Unknown

THE APOLLO MAN

Jean S MacLeod

He said he had come back for a reason

Six years ago, an ambitious Andreas Phedonos had deserted his island home of Cyprus and his childhood sweetheart, Anna. Now he’d returned, a charming and successful businessman.

Anna, independent and with a life of her own, was still bitter over his sudden departure. She couldn’t help but be suspicious of this new Andreas and his reasons for returning.

But neither could Anna stop the memories and feelings of the warm summer nights of their youth from coming back with him.

“Is marrying Nikos what you really want, Anna?”

Anna’s reply came quickly. “You have no right to ask, Andreas. None at all!”

“I have your interests at heart. We were brought up together, remember. In the ordinary way that should mean a lot.”

“It means nothing, surely,’ Anna could not look at him for fear of revealing her true feelings. “I can’t expect you to feel— responsible for me.”

“It’s not that. I just want to make sure you’re not making a terrible mistake.”

“By marrying someone who wants me— someone I could rely on, who would always be there when I need him?”

“That describes Nikos, but it would not be enough for the Anna I remember,”

Andreas replied evenly, yet his eyes betrayed a warning glitter.

“I’ve stopped remembering,” Anna said, her heart too full of memories to answer truthfully.

“I’m sorry about that,” Andreas said quietly.

“I would have it otherwise.”

‘Anna!’

The girl sitting on the shore overlooking the tideless sea did not turn immediately, knowing that what she heard must be a voice from the past, thinking it strange that she should have remembered Andreas Phedonos so vividly as she sat there. It was six years now since he had gone, leaving the island with not one word of explanation after a final quarrel with her father. They had been so uncomfortably alike those two, quick-tempered and ready to take offence at times when none was meant, but it had been excusable in Andreas because he had been young and vulnerable at twenty years of age, with no parents of his own. Her father ...

She sighed at the memory, looking out across the bay.

‘Anna!’

She turned, struggling to her feet, her lips parted in a small gasp of incredulity. Andreas was standing there in the bright April sunshine; not the boy she remembered from six long years ago, but a grown man, resolute and determined, willing her to recognise him, tall and straight as an arrow as he had been in those far-off days, his head held high.

‘You don’t remember me?’

All the grief came flooding back, catching her by the throat. ‘Nothing could be easier,’ she told him. ‘You are still the same.’

He smiled for the first time, shaking his head. ‘I doubt that,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m six years older, for one thing, and a great deal wiser.’

‘Where have you been?’

She hadn’t meant to ask the question, telling herself that she didn’t want to know. He had the look of a man of the world about him now, no longer the open-hearted boy she remembered so well.

‘Here and there, learning to fight my own battles.’

‘You could always do that,’ she assured him, brushing the sand from her faded cotton skirt.

She saw him plainly now, darkly handsome in the strong light of morning, the blue eyes he had inherited from his English mother questioning her reluctance to welcome him, his level black brows drawn together in concentrated thought. How quickly he had changed from the Andreas she remembered to this self-assured and determined man!

‘Your father is dead,’ he said slowly, not questioning the fact. ‘I heard that in Limassol. How did he die?’

‘He was drowned on a fishing trip, coming back from Crete.’ It was still difficult to talk about her father’s untimely death.

‘And Mama?’

The old term of endearment had slipped out naturally, she supposed, a confession of the affection he must still feel for the woman who had brought him up.

‘She is well.’

He took a step towards her across the level sand. ‘Is that all you have to say to me?’ he demanded. ‘Anna, I have come back to see your mother and try to make amends.’

She stiffened at his folly, forcing herself to remember the manner of his going. ‘You can never do that,’ she told him with a bitterness which surprised her. ‘You hurt her too much.’

‘I know. I said I was sorry.’

‘Did you?’ She faced him in the morning sunshine. ‘I don’t remember.’

He took her by the shoulders, looking down into her hostile eyes. ‘I wrote a letter,’ he said. ‘It was never answered.’

‘You’re lying!’ she accused him.

Releasing her, he turned to look back at the villa standing on a terrace above the bay. ‘I’m not trying to defend myself,' he said, ‘but I did write. I owed it to her, you see, for all she had done for me.’

‘She didn’t expect gratitude. She won’t now!’

‘Is she here?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want you to go to her,’ she said decisively. ‘Not till I have seen her first.’

Her lips firmed in a determined line, protecting the woman who might even now be watching them from the house.

‘To warn her or advise her?’

The abrupt question took her by surprise.

‘To cushion the shock of your return,’ she answered slowly. ‘She has been ill.’

‘I’m sorry. Is it serious?’

She looked at him steadily, remembering the disappointment of his going and all the grief it had caused. ‘She has been advised not to work so hard.’

He looked away from the house to the long curve of the bay and the white hotels lining the shore. ‘I was hoping to talk to you about that,’ he said.

She turned then, grief and bitter memory blurring her vision. ‘To make amends?' The words choked in her throat. ‘You can never do that, Andreas, as long as you live!’ She stood between him and the house. ‘I can't stop you going up there,’ she told him.

‘No, you can’t do that,’ he said. ‘I mean to go.’

His quiet determination infuriated her.

‘It would be far better if you went away again without seeing her. You can only bring her sorrow—another parting.’

‘That wasn’t my intention.' The hardness in his eyes disconcerted her for a moment. ‘I feel I have something to offer her.’

‘I can’t think what that might be.’

He studied her in silence for a moment.

‘No, you couldn’t, I suppose,’ he said briefly. ‘It is still all or nothing with you, Anna. I can see that.’

She caught her breath. ‘You’ll find her changed,’ she warned. ‘She has been very ill.’

‘Is that a promise that I can see her?’

She hesitated. ‘Give me time to explain to her.’

‘Tell her the Prodigal has returned.’

‘She loved you as a son!’

‘I know that. Did you want me to forget?’ he demanded.

‘It didn’t concern me!’

He caught her by the arm as she turned to go, looking steadily into her eyes. ‘Didn’t it, Anna?’ he demanded. ‘Can you honestly say it didn’t matter to you at all?’

She forced herself to meet that relentless gaze. ‘Not at all,’ she lied. ‘I only cared about my mother and what you did to her.’

‘Going away without a word,’ he suggested. ‘Yes, that was unforgivable, but I think your mother would understand.’

‘My father was always difficult,’ she allowed. ‘Quick to criticise, perhaps, but he had supported you. He wanted you to make something of your life—to take up a profession.’ She looked at him again, seeing the distinction of his well-groomed appearance and the subtle air of authority about him which had been the first thing she had noticed. ‘You have succeeded,’ she said involuntarily. ‘You have made something of your life, after all.’

‘Not in the way he wanted.’ His eyes sought the horizon. ‘He could never see that I wasn’t cut out for an academic career.’

Inwardly she smiled at the idea. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But fundamentally he wanted the best for us both.’

‘Have you found that sort of Utopia, Anna?’ he asked. ‘Have you married?’

She laughed at the question. ‘I haven’t had time for that. I have other things to think about,’ she assured him.

‘Such as?’

‘Making a living. The home you deserted six years ago is now a small hotel.’

He didn’t appear to be surprised, looking at the villa on the slight elevation above the bay.

‘It is an ideal situation,’ he agreed. ‘Are you doing well?’

She hesitated. ‘Reasonably well. It is hard work, of course, but rewarding.’

‘Hard work for your mother,’ he said. ‘Yes, I can appreciate that.’

‘Don’t pity her!’ she cried. ‘It’s too late for that.’ She walked a little way up the beach. ‘I’ll let you know if you can see her.’

His jaw firmed perceptibly. ‘I haven’t come as a supplicant,’ he informed her coldly. ‘I have a proposition to make.’

She looked back at him, her dark eyes accusing. ‘Nothing you can suggest now can alter the past,’ she declared. ‘Nothing you can do.’

‘Nothing is as final as that,’ he said briefly. ‘Where can I wait?'

She looked about her, taking in the neat breakwater they had built to make a small private harbour where a boat could be moored in safety when the Mediterranean surged in towards the land before a south-westerly gale, and up to the terraced gardens leading from the villa to the shore. Nowhere there, she thought, in full view of the windows.

‘If you walk along the beach ’

He turned to face the sun. ‘I know my way,’ he said. ‘I’ll go as far as Candy’s Place and then on to the road.’

‘There’s a public right-of-way now,’ she told him. ‘Candy had to grant the land.’

He nodded, striding off without looking at her again. She had made him angry, she thought, but anger was a very small thing compared with what he had done.

Slowly she walked up the beach on to the terraced gardens surrounding the villa where the scent of mimosa hung heavy on the morning air. Already the small golden balls were falling from the trees, making a scented carpet beneath her feet, their glory soon passed, but other trees and shrubs were in riotous bloom, colouring the terraces in white and blue and scarlet before she came at last to the house.

Built of local white stone thirty years ago, the Villa Severus faced the sea, its four ogival arches on the ground floor providing a shady open veranda to counter the heat of the noonday sun, its walls clad with yellow jasmine and clematis in every shade from deepest purple to the palest of pink. Above the Frankish arches long windows lay open to the morning breeze, lace curtains stirring fitfully as it passed, and over everything lay a peace and tranquillity that could almost be felt. The ideal holiday hideaway. It had been the only building on that part of the coastline at one time until the encroaching hotels had crept nearer and nearer to encompass it in the end. On one side the massive tower block of the newest holiday hotel looked down on the villa with scorn; on the other Candy’s Place hovered uncertainly on the shore-line waiting to be taken over in its turn by the highest bidder for its desirable frontage.

That would never happen to the Villa Severus, Anna vowed determinedly. They would never sell out to a high- rise block of concrete and a powerful name. Never!

The Villa Severus was full of memories for her, although it had now been turned into a small hotel, memories of her childhood and the happiness she had known there, and memories of the time Andreas Phedonos had come to stay there, adopted by her parents because he was the son George Rossides had always coveted and because her mother could never have another child. Their parents had been lifelong friends and the tragedy of Christine and Stelios Phedonos' death had touched her mother deeply.

Andreas and Anna had grown up together at the Villa Severus, sailing and fishing and swimming from the beach or trekking into the mountains to climb hills which seemed as high as the Alps in those far-off days, to come home exhausted to Dorothy Rossides’ cooking and the prospect of the next halcyon day. Then Andreas had gone off to do his National Service and things had never been the same again.

She had reached the villa, halting at the terrace steps to collect her nostalgic thoughts. Everything was different now, too. Andreas was no longer a part of their family by his own deliberate choice and the loving home they had shared was now an hotel.

‘Who was that you were talking to down on the beach?’ her mother asked when she had walked the length of the terrace to find her standing on the loggia beside an open door. ‘Was it Nikos? It looked like him.’ Her mother’s eyesight had been dimmed by her recent illness, although she could see well enough to read her newspaper and the English books she loved.

‘No, it wasn’t Nikos.’ Anna stood beside her, looking down towards the beach. ‘Mama, I have to talk to you. Something—unexpected has turned up.’

‘About the hotel?’ Dorothy turned anxious eyes in her direction. ‘You have further word from the bank?’ Anna shifted her position, knowing that what she had to say must be said right away. Her mother had suffered many blows and much hardship since her father’s death and some of the anguish was stamped on her face, but nothing had dimmed the beauty of her magnificent eyes. They were still a deep, luminous sapphire blue and still full of a tender understanding as she looked back at the daughter she loved.