gone to his mouth. His weight had altered too. He seemed heavier because he had relaxed, and Harriet knew that he was probably more than half asleep.

Confirming this, Yannina whispered ‘His eyes are closing. Thespinis, may God be praised! Ah, the poor little one!’ She moved to the cot and began straightening and smoothing the sheets and blankets and shaking up the single pillow.

Harriet turned and began another length of the room, slowing her pace deliberately. As she did so, she saw Alex standing in the doorway watching her, his brows drawn together in a thunderous frown. She bit her lip. Clearly her methods with Nicky did not have his approval, so why then had he sent for her? She ventured another glance at the doorway and saw that he had gone.

When she was sure that Nicky had slipped over the edge of drowsiness into actual slumber, she carried him to the cot and placed him gently in it, smoothing the covers with care over his small body His face was still blotched with tears, she saw with a pang. She straightened with a sigh, and went to the door where Yannina was waiting for her, looking round first to make sure that Nicky hadn’t stirred.

She had been too eager to get to his side to take much notice of her surroundings previously, but now she realised that she was in a large sitting room, off which the other rooms presumably opened.

A waiter had appeared with a trolley, and Harriet saw to her astonishment that covers were being whipped deftly off an assortment of delicious-looking sandwiches and other savouries, and that there was a bottle of champagne cooling on ice.

Alex was lounging on one of the thickly cushioned sofas, but he rose as she came rather uncertainly into the room. He had stopped frowning, she saw, but the rather formal smile he gave her did not reach his eyes.

‘Champagne is the best pick-me-up in the world,’ he said. ‘I am sure you are as much in need of it as I am.’

Harriet thought wryly of the other two occasions in her life when she had drunk champagne—at Becca’s wedding, and Nicky’s christening. She had always regarded it as a form of luxurious celebration rather than a tonic, but she was willing to be convinced.

She chose a seat on the sofa facing the one which Alex was occupying, and pretended she did not see the expression of derision which flitted across his face.

He tipped the waiter and dismissed him with a nod.

‘Please help yourself,’ he told Harriet courteously. ‘I hope you like smoked salmon.’

Harriet murmured something evasive. She was damned if she was going to admit she hadn’t the faintest idea whether she liked it or not. And that bowl full of something black and glistening—surely that couldn’t be caviare? There were vol-au-vents too, filled with chicken and mushroom in a creamy sauce. It was all a far cry from the scrambled eggs on toast she had planned for supper. And she was hungry too. Her tea seemed a very long time ago, but at the same time she knew that Alex’s presence would have an inhibiting effect on her appetite.