‘How long will your father be at the villa?’ she asked, wondering whether she ought to telephone him, but Alex was not helpful.
‘My sister Minerva is to be married in three days,’ he declared. ‘My father will be returning to Athens tomorrow for the wedding.’
‘Minerva?’ For a moment Martha was distracted. ‘Little Minerva is getting married?’ It hardly seemed possible.
‘She is eighteen,’ declared Alex flatly. ‘In our country, marriage is the natural ambition of every woman.’
‘Oh!’ Martha accepted this with a rueful sigh. It was becoming increasingly obvious where Alex’s sympathies lay, and no doubt in his eyes, she had committed an unforgivable sin by leaving her husband.
‘Etsi …’ He spread his hands now. ‘What will you do?’
What could she do? Martha’s palms were moist as she looped the strap of her bag over one shoulder. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, and Alex strode away abruptly towards the car, swinging open the nearside door so that she could climb inside.
The car was chauffeur-driven, and, as Alex climbed in beside her and the windows were rolled up, air-conditioned. It was quite a relief to get out of the heat of the sun, and she remembered belatedly that she had not bought herself the oil for her skin as she had intended. Still, she would have little enough time to sunbathe today, and if all went well she would be returning to England tomorrow.
It was a good half hour to the airport, and realising she could not sit in silence for the whole of that time, Martha decided she would have to try and break down Alex’s unnatural restraint. They had been such good friends. She couldn’t believe he had condemned her so completely.
Turning towards him, she began by asking him whether he, too, was working for his father these days. ‘I always thought you wanted to be a lecturer,’ she commented. ‘All that classical literature we used to read. Do you remember teaching me about Aeschylus and Sophocles, and how we used to act out those plays on the beach——’
‘We all change,’ Alex interrupted her shortly. ‘We grow older—and wiser.’
Martha controlled the automatic rejoinder that sprang to her lips, and said instead: ‘So you’ve given up your ideas of philosophy? You’ve decided that the material world has more to offer than the mythical one?’
Alex shifted impatiently in his seat. ‘I do not think it matters to you what my opinions may be, Martha. I was a boy when you went away, now I am a man. That is all there is to it.’
‘I see.’ Martha made a negative gesture. ‘In other words, I should mind my own business, hmm?’
Alex moved his shoulders dismissingly. ‘You have not cared what has happened to us for five years. It is unreasonable to expect me to believe you care now.’
Martha accepted this broadside with a deep pang of regret. ‘You may not believe this, but I have had my problems, too, you know,’ she ventured. ‘And as for our relationship—you were already planning on going to university. There was no way I could write to you without—without your brother and your father knowing. And in the circumstances I don’t think that would have been a good idea, do you?’
Alex bent his head, pressing his lips together as he straightened the crease in his pants. He was obviously considering what she had said, but his loyalty to his brother, and to his family, was warring with the logic of her explanation.
‘It has not been easy—for any of us,’ he said at last, looking sideways at her. ‘We have all to make our own judgment of events.’
‘And what is your judgment?’ asked Martha quietly.
Alex shook his head, and resumed his interest in his trouser leg. ‘It is not up to me to say anything,’ he replied at last. ‘But I know what your leaving meant to my brother, and that I cannot forgive.’
Martha weathered this body blow with less fortitude. She had believed that of all of them, Alex might have kept an open mind. But it seemed he was as biased as the rest, and she did not look forward to this meeting with his father with any degree of anticipation.
A new airport had been built on Rhodes, far superior to the airport Martha remembered, whose approach between two hills had been a source of danger to larger aircraft. The new airport lay on the coast, to the south of the island, with a big new runway suitable to take the powerful jumbo jets that used it daily throughout the summer months.
The Myconos car was known to the airport staff, and they were passed through with the minimum of delay. The helicopter awaited them, and Alex dismissed the chauffeur before assisting Martha up the steps and into the aircraft.
She recognised the pilot. He used to help crew the ocean-going yacht that Aristotle kept moored at Piraeus, and it was strange to hear herself addressed as Madame Myconos once more. Dion had never petitioned for a divorce, and she had assumed he had wanted to avoid the publicity it would undoubtedly attract, but she used her maiden name in England because it was easier that way.
She had never flown in a helicopter before. She seemed to remember a small hydroplane, but not a helicopter, and the curious lifting sensation she felt as they took off made her wish they had used the boat after all. Still, once they started moving forward, she forgot her fears, and the advantages it possessed over an aeroplane soon became evident. Flying at only several hundred feet instead of several thousand, she was able to distinguish the contours of every island they passed, and in her excitement she forgot that Alex had been offhand with her earlier.
‘Isn’t it tremendous?’ she asked, raising her voice above the level of the engines. ‘I mean, you can actually see how shallow the sea is in places. Oh, and look! Isn’t that a dolphin down there? That black thing in the water?’
‘I think it is more likely to be a fishing boat,’ remarked Alex drily, unable to completely hide his amusement. ‘We are not so low, you know. From this height a dolphin would hardly be visible.’
‘Oh!’ Martha pulled a rueful face, and for a moment Alex shared her disappointment. Then, quickly, he looked away again, but not before Martha had felt a slight uplift in her spirits. Given time, she was sure she could change Alex’s opinion of her, and it was good to know that he still had a sense of humour.
There were sails below them now, white sails, pristine pure against the aquamarine water. They reminded Martha of the ketch Dion had sailed, and of weekends spent cruising these waters, far, in spirit at least, from the problems their marriage was facing.
‘You’re not married, Alex?’ she enquired now, turning to look at her brother-in-law, and he shook his head.
‘No,’ he conceded, his voice almost inaudible beneath the throbbing of the propellers, and Martha guessed he was regretting his momentary lapse.
They were descending now, coming in low over the rocky contours of a headland, below which a narrow thread of sand glinted with burnished grains. There was a wooded hinterland rising to a barren summit, and then falling again more shallowly to a sheltered bay and a small harbour. The village, the island’s only community, nestled round the bay, colour-washed cottages set in gardens bright with hibiscus and oleander. Martha could see the windmill that had once irrigated the terraces, where grapes grew with such profusion, and the deserted monastery of St Demetrius, high on the hillside. It was all so real and familiar, despite the absence of years, and once more she wondered how she could justify depriving Josy of this.
The Myconos villa was of typically Greek design. Palatial terraces, set about with gardens and fountains, and lily pools, thick with blossom. Marble pillars supported a first floor balcony, and shadowed the Italian tiles that covered the floor of the hall, and urns of flowering shrubs spilled scarlet petals across the veined mosaic of the entrance. Built on several levels, it sprawled among its pools and arbours, with all the elegant abandon of a reclining naiad.
A car took Martha and Alex from the landing field near the harbour, up the winding road