Swimming to Ithaca (20 page)

‘We’re over there with the Powells.’

‘I thought I heard Jennifer’s voice. Can’t really mistake it.’

There was a woman at his shoulder, watching this little exchange. Her hair was cut short and her face was without make-up, as though she was determined not to look pretty. But she
was
pretty. She was sleek and blonde and there was something expensive about her, in the way that simple, well-made things seem expensive. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ she asked.

‘Of course I am.’ He hesitated as though confused, as though he couldn’t quite recall her name. ‘This is Deirdre. Deirdre Denham. She’s called Dee, actually. She came out with me on the troopship.’

The woman composed a smile. Her handshake was cool and sharp. ‘Oh, yes. Damien mentioned you. Deck tennis, wasn’t it? I’m Sarah.’

‘Sarah?’

‘Sarah Braudel. Damien’s wife.’

The encounter was a shock. His wife – mentioned so casually, referred to only to be dismissed – had seemed an insubstantial presence in his background, a mere shadow. Yet here she was, in flesh and blood, amused by Dee’s discomfiture and curious to know what on earth she did here on this bloody island. Her tone suggested that everyone should have something to do, some overriding passion that put all else in the shade. Hers centred round horses – three-day eventing, point-to-point, that kind of thing. What was Dee’s enthusiasm?

‘I don’t have one, really. My family, I suppose.’

Sarah laughed. ‘The dutiful wife following her husband round the world, is that it?’

‘You make it sound worse than it is.’

‘I make most things sound worse than they are. That way it’s a pleasant surprise when you find it otherwise. Like this island. I always tell people that it’s just sand, flies and boredom. Makes it so much better when you’re lucky enough to find something different. Do you have the children out here with you?’

‘Tom’s boarding. Of course he’s home for the holidays at the moment, but—’

‘He’s not at Ampleforth, is he? It
is
Yorkshire, isn’t it? Your accent, I mean. To tell you the truth, I can never tell Yorkshire from Lancashire. I get into the most awful trouble sometimes. My brothers went to Ampleforth. That’s how Damien and I met up.’

‘Yes, the accent’s Yorkshire—’

‘Damien did say. He said you had lots of fun on the boat.’

‘I suppose we did. It certainly wasn’t sand and flies. Sick and wind, perhaps.’ She laughed, and Sarah laughed as well, which created a fragile, momentary bond between the two of them. They moved away from the crowd, nursing plates of food. Damien hovered anxiously.

‘Tom’s at prep school, in Oxford,’ Dee told her. ‘But our little girl is here. She’s far too young to board. You’ve got daughters, haven’t you?’

Sarah seemed surprised that she should know, as though details of her family might be confidential information. ‘They’re nine and twelve. I don’t think I could bear to let them go to boarding school. They’re at a convent near Godalming.’

‘You haven’t put them into school here then?’

‘Good God, no! I wouldn’t risk the army school.’

Dee felt foolish, not quite sure of what was being explained to her. ‘Have you left them with relatives?’

‘Gracious, no. I’m only out here for the holidays, to see that Damien’s on the straight and narrow and give the girls a look at the Med. We’ve kept the house in England and the girls and I
are off back home as soon as poss. The point-to-point season starts next month.’ Her smile was larded with disdain. ‘So nice to meet you, Deirdre. Perhaps …’ But she never said what perhaps. Someone else was talking to her and she turned away.

Later in the evening Damien came over and asked Dee to dance. The band played ‘Singin’ the Blues’ and ‘See You Later Alligator’ and they did a sort of jive, imitating one or two of the younger couples. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when they came together for a moment.

‘For what?’

‘For Sarah. She gets nervous, and when she’s nervous she snaps.’

‘If
she’
s nervous, what do you think I am?’

‘Why should you be nervous?’

She didn’t answer. The jive came to an end and a soldier who had pretensions as a crooner came to the microphone and sang ‘Stardust’. Damien drew her close, closer than he should have, just like it had been on the
Empire Bude
. It was late by now and the lights were low and there was a crowd on the dance floor and no one seemed to notice. The song had that awful, facile appositeness, like so much popular music. That was the trick, wasn’t it? Words that would evoke easy associations.
Sometimes she wondered how she spent the lonely nights dreaming of
… what, exactly? The hidden dreamer, hidden even to herself. ‘We shouldn’t be dancing like this,’ she said, but she didn’t back away. Other dancers milled around them.

‘Safety in numbers,’ he said, his mouth close to her ear. And then, ‘I’ll ring you, when Sarah’s gone. Is that OK? I’ll ring you and we’ll fix something up. Is that what you want, Dee?’

The music was coming to an end, and she knew that she was about to say something she might regret.

‘I don’t know, Damien. I really don’t know.’

*

‘You seem to get on well with that Braudel fellow,’ Edward remarked on the drive home. ‘Danced with him a lot.’

‘Once, just once.’

‘Three numbers.’

‘Were you counting?’

‘Not specially. You’re in danger of getting a reputation, you know?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘As a flirt.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ She sat in the passenger seat, staring ahead through the windscreen. The beams from the headlights were like smudges of chalk across a grimy blackboard. There was a bit of drystone wall, roadside olive trees and, for a moment, a dead cat lying in the middle of the tarmac. ‘I was going to tell you that his wife’s over for the holidays. Maybe we should have them to dinner or something.’

‘So you can roll your eyes at him? What’s she like?’

‘Horsy.’

He laughed. ‘Looks horsy or sounds horsy?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Looks horsy, from what I saw. No wonder he keeps her hidden away in England and goes after you.’

‘He’s not hiding her away and he’s not going after me. You’re getting paranoid, Edward. They’ve made a choice, for the sake of the children. At least she’s doing that, refusing to send them away to boarding school.’

‘Is that a dig at me?’

‘It’s just a fact. Take it as you like.’

T
he phone rang. She knew it was him, even as she lifted the receiver. ‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘In a bar somewhere in Limassol.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Just mooching around really. Is Edward there? Can I talk?’

‘He’s at work. It was lovely meeting Sarah at that do. Is she still here?’

‘She left last week. Can I see you?’

There was a pause, one of those awkward moments on the telephone which, in a face-to-face encounter, would have been filled with expression and gesture.

‘Dee, are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘How about it?’

‘I was thinking of going down to Marjorie’s later. Perhaps I could drop by.’

‘Who the hell’s Marjorie?’

‘You must remember her from the
Empire Bude
.’

‘I don’t remember much from the
Empire Bude
except you.’

‘Don’t be silly. She runs a SSAFA canteen down near the Castle.’

‘Oh, I know. Where the men go for tea and sympathy. Well, that’s more or less where I am. Café Aphrodite, although Aphrodite herself seems a more likely candidate for Circus Fat Woman than Goddess of Love. And she could always double as the bearded lady if they were strapped for cash.’

‘I can find it.’

‘My dear thing, you can’t
miss
it.’

Nicos drove her. They went past the fire station and the hospital and the police headquarters. He glanced at her in the mirror, his eyes sliced out of the context of his face, devoid of expression. ‘Miss Marjorie’s canteen?’ he asked.

‘Actually, I’m going to a place on the seafront first – the Café Aphrodite or something.’

‘A bar?’

‘What’s wrong with that? I’m meeting a friend.’

The car edged its way through the narrow streets of the old town, round parked trucks and pedestrians. The minaret of a mosque could be seen rising like a missile above the roofs.

‘Not a good area,’ Nicos said. ‘Zig-Zag Street and that. Not the sort of place you should be going.’

‘It’s perfectly all right. We’ve been here many times.’

‘Over there’s the Turkish Quarter.’ He gestured towards the invisible boundary where dark figures watched from across the divide of religion and culture. ‘Bastards,’ he added.

‘What a stupid thing to say, from someone who has lived in England.’

‘What’s England got to do with it? You English don’t understand. Turks kill Greeks, you know that? For thousands of years they’ve been killing Greeks.’

‘And now the Greeks are killing the British,’ she said. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Not now, they’re not. Not when Dighenis calls a truce.’

‘But they will be, when the truce is called off. And then you’ll be just as bad as the Turks.’

The road led past workshops where fires burned in the shadows and blacksmiths hammered at iron like Hephaestus at the forge. Hephaestus was the husband of Aphrodite – a poor crippled consort for the unfaithful goddess. Geoffrey had told her that. And then there was the massive bulwark of the Castle, with soldiers on guard outside and the Union Jack flying above. Beyond were the warehouses and the tiny harbour. The car turned along the waterfront, with its promenade of old, salt-corroded houses. There were one or two run-down hotels, the offices of a couple of shipping companies, a few cafés. At the
Aphrodite tables and chairs spilled out on the pavement, but only one customer was sitting there. Nicos pulled in to the side of the road to let her out. ‘Shall I wait?’

‘No, don’t. Come and pick me up from Miss Marjorie’s canteen in an hour’s time.’

But he didn’t pull away from the kerb. As she walked towards the tables, she was conscious of his watching her from behind the reflected sky of the windscreen.

Damien rose from his chair. He was wearing a pale suit and his hat was on the chair next to him, almost as though he were saving a place for her. He bent to give her a discreet kiss on the cheek. ‘How are you? It seems ages since the party.’ He pulled the chair out for her to sit. ‘Is it too chilly out here? What’ll you have? How about a brandy sour? That’s what I’m drinking – it’s the only way I’ve discovered to make the local hooch palatable. Or you can have it with whisky, if you’d prefer.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Whisky or brandy?’

‘Either.’

She sat at the table, wondering why she was here, why he had invited her and why she had accepted. You could disguise it as an innocent encounter if you wished, but she knew it for what it was: an assignation.

‘Brandy, then. Didn’t you pay that taxi off? He’s still waiting.’

‘He’s meant to pick me up at Marjorie’s, but he’s probably checking you out. Marjorie thinks he’s in love with me.’

Damien laughed. ‘A taxi driver? That’s a bit
infra dig
, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not something you can help.’

‘Don’t I know it. I’ll tell him his services are not needed.’

‘Let me,’ she said, but he’d risen from his chair and was walking away towards the taxi before she could stop him. She watched anxiously as he talked at the window of the Opel. After
a few seconds the car drew away from the kerb and roared off down the seafront. When Damien came back he was laughing. ‘The fellow’s a London Teddy boy, for God’s sake. I thought he might knife me when I told him.’

‘What on earth did you say?’

‘I told him to bugger off, that’s what.’

‘Damien!’

‘Well, more or less. First I asked him why he was hanging around, and he told me that he wanted to make sure Mrs Denham was all right. And I said that I was an officer and a gentleman and besides that I was Mrs Denham’s favourite poodle, so he could push off. What is he, your bodyguard?’

‘I told you. He’s got a crush on me, poor soul.’

‘He’s not the only one.’

‘Don’t be silly. One’s enough. You shouldn’t have done that. It’s not fair, pulling rank on him.’

‘Rank? He’s not a bloody soldier, is he?’

‘Of course he’s not a bloody soldier. And don’t speak like that. He’s not a bloody anything, not a bloody Cyp, not a bloody wop. He’s just a taxi driver.’ She felt angry and bewildered, defensive about Nicos. That Damien could be so crass. There was an awkward pause.

‘Hey, I’ve bought a new car,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you?’

‘Of course you didn’t tell me.’

‘Isabella, she’s called.’ He pointed. The vehicle was parked near by. Isabella wasn’t a nickname he’d given it, but the name of the model. It was a white convertible two-seater, a flashy roadster with a long bonnet and lots of chrome and the maker’s name –
Borgward
– in script along the front wing. ‘Isabella’ seemed to suit it; a blowsy, tart’s name, he suggested. ‘You wouldn’t believe that Germans could be so imaginative, would you?’

She laughed nervously, hoping that the encounter had been
put back on an even keel. Their drinks came. ‘To us,’ he said, raising his glass.

‘Us?’

‘Why not?’ Damien looked at her. She sweated in the pale sunshine. He smiled and held her gaze and she felt the sweat trickle insidiously from her armpits and run down her flanks. She knew that it glistened in the valley between her breasts, and saw his eyes flicker down to see it. And suddenly he wasn’t chatting any longer, but was leaning slightly forward across the table and talking quietly to her and watching her closely for the slightest hint of evasion or pain or guilt or whatever it was. Love, he was talking of love. ‘From the moment I first set eyes on you – and you looked like death warmed up at the time, so it must be real.’ He had taken her hand, and held it, shaking it slightly as though to emphasize his words, the weight of them, the import.

‘Damien, you’re being daft.’

‘No I’m not.’