Songs of Blue and Gold (20 page)

She was eager to talk, but about herself; how she had been married to a Greek, who had died ten years ago. Leaving her relatively wealthy, it seemed. She chattered about his business – how he had come originally from Crete, where the family made a fortune from sultanas, and he had turned to other dried fruits and packaging. Rarely did she return to Britain.

She touched on life in Corfu when she arrived in 1965 – the voracious bedbugs and mosquitoes, the unspeakable smells and lack of modern drainage. ‘Of course I read the
Paradise
book. But despite what Adie wrote, it was never an Eden. He glossed over all the inconveniences and difficulties. It was still primitive when I first came here.'

‘You can still find the places, though,' ventured Melissa, glad to be back on the subject. ‘It's not as if they've vanished, or been demolished. And the colours are still there, the patterns in the sea, and the sunsets.'

‘Only in some places. Development – they went about it all the wrong way at first here. They'd ruined half the island before anyone woke up. Adie hated it. You should have heard
him rant on. It was one of the rare times when his sense of humour deserted him. “They've
spoiled
it all!” he'd shout and he'd be in a rage. It made him angry –
really
angry.'

Over tiny cups of sweet coffee, the conversation meandered away again to other topics. Alexandros opened up enough to tell them about a trip he was planning to Egypt for some archaeological research, the grant from Athens University which would pay for it. Theodora asked about Melissa's life in England and Melissa managed to avoid any more unnecessary untruths by telling her she was an archivist by training and had recently been living in Kent. She tried asking her again about Elizabeth, but Theodora shook her head as if a faint recall had slipped away again.

Lunch over, as they prepared to part, Theodora said, ‘Come and see me if you like. Villa Krassadikis in Sotiriotissa.'

Melissa doubted that she would, but smiled and thanked her.

Alexandros was thoughtful as they walked out of the café together.

‘She's obviously lived quite a life,' said Melissa. ‘How did you meet her?'

‘I've known her since I was a child.'

The same answer he had given when she'd asked about Adie. It implied long-term familiarity, yet he had first described her as an acquaintance. Melissa had the distinct impression that Alexandros was not being as straight with her as he pretended.

‘Are you going back to work?' she asked.

‘No.'

‘Oh, I thought . . .'

‘I have just finished a project. Now I'm doing some research for the next.'

Staring past him she watched a lizard slither up a crack in the stucco building. ‘What do you—?' She was about to ask him exactly what he did, but he cut her off.

‘You ask all these questions,' he said, ‘but you don't answer any yourself.'

‘I do!'

‘Not really. You tell me one version, and Theodora another. Which is true?'

She hung her head.

‘Perhaps neither is true, or you can't remember what you said? It doesn't fill me with confidence that any of this has a chance of fair representation, whatever you are planning to do with it!'

‘I'm not planning anything. That's not –'

He stopped walking abruptly. ‘What business is any of this of yours?'

‘I told you,' she whispered.

‘I don't think so,' he said brusquely.

It was a full-blown argument. She could not believe how quickly it escalated. His anger was real.

‘Just leave it, OK?' he said.

‘But—'

‘Forget it all.'

He strode off leaving her in the middle of the street. She stared at his back, watching the way his jacket swung loosely from his tense frame. It seemed a complete overreaction. She was at a loss to understand why he was so defensive.

Furious, Melissa turned into the maze of streets which
sucked the crowds down into the old town. Tall, shuttered buildings rose on either side of the narrow lanes, giving a feel of Venice without the watery lanes.

She had done nothing to deserve the outburst from Alexandros. She took deep breaths and tried to put the conversation out of her mind.

Several shops were selling fancy-shaped bottles of the kumquat liqueur she'd tried with Christos, a viscous orange concoction that might have seemed palatable in small sips under candlelight, but which in daylight, uniformly present in everything from tiny glass citrus fruits, exotic bottles and huge flagons, hinted at cruel poisons, curiously sinister and factory-made.

Skeins of gold jewellery gleamed from windows on both sides of the street, beside kiosks selling fragrant custard doughnuts, leather goods, belts and handbags. Fur coats, suede coats and knitwear filled racks outside, ready for the first chills of winter.

She went into a few shops half-heartedly, buying nothing.

What should she make of Theodora? Had she seemed to recognise Elizabeth's name at first? But then the moment had slipped away. Had she learned anything new? Not really. It was another near miss on the trail of the sinuous truth about Julian Adie. And all the while, looking for her mother was like trying to hold a melody in a minor key while a band is playing in the hard bright blare of C major.

IN KASSIOPE THE
next morning boats were crowded into the harbour.

Melissa passed a couple of hours listlessly wandering and drinking coffee. It seemed a typical resort town on a Greek island, larger and more commercial than Kalami. A ruined castle perched above the town, its broken outline speared by trees. Down on the quayside a few whitewashed one- and two-storey buildings were testament to its past as a fishing port before the tourist hotels were built. In ancient times, she read in the guidebook, it provided refuge for sailors fleeing war as well as storms. The Roman emperor Nero once sang at the altar of the temple of Jupiter Cassius, a god of the seafarers.

In a shop selling video games and DVDs, she bought a cheap compact disc of Debussy's piano music. ‘
Clair de Lune
' was the third track.

Back in Kalami, she played it on the basic player in the apartment, and let the yearning notes pull her to the balcony, watching the light stroke the surface ripples of the sea, feeling the October chill and the sadness.

Her mother was gone. She would not find ways to deal
with that loss here. The evolving patterns in the music tugged at her thoughts. In free fall, she was back in their tiny family – her mother, her father and her – but with the disconcerting feeling that something was wrong with the version of events she had understood to be true but could not isolate quite what that was.

Yes, Elizabeth had always been quiet and reserved, but she had been honest with her daughter; too honest perhaps, when she had been too young really to understand adult problems. At the age of nine Melissa would rather not have known her father's manifest shortcomings as a husband.

Now, of course, she wished she had taken more notice. As a child she had simply closed her ears because it was not information she wanted to possess, nor for it to possess her. She knew now of course that it had, although not in the way she had feared. It was an insidious knowing that undermined her now, as an adult, and made her wary of both separation and reconciliation.

She was back to the unpleasant reality of being betrayed: that you begin to question your own judgement. The feeling swells that nothing was ever as you believed at the time. Your husband is not the person you thought he was. And your hopes and dreams for the future are exposed as ridiculous.

Was that how Grace felt when she found out Adie had been unfaithful for the first time? And when he was caught out, was he sorry for his betrayal, or merely that he had failed to get away with it?

At about six o'clock a heavy knock on the door startled her.

Melissa wondered if she could ignore it. But the music was playing. Whoever it was would know she was there. Reluctantly, she opened the door.

It was Alexandros, clutching a bottle of wine.

‘I'm sorry,' he said bluntly. ‘I should not have said all those things yesterday. I was wrong.' He pushed a hand nervously through his wild curls.

There was nothing for it but to invite him in.

Standing inside the door, he came straight to the point. ‘Before you arrived there was someone else asking questions. A man – an American. I thought you were connected with him.'

‘An American man? Why would you presume we were connected?'

‘He was asking the same questions as you were.'

That took her aback. ‘Asking about Julian Adie and my mother?' She was incredulous. ‘Why on earth—?'

‘Not exactly about your mother. But, like you, he was looking for information about all the people who had known Julian Adie in the nineteen sixties. He was also very interested in the stories about the woman who drowned.'

Far too late she seemed to hear something that Christos had said, and that she had let go at the time. He had asked her whether she was another one looking for information about the drowning.

‘Why did he want to know?'

‘He wouldn't say at first. Then he said he was writing a biography. There was . . . a rather unsympathetic quality about him. He seemed to have some, ah, rather unpleasant theories about Julian and his connections with people here. We didn't give him much help. That is, some people spoke
to him but they were trying to make something of it for themselves. Most of us just didn't believe him. He wasn't talking about the Julian we knew.'

Alexandros gave an acid smile and then seemed to loosen up. His shoulders released and there was a glint of amusement as he said, ‘He, er, went around the village every morning saying “
Kalamari! Kalamari!
” to everyone. We called him the Squid-Greeter . . .!'

Melissa managed a smile. The news made her feel uneasy. ‘You must get all sorts of people turning up here asking questions about Julian Adie, surely.'

‘Some, yes. Normally you can tell that it's simple interest or curiosity. In any case, it really is not that many people who come for that now . . . his work has rather fallen from fashion.'

‘So when I turned up out of the blue . . .'

He inclined his head. ‘It seemed . . . a strange coincidence. So I'm sorry if you found me . . . suspicious.'

‘Are you saying that you do believe me then, about my mother? What's made you change your mind?'

Alexandros looked down and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He extracted a postcard, looked at it for what seemed too long, and then, almost reluctantly, held it out. ‘This.'

It was not a card but a photograph.

It was so similar to the photographs Elizabeth had unearthed that it might have been from the same film. Melissa brought her hand to her mouth.

‘You recognise it?'

She nodded.

There was a crucial difference, though. In this picture a group of people was posed on the rocks.

‘There's a date on the back,' he said. ‘July 1968.'

Melissa held it and peered carefully at the row of faces. Surely . . . ‘Is that Julian Adie . . .? And—' her heart started pounding. ‘That's my mother,' she said, pointing at the image of a young woman with long blonde hair.

‘That's what I thought,' said Alexandros.

‘How could you know?'

‘You look so alike. Look at the shape of the chin and the set of her eyes.'

He was right.

‘Where did you get it from?'

‘I found it in a drawer. It must have belonged to my parents.'

So there it was. Proof positive that Elizabeth had once been in Kalami with Julian Adie. She felt weak, suddenly. She had so nearly gone home without seeing it. But then she was overwhelmed by more questions.

‘Why did you wait until now to show it to me?' Her mouth was so dry the words felt sticky.

‘I found it only yesterday.'

Her cheeks flushed tight and hot. ‘Oh.'

How could he know the extent of her doubts, the awful suspicion that she was chasing air by coming here?

‘Sorry, I didn't mean it to come out like that.'

‘Would you like to have it?'

‘Are you sure?'

He nodded.

‘Do you know who else is in the picture?'

‘That's Ekaterina . . .'

So it was. Melissa had not recognised the slim, willowy woman.

‘That looks like Manos,' she pointed at a man in his sixties, ‘but it can't be.'

‘It's his father, the older Manos. That's Clive Stilwell. He and his wife Mary were friends of Julian's. They lived over by Kouloura. He was a historian, and became friends with my father Nikolaos, who is on the end there.'

Melissa made a note on a scrap of paper.

‘Your father – is he—?'

Alexandros shook his head. ‘He died five years ago – and my mother last year.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘I think it must have been given to my father – it doesn't look like one of ours.'

‘You've no idea who gave it to him?'

‘My guess would be Clive Stilwell, but I can't be sure.'

He was right. There was no means of knowing.

‘You don't need to keep apologising,' said Melissa.

He handed over the wine, and she suggested they drink it together.

Alexandros sat down and seemed to unwind a little.

Melissa was relieved too. She understood what had been going on. There had been a reason for the tension in their exchanges, and now it was gone. They could talk properly now.

She fetched a corkscrew and two glasses. She could not help thinking about what Christos had told her, what they had in common, after all. He had married a woman who then left him and went to live in Athens. While his wife may or may not have fallen in love with someone else, what she did know was that he was hurt in the same way she was. How was he coping with what had happened to his marriage, and was it any different for men?