Strangers in Company (24 page)

“Yes. And now it's high time we got over to breakfast before anyone starts thinking things. And you're looking better, thank goodness. Well enough, at least, to admit a bad night. What kept you awake, I wonder? Do you think they have nightingales here, like at Olympia?”

“I doubt it,” said Marian. “But I could have been worrying because I haven't heard from the children. This was one of the addresses I gave them.” And, how extraordinary, she thought, to have worried so little.

“Right,” said Stella. “You worry about it at breakfast.” And then, “You aren't really worried are you, Mrs. F.? You know what wretches we are about writing.”

“I'm learning,” said Marian.

She made a point of stopping on the way into the dining room to ask Mike, who was sitting with three of the schoolmistresses, whether there was any chance that mail for their party might have gone astray. “I was expecting to hear from my children here. I'm a bit worried.”

“Children?” They seemed to be news to Mike, and Marian had a frightening vision of how capably the organization he belonged to kept its cells separate. No one knew more than they must. “Young children?” Mike was asking. Was he, perhaps, imagining them as orphaned?

“Oh, no, grown up, or so they'd say. Eighteen. Twins. They're in America right now, with their father, but I did hope to have a note from them here. It's stupid to worry, I know.…” She let it trail off anxiously, and thought how strange it was to be using her children as they had so often used her.

Mike's handsome jaw had dropped. “Twins?” He looked at her as if for the first time. “Mrs. Frenche, they're
not—they can't be. Sebastian and Viola? Mark Frenche's children?”

“And why not?” she asked tartly. “But, if you don't mind, I prefer not to talk about it.”

“And who the hell,” asked Stella, safe once more in Marian's room, “is Mark Frenche?”

“My ex-husband,” said Marian. “Among other things.”

“Well, yes, I'd gathered that, but why does his name have such an effect on our Mike?”

“Well, do you know—” An extraordinary light was dawning on Marian. “I was rather wondering that myself.” Had Mark, too, been “one of them”? Did that explain everything? That terrible sense of failure, of frustration.… Those nights alone, biting the sheets, while he stayed downstairs, in “planning sessions” with his manager. Odd to look back and see Mark's manager, for the first time, as what he must have been. What fright, she wondered coldly now, what risk to his career had make Mark court and marry her? And those two—her mind jibbed at the word—those two had tried to make her destroy the twins. But she was smiling to herself. What a miracle, face it, the twins had been and, now she could see it, what a surprise to everyone.

But this, though it cast so extraordinary a light over her own past, could hardly explain Mike's horrified amazement at the discovery of who, in fact she was. It was more than unlikely that he and Mark had ever met, though Mark had visited Greece a few times. But of course there could be a simpler, more frightening explanation of Mike's reaction. The Greek woman, travelling to London as Mrs. Frenche would, presumably, then disappear. But it would not be easy for the ex-wife of a still-famous man just to vanish. The London cell of the conspirators had fallen down on its work, and Mike must have been seeing trouble ahead.

She had got this far when they were interrupted by one of the ubiquitous little bright-eyed Greek boys, who knocked on the door and made gestures to indicate packing and departure.

“Oh, Lord,” said Stella. “I'm only half-packed. See you on the bus, Mrs. F.”

She hurried away to her own room, and Marian smiled at the boy as she locked her big case, then felt in her purse for a few of the light little coins among which she had so far failed to discriminate. What, after all, was a lepta or so? “What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?”

The tip seemed to be satisfactory; the boy grinned widely, picked up her case, then put it down again, picked up the pillow from her bed and made passing gestures with it. Of course, that was why his face had seemed so familiar. He had been one of the players up at the stadium the day before.

Impossible to convey her recognition of this, but Marian returned his beaming smile, as he picked up the case once more, and started on her day feeling oddly reassured. It did not last long. Andreas had not appeared, and despite what she now knew, she found she missed his friendly smile and firm hand up into the bus. The fact that Mike seemed overeager to replace him was less than comforting. The new driver, a heavy, blackavised man, sat hunched over the wheel, taking notice of no one.

But he was a reassuringly good driver. The bus took the mountain road to Arachova like a master skater doing figures of eight, and Marian forgot the weight of her anxiety in looking back and downwards at the last views of that olive-green valley where, she felt, she had last known peace of mind.

But then, what use is peace of mind if it is based on ignorance? And, all too appositely, there was Mike, up at the front of the bus, launching into the disastrous story of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother. They would reach his fatal meeting of the ways in the course of the morning. “He met his father, ladies and gentlemen, but how should he know him? He thought the other one his father, the man who brought him up and against whom, as he thought, the oracle had warned him. This was merely an arrogant stranger, and in his rage and misery, he killed him, there, where the three roads meet,
and loosed a doom on himself and his that was to endure for generations. The fate of the doomed Atrides, ladies and gentlemen, was nothing compared with that of the House of Oedipus. There was death in the blood, and what is there must out. It was his sons, ladies and gentlemen, feuding against each other, who started the disastrous war of the Seven Against Thebes. The Furies may have been after Orestes, but his fate was much easier than that of Eteocles and Polyneices, who slew each other, brothers though they were.”

“You'd have thought the Furies would have got after them,” said Stella.

“They were dead, remember?” Marian chilled at the thought.

“Why don't we stop at Thebes?” This was Mrs. Spencer, reproachfully, on the seat in front of them.

“There's not much left,” explained the professor. “They're excavating there now, and I must say I'd kind of like to drop off and take a look, but it's not ready for the general public, by any means. It was destroyed, you know, very thoroughly, by Alexander the Great.”

“What a destructive lot they were,” said Stella.

“Aren't we?” asked Edvardson. “And at least Alexander spared the house of the poet Pindar.”

“Like Milton,” said Stella surprisingly.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Spencer turned round with a sharp question.

“He thought he should be spared by the royalist troops, on account of being a poet,” said Stella. “He wrote a sonnet about it, which I'll spare you. But it all seems rather pleasantly old-fashioned these days, doesn't it? I wonder how many poets there were at Hiroshima.” And then, “I'm sorry, Professor, I quite forgot.”

“That's all right,” said Edvardson. “You couldn't feel worse about it than I do.”

For some reason Marian had assumed that it would take all day to reach Athens, and it was disconcerting to find that they would get there for a late lunch, with free time in the afternoon for their own exploration. There was no
doubt about it, she felt safe now only in the bus. The more she thought about the organisation she and Stella were up against, the more it frightened her. Suppose, for instance, they had told Stella the substitution was to be made on Aegina and in fact planned to kidnap her in Athens? It would, she thought, be the kind of thing they did. But how on earth to guard against it? She considered saying she was ill and locking herself in her hotel bedroom, but one look at the huge modern Hotel Hermes decided her against this. In that great, long-corridored, impersonal building with its connecting balconies outside each window, anything could happen. To shut herself in her room would be at once to awaken suspicion and to stake herself out, the goat awaiting sacrifice.

The bus had stopped. Mike raised a hand to still the usual ensuing hubbub. “Lunch will be ready for you at once, ladies and gentlemen, and then the afternoon is yours. For those of you who plan to come to Aegina tomorrow, I recommend a taxi ride up to the Acropolis. You must not miss the greatest Greek sight of all.”

“Badly organised,” muttered Mrs. Spencer in front, reminding Marian painfully of Mrs. Hilton. “We should have had longer in Athens.”

But Mike had something more to say. “I would be glad, ladies and gentlemen, if you would tell me as you leave the bus, what your plans are for tomorrow. It is a question of arranging transport on Aegina.”

Marian and Stella exchanged glances. They had not bargained for this. “I'll cope.” Marian's whisper was covered by the usual confused babble as people reached their accumulated loot down from the crowded luggage racks. A surprising number of people seemed to have got to Arachova the day before and now had bulky parcels of carpets added to the inevitable impedimenta of travel.

Taking their time, Marian and Stella alighted just behind Mrs. Spencer and the professor. “I'm for Aegina, Mike,” said Edvardson.

“Me, too,” said Mrs. Spencer. “Even if it does mean getting up at seven.”

“It will be worth it,” Mike told her. “And you two, Mrs. Frenche?”

“Oh, dear,” Marian hedged. “I do apologise, Mike; I hadn't realised we'd have to decide so soon. It all depends, doesn't it, on how much one manages to see this afternoon? Would it be terribly tiresome if we let you know this evening? Just the two of us after all can't make that much difference?” She turned to Stella. “What do you think, dear?”

Stella was looking mulish, as she so easily could. “I'd like to go to Aegina.”

“Oh, well,” Marian dithered, looked back at the impatient queue behind her and smiled apologetically up at Mike. “I expect we'll end up deciding to go.”

“Very well, Mrs. Frenche.” Mike, who had been entering numbers in a little notebook, made an ostentatious point of writing nothing. He was, Marian thought, very angry. Which was, surely, a good sign? Must it not mean that nothing was planned for today? But then, how could she be sure that even Mike knew everything?

She was letting herself get jumpy, and that would be fatal. She forced a cheerful smile for the professor, who had paused to wait for them. “Silly not to be able to make up one's mind, isn't it?” She was still in part as a fluttering middle-aged fool.

“Not a bit of it,” he said gallantly and rather loud. “It
is
a difficult choice. But look, here's a solution for you, if you don't mind skipping lunch.”

“What?”

“There.” He pointed to a tourist bus that had pulled in behind theirs. “That looks like an afternoon tour to me. Of course in theory you book in advance, but it doesn't look like it's going to be crowded. How about it?”

“Are you going?” Marian and Stella were exchanging quick, questioning glances.

“I guess I will. Specially if you two will come along. And you?” He turned politely to Mrs. Spencer, who had hesitated just ahead on the steps of the hotel.

“It's an idea, I must say. But Mike?”

“I'll fix him. He can have our luggage sent up. The hotel won't break their hearts if we don't lunch. And there's bound to be time to get something along the way somewhere”

“Do let's.” Stella had made up her mind, and, really, Marian thought, it was an admirable idea. Where could they be safer than among another, innocent tourist crowd?

Unless, of course, the professor was one of the enemy. He had left them, now, to explain their plan to Mike, and she could not help wondering if the same kind of unspoken exchange was going on between the two of them as she and Stella so constantly practised.

“A splendid idea.” Mrs. Spencer had made up her mind. “I was feeling really sad at missing so much of Athens. I'll just make sure that Mike understands I'm going along.”

It was five minutes later, and they were established in the two usual pairs, but this time with the professor and Mrs. Spencer behind, as they had originally been in their own bus. It meant, Marian reminded herself, that everything she and Stella said could be overheard by the other two, and she hoped that Stella had realised this. No chance of urging that they stay as closely as possible to the rest of the party, but Stella, who had been so quick in that short conversation with Mike, would undoubtedly have thought of this, too. She was, Marian thought, a redoubtable ally. Strange to feel so little anger with her for having involved them in this danger in the first place. But then, her danger was at least as great as Marian's own. She was increasingly sure that Andreas had paid some horrible penalty for having risked the success of the gang's plan. What would happen to Stella?

And when she had stopped thinking of their opponents as an “organisation,” with all the comparative respectability that the name implied, and started recognising them, frankly, as a gang? And had Stella understood this, she wondered? There was so much they had not had time to say to each other.

The bus had been crawling this way and that through the
heavy Athens traffic, picking up passengers here and there from different hotels. “It's the one-way system,” Marian heard the professor explaining to Mrs. Spencer. “But here we are in Constitution Square. Passengers from the Hotel Grande Bretagne. How elegant.” The bus had stopped outside the expensive-looking frontage and Marian turned from craning backwards to look at the big public building at the top of the square. Stella had squeezed her hand convulsively. Two men were coming out of the hotel to join the bus. Two Greeks. The two Greeks.