He stepped back quietly, waiting for her to finish. Interrupting her prayer wouldn’t do. If she was aware of his presence, she didn’t give any sign. He backed further and leant against the wall. He saw he was standing beside an icon that showed another saint, much younger and more vigorous than the one Andrula Haywood was praying to, though of a somewhat androgynous aspect. He – Major Payne was sure it was a ‘he’ – was in the process of pulling a devil from the turbulent sea with his left hand, while in his other hand he brandished a hammer.
Eventually Andrula Haywood opened her eyes, crossed herself and started to rise. Payne made a movement towards her, but the next moment three more people entered the church. Two women and an elderly man on crutches. Andrula quickly walked up to them and kissed each one in turn, placing her hands on their shoulders. Payne remained standing beside the wall, watching them. They talked in an animated manner but their conversation was conducted in demotic Greek.
He had done Greek at school, but that had been classical Greek. There had been no classes in colloquial Greek… What a grammatical inferno Greek tragedy had been! As for doing Greek composition, he had thought of it as brutal bludgeoning – not so much different from the fate that awaited the devil in the icon, in fact.
He saw the elderly man with the crutches kneel. Andrula laid her hand on his shoulder and shut her eyes once more. Her lips started moving but this time she spoke the words aloud – Greek again. She spoke with fervour. The two women who had come with the man also reached out and placed their hands on his arm and they too spoke aloud. The man bowed his head. They were praying for his healing, Payne felt sure and, though he didn’t understand a word of it, he felt touched.
He was reminded of the words of Achilles’ ghost to Ulysses: I would rather be a slave at another’s plough, one who is poor with little means of livelihood, than rule all the dead and departed. Well, Andrula had chosen a life devoted to serving people in need… It didn’t seem she had got married either… Her conscience had prevented her from finding happiness of the more conventional kind.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that nearly twenty-five minutes had passed since he had arrived. He remembered his grandfather saying that a true gentleman’s concerns weren’t supposed to include the passage of time. He must have been no more than eleven or twelve at the time. Funny, how some memories stuck in the mind -
He caught a movement. The tableau had broken up and the man, supported by the two women, went to light candles. Andrula Haywood turned round and seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said, smiling, and crossed through the swirls of incense, proffering both her hands. ‘Welcome. I have never seen you here before, but I hope you will find what you are looking for.’ She spoke with a slight Greek accent. Her eyes were kind, but full of pain. (He was sure he wasn’t imagining it.)
‘As a matter of fact I was looking for you, Miss Haywood. Could I have a word?’
There was a pause. He hoped he didn’t sound too intimidating – like a plain clothes policeman.
‘You want to talk to me? Of course. Let us go to my office. There will be a baptism here soon and we will be in the way.’
As though on cue, there entered a tall priest. He was youngish, in his thirties, with a trimmed dark beard and wearing a festive black cassock and the tall cylindrical black hat that went with it. ‘Sister Andrula,’ he said in English.
She bowed down and kissed his hand. ‘Father,’ she said.
‘God is good. Is everything ready?’
‘Yes, Father,’ she answered and pointed her hand towards a screen, which presumably concealed the baptismal font.
‘I am a little early but I want to pray.’ He had given Payne an amiable nod.
‘Yes, Father. I won’t be long. This gentleman has come to see me.’ She then led the way across the room, past the iconostasis, which she described as ‘one of the finest products of the nineteenth-century School of Debar’, whatever that was. ‘I had it sent from Smyrna, my home town. That’s where I spent my childhood. It was a lovely place in the mid-fifties. I understand it’s somewhat spoilt now. Through here
…’
She pulled aside a heavy brocade curtain, pushed open a door and they entered a small, cell-like room with plain walls. There wasn’t much in it, apart from a small bookcase, a metal safe, a desk with a computer on it and two. wooden chairs. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. ‘I’m not offering you coffee because I’m in a hurry. I am a bit worried about the baptism.’ She took the seat on the other side of the desk.
He cast a glance round. ‘Do you live here?’
‘Yes. I have two rooms and a shower at the back.’ She pointed towards a second door in the wall behind him. ‘That’s all I need.’
‘And you – you actually run this church?’
‘I run it, yes. I am the owner as well as the manager. Or do you say “proprietor”? It’s not that difficult, if one has faith. I get a lot of help from my brothers and sisters – there are fifty-three of us.’
She must mean that in a spiritual rather than filial sense, Payne reflected. ‘It doesn’t look like a church from the outside – no cupola, no dome.’
Suddenly, something she had just said jarred. The mid-fifties? He must have misheard…
‘No. It used to be my old house. My neighbours happened to be moving out, so I bought their house as well. What’s your interest in the church? You aren’t thinking of making me an offer, are you?’ She smiled.
It was then that Payne had his happy inspiration. He cleared his throat. ‘You had the church built twenty years ago, didn’t you?’
She looked at him with a little frown. ‘That’s correct.’
He leant slightly forward. ‘You had a windfall. A big sum of money, but you weren’t happy because of the way the money had been acquired.’ His eyes never for a moment left her face. ‘So, to appease your conscience, you built a church. It was a form of – atonement.’
There was a pause. Her face had gone pale, the lines running down from her nostrils to the ends of her mouth deepened, but she remained composed. ‘As a matter of fact you are right, in every detail. How do you know all this? Have you come here to tell me my fortune? This is remarkable, but you must know that I do not approve of fortune-telling.’ Her dark eyes fixed on his regimental tie and she smiled once more, a faint smile. ‘You don’t look like a fortune-teller. Who are you?’
‘You don’t know me. My name is Payne.’
She drew in her breath. ‘Pain? Well, if you must know, that’s what I’ve been feeling all these years – here.’ She touched her heart. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Pain. That’s what I’ve had to live with. Sorry…’ She shook her head and wiped her eyes.
‘I’d like to know what exactly happened on 29th July 1981.’ Major Payne delivered this boldly, in measured tones, watching for her reaction. He felt sorry for her but he didn’t want to lose the momentum. ‘Who was it that paid you to pretend your mother was ill and leave Twiston in the morning? Who telephoned you?’
‘Twiston?’ She frowned, a look of utter incomprehension on her face. ‘What is Twiston?’
(Was she pretending? She must be.)
‘What did they do with little Sonya Dufrette?’
‘Sonya -?’ She broke off and he saw her expression start changing. It was very peculiar. Her mouth opened slightly. Her eyes stared back at him. She looked startled – shocked. She looked as though she had had some sort of revelation, one that had confirmed her worst fears, that was how Payne was to describe it later to Antonia. He couldn’t understand.
She whispered, ‘Is – is that what happened? Someone phoned her in the morning and – and said I was ill? Is that what happened?’