Moon of Aphrodite (4 page)

awaited her in her suite. A discreet fuss was being made, and Helen would not have

been human if she had not enjoyed it.

It made up, she told herself, for having to spend the journey in Damon Leandros'

company. She had not seen him from the evening he had dined at the flat until the time

the car had come to collect her to take her to the airport.

Even when she had final y nerved herself to phone his hotel and announce that she was

prepared to return to Greece with him after al , he had not been there, and she had had

to leave a message with some unknown female with a husky seductive voice. Typical,

Helen had thought scornful y, as she replaced her receiver. The degrading way in which

he had treated her had shown that Damon Leandros was the sort of man who would

constantly need to be proving his virility by having some unfortunate woman in tow.

She had nothing but contempt for him. It had annoyed her too to see the amount of

deference with which he had been treated at the airport in Athens and back in England,

while the hotel manager's greeting when they arrived had been almost servile. He was

not just an ordinary employee, she decided, he must be quite big in her grandfather's

organisation. Wel , the bigger they were, the harder they fel , she thought with

satisfaction, and she could not believe that Michael Korialis would be too pleased to

learn that even a trusted employee had been pawing his granddaughter.

Even though the last thing she wanted to do was spend any more time with him,

nevertheless it had annoyed her when he had casual y remarked that she would need a

rest before the resumption of their journey, and that her lunch would be brought up to

her suite.

On their way to the lifts, she had passed the open doors of the dining room where a

mouthwatering cold buffet was being set out, and she would have much preferred to

have come down to the dining room and chosen a meal for herself with the rest of the

guests.

Not that anyone could have complained about the selection which had been brought to

her; she admitted. There had been a variety of delicious salads, cold meats, stuffed

tomatoes and peppers, and a half bottle of white wine, just dry enough to suit her

palate.

She had sampled everything eagerly, but if she was honest, she was too excited and

too nervous to eat, and sitting on her own in a hotel room, however luxurious, was not

improving the condition. She needed something to take her mind-off the journey ahead

of her, and the stern old man waiting for her at the end of it.

She stil did not real y understand why she was here. She hadn't wanted to come, and

now she was here she was beginning to realise just how alien her new environment

was. People said that these days foreign capitals were growing so much alike that

anyone dropped into one blindfold would be hard put to it to decide where he was.

They would never be able to say that with Athens, she thought. Even on the journey in

from the airport, she had realised it had an atmosphere al of its own, and the glimpse

she had caught of the mighty Acropolis had been breathtaking.

She glanced at her watch, which she had remembered to alter to local time. She had

several hours to kick her heels in before they set off again. Surely she had time to do a

little sightseeing.

She slipped on a pair of low-heeled sandals and reached for her bag. She had brought

some travel ers' cheques in London and changed a few pounds into drachmas. It wasn't

a great deal, but it would be enough to pay her bus fare up to the Acropolis, and

maybe buy her a coffee and a pastry at one of the pavement cafes she had noticed on

her way to the hotel.

She slipped on a pair of sunglasses as she went down in the lift. Not that she real y

believed that anyone would try to stop her if they saw her leaving, she told herself, but

Damon Leandros had been very positive about her resting in the heat of the day, and

perhaps the hotel staff might feel that his orders should be reinforced.

The foyer was ful of people as she stepped out of the lift and she walked past the

reception area without being observed by anyone, and through the enormous swing

doors into the sunlight.

After the air-conditioning of the hotel, the heat outside struck her like a blow. She

stopped at one of the news-stands and bought a
guide book in English, and walked

along slowly reading it. She didn't feel conspicuous in the slightest. Every second

person she saw seemed to be a tourist, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Using the

map in her book, she managed to find her way to Omonia Square, and there she

hesitated, final y plucking up courage to ask a passer-by where she could catch
a bus

for the Acropolis. He gave her a wide smile, then launched into a flood of Greek, inter-

spersed with a few words of very broken English, before seizing her guide book from

her hand and writing down the numbers of several buses across the top of the page.

She was about to thank him and turn away when another man standing nearby decided

to take a hand
.
Waving a peremptory finger, he seized the stub of pencil the other had

been using and began to write a list of alternative numbers, beaming at Helen

occasional y while his conversation with the first man became more and more
heated.

Helen, aware of the curious glances of some of the passers-by, was becoming

embarrassed by the raised voices and violent gestures. She tried to interrupt, but the

two Greeks were by now far more interested in their argument than anything else, and

after standing there rather helplessly for a moment, she decided to try and find the way

to the nearest bus stand by herself. Next time she wanted to know anything, she

vowed silently, she would ask a policeman!

The heat was becoming oppressive now, and she was beginning to wish she had taken

Damon Leandros' advice and stayed in her suite with the shutters dosed. Perhaps it had

been offered as advice, and less as an order, she might have Celt more inclined to

accept it, she told herself in self-justification. It was gal ing to be issued with

instructions as if she was a child who could not be trusted to think for herself.

There seemed to be a great many buses about, but none of them seemed to bear any

of the numbers she had been given, she realised rueful y as she stared around her. Nor

were there any policemen in the vicinity.

At last, in desperation, she entered the nearest shop, a chemist's, and this time she was

luckier. The chemist, a dark young man with a beard, spoke almost perfect English, but

he looked at her dubiously when she explained where she wished to go. 'In the heat of

the day, thespinis? Is it wise?' 'I only have a few hours in Athens,' she explained. He

shrugged, looking at her slender arms revealed by the sleeveless navy dress she was

wearing. 'You have a very fair skin. It needs protection in our sun.' He reached to one

of: the shelves behind him and produced a tube of sun cream. 'This wil help
a little, but

you must take care or you wil burn, and that is not pleasant.'

She thanked him rather doubtful y. After al , she had only come in to find out where the

bus stop was, not to spend any of her smal hoard of drachmas on expensive sun

cream, but when she produced her money, he waved it away.

'I do not wish payment, thespinis. It is my pleasure to do this for you.' He smiled into

her eyes with a frank sensual appreciation that sent the colour racing into her face.

'Perhaps one day you wil come back to Athens.'

He escorted her to the pavement, and pointed out to her exactly where she could catch

her bus. It occurred to Helen as she moved away that with very little encouragement he

would probably Save come with her. And she recal ed too that Greek women were

supposed to lead quite sheltered lives until their marriage. Judging by the way the men

behaved on the slightest acquaintance, they had good reason to be sheltered! she

thought with faint amusement.

There were already several people waiting at the stop when she arrived, and she hoped

that was a good sign and that the bus would be along very shortly. Time was passing

more rapidly than she could have believed possible, and she had no idea how long the

journey to the Acropolis would take.

But twenty minutes later they were stil waiting, and Helen was ready to scream with

frustration. Most of the other would-be passengers had moved back from the bus stand

to find themselves patches of shade, but Helen remained at the edge of the pavement,

straining her eyes as she peered down the hil at the oncoming traffic.

She noticed the car at once, because of its opulence and sleek lines. And then she saw

who was driving it, and a little gasp escaped her. It was Damon Leandros, and he was

not alone. There was a girl with him, dark and in her way as opulently beautiful as the

car. She was smiling and talking to him animatedly, and at any moment the car would

be past and gone, then Damon Leandros turned slightly to flick his cigarette out of the

window, and his eyes met Helen's across two lanes of traffic. She was thankful those

two lanes existed, because as wal
as recognition and disbelief, she had seen the

beginnings of anger in his
face.

She glanced down the hil again, biting her lip anxiously. He was caught in the traffic,

and couldn't stop, and anyway this was a one-way street, yet something told her that

he would be back.

A battered grey taxi swerved into the side of the road to discharge
its passenger, and

Helen leapt for the opening door, almost knocking over the indignant Athenian who

emerged in her haste.

The driver was very dark and unshaven, and looked like a member of the Greek Mafia,

but he seemed to understand that she wanted to be driven to the Acropolis, even if he

displayed no real inclination to take her there. He put the car into gear with a gut-

wrenching screech and hurled it into the stream of traffic, muttering al the time under

his breath as he did so.

Helen, being bounced around in the back seat from one side of the car to the other,

was almost numb with rage. Quite a few of the taxis she had noticed in the streets had

had the same battered look, with bumps and

dents, and sometimes even their headlights taped up,

and if this was a sample of the way they were usual y driven, she could quite

understand why. She wished very much that she spoke Greek, because she doubted

very much whether the conventional phrase books on sale would provide a translation

for 'Please stop driving like a maniac!'

Her only consolation was that when Damon Leandros returned to look for her, and she

had not the slightest doubt that he would, she would have vanished, she hoped without

trace.

The taxi stopped at last with a jerk which almost -hurled her on to the floor, and she

stared doubtful y at the mass of figures on the meter, wondering which one depicted

the fare. The driver didn't seem prepared to help. As she hesitated, he directed a sul en

stare at her, and eventual y she produced her purse, peeled off a number of notes and

handed them to him. Judging by the slightly contemptuous smile he gave her as he

pocketed them, she had given him far too much, she thought angrily as she got out of

the car.

It was hotter than ever as she walked up the hil which led to the entrance, but near

the car park was a large stal sel ing cold drinks and other refreshments. There were

people everywhere, sitting under the shade of the trees as they ate and drank, most of

them tourists, a lot of them students, propping themselves up on their bulging

rucksacks. There were al sorts of accents, and Helen found she was eagerly listening

for an English voice, as she made her way up the slope to the summit. She would have

her cold drink later, she thought, because something told her that if she ever settled

under the trees, her sightseeing would be over for the day.

The stone slabs she was walking up were warm through the thin soles of her sandals,

and above her the rock towered away, crowned by a cluster of buildings. She stood

there for a moment
,
staring up, conscious of an isolation that went deeper than mere

physical loneliness, overcome by the thought of time, and the generations of feet which

had trodden this way before hers— tyrants, philosophers, soldiers, slaves and

conquerors— suddenly aware as she had never been of her mother's Greek blood in her

veins, and of a faint stirring deep inside her which went further than the ordinary

excitement of the holidaymaker.

Following the smal knots of people ahead of her, she made her way without haste

through the Propylaea and out on to the vast expanse of bleached white rock which

had served the city of Athens as a fortress and a religious sanctuary. The Parthenon

dominated, as she supposed it had always been intended it should. Its great honey-

coloured mass seemed to rear into the flawless blue of the sky, like some proud
ancient