Apollo's Seed

Martha expelled her breath, hardly realising until that moment that she had been holding it. So she was not to meet with her husband. It was quite a relief. Despite what she had told Roger and Sarah, she had been apprehensive of seeing him again, not least because of the rawness of the wounds he had inflicted, and their vulnerability to any kind of abrasion. They were healed, but the scars remained, and she was not yet ready to test their strength.

Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glancing expressively towards the car. He was growing impatient, and she had still to come to a decision.

‘How long will your father be at the villa?’ she asked, wondering whether she ought to telephone him, but Alex was not helpful.

‘My sister Minerva is to be married in three days,’ he declared. ‘My father will be returning to Athens tomorrow for the wedding.’

‘Minerva?’ For a moment Martha was distracted. ‘Little Minerva is getting married?’ It hardly seemed possible.

‘She is eighteen,’ declared Alex flatly. ‘In our country, marriage is the natural ambition of every woman.’

‘Oh!’ Martha accepted this with a rueful sigh. It was becoming increasingly obvious where Alex’s sympathies lay, and no doubt in his eyes, she had committed an unforgivable sin by leaving her husband.

‘Etsi …’ He spread his hands now. ‘What will you do?’

What could she do? Martha’s palms were moist as she looped the strap of her bag over one shoulder. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, and Alex strode away abruptly towards the car, swinging open the nearside door so that she could climb inside.

The car was chauffeur-driven, and, as Alex climbed in beside her and the windows were rolled up, air-conditioned. It was quite a relief to get out of the heat of the sun, and she remembered belatedly that she had not bought herself the oil for her skin as she had intended. Still, she would have little enough time to sunbathe today, and if all went well she would be returning to England tomorrow.

It was a good half hour to the airport, and realising she could not sit in silence for the whole of that time, Martha decided she would have to try and break down Alex’s unnatural restraint. They had been such good friends. She couldn’t believe he had condemned her so completely.

Turning towards him, she began by asking him whether he, too, was working for his father these days. ‘I always thought you wanted to be a lecturer,’ she commented. ‘All that classical literature we used to read. Do you remember teaching me about Aeschylus and Sophocles, and how we used to act out those plays on the beach——’

‘We all change,’ Alex interrupted her shortly. ‘We grow older—and wiser.’

Martha controlled the automatic rejoinder that sprang to her lips, and said instead: ‘So you’ve given up your ideas of philosophy? You’ve decided that the material world has more to offer than the mythical one?’

Alex shifted impatiently in his seat. ‘I do not think it matters to you what my opinions may be, Martha. I was a boy when you went away, now I am a man. That is all there is to it.’

‘I see.’ Martha made a negative gesture. ‘In other words, I should mind my own business, hmm?’

Alex moved his shoulders dismissingly. ‘You have not cared what has happened to us for five years. It is unreasonable to expect me to believe you care now.’

Martha accepted this broadside with a deep pang of regret. ‘You may not believe this, but I have had my problems, too, you know,’ she ventured. ‘And as for our relationship—you were already planning on going to university. There was no way I could write to you without—without your brother and your father knowing. And in the circumstances I don’t think that would have been a good idea, do you?’

Alex bent his head, pressing his lips together as he straightened the crease in his pants. He was obviously considering what she had said, but his loyalty to his brother, and to his family, was warring with the logic of her explanation.

‘It has not been easy—for any of us,’ he said at last, looking sideways at her. ‘We have all to make our own judgment of events.’

‘And what is your judgment?’ asked Martha quietly.

Alex shook his head, and resumed his interest in his trouser leg. ‘It is not up to me to say anything,’ he replied at last. ‘But I know what your leaving meant to my brother, and that I cannot forgive.’

Martha weathered this body blow with less fortitude. She had believed that of all of them, Alex might have kept an open mind. But it seemed he was as biased as the rest, and she did not look forward to this meeting with his father with any degree of anticipation.

A new airport had been built on Rhodes, far superior to the airport Martha remembered, whose approach between two hills had been a source of danger to larger aircraft. The new airport lay on the coast, to the south of the island, with a big new runway suitable to take the powerful jumbo jets that used it daily throughout the summer months.

The Myconos car was known to the airport staff, and they were passed through with the minimum of delay. The helicopter awaited them, and Alex dismissed the chauffeur before assisting Martha up the steps and into the aircraft.

She recognised the pilot. He used to help crew the ocean-going yacht that Aristotle kept moored at Piraeus, and it was strange to hear herself addressed as Madame Myconos once more. Dion had never petitioned for a divorce, and she had assumed he had wanted to avoid the publicity it would undoubtedly attract, but she used her maiden name in England because it was easier that way.

She had never flown in a helicopter before. She seemed to remember a small hydroplane, but not a helicopter, and the curious lifting sensation she felt as they took off made her wish they had used the boat after all. Still, once they started moving forward, she forgot her fears, and the advantages it possessed over an aeroplane soon became evident. Flying at only several hundred feet instead of several thousand, she was able to distinguish the contours of every island they passed, and in her excitement she forgot that Alex had been offhand with her earlier.

‘Isn’t it tremendous?’ she asked, raising her voice above the level of the engines. ‘I mean, you can actually see how shallow the sea is in places. Oh, and look! Isn’t that a dolphin down there? That black thing in the water?’

‘I think it is more likely to be a fishing boat,’ remarked Alex drily, unable to completely hide his amusement. ‘We are not so low, you know. From this height a dolphin would hardly be visible.’

‘Oh!’ Martha pulled a rueful face, and for a moment Alex shared her disappointment. Then, quickly, he looked away again, but not before Martha had felt a slight uplift in her spirits. Given time, she was sure she could change Alex’s opinion of her, and it was good to know that he still had a sense of humour.

There were sails below them now, white sails, pristine pure against the aquamarine water. They reminded Martha of the ketch Dion had sailed, and of weekends spent cruising these waters, far, in spirit at least, from the problems their marriage was facing.

‘You’re not married, Alex?’ she enquired now, turning to look at her brother-in-law, and he shook his head.

‘No,’ he conceded, his voice almost inaudible beneath the throbbing of the propellers, and Martha guessed he was regretting his momentary lapse.

They were descending now, coming in low over the rocky contours of a headland, below which a narrow thread of sand glinted with burnished grains. There was a wooded hinterland rising to a barren summit, and then falling again more shallowly to a sheltered bay and a small harbour. The village, the island’s only community, nestled round the bay, colour-washed cottages set in gardens bright with hibiscus and oleander. Martha could see the windmill that had once irrigated the terraces, where grapes grew with such profusion, and the deserted monastery of St Demetrius, high on the hillside. It was all so real and familiar, despite the absence of years, and once more she wondered how she could justify depriving Josy of this.

The Myconos villa was of typically Greek design. Palatial terraces, set about with gardens and fountains, and lily pools, thick with blossom. Marble pillars supported a first floor balcony, and shadowed the Italian tiles that covered the floor of the hall, and urns of flowering shrubs spilled scarlet petals across the veined mosaic of the entrance. Built on several levels, it sprawled among its pools and arbours, with all the elegant abandon of a reclining naiad.

A car took Martha and Alex from the landing field near the harbour, up the winding road to the villa. The chauffeur was another of the household staff, and like the pilot of the helicopter, he recognised his employer’s daughter-in-law. Martha seemed to recall that his name was Spiros or Spiro, she wasn’t certain which, but there had been so many names to remember, so many employees, who seemed to count it an honour to work for the Myconos family. And it was a family, in every sense of the word, a close-knit family, welded together by Aristotle Myconos’ influence, where sons—and daughters-in-law, daughters—and sons-in-law, all came within the suffocating circle of his omnipotence. Maybe, if she and Dion had had a home of their own, things would have been different, she mused, and then squashed the thought. Aristotle had not been to blame for Dion’s possessiveness, his absurd jealousy, his desire to confine his wife within the web of his family, and destroy all connections with her own …

Nothing could prevent her nerves from tightening as the limousine turned between the stone gateposts of the villa. There were no iron fortifications here, as there were at the villa in Athens. No visible guards, no burglar-proof locks to keep out intruders. The main access to the island was through the harbour, but just in case, Aristotle had the coastline patrolled both day and night.

Thick shrubs hid all but the roof of the villa as the car followed the winding curve of the drive, but eventually they emerged before its white-painted façade, and Martha saw again the imposing entrance of Dion’s island home. She remembered the first time she had seen it. She had been enchanted then—enchanted and bemused, that a man like Dionysus Myconos should want her for his wife.

The car stopped, and Alex thrust open his door to get out. The chauffeur alighted and opened Martha’s door, and with a feeling of unease she stepped out on to the gravelled forecourt.

It was slightly cooler here than in Rhodes, the soft breeze bringing a pleasant relief in the heat of the day. Yet the smell was the same, that tangy citrus smell, that mingled here with the salty taste of the sea. And it was quiet, so quiet after the noisy harbour at Rhodes, without even the peal of voices to disturb the stillness. She had thought Dion’s older sister, Helene, might be there, with her two sons, but there were no voices echoing from the pool as there would have been if there were children about.

‘My father is in his study,’ Alex said, at her elbow, and she looked up at him anxiously.

‘Is no one else here?’

‘You forget—I told you, my sister is getting married on Friday. The family are gathering in Athens for the celebrations.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Martha had forgotten. ‘Well, shall we get it over with?’

Alex raised his dark eyebrows, but he made no comment, merely led the way beneath the marble pillars, and into the cool, spacious hall.

Martha had forgotten the long windows at the back of the hall, which gave a magnificent view of the curve of the hillside, stretching up to the mellowed walls of the monastery. The hall itself was on two levels, with an iron-railed balcony providing an oasis of plants in the heart of the building. Alabaster balusters supported the rail of the staircase, that curved to the upper storey, and overhead a crystal chandelier glinted dully below the arch of the ceiling.

Aristotle’s study was some distance from the entrance hall, along corridors that gave tantalising glimpses of the sea between stone panels. The Aegean lay below them, somnolent in the noonday sun, a deeper blue than the sky above. It was so beautiful here, she thought with a pang. If only people were like places!

Her knees were knocking as they reached the leather-studded door, and in a spurt of panic she decided to dismiss any other motive she might have had for coming here. She would speak to Dion’s father on Roger’s behalf, and that was all. If he refused, she had done her best, and no one could do more. So far as her feelings towards Josy were concerned, they would have to wait. Maybe back in England, with the journey behind her, she would be able to view things less emotionally, but right now she wanted to turn and run, and that was not the frame of mind in which to come to a rational decision.

Alex knocked, and then gave her a faintly appealing look. It was as if for a moment he regretted their estrangement as much as she did, and impulsively, she put her fingers on his arm taut beneath the fine material of his suit.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, with a little rush of nostalgia. ‘I did miss you, Alex—honestly!’

His lips were parting to make some response, when the door beside them opened. In that moment they were frozen in their adopted attitudes, caught for that fleeting split second in time, like two lovers planning an assignation. Then Martha’s head turned, her hand dropped away, and her eyes widened in chilling disbelief as she gazed up at the man confronting them. This was not Aristotle Myconos, not this tall man, with thin, slightly haggard features, and a lean, loose-limbed body. Aristotle was more like Alex, shorter, stockier, greyer—although this man’s dark hair was liberally sprinkled with that betraying filament. Besides, this man was younger, too young to have sired four grown sons and two daughters, yet like Alex, he too had suffered badly from the passage of years. His eyes seemed darker, deeper-set, his cheeks hollower, his frame more angular, thinner. This man was Dionysus Myconos, her husband, yet not her husband, but the man she had least wanted to meet.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE had misunderstood Alex’s appealing look, she thought bitterly, trying to maintain some semblance of composure. It was sympathy, not understanding, she had glimpsed in his face, and she was tempted to turn on him angrily, scorning the lies he had told her to get her here. He had said Dion was in Amsterdam—or had he? All he had actually said was that he had gone there two days before.

‘Will you not come in, Martha?’ intoned her husband now, his voice as cold as the censure in his eyes. ‘Alex, we will talk later.’

‘Yes …’

Alex turned away, but not before he had given Martha another of those reluctantly compassionate looks, though she was too intent on the interview ahead to notice it. With a stiffening of her backbone she stalked past her husband into the room, and then stopped short at the sight of her father-in-law, seated behind his square mahogany desk. Somehow she had expected Dion to be alone, and her step faltered as she heard her husband close the heavy door behind them.

‘Martha!’ Aristotle Myconos got heavily to his feet, and she saw he limped as he came round the desk to greet her. Like his sons he had aged, but although she eyed him warily, there was nothing but polite courtesy in his eyes. ‘I am so glad you agreed to come here. As you can see, I am not so young as I used to be, and I leave most of the legwork to my sons these days.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Martha’s response was clipped, but she couldn’t help it. Whichever way she looked at it, she had been tricked, and she didn’t like it.

‘Please …’ Aristotle indicated a dark green leather armchair, placed to one side of his desk. ‘Will you not sit down? I realise you are feeling we have deceived you, but it was not reasonable for you to expect me not to tell Dion about your letter.’

Martha drew a deep breath. She was at a distinct disadvantage here. Before her was this old man, looking every one of his sixty-odd years, and behind her, boring into her shoulder blades, was the malevolent gaze of her husband. What was Dion doing here? What did he have to say to her? And why did she have the feeling she had been manipulated once again?

Composing her words carefully, she said: ‘I told Alex I didn’t want to come here. What we have to say to one another could have been said just as well in a letter——’

‘Could it?’

The harsh tones that interrupted her were so unlike Alex’s that Martha wondered how she could ever have mistaken them, however briefly. As she clutched her handbag as a sort of lifeline, Dion strode from the door to join his father, standing before the desk, feet slightly apart, arms folded across the muscled leanness of his chest. Like his brother and his father, he too was wearing formal clothes, but the dark colours he chose accentuated the alien cast of his skin, and clung to the narrow outline of his hips.

Facing him, Martha half wished he had remained where he was. In the years since their separation, she had succeeded in banishing his image to the farthest recesses of her mind, but now here he was again, tearing the veils aside, exposing her futile hopes and deepest fears.

‘I wrote to your father because this is his island, and I hoped he might understand the position I was in,’ she said now, realising she had to answer him. ‘Roger—that is, Mr Scott—has—has been a good friend to—to us——’

‘You mean—to you and your daughter?’ enquired Dion coldly, and his father put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘To—to Josy and me, yes. And—and to my sister.’

‘Oh, yes, your sister,’ Dion nodded. ‘We must not forget her, must we?’

Martha drew a trembling breath and appealed to Aristotle, ‘Is the answer no? Is that what you’re about to tell me? Because if it is——’

‘Will you not sit?’ Aristotle gestured towards the chair again, and although the last thing Martha wanted to do in her husband’s presence was to increase his advantage, she realised her father-in-law was finding the standing too much, and he would not sit down unless she did. With a hesitant little shrug she took the seat he offered, and with obvious eagerness he sought the relief of his own chair.

‘Now,’ he said, resting his palms on the desk, ‘let us be honest with one another, hmm?’

‘Pateras!’

‘Ohi, Dionysus.’ His father ignored his angry remonstrance. ‘It must be said, and at once. It is not fair to keep the reasons for this interview from your wife. If, as you say, you wish to be free of this marriage, then it is right that Martha should understand from the outset.’

Martha could feel all the colour draining out of her cheeks at Aristotle’s words. She had been shocked to see her husband, naturally, but it had not been entirely unexpected. This was! That Dionysus might be considering divorce had never entered her head. Not for years. And what was more, the idea was not even acceptable to her. What about Josy? she wanted to cry, but she didn’t. She sat in frozen silence, trying desperately not to show how completely stunned she felt.

‘So …’ Aristotle surveyed her across the desk with quiet courtesy. ‘You understand now why Dionysus is here. When you wrote to me concerning this matter of an archaeological survey, we took the opportunity to promote this meeting. These things are better said face to face. It has been in his mind for some time, I know, and your correspondence made it easier for us all.’

‘I—I see.’ Martha’s mouth was horribly dry, and she had difficulty in articulating at all. ‘And—and Roger’s survey?’

‘Mou theos!’ snapped Dion angrily, even while Martha realised her words must sound incredibly foolish. But she couldn’t bring herself to speak of anything else at this moment, and even his anger could not take away the feeling of disorientation that was gripping her.

‘Be calm, my son.’ Aristotle’s controlled tones were a contrast to her husband’s. ‘Will you summon Andros? We all need a drink, I believe.’

While Dion crossed the floor and jerked open the door, Martha tried to get a hold on her emotions. But it wasn’t easy with Aristotle’s thoughtful eyes upon her, and without asking permission, she rose from her chair and crossed to the windows, staring out unseeingly at the terraced gardens below the villa. Dear God, she thought unsteadily, and she had thought Dion was there to make some demands upon her! She couldn’t have been more wrong.

She heard the clink of glasses on a tray, and turned as Dion, accompanied by another manservant, re-entered the room. The man set the tray he was carrying on the desk, and bowed his head politely before making his departure. Then Dion crossed to the desk and with evident brusqueness asked her what she would like to drink.

There was lemonade there, and Martha picked that, unwilling to stretch her nerves any further by the introduction of alcohol. Dion and his father both chose gin, and her husband swallowed half his at a gulp before refilling his glass. As the chair she had been occupying was too close to the tray for comfort, Martha decided to perch on the window seat, and the cooling breeze the open window emitted helped to keep the faintness she was feeling at bay. This interview which had started so badly had suddenly got worse, and she had little confidence in her own ability to handle it.

‘Now …’ Aristotle spoke again. ‘First of all I suggest we clear up this matter of—Mr Scott? Is that right? Ah.’ He nodded, as Martha agreed with his identification. ‘I am sure you know, without my having to tell you, Martha, I never allow any historians to visit Mycos.’

‘But that was not why you came, was it, Martha?’ enquired her husband, with cold accusation, and with a shock she realised that there was more to this even now than she understood.

‘I—I’m afraid——’

‘Oh, please do not attempt to deceive us with your lies!’ Dion grated angrily. ‘You did not write to my father because you felt some—some philanthropic desire to help this man you speak of.’

‘Then why did I write?’ she found herself asking, unable to prevent the question from spilling from her tongue, and once again it was Aristotle Myconos who tried to cool the situation.

‘Dionysus, let us not jump to conclusions,’ he said, and there was a warning in his eyes that Martha failed to comprehend. ‘Let Martha tell us her reasons. Then we can discuss this matter.’

‘I’ve told you my reason,’ she exclaimed, coming to her feet again. ‘What other reason could there be?’

Dion’s narrow lips curled. ‘You did not consider perhaps that, now the child is older, it might be possible for you to sue for maintenance?’

‘Maintenance?’ Martha was horrified. ‘No! No, of course not.’

‘Dion …’ Again that warning note in his father’s voice, but this time he ignored it.

‘I should tell you,’ he said coldly, ‘I have been to England. I have seen the circumstances in which you live. And it is no surprise to me that you have finally decided that independence is not everything you thought it to be.’

His words temporarily numbed Martha. Dion had been to England! He had seen the circumstances in which she lived! What did that mean? Had he seen Josy? Did he know about Sarah? His next words enlightened her.

‘You have not sued for divorce. This man, whoever he is, has not made any apparent effort to marry you, to father the child he seeded in you. You must be getting desperate to give the child a name!’

‘You are wrong,’ she declared now. ‘Totally and utterly wrong! I—I—if you think Roger is—is Josy’s father, then you’re crazy!’

Dion took a step towards her at this piece of insolence, but as if mindful of his father’s watching presence, he halted. ‘Then who is he? Tell me that?’ he demanded. ‘And tell me why you dared to write to my father asking for a permission you knew would be denied you!’

Martha’s breathing was shallow and uneven, but she managed to say what she had to. ‘After—after I left you, I stayed with Sarah for a while, but her apartment was tiny, just a bed-sitter, and her landlady didn’t take too kindly to having a baby’s nappies hanging in the bathroom. Then—then——’ She broke off, still unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing about Sarah’s accident, and of how useless the apartment had become to someone confined to a wheelchair, and went on less convincingly: ‘We needed somewhere else, somewhere I—I could wheel a pram. Roger offered us the ground floor of his house.’