The Beads of Nemesis Page 11

  Morag wanted to deny it, but there were no words that came to her. She struggled vainly to defend herself when all she wanted to do was run away and hide. She owed that much to Pericles! She had to say something! This time she couldn’t let them think what they liked about her. This time it was Pericles who would suffer.

  “I remember it well too,” she said in a small voice. She clenched her fists and drove herself on relentlessly. “Pericles had just said I’d never be free - ” But her husband wasn’t even listening. He had picked up a pile of paintings and had walked out of the room.

  Morag thought the party was going on forever. It was time the children were in bed, she thought, and wondered if they would think her very officious if she suggested that they should take themselves off. Peggy was flushed with success from the praise she had received from her drawings and probably wouldn’t mind too much, but Kimon was deep in conversation with a man Morag had not previously noticed. Judging by the boy’s absorbed expression they were talking about coins. Any moment now and Kimon’s precious Spartan ‘cartwheel’ would be passed from hand to hand, while he told them yet again why it was so heavy and why it was made of nothing more valuable than iron.

  But, rather to her surprise, the children were glad to go and disappeared without a murmur. Perhaps they had known that the party was about to break up anyway and knew they weren’t going to miss anything. Morag stood beside her husband and mother-in-law and wished them all goodnight to their friends, a fixed smile on her face. She knew now that she would never be happy with Pericles, and she thought the knowledge would destroy her, so badly did it hurt to know that he would never love her but that, on the contrary, he wasn’t even sufficiently interested to know that it was he who held her heart and not - nor ever could be - Takis Kapandriti!

  What a relief it was to divest herself of her golden dress and to put on a cotton nightdress and a thin, filmy negligee that barely covered her at all. She went to take a last look at the children and found Kimon in tears.

  “Morag, I’ve lost my coin! I took it into the garden to see what it looked like by moonlight and I dropped it on the path, and I can’t find it!”

  She put her arms round him and hugged him tight. I’ll have a look,” she offered.

  “But supposing you don’t find it?”

  “I shan’t go to bed until I do!” she assured him. “I’ll give it to you in the morning. Don’t worry about it now!” But her confidence took a dive when she had crawled up and down the path on her hands and knees and still hadn’t found the coin. She didn’t even mind when she heard Takis humming to himself as he came up from looking at the sea and found her there, stopping only a couple of feet away from where she was kneeling.

  “Don’t just stand there!” she said crossly. “Help me look for Kimon’s coin! He’ll be desolate if he’s lost it!” Takis obediently fell on his knees beside her and began feeling round for the coin. “Why do you make yourself the servant of these children?” he asked her.

  She answered deliberately. “What other role have I here?”

  “Morag.”

  With a sinking heart she knew that Pericles had already seen her and, worse still, that he had seen Takis with her. “Kimon’s lost his coin!” she explained.

  Pericles bent down until his eyes were practically on the same level as hers. “I warned you, Morag,” he bit out at her. He lifted her bodily to her feet. “Go into the house at once!” She looked down at the inadequate negligee she was wearing and hurried to obey him. He came after her almost immediately, catching up with her in the hall.

  “While you are my wife, you will not entertain your lovers at my front door!” he told her.

  “But I wasn’t! I was looking for Kimon’s coin!”

  For a long moment he stared angrily at her, then he opened the door to his bedroom and thrust her inside before him. “If you want to be loved,” he said tautly, “you can make up your mind to be loved by me!”

  She backed away from him, almost falling on to the bed behind her. “But I didn’t go out to meet Takis - I wouldn't!” His hands slipped her negligee off her shoulders, ignoring her protests. He pushed her back against the pillows, his lips taking possession of hers with a fierceness that took her breath away. She made a last effort to prevent him from taking her more firmly into his arms, but her own need to give way to him was too strong for her.

  “Oh, Pericles!” she breathed.

  She felt him against her and she clung to him, welcoming his warm hands against her flesh. She didn’t care how it had happened, she didn’t care what happened afterwards, but to belong utterly to her husband was the fulfilment of everything she had ever dreamed of for herself.

  Pericles was no longer beside her when she awoke. She started up, afraid that he had left her alone, but then she heard him splashing in the bathroom and knew he would soon be back, and that she would have to say something to him when he did. The door swung open and he came through it, his eyes brilliant as he looked at her. Reddening despite herself, she looked away from him and her eye fell on Kimon’s Spartan coin on the bedside table. She reached out for it, her heart pounding out a new, unfamiliar message within her.

  “You found the coin!” she accused him. “You knew I was telling you the truth all the time!”

  Pericles came over to the bed. He leaned over her, putting a hand on either side of her slim body.

  “Yes, I knew,” he said.

  “Then - ” She blushed vividly. “I think you might have told me you knew,” she said.

  There was a curious look in his eyes and she found herself thinking how white and strong his teeth were, and that his mouth was every bit as strong and firm as it had felt against hers.

  “Are you expecting an apology?” he asked her, the look in his eyes deliberately mocking. “I don’t have to apologise for making love to my own wife” he told her, as arrogant as she had ever seen him. “Not even to her!” he added. He bent his head and took an unhurried toll of her lips. “Especially not to her!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Pericles had gone out. Morag passed a restless half-hour trying to persuade herself that she didn’t care where he had gone, but she failed dismally in this that she was all the more pleased to see her mother-in-law coming into the dining-room for her breakfast. Dora gave her a long, interested look as she sat down, smiling suddenly with all the warmth that made some people say she was the most charming woman they had ever met.

  “You have a glow this morning, my dear. I think I shall have to paint you again like you are now. Perhaps Pericles would like it better. Positively complacent!” Her smile lit her eyes and died again. “It has happened to other women before, you know!”

  Morag was getting used to Dora’s odd, slanting shafts of humour. “But never to me!” she said. She eyed her mother- in-law across the table. “Nobody can take that away from me!”

  “Why should anyone want to?” Dora asked dryly. “Always before, someone has.”

  “Delia?”

  Morag nodded. “Did Perry tell you about her?”

  “Not really,” Dora said with disinterest. “I think he mentioned her name once.”

  “Most men prefer her.”

  “Oh? I thought she had always been jealous of you? Didn’t she try and take your young man away from you?” Morag stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “Kimon told me,” Dora said simply. “He had heard you and Pericles talking about it. Children hear far more than they are ever meant to. I can’t say that young man sounds much of a loss. Do he and Delia intend to marry?”

  “No,” Morag said. “David is dead. He was killed in a car crash.”

  Dora yawned. “I suppose she was driving?”

  Morag maintained an uncomfortable silence. It was odd to think about David now. She knew now that she had never loved him, and that her liking for him had been rather uncertain, bred of habit and the comfortable certainty that sooner or later they would come together in a

  more perma
nent relationship as other people did.

  “Well?” said Dora.

  “I never thought of it before,” Morag wondered at herself, “but Delia never did have any particular boy-friend of her own. Do you suppose that was why she wanted David?”

  “Quite likely!”

  “David wasn’t really in love with me. He took one look at Delia and that was that. I might just as well not have existed!”

  “You must have been very young to have minded so much,” Dora commented. “He sounds a very dull young man, with not much understanding of life if he thought this Delia would suit him better. I hope you told him so?” “Well, no,” Morag confessed.

  “But you decided he should have what he wanted?”

  “If it was Delia he wanted.”

  “I must say you were quite as stupid as Pericles says you were! It was she who killed him, I suppose?”

  Morag bowed her head. “Did Pericles tell you that too?” “Pericles tells me nothing! And Kimon, who would tell me, did not know that! But now you are not so young and silly, ne? You gave this young man away, but that was an extravagance of youth! You would not give your present happiness away so easily to your sister, or to anyone else. Have you told Pericles that?”

  Morag avoided the question. “She’s my stepsister.”

  Dora made an exasperated gesture. “It is only an excuse to say you are shy!” she muttered. “I hope he beats you if you don’t tell him very soon! It was bad enough that Susan should only tolerate what she should have seized with gratitude, but with you it is quite different, and I am glad it should be so! I want my son to be loved above all else! Whether he in turn loves you is a matter of indifference to me. It matters to me only that you should love him and that he should know it!”

  “I love Pericles very much,” Morag said simply.

  “Tell that to him!” Dora retorted.

  “How do you know I haven’t?” Morag burst out.

  “Have you?”

  “No.” Morag wished she had cultivated the art of telling lies better and were not quite so naturally truthful. It was true enough that she had not told Pericles anything, but surely, sometimes, actions spoke louder than words? She sighed, knowing that it was the words that Pericles wanted, and words never came easily to her, and were now harder than ever to find when they mattered so much. She lifted her head. “Not that it’s any business of yours!” she added to her mother-in-law.

  Dora gave her a quick look of appreciation. “Quite right!” she applauded. “It would have been much easier for you if you had a proper honeymoon away from us all. I have tried to keep out of it, my dear, but it’s a bit difficult when we are all in the same house and on top of one another the whole time. I apologise.”

  It was the last reaction that Morag had expected. “It doesn’t matter,” she said awkwardly. “I don’t mind - much. Only don’t hope for too much. Pericles only married me to look after the children. I can’t - can’t expect that he should want me to hang round his neck all the time!”

  Dora frowned. “Don’t be too unselfish!” she warned. There was a short silence while Morag digested this, and then the older woman went on casually, “By the way, I thought I might take the children out tonight. They want to see the Son et Lumiere of the Acropolis, and I want them to see the Dora Stratou Theatre of Greek Dance. It’s right that they should take a proper interest in their heritage. Would you care to come too?” Morag looked as confused as she felt. “I don’t know,” she said. “Won’t Pericles think it odd if we all go out without him?”

  “Pericles is going out himself,” his mother let fall. “He won’t be back till very late, if at all.”

  It was typical, Morag thought, that she should be the last to know! “Where is he going?” she asked.

  Dora smiled faintly. “In Greece a man often goes out alone and it’s seldom that he tells his womenfolk where he’s going. Pericles is no exception to that!”

  “But he’s only half Greek!”

  “He is living here,” Dora pointed out. “So I take it you will come with us?”

  Morag nodded. “Thank you,” she said. But she didn’t feel like thanking anyone. Her pleasure in the morning was quite destroyed. She sighed and poured herself some more coffee, just as Kimon and Peggy came in from the beach.

  “Did you find it? Morag, did you find my coin? Please say you did! I would have come back and helped you look, but I heard Daddy talking to

  you.” His eyes grew round at the memory. “He sounded awfully angry!” Morag’s features took on a calmness she was far from feeling. What else had Kimon heard? Pericles’ angry accusation that he wouldn’t allow her to entertain her lovers at his front door? Really, it was quite impossible to hold a private conversation in this house!

  “He found your coin,” she said aloud.

  “Daddy did? But he didn’t spend any time looking for it at all-”

  “He - he came upon it immediately!” Morag cut him off. “Oh,” said Kimon. “Well, I’m glad it’s found. It’s my most precious possession in all the world. Do you think I should thank him?”

  “Of course you should!” Peggy chimed in. “Wasn’t it a super party last night? I thought I’d die when Grandma showed all my drawings with hers, but they didn’t look too bad, did they? There was one man there who wanted to take one of them home with him, but Daddy said no. It was the drawing I did of you, Morag. Did you look at it properly?”'

  “It depends what you mean by properly,” Morag teased her.

  “I mean, did you think it looked like you?”

  Morag had thought so. She had her head flung back and she was laughing. She had been surprised to find herself thinking that the girl in the picture was more than a little bit pretty. She was striking to look at, and quite different from the way she thought of herself.

  “I suppose it does. I don’t see myself very often - except in the looking glass.”

  “No, one doesn’t,” Peggy agreed, “I thought,” she went on happily, “that Grandma was going to show the painting she did of you too. Why didn’t you, Grandma? I think it’s terribly good!”

  A sudden bark of laughter escaped from Dora’s throat. She put up a hand to her mouth as if to prevent it from happening again. “Daddy said no,” she said dryly.

  “Daddy did?” both children said together. “Why?” “You’ll have to ask him,” Dora suggested, but her eyes were on Morag’s flushed face and, underneath, she was still laughing. “Meanwhile, will you hurry up and finish your breakfast or we shall never get anything done today. Parties are all very well, but they do disorganise one so!” Morag didn’t see Pericles all day. Not that she would have known what to say to him if she had. She would have liked to have known, quite as much as the children, why he had refused to allow the man to take away Peggy’s drawing of herself.

  Whichever way she looked at it, it seemed an odd thing to do. She wished with all her heart that she could think it was because he wanted it for himself, but she knew that to be an idle hope before she had even voiced it to herself. Why should he? All he had to do was ask Peggy to do another drawing of herself any time she chose.

  It was not until they were all in Dora’s car on their way to Athens that evening that she thought to ask Peggy who the man had been who had wanted the drawing.

  “Adoni? He’s a cousin of ours.” Peggy stretched lazily. “He pretends to be Takis’ twin, because they’re almost the same age, but he isn’t, of course. They aren’t even brothers, though they’ve always done practically everything together, Kimon and I are the only real twins in the family!”

  “I don’t see why he should want a drawing of me,” Morag went on worrying at the point. “I’ve never seen him before!”

  Kimon looked kindly at her. “He would have given it to Takis,” he explained as if her were speaking to a simpleton. “Takis said he wanted it to put it up in his room.”

  Morag gave him a quick glance. “Are you sure?”

  Kimon nodded. “I don’t suppose Taki
s really wanted it,” he consoled her. “He probably thought it would annoy Daddy.”

  Morag suppressed a strong wish to strangle Takis and his cousin. If it had been anyone else but Kimon to say such a thing, she would have discounted it as his imagination, but Kimon was not given to fantasies and his lack of interest in the whole subject was made clear when he changed the subject back to his beloved coin, eagerly telling his grandmother that he was sure it was one of the best examples of Spartan coinage still extant in Greece.

  But Morag could not forget what he had said as easily. For the first time she began to wonder in earnest about Susan, what she had been like, and whether she had really been in love with Takis. There had to be some reason why Takis should want to hurt Pericles any way he could? Was it because he hadn’t been as sure as he pretended to be that Susan had preferred him to her own husband? Oh well, no one could tell her that now. Just as she would never be able to ask David if Delia had only run after him because she had been unable to bear the fact that David preferred her stepsister. What unhappiness such conceit in one’s own attraction could cause! Was that the sin that the ancient Greeks had

  called hubris, the crime of thinking that one could be master of one’s own destiny, of presuming to think that one could take anything merely because one wanted it? Morag fingered the shells round her neck with a faint shiver. It was Nemesis whose duty it was to punish all such presumption. On whom would her vengeance fall ' next?

  “I’m tired, Grandma!” Peggy complained, breaking into Morag’s train of thought. “Why did we have to come tonight? I’m tired!”

  “You slept late enough this morning,” her grandmother told her.

  “But I’m tired!”

  “Hush,” said Morag. “You can sleep afterwards.”

  “But not for ages! The Son et Lumiere doesn’t begin until nine o’clock!”

  “Doesn’t it?” Morag exclaimed. “But it gets dark much earlier than that!”

  Dora compressed her lips together signifying her displeasure. “I thought you’d like to hear it in English. The children understand English better than any other language too. Also it fits in better with the Dora Stratou. Theatre.”