For a long moment they gazed at each other and then she waded out of the water and crossed the beach to a hollow in the sand surrounded by a horseshoe of boulders. Her shoes and a towel lay on an old travelling rug and she sat down and started to dry her legs.
Lomax crouched beside her and lit a cigarette. After a moment she held out her hand. “Do you mind?”
He gave her the cigarette without speaking and there was silence between them while she smoked it.
After a while she sighed and tossed it away. “What do you want me to say? That my life was ruined? That each day was a torment?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“It was all so long ago that it might have happened to someone else,” she said. “In any case, I was lucky. I became pregnant after a couple of months and they turned me out to fend for myself.”.”And the child?”
“I had a miscarriage.” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t have lived anyway. In those days half Greece was starving.”
“I’m sorry, Katina,” he said. “You’ll never know sorry.”
“But there’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Isn’t there? Remember what Father John said that day at The Little Ship? How men like me always left Other people to pay for our glory?”
She shook her head and said firmly. “Only the war was to blame. I told you once that it was a dark dream in which nothing that happened made any sense.”
“And from which some people never manage to awaken.”
“You mean my uncle?” She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid he’s never been able to forget. He lives on his own too much and broods.”
“On his own?”
“At the farm. He’s leased !t from me ever since the war. He’s come to spend an increasing amount of tune there over the years. It isn’t good for him.”
“Surely he must employ a housekeeper and labourers to work in the vineyard.”
“Only during the day. At night he prefers to be alone.”
“What about The Little Ship?”
“He took Nikoli into partnership years ago. He and Pimitri Paros run it between them.”
Lomax frowned. “Why Dimitri?”
She shrugged. “My uncle has always felt a responsibility towards him. His father was one of those who died at Fonchi.”
“And they all hate me,” he said. “Ah. except you. Why, Katina? Why should you be different?”
She pushed herself up and said lightly, “But you have given me no reason to hate you.”
She stood looking out to sea as the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon and Lomax got to his feet and moved to her shoulder.
“Why did you never marry?” he said softly. “A girl like you must have had offers.”
8 113
She turned very slowly and in the weird orange light reflected from the sea she might have been Helen gazing on Troy burning and never more beautiful.
Her eyes were dark pools a man could never fathom. When she whispered his name and took a step forward they came together naturally and easily. Her hands pulled his head down as her mouth sought his and then he lifted her hi his arms and laid her down on the rug.
She was crying, her face wet with tears, he was aware of that and then a great wind seemed to gather them up and carry them off to the other end of tune.
As they went through the garden to the house they walked hand-in-hand like children. Katina’s linen dress was badly crumpled and stained with salt water and. Lomax chuckled and kissed her gently on one cheek. “You’d better change before supper. We don’t want to shock Oliver in his old age.”
They moved through the sitting room into the hall and paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I think I’ll take a shower as1 well,” she said. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”
He nodded. “Ill be on the terrace with Van Horn.”
She kissed him briefly and turned away and he stayed there, aware that her fragrance still lingered in the air around him, feeling curiously sad.
For a little while he had managed to escape from the world of hate and violence into which he had been plunged. But what he had just experienced on the beach had been a brief foretaste of a happiness he could only have if he solved a seventeen-year-old mystery. He was beginning to doubt whether that was possible.