Moon of Aphrodite (24 page)

Josephina was waiting with a glass in a silver holder when Helen got hack, and she

began to scold, but after a swift look at Helen's white face and quivering lips, she set

down the glass and took the trembling girl in her arms. She asked no questions, and

suggested no answers, and presently, when the first storm of weeping was past, she

put Helen to bed as if she was a child, and fussed her gently until she drank the tea

down to the last drop.

Whatever was in it, it worked. Helen was asleep almost before she knew it.

And then she was awake and the room was ful of moonlight, flooding in through the

window, swamping the bed. The moonlight was drawing her to the window, to the

balcony outside, and she went wil ingly, lifting her face to the great silver orb which

hung in the sky over the sea. It made a shimmering avenue across the water, and she

was leaning forward, trembling a little, waiting for what might be.

The whisper of the sea was getting louder, its note changing so that it sounded like the

murmuring of a thousand doves. And then the doves were there, a great flock of them,

wheeling and circling in a white and fluttering cloud, and in the middle of the cloud a

chariot shaped like a silver shel , carrying a girl with hair like spun foam, and eyes as

dark blue as the Aegean itself.

Helen thought incredulously, 'Aphrodite, the Foam-Born One. But it can't be. It's not

possible. No!' She cried the last word aloud, and woke to find herself sitting bolt upright

in bed in a room fil ed with moonlight.

She said shakily. 'My God, Josephina, That herbal tea packs quite a punch.' She threw

the sheet back and got out of bed because the moon was making the room as bright as

day, and further sleep was impossible unless she closed the shutters and drew the

curtains.

She was awake this time, and she knew it, and she had seen the effect of moonlight

across water before, but she lingered for a moment just the same, admiring the effect,

and recal ing the vividness of her dream. It had been so real, real enough to make her

wonder even now whether, if she went to the ruined temple, the empty plinth where

the goddess had once stood would now be occupied.

She shook her head in self-mockery at her own fancifulness and went back to bed. But

this time sleep eluded her. It was too warm with the shutters closed, and she tossed

and turned restlessly, seeking a cool place on the pil ow.

At last she sat up and said aloud, 'This is ridiculous!' And it was. She wanted to rest,

she needed to sleep, because then she didn't have to think, and-there was a lot she

would have liked to forget. If she could close her eyes, she might dream again—not of

pagan goddesses rising out of the sea, but of a man who looked at her not with bleak

indifference, but with love, and whose mouth curved sensuously as he whispered her

name and buried his face in her hair.

She muttered, 'Oh, Damon!' on a little groan, and . lay alone in her wide bed and ached

for him, and for al the dreams which would remain unfulfil ed in the years ahead.

She thought, 'I should have married him when I had the chance. I should have taken

him on his own terms. He wanted me, and perhaps in time I could have made him love

me. If I'd had his child, he might have loved me then—Greeks adore children.'

And she saw him with Soula in image after agonising image, until her nerves were

screaming and her body felt like fire, and there were tears pricking and smarting behind

her eyelids. She couldn't breathe, the room seemed
to be closing in on her, and beyond

the shutters the moonlight beckoned.

She kicked the
sheet away and slid to the floor. In the clothes cupboard
she found a

pair of jeans and a sweater shirt, and pul ed them on. There would be no one around to

see or
disparage her unfeminine attire at this time of night. She carried her sandals in

her hand, moving silent and barefoot through the sleeping house. Downstairs, the main

door wasn't even bolted, and it yielded noiselessly as she tried the handle.

The gardens were strange in the moonlight, stripped of their vibrancy and colour. Helen

moved through a silver landscape down to the silver sea.

She stood at the water's edge, letting the smal waves ripple and cream about her feet.

The night was warm around her, but a .slight breeze blowing off the sea was fresh on

her face, and she inhaled thankful y.

She thought, 'Tomorrow I'l go to Grandfather and tel him he must let me go home—go

back to England. At least there I won't have the torment of seeing Damon, of watching

him with Soula. And I'l tel Grandfather I don't want his money. I've learned to love

him, and I'l come back and see him if he wants me to, but I don't want to be an

heiress. It's spoiled every thing.'

She bent and dipped her hands in the water, pressing the cool drops against her

flushed cheeks. Then, acting on an impulse she barely understood, she dragged her

shirt over her head and unzipped her jeans, letting them drop to the ground. She

waded into the sea up to her waist, then lowered herself ful y into the water and began

to swim with long steady strokes. She did not venture too far out. After al , she was

alone, and the water was cooler at night, and she did not want to risk an attack of

cramp.

The moonlight surrounded her and lifted her up. She turned on to her back and floated,

moving her hands
lazily, the radiance of the night bringing her a kind of peace. She

thought that on a night like this she could believe in anything, abandon al touch with

reality. She could even believe that a girl whose name stil symbolised al the beauty

and the passion of a pagan world could rise up out of the sea in a silver shel . She could

understand the faith of the island girls who came steadily by night to her ruined shrine

lo ask for a chance of happiness, which, after al , was the least anyone could ask for.

And she knew what she had to do. She swam unhurriedly back to the shore along the

path of moonlight to where her clothes were waiting. They felt clammy and

uncomfortable being pul ed over her damp skin, and she was probably asking for an un-

pleasant chil if not pneumonia
,
but it no longer seemed to matter. She thrust her feel

into her sandals and ran up the beach and through the rustling olive grove. She slowed

a little when she found the track to the temple. The last thing she wanted was to sprain

her ankle on one of the loose stones.

She had nothing to offer, of course. She was wearing no rings, no chains or pendants.

Even her watch was back at the vil a. She hoped Aphrodite was in a generous mood

and would take the wil for the deed.

She was breathless as she reached the top of the slope and looked down into the

hollow, and it wasn't just because she'd been hurrying. Just for a moment she had

wondered whether she would look down into the temple and find she was not alone.

She was being a fool, of course, and she knew it, but twentieth-century rationalism

skated lightly across the surfaces of places like this, and race memories and

superstitions ran deep, and she was doing a very superstitious thing. Hugo who had

vaguely humanistic leanings would never believe this, but she thought her mother

might have understood, and smiled a little...

She slid the last few yards in a flurry of gravel and dust, then walked across the floor of

the hollow and climbed up on the first of the
great stone slabs which formed the base

of the sanctuary. She took a deep breath and moved forward a few
paces, then halted,

holding out her hands palms upwards in the age-old gesture of the suppliant.

She whispered, 'I love him. Please let him love me. Please send him to me.'

Then she waited while the silence enfolded her.

But only for a moment. Even as she released her pent-up breath in a little sigh at her

own foolishness, she heard it—the rattle and scrape of a pebble fal ing down the slope,

dislodged by a careless foot. Her whole body stiffened with tension, and her hands flew

up to cover her trembling mouth as she tried to bite back a scream.

Damon's voice said from the shadows at the edge of the sanctuary, 'I frightened you.

I'm sorry.'

Helen's eyes widened incredulously, and she took an instinctive step backwards as he

stepped out into the moonlight.

She said stupidly, 'But—what are you doing here.'

'I followed you. I could not sleep, and I saw you leave the vil a, so I came after you.'

'And—watched me?' Her face warmed as she remembered how she had walked naked

out of the sea.

He bent his head silently in affirmation.

'You're despicable!'

'I am human,' he retorted. 'When I got to the beach, I thought you had vanished, and

then I saw you swimming. I stayed in case you got into difficulties. If you expect me to

apologise for looking at you, then you wil be disappointed.'

'Oh, I expect nothing,' she said bitterly. 'But your future wife might not be too happy

about the situation. Not that she'l ever learn about it from me. I'm going back to

London as soon as I can persuade Grandfather to make the arrangements.'

'And if he cannot be persuaded to let you go soon?'

'Then I'l get to Athens somehow, and ask the British Consulate for help,' she flashed.

'My father wil send me the fare home when he knows I'm stranded.'

'You are real y so desperate to get away?'

'What do you think?'

'Where you are concerned, I no longer know what to think,' he said savagely.

Helen bit her lip. 'Then it's just as wel I'm leaving,' she said quietly, and a little shiver

ran through her. Part of it was caused because she was stil damp from her bathe, but

some of it—most of it—was because she felt desperately forlorn.

Her prayer, if that was what it had been, had been answered. Damon was here, but

nothing had changed. They stil faced each other as antagonists, and she could real y

have expected little else. '

'I—I'd like to go back to the vil a. I'm cold,' she said, and at once he unslung the jacket

he was wearing over his shoulders and took a step towards her. His intention was

obvious, he was going to put it round her. His hand would touch her, brush her skin,

and she knew she couldn't take that. She might burst into flame, break down, weep,

beg for his love, so she said quickly, 'I'm al right,' at the same time stepping backwards

and putting out a hand to ward him off.

Damon stopped in his tracks, his face grim, his dark eyes accusing.

He said, 'You won't even accept this much from me.

Yet that day on the caique you were wearing Lassiter's sweater. I saw you return it to

him. Is this perhaps why you are leaving in such a hurry? So that you can leave with

him.'

'No!' The very thought appal ed her. She had forgotten about Craig lending her the

sweater, but she remembered it now, how it had been hand-knitted with evident care,

and how little he had seemed to value it. She supposed Christina, his wife, had made it

for him. It had been a complicated pattern with a lot of work in it, and a lot of pride,

and probably a lot of love, and in retrospect it al seemed unbearably poignant.

'Yet you're crying for him,' he said bleakly.

'Like hel I am! I was thinking about his wife, if you must know. What wil happen to

her?'

'She has relatives here, she wil be looked after,' he said, and Helen believed him. He

didn't have to enlarge on the subject. Christina had made a mistake, and if her own

relatives stil blamed her for this, he would provide any necessary protection.

'I'm glad,' she said. 'She's better off without him.' She saw his mouth twist cynical y,

and hurried on, 'I real y mean it. I told you Craig meant nothing to me. He—he was a

stranger.'

'A stranger? Yet you drank with him in public, spent time alone with him on a caique in

the bay, actual y came to me to plead his cause.'

'He told me that you and Grandfather were prejudiced against him because he was

English, among other things. He was very convincing.' She looked at him steadily. 'But

I'm not going away with him. You have to believe that.'

Their eyes met, and held, but after a moment Damon shrugged. She knew what the

shrug implied. It meant he believed her for what it was worth, but it was no longer

important. She was no longer the girl he intended to marry, so she
could behave as

indiscreetly as she those. Soula, on the other hand, would probably never give him

cause for concern.

Damon asked abruptly, 'Why did you come here tonight?'

'I was cold after my swim. I needed exercise,' she said feebly after a moment. 'And I

wanted to say goodbye to the temple.'

'Wouldn't daytime have been a more appropriate time for a visit?'

'I'd already seen it in daylight,' she said, and pressed her hands to her flaming checks

as she remembered the exact the circumstances of that afternoon. 'Now please may we

go back to the vil a?' She needed to change the subject. Damon had been following her,

he must have watched her from the top of the slope as she stood here making her

futile, pathetic appeal to the non-existent. It would be humiliating beyond al bearing if