But that is enough of Julian for the moment. On, on to his charming wife, if that is not too precise an imperative.
‘You too, Mr White?’
She stood behind me with one hand, palm inward, fingers splayed, resting on her hip. The blonde hair was gathered into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, held by a large gold pin. She wore a tight blue pullover without sleeves, and a worn pair of white cord trousers. Her toes were out through battered tennis shoes. Standing there before me, with the wind shaking the hills around her, she seemed a Cycladean queen, the patrician line of each small bone formed by a millennium of aristocrats. Aye, and a lady into whom this poor peasant could never hope to plunge his hairy claws. She advanced, smiling, her eyes on mine, fully aware of the effect she had on me, and pleased with it.
‘Me too?’ I asked.
She glanced at the well.
‘Do you also have a fascination with holes in the ground?’
‘Not in the ground, no.’
I tried to bite off my tongue. She was good enough to ignore that remark. I studied the hand which she lifted to her forehead to brush away a strand of hair, and a whole night of forgotten drunkenness came flooding back to me. Her nails were badly bitten.
‘Julian says that his greatest ambition is to buy Syntagma Square, dig an enormous crater in the middle of it, and then spy from the palace windows on the people who come to gape into it …’
She wheeled around to face me, and considered me curiously.
‘I wondered if you have the same kind of mind.’
I did not know what to make of that question. I giggled, and then looked gravely down into the well, giving her the benefit of my dignified profile. The wind roared around us.
‘There was a man driving alone one night on a country road in Ireland,’ I said. ‘He was going home. He crashed, and was thrown through the windscreen into a field. Various important bones were broken. At the other side of the field there were lights. He crawled toward them. It was a farmhouse. He got so near to it that he could see the farmer sitting by the fire with a newspaper, and the farmer’s wife bathing a child in a tin bath. With a great effort he started forward for the last few yards. Nearer and nearer, almost there, he began to laugh with relief, and laughing fell into a pond, and was drowned.’
Somehow that was not what I had meant to say. Helena made a gesture of distaste, and stepped away from me.
‘Oh no,’ I cried. ‘Listen.’
I caught her by the arm, but released her instantly. She stood with her back to me, her head bent, waiting.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Kyd. That story sounds differently, it should sound … I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
She smiled at me over her shoulder, and without a word went into the house. I moved toward the gate, and met the boy, Yacinth, coming in from the road. He moved slowly, with his hands plunged in the pockets of his shorts. He seemed bored. I watched him, searching for Helena’s face in his, but, strangely, could not find it.
‘Hello,’ I said brightly.
He looked at me from under his lashes, tossing the black curls away from his forehead with an angry turn of his head. He muttered a greeting of sorts, and went quickly past me, through the dim doorway. A short laugh sounded in the house, the wind blew, and then Helena appeared, carrying a bundled towel under her arm.
‘I don’t think your brother likes me,’ I said.
‘Yacinth? He’s a strange child.’
We walked down the hill to the village. Helena bought chocolate and grapes, while I stood in the doorway kicking my heels. Above the heads of the crowd, a familiar thatch of red hair approached. I slipped into the shop and stood behind Helena.
‘Hide me,’ I said.
‘What?’
She looked at me, at the street, at me again, and smiled.
‘Your German friend?’
‘Not so much a friend.’
‘Oh’
Already, it seemed, I had traded an old love for a new.
The road took us away from the village, and along the coast high above the peaceful sea, the rocks, the rubbish dump, the shambles. Lizards lay torpid in the dust, too drugged with heat to stir at our approach. My shirt was damp and dark with sweat, and Helena now and then drove her hands into the heat of her hair. We followed in the silence of our steps the winding road, and at last, the hill crest crossed, we found the little bay and the deserted beach, the taverna at the water’s edge, and the tall parched reeds behind it. A great gust of wind met us, and died away. The day was growing calm. I found Helena smiling at me.
‘Everything,’ she murmured, and shook her head in wonder and amusement.
‘What?’
‘Everything, you said that everything frightens you.’
We took a table in the shade of the olive tree before the taverna. The beach was at our feet. The old woman of the place approached us warily. I asked her for beer, and she smiled, and nodded, and backed away. Helena said,
‘Are you writing a book now?’
‘A wha—? Oh yes, indeed, yes, like a beaver I am.’
She searched in her bag, her small bright tongue touching her lip, and brought out a crumpled packet of fat sweet Turkish cigarettes. I shifted, sitting sideways on the chair, for god, it would not do to have it nudge her knee under the table.
‘We had difficulty in bringing you back last night,’ she said, and picked a piece of tobacco from her lip. ‘From Delos, you know? You were very drunk, and sick. Do you remember?’
‘Not very well.’
‘I am not surprised.’
I turned the matchbox end over end on the table. The old woman of the crazed smile returned and set the beer before us. While I counted my money, she slowly wiped her hands in her apron, watching me. I paid her, and then said sharply,
‘Wait.’
Her smile wavered. I retrieved one of the coins from her palm and replaced it with another.
‘This is for luck, you see.’
She said something, which I did not catch, and went away. I slipped the coin into the pocket of my shirt.
‘For luck,’ I told Helena.
‘Of course.’
We drank our beer, and watched the water, the comings and goings of the little waves, wrestling with the silence. I dared to eat a grape. A boat rounded the headland and turned toward the beach. The soft liquid sound of the oars came clearly to us. Helena put a hand against her cheek and looked down at her glass. Light through the leaves above her had cut a tiny jewel on the rim. She was very still, and suddenly, without provocation, all her hair came loose and fell about her. It was long, and of one colour with the sunlight, it fell over her arm, over the table. I bent and picked up the gold pin which had fallen to the dust. The point pricked my finger and suddenly I paused, wondering how I had come to be there. No force of my own had carried me down the hill, along the road, to this beach with this woman whom I did not know. I looked at her with a new curiosity. She was grinning at me through delicate blue wreaths of smoke. A woman whom I did not know. She dropped her cigarette into the sand, and lowered her eyes.