Moon of Aphrodite (17 page)

Wel , it was said, she thought, and it was too late to regret that sudden reckless

impulse.

'My interest is to make sure that your visit here passes enjoyably. It would worry your

grandfather if you were to become il in any way.'

Helen was completely taken aback by the laconic reply. She had expected—what? Some

kind of admission, a declaration? She wasn't sure. Her face burned. Perhaps Craig's

story had only been gossip after al . If so she had come within inches of making an

utter tool of herself.

They were walking away from the beach, she noticed, but the path they were taking

was not one that led back to the house. It was rough, and covered with loose stones,

and it sloped upwards among the crowding olive trees.

'Where are we going?' she asked.

'You haven't been this way before?'

'Wel , no,' she confessed. 'I'd intended to do some exploring, but the beach has always

been too beguiling.'

'And also the vil age, it would seem.' This time his glance was total y unsmiling.

'I've been to the vil age, yes.' Helen lifted her eyebrows. 'Is something wrong with

that?'

'It is not a particularly lively place.'

'But there are shops there. I wanted to buy some dress material.'

'And you were successful in this?'

'As a matter of fact, no.' Helen bit her lip. 'There wasn't a great
deal of time. Kostas

seemed to be in a great hurry.'

'Perhaps it was simply that he did not approve of the company you were keeping.'

'He made no secret of it. I suppose it would never occur to any of you that talking to

one of my own compatriots might make a refreshing change.'

'You arc wrong,' he said. 'Kyritha is a smal vil age. If you went there it was inevitable

that you and Lassiter would meet.'

Her lips parted in silent outrage for a moment, then she said huskily, 'So I was right.

There was a deliberate policy to keep me away from the place. What's the matter? Isn't

a taverna keeper good enough for me to talk to? Would it be better if he owned a

longer string of hotels than Grandfather's? Would that make him acceptable?'

He said wearily, 'You talk like a fool, Eleni. Your grandfather has good reason for not

wishing you to become too friendly with someone like Lassiter.'

'Because he's English, I suppose.' Helen gave a brittle laugh. 'My God! I didn't realise

quite how deep that particular prejudice went. Is he afraid that I'm going to take a leaf

out of my mother's book?'

'I think he has a higher opinion of your intel igence than that,' he said drily.

'Then perhaps he'd better be careful.' Helen stopped in her tracks and swung to face

him, her eyes furious. 'I won't submit to the kind of pressure that he tried to inflict on

my mother either. I belong to myself. You might tel him that'

'I shal do nothing so hurtful,' he said cuttingly.

'No,' she said wretchedly, aware that she had al owed her temper to betray her. 'But he

must understand that things are different in England, I have to be al owed to choose

my own friends.'

'Even if the choice is an unwise one?'

'You don't like Craig?'

'You are more than perceptive, Eleni. No, I do not like him.'

'Wel , I do,' she said defiantly. 'I’m afraid your prejudices carry little weight with me. I

like Craig, and I intend to see more of him while I'm here.'

'Then it is as wel that your time wil be ful y occupied from tomorrow. Perhaps you wil

be more receptive to Madame Stavros' guidance than to mine.' Damon did not bother to

disguise the grimness in his voice.

'I thought I'd already made my views clear on that as wel ,' she said. 'Her coming here

is simply a waste of her time and mine.'

'You would prefer to waste your time with Lassiter?'

Helen wasn't sure she wanted to go quite that far, but she said, 'Yes,' anyway, and was

pleased to see his dark brows snap together in a heavy frown.

Emboldened, she told him, 'I won't be driven to do anything against my wil .'

'I would not count on that if I were you.' He moved on, and Helen stood for a moment

looking after him, strongly tempted to turn and go back the way they had come, if only

to reinforce the point. But at the same time she was curious to know where they were

going, so eventual y she followed slowly.

The path became steeper, and Helen found herself having to scramble over the rocks

which littered it. She noticed irritably that Damon did not look back to enquire if she

needed a hand—not that she wanted any of his help, she assured herself silently,

wincing as she scraped her knee against a jutting piece of sharp rock. She paused,

flexing her leg a little and regaining her breath at the same time. A few yards ahead the

path seemed to taper out as it reached a kind of ridge, and here Damon was waiting,

leaning back against a tal boulder, a thin blue wisp of smoke rising from the cheroot he

had just lit.

Helen was suddenly aware of a strange silence. The rasping of the cicadas had hushed

as if the whisper of the breeze which stirred the branches of the sheltering olive trees

had murmured some charm commanding quietness. The bril iance of the sunlight

seemed mel owed as it spil ed through the silvery leaves, and on the flat rock a few

inches from Helen's hand a lizard appeared in a flash of green
and gold and lay, its only

movement in its tiny panting sides, like a smal , armoured sentinel. Somewhere she

thought she heard the cooing of doves.

In spite of the languid heat of the afternoon, Helen felt herself shiver a little. She was

an alien, surrounded by forces she did not understand. Brownish-red dust rose in little

eddies as she climbed the last few yards where Damon stil stood, his back half turned

to her. A pebble, disturbed by her sandal ed foot, rolled away down the slope with a

crack like a pistol shot, and Damon looked round at her.

Their eyes met—locked, and her shiver deepened, running the length of her body,

tautening her nerve endings. The silence surrounded them, hemming them in. She

could hear the beat of her own heart, feel the movement of her blood along her veins.

Moving stiffly, like an automaton, she crossed the last smal space dial separated them.

Below them the ground fel away into a rocky hollow, bushes and scrub dinging to its

steep sides, and at the base of the hollow, like a jewel in a cup, was a little ruined

temple.

Few of its columns stil stood intact, and the roof had gone probably centuries before.

There were piles of fal en masonry al round the site of the square raised floor, so

weathered by the sun and wind that it was almost impossible to recreate them with the

mind's eye and see how it might once have been, yet it was not forlorn. The remaining

columns reared proudly towards the sky, and the bleached stones seemed to bask,

smiling, in the sun.

Helen said, 'It's beautiful. It's what you were tel ing me about in Athens—the temple to

Aphrodite.' Her voice was hushed and husky, her response purely emotional.

'Do you wish to go down and look more closely? There is a track of sorts, but not many

people find their way here.'

'That's just as wel .' Helen had a sudden vision of hordes of tourists tramping down into

the hollow, carving their initials on the ancient stones, sitting to eat packed lunches in

the shadow of the ancient columns. Absurdly, it seemed like sacrilege. She looked at

Damon. 'We wouldn't cause any damage, would we, if we just had a quick look?'

'I think Aphrodite wil forgive us,' he said, and smiled at her, his eyes lingering on her

upturned face, and she looked back at him, dry-mouthed suddenly, her heart fluttering

against her ribs like a panic-stricken bird, wondering dazedly what strange alchemy

could turn the world upside down.

She thought wildly, 'It's the atmosphere of this place getting to me, that's al . Nothing's

changed. Nothing can change. I won't let it. We're the same people we were only a few

hours ago, and I hated him then. So how can I feel that if he touched me now, I would

die of the delight of it?'

Her thoughts seemed to close in on her, clamouring at the edges of her mind,

bewildering her with their implications. And he was going to touch her, of course he

was. His hand was reaching to take hers, to help her down towards the temple, and she

stepped away from him quickly, terrified of betraying this strange, tumultuous

confusion which had taken possession of her.

She tried to smile. 'I can manage, thanks.' Her voice was too bright, too brittle,, and

she saw his eyes narrow as he registered her rejection. He tossed the smouldering butt

of his cheroot to the floor and ground it out under his heel. When he looked at her, the

warmth in his smile, in his eyes, had gone.

'Let us go, then.'

The track downwards could only have been used previously by goats and drunken goats

at that, Helen thought breathlessly as she slithered after him in a shower of dust and

loose pebbles, catching at the thick rather prickly bushes to steady herself.

The sun's warmth was trapped
in the hollow, stil and languid in the late afternoon. She

moved slowly, feeling beads of perspiration on her forehead and mouth, but not sure

whether they were caused by the heat or her heightened consciousness of the

unsmiling regard of the man who sat on one of the rocks watching her as she explored

the temple. There was one raised stone in the middle of the floor, and she wondered if

this had been the altar. It was worn and slightly hollowed out in the middle, and she

tried to search her scanty store of mythology to remember if the Greeks offered

sacrifices to their gods and goddesses. What would be Aphrodite's price for a favour?

she thought. Perhaps a pair of the birds whose cooing sounded louder than ever in this

sheltered place.

She said, 'Can I hear doves, or is it just imagination?'

'No, they nest near this place. You look relieved, Eleni. Were you perhaps afraid that it

was the sound of Aphrodite's chariot you heard approaching? It is said it was drawn by

doves.'

'I didn't know that.' She bit her lip. 'I know so little, and yet al this is part of my

heritage through my mother.'

'So you admit it at last. It is, I suppose, a kind of progress. If it interests you, the statue

they found stood almost where you are standing now. You can see the remains of the

plinth.'

'What happened to the statue?'

'It has gone to a museum, what remains of it. Why do you ask?'

She shrugged. 'Just a feeling that it should be here.'

'That's interesting.' He lounged on his rock, and Helen found her eyes being drawn

unwil ingly to the strong graceful lines of his body. 'The island girls would probably

agree with you. For generations they came here with offerings, unbeknown to the

priests, to ask Aphrodite to send them strong and loving husbands.'

'How—how fascinating.' There was a sudden constriction in her throat. 'I—I wonder if it

worked and what kind of offerings they brought?'

Damon lifted a negligent shoulder. 'You would do better to ask an island girl, Eleni

mou. But I would imagine that it was their dowries rather than any promise from the

goddess that brought the young men flocking round. A girl who was not strong enough

to work and bear children and whose parents had not been able to provide financial y

for her would find it hard to find a husband, even if she was as beautiful as Aphrodite

herself. Marriage was and is a practical matter.'

Helen said harshly, 'Was it my mother's dowry that attracted your brother so much? I

thank God that she eventual y found someone who wanted her for herself alone.'

He said drily, 'The match was being arranged by Michaelis and my father, Eleni mow. I

doubt whether Iorgos had any more say in the matter than your mother. But no doubt

he would have wanted her. He had a way with women—too much so, or so our father

thought. That is why he wished to see him safely married. And a beautiful heiress

would be more likely to stop his eyes from straying after the marriage than a plain one.

That is a fact of life.'

'No wonder she ran away,' Helen said hotly.

'Perhaps,' he shrugged. 'Or perhaps she was ripe for love and Iorgos was unlucky that

he did not see her before your father did. Just think, matia mou, we might have been

uncle and niece, you and I. Would you have liked that?'

She said stiffly, 'I prefer not to have any kind of relationship with you at al .'

His laugh was low and mocking. 'No, Eleni? You seem very sure, and yet you are

nervous of me—I know it.' He came off the rock in one swift, graceful movement, lithe

as a cat—a black panther, she thought, and as dangerous. Her body began to tremble.

She wanted to turn and run, but she wasn't sure that her legs would support her, and it

was suddenly very important that he shouldn't know this. So she faced him, her chin

lifted defiantly.

'Nervous of you? Why should I be?'

'Because you are also ripe for love, Eleni mou, and this time no other man has seen you

first.' His voice sank almost to a whisper as he reached her, and then it was far too late