Kimon’s eyes lit, and he smiled the tantalising smile that was so like his father’s. “I think she’s put it off,” he said.
Dora, when she came back, took one look at Morag’s face and told her with some asperity to pull herself together. “My dear girl, Delia’s your stepsister. If you wanted her to go, you had a perfect right to get rid of her.”
“Even against Pericles’ wishes?”
Dora looked considerably less certain. “Well, I expect you’ll be able to explain it to him,” she said bravely. “But it’s no good looking like a guilty shadow! What you need is a little time to yourself to put some spirit back into you.”
“I can’t leave the children.”
“Really, Morag! You make me almost glad that stepsister of yours had the gumption to slap you! I have looked after my grandchildren before without any complaints from either of them!”
“But you’re playing bridge!”
Dora favoured her with a wry smile. “I told the other ladies I would not be playing at the same time as I rang up the airport. My powers of concentration are more than adequate for normal times, but I doubted that I should play very well this afternoon somehow. I said my daughter-in-law needed me,” she added, a glint of amusement in her eyes, “and of course they accepted that my duty to you came first!”
Morag raised a bleak smile. “You’re very kind to me,” she said.
“Go away!” said Dora, completely exasperated. “Go away and sort yourself out! It’s more than time that you did. It isn’t only you who likes to give and to be admired for their good nature. Perhaps even Pericles might like to be asked for something for a change!”
“Oh,” said Morag.
“Try it!” her mother-in-law recommended. “Try telling him how much you want him to love you, and that it isn’t enough for you to love him. Pericles has his doubts too, you know,” Dora rammed home her advantage. “He can’t do it all by himself!”
Morag licked her lips. “He said I had to tell him in words -” She coloured, suddenly embarrassed. “If you’re sure you don’t mind having the children, I think I will go out somewhere. I’ll take some sandwiches and - and my tent, in case the buses don’t fit, so don’t worry if I don’t come back tonight.”
“I won’t,” Dora assured her. “But supposing Pericles
wants to know, which direction do you intend going in?” Morag opened her mouth, but no words came out. She shook her head and pointed wildly away from the sea. “I don’t know -somewhere!”
“Very enlightening!” her mother-in-law mocked.“Let’s hope Perry can read your mind better than I can!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Marathon was hotter than ever. The light breeze that had stirred the dust the last time Morag had been there was absent and there was nothing to ameliorate the burning rays of the sun as they beat down on the narrow street and the huddled white houses on either side. For a while Morag wished she hadn’t come. She could have gone anywhere. She could have gone to Eleusis - she might even have found Pericles there before her! But then she still wasn’t sure that she was ready to see Pericles quite yet. If he followed her, she supposed she would be glad. No, she amended that to herself, she would be more than glad, she would feel whole again. Her spirits leaped at the thought, only to fall again as she realised that she had no reason to think that he would come looking for her.
She went into the same shop she had been in before and was gratified when its black-clad owner recognised her and produced a bottle of bitter lemon, opening it for her with a flick of her hand. Morag offered her a bank note to pay for it.
“Tehispsila?” the woman asked.
Rightly taking this to mean that she wanted something smaller, Morag searched through her pockets and produced a ten-drachmae coin. The woman nodded happily and took it from her.
Morag drank the bitter lemon slowly, enjoying its chilled qualities as it slid down her dry throat. It was three hours to Rhamnous, if that was where she was going, and there would be no one to give her a lift today.
When she turned to go, picking up her knapsack with one hand, the woman pointed to the necklace of shells round her neck and laughed out loud.
“I don’t understand,” Morag apologised in Greek. Those few words she had had reason to learn by heart from her phrase book.
“She said you had already been to Rhamnous,” a very familiar voice translated behind her.
Morag dropped her knapsack, looking so guilty that her husband laughed at her, touching her scarlet cheeks with an interested hand.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he drawled. “Nemesis won’t protect you today, however, agapi mou. She’s on my side in this!” Morag murmured something quite incomprehensible even to herself, stopped, and made a dash to retrieve her knapsack from the floor. “Did Dora tell you -?”
“My mother was in no state to tell me anything! You’ve had a busy day, haven’t you? Turning the whole family upside down, and blackening my name with them for not treating you better! What she did tell me was that she was looking after the children for some reason instead of playing bridge. Greater love than that, no woman hath!”
Morag stared at him helplessly. “I didn’t ask her -” she began. Oh, lord, she thought, was she never going to finish a sentence again? She allowed Pericles to take her knapsack from her and tried to conquer the rising panic within her. “Are you - are you very angry?” she managed to ask.
“That depends,” he said dryly. “It depends largely if you are prepared to talk. Are you, Morag?”
She nodded her head quickly, though what she was going to say was beyond her. Her mouth felt dry again, all benefit from the bitter lemon having departed at his words. “Where are we
rJ)
going?”
He looked at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. “To Rhamnous.
Where else ?”
“If you’d rather go home.”
“Would you?”
She shook her head, fingering the green beads in her shell necklace as if they were some kind of charm that could protect her from her own inadequacy.
“I thought not,” he said. “Rhamnous will serve us both very well. Perhaps Nemesis will compensate both of us for what we lack in ourselves.”
“But you don’t lack anything!” she protested. “At least-” The look in his eyes made her feel hot all over - “I don’t think you do,” she ended, mumbling the words in an agony of embarrassment.
“Don’t you, darling?” He lifted her knapsack on to his shoulder and exchanged a few words in rapid Greek with the shopkeeper, accepting a number of bottles of beer and bitter lemon from her.
When he had stowed them away in the canvas bag, he put a hand on Morag’s shoulder and guided her out of the house. She could feel the strength of his fingers through the thin material of her shirt, and the same elated fear that she felt so often in his presence fountained up within her. “Bravely said,” he whispered in her ear, “but it’s only a beginning. This time we’ll have all the words, if it takes us all night. Agreed?”
Morag wasn’t in any position to refuse, even if she had wanted to, and she didn’t know that she did. Wasn’t that why she had come away by herself? To find the words that he had told her he wanted from her. The truce between them hadn’t been enough for her - and perhaps it hadn’t been enough for him either. She looked at him uneasily as he opened the door of the car and flung her knapsack on to the rear seat, standing back to allow her to get in.
“I nearly didn’t go to Rhamnous,” she told him. “I thought of going to Eleusis.”
He grinned. “That would have been throwing down the gauntlet with a vengeance. I’ll take you there one day, but today I think Rhamnous will suit us better.”
A truce was something that could be broken. Had she broken theirs by sending Delia away? She shivered, marvelling at her own recklessness. But he had come after her, so perhaps he meant to make a final peace with her after all. He would hardly have come if he had only wanted to te
ll her that he couldn’t forgive her gesture of independent defiance of his wishes. She wound her fingers together and her wedding-ring glinted in the sun, startling her into a new line of thought. She was still his wife and, if she played her cards right, she might be able to tempt him into a final peace treaty that neither of them would ever want to break, not ever!
“Yes,” she said. She put her head back against the seat and smiled at him. “I brought my tent with me. There’s room in it for two - if you don’t mind a bit of a squash.”
“I think I could bear it.” His eyes flickered over her, looking amused. “If you give me the answers I want in time. You won’t put me off with a few kisses this time, though. Words are what I want, Morag, if I have to turn you inside out and squeeze them out of
I”
you!”
“You - you wouldn’t!”
“I would, you know. In fact I’d enjoy doing it, so be very careful, karthia mou. My terms will get steeper the longer you delay.”
“The terms for your pride?”
“Amongst other things.”
She looked out of the window, watching the famous plain slip past her. She tried to tell herself that she had nothing to be frightened about. Any fool could tell her husband that she loved him! Any fool but her! She didn’t know how to begin. But if she didn’t tell him, what then?
Pericles put out a hand and patted her knee. “Cheer up, Morag, I’ll help you all I can. I don’t want to be brutal with you, but neither will I baulk at the last fence. I want us both to know exactly where we stand.”
She averted her face, biting her lip. “You’re not brutal!” “No?” “You know you’re not!”
His hand brushed against her hair before returning to the gear-lever. “I was afraid you thought I was the night Kimon lost his coin.”
“Pericles!” she spluttered.
“What does that mean?”
“You know -” She beat a hasty retreat into silence, hoping that he would let the subject drop.
“Know what?”
“That’s why I bought the dress,” she brought out jerkily.
“That’s why I paid for it!”
Her eyes widened. “Was it? You didn’t say anything! I thought -I thought you were being kind because I’d spent everything I had on it!”
“You didn’t say anything either,” he reminded her, “except that you weren’t going to dazzle anyone in particular, and that you’d bought it on impulse.”
“But you were being kind too - weren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
Morag wriggled uncomfortably. “I-I thought you didn’t want me - only for the children. The dress was a symbol of-of-”
“Say it, Morag!”
She looked down at her hands in her lap. “That I was willing -”
“Willing, Morag? You’ll have to do better than that!”
“I can’t!” she said.
She stared sightlessly out of the window, berating herself inwardly for her cowardice. He must know she loved him, so there was no point in not admitting it. She would, she promised herself, but not until she knew if he was angry with her for sending Delia away. Honesty compelled her to admit that this was a mere excuse for procrastination, and she knew that Pericles would recognise it as such.
He was silent too, apparently waiting for her to take the next initiative in the conversation. Perhaps this was her moment for bringing up the subject of Delia. She cast him a speculative look, trying to persuade herself that he might find the story amusing rather than dwell on her own motives for removing her stepsister from his proximity as fast as she possibly could. The strength of his face pleased her, even while she thought it boded ill for her own immediate comfort. He was very good-looking, not in a commonplace way, but like a Greek statue with that curious tactile quality that made one long to touch, even to caress. She looked away quickly, before she could give way to such a temptation.
They had left the Plain of Marathon far behind by now. A large flock of goats came running down a nearby hill and flooded across the road ahead of them. Pericles braked, slowing to a stop. The goat could well be the symbol of Greece, Morag thought. They came from nowhere, going nowhere, following the fluting call of their goatherd, their bells providing the counterpoint to
the timeless music of the scene. They had such pretty cars!
“I love Greek goats!” Morag exclaimed.
Pericles eyed her lazily. “Well, you said that easily enough!” he observed.
Instantly she was all confusion. “That’s different!” she
murmured.
“So I see!”
“Oh, Pericles, don’t be beastly!”
“The remedy is in your own hands.”
She searched his face looking for some sign that he understood how she felt, but apart from a fleeting flash of amusement in his eyes, he might have been carved from granite.
“I don’t understand,” she said faintly.
“Oh yes, you do!” He let in the clutch and the car moved slowly forward again. “I won’t wait forever,” he added, giving her a look that held so much in it that she felt a great rush of warmth for him.
“I l-love you too!”
“Next best to the goats?”
That struck her as funny and she giggled. “No, I love you best of all!”
He pulled the car into the side of the road, a pleased smile on his lips. “Now that,” he said, “deserves some kind of a reward, don’t you think? Bravely said, Morag! Was it so very difficult?”
She was a little surprised to find that she had finally said it after all. “I love you very much!” she repeated.
He put a hand on either side of her face, smoothing back her hair with his thumbs. Her green eyes grew almost as dark as his. Then his mouth touched hers in a gentle salute. But, almost immediately, he had put her away from him and had started up the car again, giving all his concentration to the road ahead.
There was no one else at Rhamnous. The ancient shrine slept under the hot sun, disturbed only the occasional bird, hopping over the fallen marble pillars, or soaring in the thermals that surrounded the headland. It was just as beautiful as Morag remembered it. The mountains in the distance rose in rugged grandeur on the other side of the ink-blue sea. The dark, black-green of the pine trees offered a pleasing cool shade from where they could see right over the delightful view that the ruined fort on the headland afforded Pericles, having bought the entry tickets, took Morag by the hand and guided her along the rough path towards the two abandoned temples that had once been the centre of the worship of Nemesis, and Thetis with her interest in justice, custom and equity.
“I brought some sandwiches,” Morag said. “They’re in my knapsack.”
He took them out, placing them carefully on a flat stone and arranging the bottles he had bought around them. “They’re a bit squashed. My fault, I’m afraid. I put the beer on top of them. What else have you got in here?”
Morag looked away from him. “Not much. Just my night things and - and the tent.”
“All, yes, the tent!” he grinned. “Weren’t you going to get rather hungry if this was all the food you brought with you?”
“I have some money,” she explained.
“I'm surprised. Did Delia pay for her own ticket?”
So it had come! The battle had opened with a vengeance and, although she had been expecting it, she felt quite unprepared to deal with it.
“Dora took it out of the housekeeping,” she confessed. “I don’t think she thought I had enough money to pay for it myself. I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t paid for the dress! But you mustn’t blame her, Perry! It was all my doing!”
“Was it indeed?”
Morag accepted the sandwich he held out to her, though when she bit into it she couldn’t have told if it was ham or fish, or what it was. It was impossible to see what Pericles was thinking, for he had his face turned away from her and all she could see was his thick black hair and the way it curled up at h
is neck, as if it had a life of its own. What would he do if she were to reach out her hand and give that curl a pull? Would he know the delight she found in touching him and in having him touch her? Her face flamed at the thought.
“Why did you want to take Delia to Eleusis on her own?” she asked him. Her voice sounded husky and very unsure and she gave herself a little mental shake in an attempt to pull herself together. This was no moment for dreaming, she rebuked herself. This was the moment on which her whole future depended.
“To annoy you,” he said quietly.
Morag looked at him quickly. “But why?”
He turned his eyes on her, studying her gravely with an enigmatic expression. “I thought it might help you to get it all together; It did, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean!” she denied.
“Morag, if you say that once more, I’ll take you home now and leave you to stew in your own juice! I’ll give you five minutes in which to tell me all about Delia and then we can both forget all about her. She never was as important as you imagined.
“She was to me!” Morag kept her tone even with difficulty. She was afraid that she was going to burst into tears. “I saw the way you looked at her when we arrived in England. But it was too late, wasn’t it? You were already committed to me, but it was she you wanted to kiss and-” She broke off, horrified by the sight of her own jealousy so plainly revealed for him to see.
“And she would be more than willing to take me from you. Is that it?”
She nodded in earnest now. “But I couldn’t let her have you. I couldn’t, Perry! I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t!”
“Didn’t it ever occur to you, my love, that I might have had some ideas on the subject? If I’d wanted Delia, don’t you think I could have got out of marrying you? I’d had one marriage where neither of us cared very much for the other. Do you think I’d want to go through that again?”
She stopped crying and stared at him. “But you were - you did! I mean, you married me!”
He gave her a mocking look. “Exactly!”
“D-didn’t Delia attract you at all?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up into a smile. “Not at all!”