The Beads of Nemesis (8 page)

“He’s only half Greek.”

Her father chuckled. “He looks Greek, and I daresay he makes love like a Greek. Did you tell him the truth about the David business, or did he guess?”

Morag gave him a quick glance. “I didn’t think you knew!”

“I didn’t know. I thought it likely, no more than that. I should have spoken up, I suppose. I didn’t know what to do! I’m glad you’ve found someone to look after you. Too many people were ready to take advantage of you and you would have given them all everything you had. Pericles looks as though he knows how to keep you well in hand. I think you’ve chosen well there!”

Morag looked at him as though she had never really seen him before. “It was a lovely wedding, Daddy,” she said. “Thank you for that.”

“It was the least I could do. Ah, here’s Delia. Did you enjoy the wedding too?” he asked his stepdaughter.

“Heavens, no! I thought it was rather pathetic, actually. Morag may think she’s got Perry where she wants him, but it can’t possibly last. I give her a year, and then he’ll be bored with her as David was!”

“Delia!”

Delia smiled lazily at her stepfather. “Don’t look so shocked! You know it’s true! By the way, Morag, where are you going for your honeymoon? I suppose you are having one?”

Morag’s eyes glittered dangerously. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

Delia laughed loudly. “Well, hadn’t you better find out?”

“Do you know?” Morag challenged her.

“Of course!”

Hurt to the quick, Morag ran from the room, running slap into Pericles in the hall. “How could you?’
^;
she demanded of him. “How could you tell her and not me?” “Tell her what?”

“Where we’re going!”

“But you know where we’re going, Morag!”

“I don’t!” she stormed at him. She lifted a hand as if to strike him, but

he was before her, clipping both her wrists behind her back.

“We’re going back to Greece, where else? Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes,” she admitted uncertainly. “But why tell her?”“Why let her know you mind?” he countered. He let her go with a suddenness that made her stagger. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”

“I haven’t packed yet.” She bit her lip. “I thought - ”

He gave her a push towards the stairs, sighing. “Go and pack, Morag.”

She met her stepmother coming down the stairs and stood aside for her to pass, hoping that she wouldn’t notice how close she was to tears. It was a forlorn hope.

“Oh, Morag, I thought you would be gone! Crying already? I’m not surprised! It seems so strange for you to be the wife of a foreigner. I hope you manage to get used to their funny ways. Delia says it wouldn’t do for her at all! Perry has been telling her some of the things that are expected of a wife in Greece. She says he only married you to look after the children anyway!”

Morag managed a light, amused laugh, helped on by the freezing anger that gripped her. She ran up the remaining stairs and threw her possessions into her suitcase, uncaring as to whether they creased or not. She shut the case with a bang and took a last look around the room. The necklace of shells lay on the bedside-table and she picked them up, longing to smash them as Peggy had smashed her necklace at Rhamous. Pericles had promised, and he hadn’t even told her a simple thing like that they were going back to Greece. She put the shells round her neck, not knowing what else to do with them, and went downstairs again.

Pericles stood up the moment she appeared in the door-way. He took a step towards her, taking both her hands in his.

“Ready, darling? I have been trying to convince your father that we’ll

be pleased to see him any time in Athens. You’ll have to add your persuasions to mine!”

“But of course we’d love to have you,” Morag heard herself say.

Her father chuckled. “When you’ve had time to get used to one another we might think about paying you a visit.” “Do, sir. Morag will like to see you, won’t you, sweetheart?”

Morag felt hypnotised into agreeing with anything he said. She still felt cold with anger at his betrayal, but it didn’t seem to matter very much. Nothing mattered, not even the acquisitive look in Delia’s eyes that at another time would have filled her with despair.

“The car is waiting to take you to the airport,” Mrs. Grant told them busily, her eyes snapping at the sight of Pericles holding Morag’s hand. “I don’t suppose you want us to come with you.”

Pericles grinned at her. “Quite right. I haven’t had an opportunity to kiss my bride yet, and where better than in a comfortable car?”

“Oh, but - ” said Morag.

“She’s shy,” Delia said, sounding bored. “You’d think she’d never been kissed before!”

Pericles put his arms round Morag and hugged her tight, kissing her still pink cheek. “That’s what I love about her,” he said. “I’m Greek enough to want to come first with my wife.” He kissed her again, very gently, but as if he meant it. “Do I come first?” he whispered in her ear. She buried her face in his chest and clenched her fists, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. It was only to herself that she could acknowledge that with her he would always come first, last, and all the time, no matter what he did.

CHAPTER FIVE

“It sounds a funny sort of wedding to me,” Kimon said.

“You look just the same as before,” Peggy added.

She felt just the same too, Morag reflected. The trip to England and the few days spent with her family were like the events of a dream. Pericles had hurried her into the car that had taken them to the airport, but he hadn’t kissed her. All he had said was that she must be tired after such a long day and that he hoped she wouldn’t find the flight back to Greece too much for her.

Morag had been aware of a dull feeling of disappointment which had

lasted for the whole length of the journey. She had felt like a puppet, having her passport stamped and her luggage checked, and even when she had sat in the car beside Pericles for the short drive to his mother’s villa.

Once they had arrived there, she had been sure that everything would change for the better, but it had not.

She had got out of the car, stiff-limbed and more than a little weary, but undeniably glad to be back in this lovely house, with its private pathway down to the sea. It had looked grey in the moonlight and friendly, just as she had remembered it.

“Aren’t you glad to be home?” she had said to Pericles as he had bent to pick their luggage out of the boot.

“Is it home to you already?” he had smiled at her.

She had been a bit surprised herself, but there had been no doubt in her own mind that this was home, whereas her father’s house had been no more than a memory of childhood to her. She had nodded her head, feeling lost and a bit presumptuous for implying that Kyria Holmes’ villa in some way belonged to her too.

“I expect my mother and the children are already in bed and asleep,” he had said, catching up with her at the front door. “Which is where you ought to be. I’ll put your things in your old room and you can stay there for tonight.”

She had felt quite unable to argue with him about it, especially as she knew from experience how the slightest sound echoed up and down the hall, and the last thing she had wanted was to have Pericles’ mother out on them. Besides, she had reasoned, feeling more and more leaden by the minute, it would only be for the one night, or what was left of it, and she could make the change into his room the following day. She had known, of course, that she would never find the courage to suggest such a thing herself, but she had been confident that he would insist on it, if for no better reason than for the look of the thing.

But he had done nothing of the sort. In fact he had done nothing at all. She might just as well not be married to him at all! She had hardly seen him in the last few days and, when she had seen him, she had found herself rendered almost completely tongue-tied, so nervous had she been of saying anything untoward. She was bound to admit that he had been more than patient with this sudden

affliction that had taken her, but then perhaps he hadn’t noticed that she had lost her tongue and that she started like a nervous rabbit whenever he looked at her! Oh, how she despised herself when she thought of it!

“I’m glad you went,” Peggy assured her happily. “You wouldn’t have brought back my stamp collection if you hadn’t gone.”

“It wasn’t much fun while you were away, though,” Kimon told her. “I much prefer it when you are here. Daddy says he does too.” Morag’s heart lurched within her. When had he said that? she wondered.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?” she asked the children. “We could take the bus somewhere, if you like?”

“Athens,” said Kimon with decision.

“It’s too hot in Athens,” Peggy argued. “I’d rather go swimming.” Kimon made a face at her. “You always want to go swimming!” He gave Morag a sudden smile that was very like his father’s. “What do you want to do? You ought to choose sometimes too.”

“You like swimming!” Peggy reminded her quickly, anxious that she was not going to get her own way after all.

“Yes, I do. But we went swimming this morning. I’d like to go to Athens too. I want to do some shopping

Both children groaned at that. “I hate shopping!” Kimon muttered. His face brightened, though, as a new idea struck him. “Yes, you go shopping, and we can go to the museum and see all the different coins there. I want to compare my Spartan coin with the ones they have there. We’d be quite all right on our own in the museum, truly we would! And we could all have an ice-cream outside afterwards.”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “I like to see the man there carrying a mountain of things on his tray. I don’t know how he remembers who wants what. May we do that, Morag?”

Glad to have found a compromise so easily, Morag said they would go immediately after lunch. Kyria Holmes, when told of the plan, thought at first she would like to go with them, but in the end she decided against it.

“Since you talked me into painting again,” she said to her daughter-in-law with a wry smile, “I have done little else. You must tell me if you think any of my canvases are good enough to show to Pericles.”

“I don’t know if I’d know,” Morag told her. “I’d love to see them, though. Are they all landscapes?”

“No, not at all.” The older woman’s eyes glinted in the sunlight. “I’ve been meaning to ask you to call me Dora,” she said. “I don’t think I should care for Mama - it’s bad enough that Perry calls me that! - and we can’t go on being formal forever.”

Morag’s face was filled with surprised pleasure. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Dora gave her an amused look. “I’m glad you like living here,” she went on coolly. “Pericles is afraid that you may be lonely as he had so much business to get through, but you seem to fill your days pretty well. I find it hard to believe as he does that you want your family to visit you quite yet! But you have only to ask - you know there is plenty of room!” Morag answered quickly, “I don’t think they’d want to come quite yet!” “No? Your stepsister longs to come to Greece, I’m told. Pericles says she’s a raving beauty. Perhaps I should paint her some time.”

Morag swallowed down the comment that beauty is as beauty does with difficulty. She thought Dora might have some difficulty in understanding the allusion, but she couldn’t possibly mistake the tone.

“If Pericles wants to ask her,” she began, “I should - should have no objection.”

Dora shrugged, unmoved by these wifely sentiments. “You’d better tell him that! But I should remember my dear, that Pericles is a man like any other, and the Greeks have always found it very hard to resist physical beauty - especially when there is nothing else to distract them!” Morag shrugged her shoulders. “That’s not my fault!” “No?” Morag, who had grown daily more at ease with Pericles’ mother, had forgotten how imperious she could be. “It would only take a word from you -”

“No. He arranged things this way. I’m not going to ask him for anything!”

Dora shrugged again. “Have you ever thought that it’s more generous sometimes to take than to give? Why don’t you have it out with him once and for all? At least he’d know what you wanted from him, and not just what you are willing to give, no matter how willingly!”

Morag shrank away from her impatience. “I couldn’t,” she said in a small voice.

“But how is he to know you’re in love with him if you don’t tell him?”

her mother-in-law demanded unanswerably.

“You don’t think he’s guessed?” Morag asked faintly. “Oh, don’t ask me! I’m only his mother! You’d better get on to Athens and do your shopping before I start giving you some very bad advice which you won’t take. I doted on my own husband, not that he cared whether I did or not as long as I was there to fulfill his needs. But Pericles is different. I’d say it was his English blood, but what else was his father? Susan’s indifference worried him very much, though she could hardly have married young Takis, no matter how much in love with him she fancied herself to be. Love grows after marriage, if you let it, but Pericles won’t see that. I can’t think why he married you!” Morag’s eyes filled with tears. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“My dear child, I keep telling you that Pericles is a full-grown man! I have no right to ask him any such thing. A man’s life is his own. It’s quite different for a woman. It’s her nature to respond and not to initiate, so she can be taught to love and to live her life subordinate to her husband’s. That is the Greek way.”

“Perry is only half Greek!”

Dora laughed. “Maybe, but he’s man enough for you, Morag Holmes, as you’ll find out one of these days!”

It wasn’t a very auspicious start to the afternoon and, by the time she had collected the children, they had missed the bus and had to wait for the next one in the burning heat of the afternoon, a prospect that didn’t please any of them. Morag and Peggy sat on a low wall by the side of the road, but Kimon was made of sterner stuff and spent the time spotting the different makes of cars that flashed past him.

“Look, there’s Takis!” he shouted after a few minutes. “He’ll take us to Athens. Make him stop, Morag! He won’t be able to see me!”

Morag stood up and waved her scarf half-heartedly. She rather hoped that Takis would go by without stopping, but with a screech from his brakes he drew in beside them, grinning broadly.