Moon Of Aphrodite

She became aware that a group of people behind her were patiently waiting to take a photograph and stepped out of the way with a murmured word of apology. She knew that because of the wear and tear of the centuries, and more recently air pollution from the great city which circled the foot of the Acropolis, the most she could do was look and admire from a distance. Some of the buildings, she noticed, glancing round her, were already supported by scaffolding. It was a shame, but at least the authorities were doing their best to preserve them for further generations of feet to tread up the long winding route from the foot of the rock.

She sat down on a piece of fallen masonry, and filled her mind with images to carry away with her, because she doubted whether she would ever come back. She had agreed to undertake this journey of reconciliation because her grandfather was elderly and ill. It seemed quite likely that he was at death’s door, she thought sombrely, and once he was dead there would be no reason for her to return to Greece ever again. That feeling of fellowship with the past, of homecoming even that she had experienced earlier, had disturbed her. She didn’t understand herself. She had always regarded herself as English through and through, and wholly her father’s daughter. She had never ever looked Greek, she thought in perplexity.

After a while, she rose and walked to the edge, threading her way between the chattering groups with their clicking cameras. The view was stupendous. She thought she could even catch a glimpse of the sea in the distance.

She turned away at last, feeling a little giddy. The sun reflecting off the white rock she stood on was almost overwhelming, like some exotic moonscape. It would surely be cooler, more bearable indoors. She went down a brief flight of steps, past a large stone owl and into the museum. She found an unoccupied bench and sank down on to it, pressing her fingers against her forehead with a little sigh.

When the hand descended on her shoulder, she looked up with a start, thinking it was one of the attendants. Instead she found herself looking into the coldly furious face of Damon Leandros.

‘Oh.’ She stared up at him, her brows drawing together. ‘It’s you. How did you find me?’

‘It did not require a great deal of thought to deduce where you were going,’ he said icily. ‘I saw you enter the museum and followed. What is the matter? Are you ill?’

‘A slight headache, that’s all,’ she returned stiffly, and heard his exasperated sigh.

‘I asked you to rest for precisely this reason,’ he said after a pause. ‘I do not wish to present you to your grandfather suffering from heatstroke or exhaustion.’

‘Of course not, although I needn’t ask whether that’s prompted by concern for me or concern for your job.’ She pushed her hair back from her face with defiant fingers. ‘I suppose my grandfather might not be too pleased that you’d left me to my own devices.’

He gave her a long, hard look. ‘Your grandfather was perfectly well aware that I had business to attend to this afternoon, and that our departure for Phoros would be delayed for a few hours.’

‘Really?’ Helen smiled in spite of her pounding head. ‘I saw your—business beside you in the car. Nice work if you can get it,’ she added with deliberately airy vulgarity.

But the expected explosion did not transpire. When he did speak his voice was softer than ever.

‘Miss Brandon, did your father never beat you when you were a child?’

‘Of course not.’ Helen dismissed from her mind the memory of numerous childish chastisements. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Idle curiosity. There could, of course, be no other reason.’ His tone was silky. ‘Are you prepared to return to the hotel with me now, and rest?’

Helen lifted her chin. ‘But I haven’t had a chance to look round the museum yet,’ she objected.

‘Then by all means let us do so.’ She didn’t like the smile he gave her as he lifted her to her feet.

Half an hour later, she was wishing with all her heart that she had meekly acceded to his original suggestion of returning to the hotel. Her head was pounding almost intolerably, and she felt desperately thirsty and slightly queasy at the same time. At any other time—and of course if he had been anyone else—she would have been fascinated by what he was telling her about the transition from the Archaic to the Classical style in sculpture, but his words seemed to buzz meaninglessly in her ears. And the curving smiles on the Korai, the maidens carved out of stone as offerings to the virgin goddess of the city, Athena, seemed to mock her everywhere she looked.

She swallowed, staring down at the floor, refusing to admit defeat. She was being a fool, she knew. After all, Damon Leandros had been detailed by her grandfather to look after her, and she was sure she only had to give a hint and she would be out of this increasingly stuffy atmosphere, and back in that comfortable hotel room, with the shutters closed. But if she asked him to take her back, he would have won in some obscure way and that she could not allow. She gave a little stifled sigh and forced herself to concentrate on the head of a boy, known as the ‘blond youth’, Damon told her, because there were still traces of yellow tint found on it when it was discovered.

‘We have always admired fair hair, you see.’ Her companion’s voice sounded amused. ‘On Phoros near your grandfather’s villa there is a ruined temple that archaeologists say was dedicated to Aphrodite. She is usually pictured as having blonde hair too.’

Helen said faintly, ‘She could be bald as a coot for me. I—I really must get out of here. I can’t breathe.’

The events of the next hour or so were mercifully blurred. Later she would remember details, like the strength of his arm round her, and the way the cushions of that sleek car of his seemed to support her like a cloud. As they drove back to the hotel, she found herself wondering, as she tried to control the waves of threatened nausea, what he had done with the dark beauty she had seen him with, but enquiring was altogether too much trouble. Besides, she tried to tell herself, what did it matter how many women he had?

And she could remember vomiting tiredly until her throat and her stomach ached, and the tiled bathroom swung in a dizzying arc around her, and the refreshing sensation of a towel dipped in cold water wiping her face, and being placed across her forehead as at last—at long last—she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again it was early evening, judging by the length of the shadows across the floor. She sat up gingerly. Her head still ached, but she no longer felt that terrible, debilitating nausea. In fact, she was almost hungry. She pushed back the single sheet which was the only covering provided on the bed, and started to get out, catching as she did so an astonished glimpse of herself in the long mirror opposite. She looked a mess, she thought candidly. Her eyes looked twice their normal size, and her hair hung on her shoulders in a tangle, but that was incidental. All she was wearing were her underclothes, a dark blue lace bra and matching brief panties. Her navy dress was hanging over the back of a chair with her sandals placed neatly beside it, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember removing any of them.

She got up and went over to the dressing table, reaching for her hairbrush which had been among the small amount of hand luggage she had unpacked, and starting to smooth her hair into its usual face-curving style. She looked wan, she thought critically, but cosmetics would soon improve that. She wandered into the bathroom and had a long leisurely wash, spraying herself liberally with L’Air du Temps when she had finished.

She would phone down for some soup, she thought, and also enquire if there were any messages for her. It was already well past the time that Damon Leandros had proposed they should set off for Phoros, and she supposed he would be waiting somewhere. Grudgingly, she had to admit that he had been kind enough during the dash back to the hotel, and that he had at least left her alone to recover from her sickness.

She sauntered back into the bedroom, and stopped dead, her eyes widening in disbelief. Damon Leandros was there, lounging nonchalantly against the long row of fitted wardrobes which filled one wall. For a moment their gazes locked, and then his eyebrows rose mockingly and she remembered too late that she was half naked.

She looked round wildly for her dress, but he was between her and the chair on which it lay. As if he guessed what was going through her mind, he turned and reached for it, tossing it to her. She snatched at it thankfully, and dragged it over her head, her hands fumbling as she sought to reach and close the long back zip.

He watched her efforts for a moment or two, a derisive smile curling his lips, then he moved towards her and she took an instinctive step backwards.

‘Relax,’ he advised curtly. ‘I have no intention of raping you, but you seem to need help.’

‘I don’t need anything from you,’ Helen choked, still struggling ineffectually with that damned zip.

‘You didn’t say that a few hours ago while I was holding your head in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘Besides, I may have damaged the zip when I removed the dress. I was in a hurry and they are fragile things.’

Helen pressed her hands against burning cheeks. ‘You—it was you? Oh, how could you? How dared you?’

‘There was no question of daring,’ he said coolly. ‘I thought English girls gloried in their liberation from outdated conventions. Besides, you were and are perfectly adequately clothed. I daresay you will wear far less when you go swimming on Phoros.’

‘Well, at least you won’t be there to see,’ Helen flashed. ‘I doubt whether Mr Korialis will regard your activities in quite the same liberated way.’

‘So you intend to make use of your Greek parentage when it suits you. I find that interesting.’ He walked over to her before she could retreat again and spun her round, his hands on her shoulders. Helen felt the recalcitrant zip move upwards, and for one infinitely disturbing minute the brush of his fingers strangely cool on the heated skin of her spine. She tensed involuntarily at his touch, and heard him laugh softly.

‘I’m glad I amuse you,’ she said tersely, as she pulled away from him. ‘I think you’ll laugh on the other side of your face when you find yourself out of a job.’

‘You intend that your grandfather should dismiss me?’ he enquired lazily.

‘How right you are!’ She faced him defiantly, her chin up, eyes sparkling.

He shrugged. ‘You can always try, Eleni.’

‘And please don’t call me that. It—it’s familiar.’

‘Which is of course unthinkable,’ he said solemnly. But he was amused, and she knew he was, and it infuriated her.

‘How the hell did you get into my room anyway? Surely the staff wouldn’t have allowed …’

‘Oh, I can be very persuasive when I want. But in this case I didn’t have to be. When I left after attending to your—needs, I simply took your key with me.’ He touched his jacket pocket. ‘I have it here.’

She held out her hand. ‘Give it to me, please.’

‘Why? You won’t need it again. We are leaving soon. As it is, I have had to telephone your grandfather and tell him we have been delayed.’ He paused. ‘He wasn’t pleased, and it is bad for him to suffer any agitation.’

‘And I suppose you made haste to tell him it was all my fault,’ she said with heavy irony.

‘I told him merely that you have been tired by your journey from England, and that the heat had affected you. I did not tell him you had been mad enough to try and explore the Acropolis in the full blaze of noon without allowing yourself to become in any way acclimatised. Michael Korialis is not one of those who—to use your English phrase—suffer fools gladly, and I didn’t wish you to make a bad impression immediately.’

She gave him an outraged look. ‘The implication being that I’ll make one eventually.’

‘I think it is inevitable. You are wilful, disobedient, and have a sharp tongue, and none of these are attributes to appeal to a man who adheres to the old ways like your grandfather. You have a lot to learn about Greece and its men, Eleni.’

‘I’d prefer to have no more lessons from you,’ she said baldly.

He smiled. ‘As you plan to have me dismissed as soon as we get to Phoros, there will be little opportunity for such lessons,’ he said smoothly, but his dark eyes held an odd glint, and Helen bit her lip in sudden uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn’t have clashed with him quite so openly. Her grandfather had obviously given him a great deal of power, and it had gone to his head. But it might have been better to have waited to declare her enmity until they were safely on Phoros. But she’d not been able to help herself. The thought of him looking at her, touching her when she was sick and helpless made her feel ill all over again.

She should have retaliated after he had kissed her in London, she thought vengefully, as she repacked her small case. She should have hit him or laid his face open with her nails, then he would not have dared take these kind of liberties. And she ignored the small warning voice which suggested that a man like Damon Leandros took what he chose, as he wished, and without counting the cost.

As she worked, she was aware of him watching her, his dark face enigmatic as she thrust her toilet bag on top of her night things, and threw her hairbrush in after them.

As she clicked the locks shut, she ignored his outstretched hand.

‘Perhaps you would bring the others.’ She nodded towards her other cases, standing under the window.

‘I’ll have them brought down, certainly,’ he said evenly, after a pause, and she-suppressed a grin. Beneath his dignity, obviously, to walk behind her carrying two large cases, she thought. Perhaps she had discovered his vulnerable point. He didn’t like to look ridiculous. And that, she thought, with the vaguest germ of an idea forming in her head, could be just too bad for Mr Macho Leandros!

As she walked along the corridor towards the lift, Helen became aware of two excitedly giggling chambermaids observing her from a linen room. She glanced questioningly at Damon, who smiled faintly.

‘They are pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather is a much loved man.’

She felt as if he was waiting for some special response from her, but she could give none. The prospect of meeting her grandfather was becoming more and more formidable.

She entered the lift in silence and stood waiting while her companion pressed the ‘down’ button.

‘How do we get to Phoros?’ she asked at last, more to break the silence than from any desire for information.

‘There is a car waiting to take us to Piraeus. From there we make a journey by sea,’ he said laconically.

‘Oh.’ Helen digested this. ‘I suppose there’s a regular ferry service, even though it’s only a small island?’

‘It runs three times a day.’

The faint wish to make him look ridiculous which had been buzzing in her mind now began to take shape.

It would give her great satisfaction, she thought, to arrive on Phoros alone, having left Damon Leandros ignominiously behind in Athens. She wished she had thought of it earlier while she was still in her room. Perhaps she could have lured him into the bathroom and locked him in somehow, although she had a feeling the only bolt had been on the inside of the door. Well, she would just have to think of something else.

As they emerged from the lift Helen saw her remaining luggage being carried out to the car ahead of them. If this was a sample of the service provided by all her grandfather’s hotels, then it could hardly be faulted, she thought wryly.

‘Don’t we have to—check out or something?’ she asked a little desperately as they moved past the reception desk.

‘That’s all been taken care of.’

‘But my key,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve still got my key.’

‘I left it in the door of your room.’

Oh, blast! Helen thought savagely. If she could have delayed him at reception even for a moment or two she might have been able to get out to the car and persuade the driver to leave without him.

She could hardly believe her own fortune when she heard one of the receptionists call after him, and saw him hesitate with obvious impatience before he turned back towards the desk.

‘You go ahead,’ he directed briefly. ‘I hope only to be a few minutes.’

‘Take as long as you like.’ Helen sent him a dazzling smile. Her heart beating rapidly, she walked towards the door. The car, an opulent vehicle of a make which she didn’t immediately recognise, was drawn up at the kerb, and a man in a chauffeur’s uniform was standing beside it. When he saw Helen coming towards him he threw open the rear passenger door with some ceremony.

She got in, trying to appear calm and in control of the situation.

‘Do you speak English?’ she asked.

‘Only a little, thespinis.’

‘That’s fine.’ She made herself speak slowly and deliberately so that he would understand. ‘I want to leave at once. We must go quickly to catch the ferry.’

The man’s face was a picture of astonishment. He started to say something about Kyrios Leandros, but Helen swiftly interrupted.

‘Kyrios Leandros cannot come with us. He has been delayed.’ She mimed a telephone call. ‘He is too busy. He will come later.’

The driver gave her a long doubtful look, then stared at the hotel entrance as if willing Kyrios Leandros to appear like the Demon King and put an end to his uncertainty. But no one emerged.

‘Please hurry!’ Helen applied a little more pressure. ‘If I miss the ferry, my grandfather Michael Korialis will be angry.’

It was clear the Korialis name had pull with the driver, because with a fatalistic shrug he got into the driving seat and started the car. Helen sat back in her seat, allowing a little relieved sigh to escape her lips. She wished she could be around when Damon Leandros finished taking his phone call, or whatever he was doing, and came out of the hotel to find the car gone and her with it, but you couldn’t have everything in this life, and she was more than content to be speeding towards Piraeus and the Phoros ferry without him.

And let him explain that away to my grandfather along with everything else, she thought.

The drive to Piraeus was a little disappointing, as the road lay through rather dusty suburbs and industrial estates, and the scenery was flat and uninspiring. Helen found it difficult to relax. She felt exhilarated, and a little nervous at the same time, and could not resist taking brief looks back over her shoulder, as if she half expected to see Damon Leandros following them.

But that was impossible, she told herself confidently. He’d have to find another car, and that would take time. She glanced at her watch, wondering what time the Phoros ferry left. The traffic was heavy, and the car was constantly being forced to slow almost to a crawling pace if not stop altogether. But recalling her experience of waiting for the bus, Helen decided that timetables were obviously not as strictly adhered to in Greece as in the rest of creation. Certainly the driver did not seem at all agitated by the frequent delays, and the easiest thing to do was to follow his example.

She sighed in relief as the harbour came in sight, and sat forward, waiting for the car to stop. But it did not stop. The driver steadily threaded his way through the other vehicles both moving and stationary which packed the narrow streets, narrowly avoiding laughing, chattering groups of people who roamed across the crowded highways as if it was just another extension of the narrow footpath.

There seemed to be streamers everywhere, Helen thought dazedly as she stared out of the window, and hundreds of people boarding and disembarking. She only hoped the driver knew what he was doing, and that her escapade would not end in her sailing off into the wide blue yonder on the wrong ship.

She tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Which is the ferry?’ she asked.

But his only response was an owlish look and a faint shrug of the shoulders as if her meaning escaped him.

‘Boat—Phoros,’ she tried again, and this time to her relief he nodded, smiling broadly.

‘Soon, soon, thespinis.’

And with that she had to be content. The car moved on, away from the harbour, and the scent of exhaust fumes mingling with the more pervasive odours of charcoal grills and olive oil, and out on to a winding road. Helen twisted round, staring at the clustering vessels they were leaving behind. She could only hope the driver knew what he was doing as they left the vast sprawl of the waterfront behind them. The road they were on seemed to have been carved out of the vast cliffs themselves, and some of the views were spectacular, she had to admit. She was intrigued too by the numerous little shrines and grottoes which were dotted along the wayside. Thank-offerings, she supposed, but to which gods—the ancient or the modern? Perhaps in a country like Greece the old pagan undercurrents still ran strong.

The road turned downhill, and she saw another smaller harbour beneath them, where sleek motor launches and small yachts lay at anchor. It looked the last place in the world where a public ferry for a small place like Phoros would leave from, and she leaned forward frowning a little.

The driver looked back at her, as if aware of her uncertainty, and pointed downwards, saying something in his own tongue which clearly intended to be reassuring. She made herself smile back, but her tension showed in her smile. She was at the end of one journey, perhaps, but at the beginning of another. And at the end of it was a man who, although unseen, had seemed to dominate her childhood and adolescence, on whose character, whose pride, arrogance and lack of compassion she had speculated so often and to so little avail. Yet soon they would meet, and her stomach churned involuntarily at the thought. If her grandfather could be judged by the calibre of the men he chose to employ, she thought, then resolutely switched her mind to other less disturbing ideas. He had sent for her, he wanted to see her, so surely that indicated a softening of his earlier implacable attitude. Or at least she had to hope so, or the few weeks she was committed to spending in Greece could well be unendurable.

She wished she had never allowed herself to be persuaded to come to Greece, if persuasion was the word. Emotional blackmail might be more appropriate, she thought bitterly, remembering how Damon Leandros had deliberately played on her heightened sensibilities. He was to blame. He was to blame for everything.

The car drove slowly along the waterfront, past open-air cafes whose gay awnings fluttered in the slight evening breeze. There were people everywhere, tourists tentatively sipping their first tastes of ouzo and retsina, and the usual anonymous groups of men talking, the bright strings or worry beads in their hands moving incessantly as they gestured to lend emphasis to their remarks. The main waterfront at Piraeus had almost been too crowded to assimilate, but here Helen had time to look around her and take in some of the atmosphere.

It was soon obvious that the driver was no stranger here, and this in itself was a reassurance to her. The car was recognised and voices called and hands lifted in greeting, to which he responded. He drove slowly along the curve of the quayside almost to the far end before stopping. Then he turned to Helen.

‘Boat here, thespinis,’ he announced.

There certainly was a boat, but not the small, rather scruffy steamer she had ruefully envisaged as the most likely craft to be plying between Piraeus and an unimportant island. It was a large, impressive cruiser with cabin accommodation, and what appeared to be a sun deck with an awning. And was that a radio mast? she wondered in bewilderment.

The driver had opened her door by this time and was standing patiently waiting for her to alight.