The Habit of Widowhood Page 17

  Of course, David had been sweet through the entire trip. But then, knowing she had always been fascinated by the idea of Greece, this honeymoon trip had been his idea. So it was quite natural that he should keep her spirits up by little reminders of the romantic nature of the island, the exotic food, the excursions to Crete and Rhodes. And of course the pleasure of a honeymoon. David had always insisted that the first time would be in the luxury hotel on Mathos. David was old-fashioned. He didn’t believe in anticipating marriage, and Carol thought it rather sweet of him. She had anticipated it all too often with other men.

  Jutting up like a fairy cake in the middle of a brilliant blue tea cloth, Mathos assumed more definite shape.

  “It’s beautiful,” said David. “Just perfect.”

  “It’s all been just perfect,” said Carol dreamily. “The wedding, the breakfast—everything.”

  “Almost perfect,” responded David. “I just wish Dad could have been there to share it.”

  David had loved his father, who had died just before they had got engaged. He missed him, and found his new role as head of Lloyd-Johnson Agricultural Estates burdensome and worrying. Carol put her hand over his on the prow of the boat.

  “Almost perfect,” she agreed. “As perfect as we could make it.”

  As they neared the island, shapes began to appear. A ruined monastery on the hilltop, fishing boats and a pleasure yacht in the harbor, a restaurant with tables outside and red-checked tablecloths . . . people on the quayside.

  “The local peasants, come to see us arrive,” said David. “And a few tourists, I expect.”

  “We needn’t talk to any of them if we don’t want to,” said Carol. “We have each other.”

  Suddenly, as the boat was approaching the quay, she was conscious of David’s body stiffening.

  “It can’t be,” he muttered. “It’s just a . . . Oh, my God!”

  His face was purple with rage. Carol had never seen him like that. He was such a gentle soul. She looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

  “What is it, David?”

  “The swine. The absolute swine. Don’t you see who that is? It’s that rotter Joshua Swayne.”

  “Oh, David, it can’t be.”

  But it did look very like him indeed. He was standing at the end of the quay, just where the ferry was to dock. He was wearing beautifully tailored white trousers, and a dashing shirt open to the waist and knotted at the navel. He was very tanned, very fit-looking, so that even David’s rural-proprietor complexion seemed beside his that of a country bumpkin. David, somehow, could never be said to look sexy.

  “Take no notice of him,” said David, red and furious. “He thinks we shall have to acknowledge him, standing there in the middle of the quay. Well, we don’t have to. Walk right past him. Ignore him. My God, what a diabolical liberty! Who does he think he is?”

  There was not much doubt who Joshua Swayne was. Less than a year ago his . . . wooing of Carol had been the talk of Merioneth, staple gossip in pubs and tearooms around the county. Joshua Swayne was only a greengrocer’s son, but he certainly knew how to cut a dash. And Carol had always resisted that “only a greengrocer’s son” formulation. Come to that, she was only a schoolteacher’s daughter, wasn’t she? Whatever else she was, she wasn’t a snob. And if anyone asked her how he cut the dash that he did, what he did it on, she merely shrugged and said it was none of her business. He was just a very entertaining companion, she said. Oh yes? said everyone else.

  “Just don’t look at him,” hissed David as the boat docked. “Walk off talking and don’t acknowledge his existence. The cad!”

  And that’s what they did, though somehow it seemed terribly unnatural. They held hands, looked into each other’s eyes, and walked straight past Joshua Swayne and on to the bus, where they sat, still talking in those unnaturally high voices, still looking anywhere but back to the quay, as the boot was loaded with their and the other tourists’ luggage, and the bus began its steep ascent to the hotel.

  Of course, when they got out and walked into the hotel lobby, there he was again. Somehow David had expected it, since the ride had been so short, and Joshua was a notable mountaineer—“the mountain goat” he had been called, somewhat ambiguously, at home. Half expecting it didn’t make it any the easier for David to deal with. Carol went on ignoring him studiously, but as they marched up to the reception desk, and as he stood there in all his arrogant sexuality, David barked: “Get out of my way,” and Joshua moved lithely aside with a pleasant smile. Somehow he always seemed to take the trick, however poor his cards.

  They made their way to their room, watched from the open, sun-drenched doorway by Joshua, who seemed part, or product, of the sun itself. Once safely inside the bedroom, they sat on the bed and looked at each other.

  “This is dreadful,” said Carol. “Just unimaginable. He has no right.”

  “Of course he has no right. You threw him over for me, and there’s an end of it.”

  “Actually I threw him over well before I got interested in you,” Carol said. And indeed there had been all of a fortnight’s gap between her breaking it off with Joshua and starting to go out with David. “He acts as though he owns me.”

  “I just can’t see what’s to be done.”

  “We could move to another hotel.”

  “And have him come after us? We’d become laughingstocks.”

  David was very conscious, always, of anybody laughing at him.

  “But that means sticking it out here.” Carol giggled shyly. “Of course, we could stay in our room the whole time, and that would be nice. But we have to have meals.”

  David looked around the room.

  “We could. I suppose there must be room service. But I’m damned if I’m going to avoid the dining room because he’ll be there.”

  “No. Why should we? Though it will be awkward. . . .”

  David looked very glum.

  “He’s spoilt everything. You know, what I’d like to do now is . . . well . . . you know. But I just don’t want it to happen in this sort of atmosphere. We’ve got to get this sorted out, one way or the other.”

  “Exactly. Because if we can’t get it sorted out, we might as well go home and . . . start the marriage there.” Carol looked at her watch. “Actually it’s lunchtime now. And after all that traveling I am pretty hungry.”

  They both showered, separately and modestly, and then they put on clean summer clothes, crisp and delightful on the body, clothes in which David looked almost handsome, Carol thought, and definitely better than presentable. Then they went, holding hands, down to lunch.

  He wasn’t there when they went in, and for that they were grateful. But they had hardly stewed over the menu and given their orders to the waiter when they saw him come in the door from the foyer. The waiter tried to steer him to what was obviously his usual table, but they saw something pass from hand to hand, and he came over and sat himself at the next table.

  “Good morning, again,” he said cheerfully. “You really have picked well, you know. An inspired choice. Mathos could hardly be bettered for a honeymoon island. You’re going to be awfully happy here.”

  David choked, and Carol managed a few reluctant murmurs of reply, for the benefit of other lunch-takers around them. Joshua had already turned to the waiter and began ordering in what sounded like idiomatic Greek, to a non-Greek. He might have been the cookery correspondent of a glossy magazine.

  It was a ghastly meal. Everything they said could be heard by him at the next table. They scampered through their three courses, and as they were getting up, Joshua said:

  “Enjoy the afternoon. There are some quite fabulous walks around here, you know. Just give me the nod any time you feel like it, and I’ll show you round.”

  David and Carol choked with irritation. When they got to the door David made a decision. He left Carol there and marched back down the dining room.

  “Look here,” he said, red-faced and bulgy-eyed, “just what is your game
?”

  Joshua raised his eyebrows and gave a cool smile up at him.

  “Game, old man? I don’t quite understand you. I’m here on holiday like yourselves—well, almost like yourselves.”

  “You’re not going to tell me this is a coincidence.”

  “All right. I won’t try and tell you this is a coincidence.”

  “You’ve come here deliberately, because you found out this was where we were coming.”

  “The island has many attractions,” said Joshua, this time with a catlike smile. “And that, of course, was among them.”

  “If you think you’re going to make us turn tail and flee, you’ll be disappointed.”

  “On the contrary, I would be disappointed if you did. It would cause me so much hassle. But I know your sturdy Welsh stock, David, and I know you’re not a quitter.”

  “I know you are a cad,” David said, his voice rising, so that people began to look at him from tables quite far away, and he blushed and reduced it to a hiss again, “but I never thought you’d want to cause Carol this sort of distress.”

  “Is she distressed? I don’t know why she should be. Most women like having two men at their beck and call.”

  “You are not at her beck and call.”

  “I certainly am, supposing she decides to beck or call.”

  “If you continue to force yourself on us in the way you have been doing today—”

  “Yes?”

  It was a thoroughly irritating question, and insolently delivered, the eyebrows raised quizzically. Because what, after all, could David threaten him with?

  “I’ll not answer for the consequences,” David spluttered, and marched out of the dining room.

  The consequences, unfortunately, were mostly on David’s and Carol’s heads. David said he really didn’t want to . . . start the honeymoon while all this was hanging over their heads, and Carol said that really she didn’t want to either. They sat in their hotel room and talked things over, and Carol said that at least they did have each other to chew things over with, and that what they were really facing was the first crisis of their married life. If they could face up to all the others as calmly, things wouldn’t work out too badly, would they?

  The trouble was, thought David, that facing up to a marriage crisis was one thing, and that could be done calmly and with dignity: but facing up to Joshua Swayne was quite another matter. The mere thought of Joshua made him panic, as facing up to the farm workers had made him sweat in the first weeks of running the Estates after his father’s death. It was the thought of him and Carol . . . Well, least said, soonest mended, but somehow David couldn’t manage to put that thought out of his head. And it made him the very reverse of calm.

  They weren’t going to be imprisoned in their room, that was for sure. About three o’clock they went out for a walk, and they probably would have enjoyed it if they hadn’t constantly been glancing nervously around to see if they were being shadowed. The island was beautiful, with sloping, fertile pastures, and with cliffs stretching dazzlingly up skywards. Luckily they were young and fit, and David in particular was used to climbing. But as they approached their hotel, the inevitable happened. Joshua was suddenly to be found, insinuating himself beside them.

  “Don’t you agree it’s a beautiful island?” he said. “I thought I’d let you enjoy it on your own. Went down to Nimos, didn’t you? And then up the hill to the coastguard station, then down the cliff path and back here?”

  So he had been following them the whole time. David was livid. He drew Carol aside.

  “You go ahead, darling,” he said. “I’m going to deal with this louse once and for all.”

  It did not occur to David, in sending Carol on ahead, that really she had a lot more experience in dealing with that louse than he had. Probably even if it had occurred to him he would not have let her do the dealing.

  “Now let’s get this straight,” he said, turning to the imperturbably smiling and disgracefully tanned Joshua. “This has got to stop.”

  “Spoiling your honeymoon, is it?” asked Joshua.

  There seemed nothing for it but to admit it.

  “Yes.”

  Joshua shook his head.

  “That’s tough. Carol being such a fun girl, and all. She gets whingy when things don’t go as she wants them to. Have you found that out yet?”

  “She does not get whingy. She is the sweetest girl on God’s earth, and you’re making her life a misery.”

  “Now that I would hate to do. If only for old times’ sake I’d like her to be happy. Just for her, David—just for her—I might be willing to come to an accommodation.”

  David was bewildered. Was he offering to seek alternative lodgings?

  “I don’t get you.”

  “I might, out of consideration for her, be open to an offer.”

  David was outraged.

  “Do you mean you would accept money to go away?”

  Joshua shrugged, still smiling.

  “Market forces rule. I’m sure you’ve always believed that. The plain market fact is that you have money, and I want money.”

  “You cad! You unadulterated bounder!”

  “In addition, the service I can perform for that money is the service you want above all things: I can go away.”

  “This is unbelievable!”

  “You’d better believe it, boyo! I tell you what: you go back to your room and think it over. I can see it’s a new idea for you. Never too quick to take in new ideas, are you, David? Then when you’ve thought it over, talked it through with Carol, you can come up with a sum, and we can start negotiations. How about half past six, up near the coastguard station? There we’ll be away from anyone English who might overhear. We wouldn’t want either of us to be embarrassed, would we?”

  David was, as Joshua implied, not the quickest thinker in the world. He thought over the proposal, and he discussed it with Carol, but after all that he still found the idea utterly distasteful. The trouble was he couldn’t think of any alternative to going along with it.

  “I think we ought to agree,” he said finally. “No—not ought to agree: it’s a disgusting suggestion. But I think we simply have to.”

  “I think we have to too,” said Carol. “If we don’t, then the honeymoon is ruined, and that would be a terrible start to our marriage. And after all, it is only money. It’s not nice to beswindled, that’s for sure, but on the other hand I don’t think we should make money some kind of god. We’ve got enough of it, heaven knows. . . .”

  So six-fifteen saw David toiling up the hill again, once more leaving Carol out of things, in that old-fashioned, gentlemanly way he had. Carol had not been keen, in any case, to witness a transaction which might almost seem to an outsider to be a sale or auction of herself. David agreed with Carol that they should not make a god of money, but he determined not to offer at the start anything like the sum that he might be prepared to fork out after negotiation.

  His heart leapt with justified rage when he saw the figure of Joshua Swayne, on the top of the cliff, silhouetted against the setting sun. He was standing there, rather dejected-looking, and David wondered whether he was perhaps feeling in his heart the jerk his conduct was proving him to be.

  “Well,” said David, a bit puffed, when he drew near to Joshua. “I’ve thought it over.”

  “Yes?” said Joshua, low. David modified his voice too.

  “I think we might say three hundred pounds.”

  “What?” shouted Joshua, suddenly raising his voice, and looking fiercely at David.

  “I think we might say four hundred pounds,” yelled David in return.

  “You swine!” shouted Joshua, in a voice that seemed to carry all over the island. “You absolute cad. My God, you’re trying to buy me. You think I’m here to screw money out of you! I’m not going to stand for this!”

  David did not sense the first blow coming. This was not at all what he had come prepared for. When Joshua engaged him in a close wrestling gri
p he was too breathless to put up more than a token resistance, and when further blows rained down on him, and they moved closer and closer to the cliff’s edge, he could no more avoid the fate he saw coming than can a man in the maelstrom. As he was thrown, head first, over the cliff, he knew his end was a second away, and yet he still did not understand. His overmastering emotion as he fell was bewilderment.

  • • •

  It had all worked out very nicely indeed, Carol considered, as she flew home, dressed in deep black (the Greeks were very good at black, they wore so much of it). She was accompanied by the coffin, but she thought very little about it. That part of her life was over and done with.

  The coastguards, whom Joshua had so cleverly ascertained spoke English, testified to the offer of money, and the sense of outrage felt by the accused. The Greek police, being natural romantics and admirers of Milord Byron, had felt considerable sympathy for the young man (did he not resemble in many ways the familiar features of the liberating English Milord?) who had suffered so much at being rejected by the woman he loved, and who was only making a desperate attempt at the very last moment to win her back. To be offered money to go away, this was the ultimate insult to his tender heart. The Greeks, in any case, take a very lenient view of crimes passionnels. That, of course, was why she had maneuvered David into choosing Greece. Carol had been assured by the Greek lawyer she had retained for herself (though she had been very cunning about not seeming to ask for any reason other than indignation and pity for the fate of her husband) that Joshua Swayne was unlikely to serve more than five years. (“Alas, madam, but that is how we regard these things in this country!”)

  Five years! It seemed a lifetime. But her heart swelled with pride as she thought what Joshua was willing to suffer, for her, and for the money. For money there would be, now, in abundance. She did not expect to be well received by David’s mother, or his sister, but really there was nothing whatsoever that they could do. From now on she was effective head of Lloyd-Johnson Agricultural Estates. She had always fancied herself running a big business enterprise. When Joshua got out, either they would marry in North Wales and outface the talk or she would sell up and they would branch out into something more glamorous than large-scale farming. The world was all before them.