Strangers in Company (11 page)

“I wish you'd call me Stella.” Cross tone contradicted friendly words. “It's ridiculous for us all to be so formal with you and calling Mike ‘Mike.'”

And, “Well worth every step of it,” said Marian. “May we call you David?”

“I wish you would.” He moved forward to the centre of the theatre and began to explain about its amazing acoustics. The schoolmistresses were already hurrying up the tiers of seats, ready to hear him strike a match from the bottom.

“I'll take their word for it,” said Stella. “What do you think, Mrs. F.?”

“I think it's the most heavenly place I ever saw. Let's find a quiet corner and just enjoy it.”

It was easier said than done, since two other parties were already scrambing up and down the great amphitheatre, but they settled at last in two of the surprisingly comfortable stone seats. “Heavenly sun,” said Stella. “There's that cuckoo again. I wonder if the professor will see his wet-winged warbler or whatever it was? Lord, didn't he go on at breakfast?”

“I found it very interesting,” said Marian.

Stella laughed her short, surprising gurgle. “
Touché
. And apologies. Not your fault if he talks a blue streak to you and treats me like something out of kindergarten.”

“Oh, but.…” Marian began a protest, but was laughed down.

“I believe you hadn't even noticed. Really, Mrs. F., you're incorrigible. Do you honestly think he goes round imparting all that information to every stray female he meets? If you ask me, he finds you a good listener. Fatal!”

Fatal indeed. How often, in the past, had she sat, interminably listening as Mark made up his own mind about a new act. And her reward at the end? A quick pat on whichever bit of her came handy, a loving phrase and a dive to the telephone for one of those equally endless talks with his manager. Sometimes, bitterly putting herself to bed while the eager voice went on and on in the next room, and she had wondered what Mark wanted with a wife.… Strange how this tour was bringing back the old, unhappy memories she had managed to keep battened down for so long. But perhaps time they were faced?

The cuckoo called again. Stella was sitting moodily
throwing little stones at a spiky plant that grew out of the seat below them. “Don't.” Marian put a gentle hand on hers. “It might spoil David's demonstration.”

“Oh—” Stella swallowed the next word. “Sorry, I'm sure.” She reached for a more friendly tone. “I really
am
sorry. To tell you the truth, I had a rather hellish night.”

“Oh, dear.…”

“A dream for Aesculapius. Do you think if I take him an offering he'll send me the interpretation?” She stood up and began to climb the few remaining tiers to the top of the amphitheatre. “Come and help me look, Mrs. F.?”

It was, unmistakably, an olive branch, and Marian followed with an inward sigh of relief. “What kind of offering?” She caught the spirit of the thing.

“Goodness knows.” Stella threw back her head. “Oh, Aesculapius, send me a sign.”

“You'll be expecting an eagle next,” said Marian.

“No, no,” Stella corrected her. “That's at Delphi. And, don't you remember, the professor says they're vultures anyway.”

“Very disillusioning.” Marian thought that Stella must have been paying more attention at breakfast than she had let show. “How about a pine cone?” She bent to pick one up.

“Pretty.” Stella took it and tossed it thoughtfully in the air, caught it again, then threw it away with one of her swift, violent gestures. “But I must find my own thing.”

“Of course.” They had reached a path that circled the top of the amphitheatre, then curved down its side. “Shall we go down this way? I find steps a bit exhausting. Specially downwards.” Marian turned to lead the way. “I must say I rather wish I hadn't said I'd go up to the Palamede with Mrs. Duncan this afternoon. Do you want to come? It's eight hundred and something steps apparently. There ought to be quite a view from the top.”

“There certainly should. But, no, thanks. I thought I'd go swimming. It's the last chance till Aegina.”

“You'll be careful? It looks rough to me.” But it was
a relief to have Stella's afternoon so pleasantly taken care of.

“Don't worry. I swim like a dolphin. It's my talent. But why struggle up all those steps with that dreary Mrs. Duncan if you don't want to? If you ask me, you'd do much better to rest for a while. You look as if you'd had about the same kind of night I did. Why don't you do that, and then when I get back from my swim, we could go down and explore Nauplia?”

“I'll see.” Marian was touched by the suggestion. “I must admit it's tempting.”

“Just to be alone,” said Stella. “‘And the sound of the hollow sea.'”

“It's marvellous, isn't it?” Marian recognised the misquotation with pleasure. “I'd like to come back to Nauplia sometime, on my own.” Or with the twins, went her mental parenthesis. “And come over here every day.”

“Why not stay here? There's a tourist pavilion, I believe.”

“Is there?” Marian was surprised at this sudden bit of local knowledge.

“Somebody said so. Oh, look! There's my offering.” Stella bent down to pick a flower from beside the path. “What is it, do you think?”

“I haven't any idea.” Marian examined the exotic-looking flower with careful ignorance. “I'm afraid I'm as bad at flowers as I am at birds. But it looks like a bee.”

“Yes, doesn't it? One of those ingenious dodges plants get up to, I suppose. Anyway, I'm sure it's just the thing for Aesculapius. Isn't there something a bit magic about bees?”

“You have to tell them things, I know.”

“I'd hate to try it.”

Thank God, thought Marian, she's cheering up. “Me, too,” she said. “Oh, look.” They had emerged from a thicket of pine and blossoming Judas trees at the bottom of the slope. “They're moving.”

“This way for the museum,” said Stella.

But when they reached the museum, it was to see the
tail end of a crocodile of blue-clad Greek schoolgirls vanishing into the entrance. “Blast,” said Cairnthorpe for the second time. “Perhaps we'd better go down to the site first.”

“By all means.” Mrs. Duncan was positive as usual. “We wouldn't be able to hear ourselves think with all those noisy children in there.” And then, “Where in the world did you find that?” She was looking with apparent rage at the flower in Stella's hand.

“On the path above the theatre. Why? Do you know what it is?”

“Of course I do. It's a bee orchid. A Very Rare Flower.” She gave each word capital letters. “And if you pick one, it doesn't flower again, or seed again, for seven years.”

“Well,” said Stella reasonably, “I suppose if it didn't flower it would be bound not to seed.”

“Intolerable ignorance,” said Mrs. Duncan between her teeth.

“I believe they aren't quite so rare here as they are in England.” Cairnthorpe intended, obviously, to pacify.

“They will be if every ignorant tourist who sees one picks it,” said Mrs. Duncan.

Suddenly, amazingly, David Cairnthorpe lost his temper. “Personally, I think people are more important than plants.” In anger, he went white, rather than red, and looked a good deal older. “Of course”—belatedly he remembered his position—“you're perfectly right, really.”

“Ecology and all that,” said Stella cheerfully. “Consider me in disgrace. So help me, I won't pick so much as a buttercup from now on.”

“There aren't any buttercups,” said Mrs. Duncan, and Marian saw David and Stella exchange delighted glances behind her back.

The schoolmistresses had clustered round to examine the rare flower, and they all moved forward together, while Marian found herself between Miss Gear and Miss Grange as they straggled along the path to the rest of the site. “Lot of nonsense,” said Miss Gear.

“Well, I don't know.” Miss Grange was judicious. “She had a point, of course, but there was no need to make it
so rudely. And just as that poor child of yours was looking a bit better, too. Frankly, Gear and I have been a bit worried about her. Looks a bit schiz to us.”

“Schiz?”

“Ophrenic,” helped Miss Gear. “We're psychiatrists, Grange and I. You can't help noticing things when you're in the trade. Of course, we'd rather die than interfere, but we've been wanting a word with you, just to offer help if it's needed.”

“Has she anything to take?” asked Miss Grange.

“Take?”

“Medicine.” Miss Grange was patient. “Tranquillisers. You take them, don't you? If you don't mind my mentioning it”

Marian found that she did, very much. Her every instinct was to evade this merciless, courteous probing, but they were walking along in a kind of loose crocodile through the ruins, and escape would be impossible short of open rudeness. “Sometimes,” she admitted.

“But you're perfectly normal,” said Miss Geer heartily. “Anyone can see that. I'm not so sure about Miss Marten.”

“Very odd changes of mood,” said Miss Grange.

“We'd thought about drugs, but the symptoms aren't right.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” Marian's tone was dry to the point of fury, but the two women were too happily launched on what was obviously a well-tried discussion to notice.

“Naturally,” agreed Miss Grange. “But there could be worse things.” The idea appeared to give her pleasure. “You don't share a room with her?”

“No.”

“That's something. We thought you couldn't be when we saw her sitting up to all hours last night, drinking with that young Greek.”

“Greek?” This, Marian realised, was what they had wanted to tell her.

“That Mike, who's so handsome and knows it. We rather hoped she wouldn't get—well, too involved with him.”

Divided between being worried and annoyed by this
doubtless well-intended bit of information, Marian was still searching for the right reply when Mrs. Spencer spoke briskly from behind her. “Mr. Cairnthorpe's started to speak. Poor man; it's the least one can do to listen.”

“He wants us to call him David,” said Marian, gratefully following through fallen pillars to where Cairnthorpe had taken his place on a block of stone to talk of the cult of Aesculapius and the various theories about the mysterious circular ruin, or tholos, that they were about to see. She found she could not listen, could not care what the curious labyrinth under the circular building might or might not have been used for. Serpents … a very small minotaur … Cairnthorpe was enjoying himself, she thought, and so had Miss Gear and Miss Grange been. Disgusting, but true. “Power corrupts.” … “We murder to dissect.” … Quotations buzzed in her head like angry bees.… Bees. She would not let two prying women spoil this heavenly place for her. She moved a little away from the crowd, sat down on a stone, closed her eyes and tried to make her mind a blank. The cuckoo called again.… The magic of the place was coming back.… Let them go, the thought grew in her mind, unexpected, like a green shoot in the desert. Let it all go. The remembered bitterness; the terrible feeling of inadequacy, of failure; those desperate months after Mark left her, when the only thing that kept her going, kept her out of the enticing river, was the fusillade of kicks with which the unborn twins reminded her of their existence. And now—she lay back in the warm sun—now she must let the twins go, too. They had been her life for eighteen years, and then, at a nod, at a ring of the doorbell, at a brief cable from America, they had left her. Grown up. Gone. And in their place a great emptiness. A great peace? Why had she never thought of it like that before? And the cuckoo, singing of spring.

“Daydreaming?” A heavy hand fell on her shoulder.

“You'll miss the museum if you don't get a move on.” Miss Gear and Miss Grange had found her again.

This time it was Stella who rescued her. “There you
are!” She hurried towards them, picking her way nimbly among fallen stones. “Come along, Mrs. F., you have to help me make my offering to Aesculapius. In the tholos, don't you think? It's the most magic place.”

“The museum closes at one.” Miss Gear looked at her watch.

“We wouldn't keep you for anything.” Stella's voice was honey-sweet.

“The carvings are supposed to be quite extraordinary,” said Miss Grange.

“So is this place.” Stella watched them move away, then hurry to catch up with the rest of the party, talking eagerly together as they went. “Prying old pussies.” She reached down a hand to pull Marian to her feet. “What did they say about me?”

“They don't think you're on drugs.” Marian surprised herself with her answer.

Stella threw back her head and laughed. “Handsome of them. I'm just mad, I suppose. Come on, Mrs. F. Let's behave like the lunatics we are and leave our gift for Aesculapius.”

She insisted on climbing down into the ditch that surrounded the little circular building and working her way into the centre of the labyrinth, where, she reported, coming back flushed and smiling, she had left her offering on a most suitable stone. She looked, Marian thought, rather like a child who knows it has been naughty, as she reached up a hand to be helped out of the deep ditch. “Now, Mrs. F., must it be the museum, or shall we cheat and go and have an ouzo? I liked the look of that café.”

“So did I.” Marian was hardly paying attention. When she had thought of Stella as looking like a child, she had just thought of children, not of her own children. I'm free, she thought. I'm free of them. “Wait a minute.” She stopped. “Oh, yes, the café, of course. But I want to leave something, too.” She looked about her. No pine cones here. Only the ordinary flowers. “It's the thought that counts.” The trite words mocked her. She opened her bag. “Stella?”