For entertainment we invited large groups of our neighbors from the village to dine with us. Never before had I mingled with such a varied group of friends. Cécile's dearest compatriot was a young man called Aristo Papadakos, a skillful woodworker. After she described to him her miniature Versailles, he carved for her a tiny Parthenon and presented it to her. From that day on, they set about re-creating Athens in its golden age, complete with small figures of Pericles, Socrates, and Plato.
I spent much of my time alone, sketching or reading. In the afternoon I liked to walk along the cliff toward Fira, the largest city on Santorini. Often I would stop at the summit of a rocky outcrop with a book and enjoy perfect solitude while seemingly everyone else on the island napped. The weather that spring was extraordinary, bringing day after day of sunshine following a rainy February.
Perched on a rock one fine day in March, I sighed with satisfaction as I looked at the caldera before me and wondered what lay in ruin beneath its waters. I had been reading Plato's Timaeus, a dialogue in which the great philosopher describes the destruction of the ancient civilization of Atlantis, often thought to have been located on Santorini. I had just decided that I must find someone to take me across to the volcano tomorrow when I heard a person approaching from the path behind me. I turned around and saw Colin smiling at me.
"It looks as if you have found paradise," he said.
"What a surprise!" I exclaimed, rising to meet him. "I should not have thought Santorini a convenient excursion from Berlin."
"I assure you it is not." He kissed my hand.
"Then I am most flattered that you made the trip." He was dressed more casually than I had ever seen him and looked extraordinarily handsome with his hair disheveled by the wind.
"You should be," he said. "You are reading Plato?"
"Yes."
"Timaeus?"
"I felt this the perfect location for it."
"I adore the way your mind works." He kissed my hand again. I touched his face and leaned forward to kiss him. After a short embrace, I pulled away and looked at him, relishing the warmth I found in his eyes.
"How are your studies coming?" he asked.
"Very well for the most part, although I have stalled a bit on my Greek-difficult to learn on one's own."
"Hmmm..." he agreed, softly kissing my neck.
"Now that you are here, you must help me. I'm so pleased to have someone who can answer my grammar questions. I'd begun to fear that I would be stuck reading in translation until Margaret arrives." He did not seem to be paying much attention to my plight, so I lifted his head. "You will help me, won't you?"
"Yes, but not before you feed me — there was nothing edible on the boat." He took my hand, and we walked slowly back to the villa, where Cécile rejoiced at his appearance. She insisted that we celebrate his arrival and immediately began discussing plans for a feast with Mrs. Katevatis, who, in typical fashion, had soon invited the entire village to dine with us. The food was, as always, incomparable, and the amount of ouzo consumed led to some particularly raucous dancing. Colin took to Greek folk dancing well, cutting a fine figure with Cécile and the villagers. The festivities did not break up until late in the evening, and although I was exhausted by the time I fell into my bed, I found that I could not sleep. I paced restlessly on my balcony for some time, calmed by neither the stars nor the sound of the ocean. Suddenly my eyes caught something below me; I had left a book on the white wall at the edge of the cliff and decided to get it before the wind blew it into the water.
I went downstairs, stepping quickly, the stone floor of the veranda cold on my feet. The book, my poor abandoned Timaeus, collected, I paused for a moment to look at the caldera, when I saw Colin sitting in a chair only a few feet away from me.
"Why aren't you asleep?" I asked as he stood and walked toward me.
"Morpheus seems to have eluded me completely tonight," he said. The skirts of my nightgown and my long hair billowed around me in the wind as I took his hand. "You are cold."
"A little," I admitted. "I couldn't sleep either. Your arrival has forced me to realize how much I have missed you, when all this time I thought I had found perfect contentment. I shall never forgive you for disillusioning me."
"What can I do to redeem myself?" he asked, putting his arms around me.
"I cannot say. You might start by kissing me again."
He obliged me immediately and thoroughly. "I hope that was satisfactory."
"Perfectly," I murmured, resting my cheek against his.
"The difficulty, of course," he continued, "is that it does not address the long-term problem."
"Is there a long-term problem?"
"Of course. Now that I know you shall miss me, how can I possibly leave you again?"
"There's no need to think about leaving; you've only just arrived."
"But eventually I shall have to go, and I have found being without you a severe impediment to my happiness. I am afraid there is only one solution to our predicament."
"What is that?" I asked, kissing him. He was unable to respond for several minutes.
"I want you to give me your heart, Emily. I want you to marry me," he said. "But I know your views on that subject. I would not want you as my wife unless you truly believed that marrying me would complement a life you already find perfectly satisfying."
Although the idea of spending my life with Colin struck me as very attractive on a number of levels, I was not willing to commit to something that would so radically affect my personal freedom. Perhaps later, when I had a more precise idea of how I wanted to live my life, I would be in a better position to judge how he could fit into it. For now, though, I was not prepared to abandon my autonomy and did not want to feel obligated to anyone. An odd thought crossed my mind.
"Whom do you prefer: Hector or Achilles?" I asked.
"What kind of a question is that?"
"Hector or Achilles?"
"Hector, of course," he said, looking confused. "'Sprung from no god, and of no goddess born; / Yet such his acts, as Greeks unborn shall tell, / And curse the battle where their fathers fell.'"
"And you did express an interest in taking me to Ephesus, if I remember correctly. I believe it was on the Pont-Neuf?"
"So long as you are willing to uphold your pledge to leave your evening clothes behind."
"Cécile is right," I said, laughing. "She has always told me that you are a man of great possibility."
"Perhaps I should propose to her," he replied, raising his eyebrows.
"She undoubtedly would accept you." I rested my hand on his cheek. "I, however, have no intention of marrying again." He did not take his eyes from mine, even as they exposed the pain my statement caused him. I paused. "But, faced with such a suitor, I am willing to allow for the possibility."
"What does that mean?"
"I am giving you permission to court me, Mr. Hargreaves," I replied, placing my fingers lightly on his lips. "But I can offer you no promises." He pulled me close and kissed me passionately, apparently satisfied with my response.
"Perhaps just one promise?" he asked, brushing my hair from my eyes.
"What?"
"Promise that you will not be too hard on me. I've no goddesses lining up to help me convince you."
"No promises, Colin," I said, and kissed him very sweetly before returning to my bed.
The history behind the story
On writing And Only to Deceive
One day, while I Was engrossed in Dorothy L. Sayers's wonderful Gaudy Night, a sentence leapt off the page at me:
If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller-(all other interests, your own and other people's.