Songs of Blue and Gold (23 page)

Veronica smiled complicitly at Adie. ‘I had a wonderful time, darling. We must do it again . . . very soon.'

Elizabeth felt her stomach clench. She had not seen him for two days. She sat back in her chair, trying to appear relaxed. She knew better than to say anything.

Others arrived. Voices and laughter rose as the company swelled around them. Elizabeth, wearing a smile that now pinched her cheeks and made her unable to concentrate on even the smallest of talk, endured an hour of yachting tales from a bloated ex-businessman followed by a dinner placement between a morose British scriptwriter and the editor of a local English-language newspaper who was a serious admirer of Adie's novels. The evening seemed never-ending.

She waited until they had cadged a lift back to Kalami where he suggested a nightcap in one of the beach tavernas. Then she made the mistake of asking him what Veronica had meant.

His reaction was purely physical. His chest expanded; his broad shoulders locked; and his face changed colour. It was as if the rage was engorged under his skin.

‘Why the hell shouldn't I poke her if I want to?'

That took her breath away. She had clearly not understood her position, or perhaps had only seen what she had wanted to see. Either way, she felt the ground shift under her feet.

‘Am I answerable to you? Who do you think you are?'

‘I – I . . .'

‘Possessiveness! I can't bear it. Never, ever try to possess me. It's the kiss of death, dear.' His tone was light and mocking. The surge of rage had passed as quickly as it had blown up.

Elizabeth said nothing.

Julian ordered brandy. He had a jaunty cut-and-thrust conversation in Greek with the waiter, and as if nothing had spoiled their togetherness, covered her hand with his. Its compelling warmth stole down into her bones.

She stood up. ‘I'm going now.'

The moon was fat in a clear, star-pierced sky. There was plenty of light by which to walk back to Kouloura.

He exhaled the distinctive smoke of his French cigarette. ‘You don't want to spend the night with me?'

‘No.'

He didn't try to persuade her to change her mind.

She left.

Fireflies jittered and glowed as Elizabeth struck out briskly. The headland was darker than she expected where the trees blocked the pale light. She shivered but she could not turn back.

She felt sick, and worse. She could see all too well what she was: a silly, naïve girl with a stupidly aching heart. Yet not so silly, she reminded herself; she had always known what she was doing, what he was. Of course there were going to
be cracks in the relationship. If, in his mind, it was a relationship at all.

As her strides became looser and her breathing calmer, she thought, so what if he wants to see Veronica too? She had wanted experience, to learn sophistication. There was no way she had a future with Julian Adie; she was just fooling around with him, using him as much as he was her. The thoughts went round and round as she tried to rationalise her feelings and assuage the sharpness of sudden hurt.

It took a few seconds after she woke the next morning to remember what was wrong. That she had been half-awake all night, irritated by the constant whine of mosquitoes. Why she felt heartsick. Several replays of his callousness made her get up blearily. It was still early – there was no sign of Clive or Mary. Still wearing her nightdress she shuffled into the kitchen for some coffee and took it outside on the terrace. The sun was too bright. It made her head hurt.

‘
She walks in beauty, like the night
 . . .'

The familiar ringing voice made her jump. Julian was sitting below, under the idleness tree. He bounded up the steps, and thrust a vast untidy bunch of wild flowers at her. His hair was tousled, still wet from a swim.

‘I am so sorry I upset you,' he said. ‘I behaved like a pig.'

Sorry for upsetting her, she noted. Not sorry for whatever he had been doing with Veronica.

He shrugged with his arms out for her. How can I help what I am, he seemed to be saying. Sometimes I'm bad. The crinkling, twinkling eyes.

She must have hesitated for all of thirty seconds.

The trouble was, she wanted him. His emotional hold over her was like a strong undertow. She would not call it love; that would be too dangerous, would leave her too open to hurt. She knew for certain it would be the kind of hurt she had never felt when she was with David. Even now, just imagining losing it was sharp and intense.

Elizabeth was starting to accept that he meant more to her than she did to him. But that was no reason to forgo the pleasure of being with him.

From then on, when she did not see him she suspected he was with Veronica.

The other woman's catty and dismissive remarks to Elizabeth continued when their paths occasionally crossed, but at least assured her that she was as much a thorn in the other woman's side as Veronica was proving in hers.

She resolved to stride out harder and longer on her walks, pour her energies into her drawings, and to make some new friends. She went out a few times with the young set she'd met at the Stilwells' fateful party, dancing at the beachside clubs at Ipsos, but never felt a hundredth of the excitement she had with Julian Adie.

IN KASSIOPE, THE
dark quayside was transformed. Tents and stalls selling sweets and fripperies jostled for space with nut and melon-seed vendors, and tables and chairs laid out on three sides of the square. Strings of electric lights winked and hummed in the trees.

‘The festival of midsummer's eve, and the eve of St John's feast day. A
paneyiri
!' said Julian, leading the way. The entourage trotted to keep up, including Clive and Mary.

Elizabeth felt her spirits lift as she saw how the setting and the anticipation of a Greek feast were balm to Julian's tricky mood. For days he had been alternately quiet and argumentative. None of it had been directed at her, but listening as he sounded off about the world in general, and bourgeois prejudice in particular, had been sapping. Now, his enthusiasm was infectious.

The aroma of lambs roasting on the spit mingled with the smell of oil from boats recently docked and sweet honey cakes and red-hot charcoal.

Church bells rang, and the door to the chapel was open.
In every direction the streets were full, the crowds meandering down to the water and the spot where three fires would be lit, currently ragged wigwams of twigs and branches.

‘There!' Julian pointed to the table he wanted to claim. Elizabeth laughed as he pulled her along, and kissed her playfully as they sat down.

The wine began to flow.

The three fires were lit, burning in the middle of the party.

‘The same is happening in villages all across the island,' said Mary. ‘The fire is supposed to be purifying. It drives out bad spirits and uplifts the soul.'

It certainly seemed to be having that effect on Julian. He was in high good humour, waving at people as they passed and clapping to the music that had started.

‘The local men will jump through the fires wearing headdresses of olive branches,' Mary continued. ‘They jump through the fires three times calling for the blessing of God from St John.'

Right on cue there was a cheer from the crowd as the first supplicants appeared, heads bowed under rough leafy crowns.

‘I'm in too!' cried Julian. ‘Spyro, you got the hats? Come on, Clive, you could do with blessing!' He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

After the ritual, they hurled the headdresses into the fires and whooped as they burned.

‘It is thought to drive away witches,' said Adie, grinning. ‘Pagan, in origin, of course.'

Elizabeth gave concentrated thought to Veronica, then felt guilty.

The scent of roasting lambs grew stronger. Long tables were set out for the feast: bowls of herby tsatziki, spicy kebabs and sausage and colourful salads of red pepper, others of tomato, cucumber and crumbly chunks of feta cheese.

The band was in full flow. Rippling melodies played on the balalaika, guitar and flute were overlaid with mournful singing.

‘They're old Corfiot songs. “Sea, you youth-swallower”,' Julian translated, ‘“all the bodies of the young you have sucked into your insatiable maw . . .”

‘Traditions run deep in Greece. When I was young here no workman would ever take a nap under a tree because he feared the Nereids who waited in the shadows for the unwary.'

He listened, moving his head to the rhythm. ‘“The boat's ripped sail and the cunning seas, the wind like the breath of Helen as she is snatched away” . . . Despair is never far away. In Greece, songs are history. Lyrics are poems that tell a true story.'

Soon there was dancing around the fire, those who remained seated singing and clapping in time.

At first it was mainly the girls and women dancing.

‘Do the men have their own dances?' Elizabeth asked Spyros.

‘Traditionally the
paneyiri
attracted the young people who
wanted to get married, and these were the dances performed by the unmarried women.'

‘A sanctioned flaunting of themselves to attract a male,' said Julian.

Many of the women were wearing a country costume, headdresses ornately decorated with flowers, and tight bodices. Their black shoes were dusty from the several miles of tracks they had walked down from the hills.

When a men's dance started, Julian and his Greek friend rushed to join in the frenzy. Clive stared to explain the
kalamatianos
and
syrtos,
but the music was too loud to speak over. Elizabeth watched as the spiral went first one way and then the other, ever-expanding to allow more revellers to join the line.

Then it was her turn.

‘Come on,' said Mary. ‘Follow what I do. No one minds if you go wrong.'

Elizabeth allowed herself to be drawn in. She felt young and free. Her blonde hair swinging, she knew she was noticeable and enjoyed being seen. She danced for longer than she had intended. The line went round and round, ever longer, whipping round in a frenzy of music and stomping from the crowds. The lights were whirling above their heads.

When she was finally released she looked around, still laughing, for Julian, hoping he had been admiring her efforts. But she couldn't see him anywhere.

‘Has anyone seen where Julian's got to?' she asked back at their table.

No one had. Neither did they seem unduly concerned. She sat down to drink a glass of water. His unpredictability was a given.

Half an hour went by. Elizabeth muttered that she was going to look at the stalls, and slid back into the throng. The band, still going strong, had slowed the tempo to a dirge. The singer wailed, his head thrown back.

She bought a paper twist of honeyed nuts. Still she expected to see his face at any moment bobbing among the dancers, or chatting at another table. But he did not materialise.

Unwilling to return to the party without him, she wandered into the town. Music and light blazed out of shops and cafés. Men called out to her.

A circuitous route took her back to the quay. She was about to rejoin the others at the table when she saw him.

He was with Veronica.

They were pressed into the shadows of the harbourmaster's office.

Elizabeth hesitated, then walked straight up to them.

‘Hello,' she said with stiff civility.

Veronica ran a finger down Julian's cheekbone in a defiantly intimate gesture.

Elizabeth turned to Julian, unsure what she expected him to do. He confounded her, though. He gave her a sheepish smile. Then he closed his eyes and clutched on to Veronica. For once, he seemed drunk.

‘We were just leaving,' Veronica said.

Elizabeth stared. ‘I'll say goodnight, then,' she said to Julian.

He said nothing.

She worked her way round the knots of festoons and raucous groups. Her ears roared; it was like being in an echo chamber: voices from the party boomed and rang in the black air. This time she did mind.

Clive and Mary drove her the few miles back to Kouloura. Stoutly, no one mentioned Julian.

He might have gone with Veronica that night, but he was still intent on seeing Elizabeth.

The night after that, he telephoned the Stilwells at four in the morning asking for Elizabeth. He demanded that she speak to him. ‘Tell her I'll send a car for her now,' he shouted. ‘I want to see her right now!'

He did not get his way.

Julian told her to make no demands on him, but then persisted in demanding she carry on with him as before. ‘But you are immeasurably more lovely than she is!' he cried, as if that made it all right.

She knew what he was doing; he was playing games with them both.

Still she was drawn to him. The golden aura, the careless manner, his intense interior life, his exuberant insistence on mystery and exploration – it was all a great conjuring trick, one that fascinated her. She could not stop going back until she understood how it worked.

So Elizabeth continued to go out on the boat with him, to lie in the sun on the rocks, to make love by the sea, to listen to him talk, and to learn about his world beneath the surface. She would live in the moment, she had decided, never trying to possess him. After all wasn't this what her generation was fighting for, the right of women to enjoy sex in the same way that men did? Everyone else was doing it, being free and laughing at the old constraints.

Although Mary and Clive said nothing, she felt their
apprehension. And if they did say anything she would tell them she had no need of their concern. She was fine. If they thought she was out of her depth in the undersea world of other people's motives, they were underestimating her. Maybe she had learned more than anyone realised from Julian.

For gradually, Elizabeth was becoming aware for the first time in her life that she had power too. The first time she felt it, it seemed too much for her, like too much horsepower in a car. Now, once she was used to it, she wanted to test out the surge. The ride was spectacular.