Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 8

  It was a letter that had filled him with disquiet. Though he didn’t want Ella to be unhappy in Crete, neither did he want her to begin feeling at home there. Filling him with even greater disquiet was the overall tone of her letters. Chatty and bubbly, they could have been the letters of a sister to a brother. In every letter he wrote he told her how much he was missing her, and of the future he hoped they were going to have together. In the letters she wrote back there was never a similar response.

  Instead, she wrote about the dig; about how, though they hadn’t yet located a palace, they had located a Bronze Age villa; and of the hours she had spent under a hot sun scrubbing sherds in bowls of acid and water to remove the soil from them; and of the magnificent gold jewellery that Christos had unearthed, and which was now in the museum at Heraklion.

  She wrote about the village and of how there were no paved streets in it; of how the houses had outside stairs that led to the living quarters; and of how the ground floors served as stables for animals.

  She wrote of how Andre Stathopoulos, whose cafeneion she and Kate were lodging in, played the fiddle after their evening meals, and of how Agata Stathopoulos fussed over her and Kate like a mother hen.

  She wrote about Kate and how, not wanting Lewis Sinclair to guess how she felt about him, she was always coolly polite and distant with him; and she wrote about Daphne, saying that she no longer mentioned Sholto in her letters, and that Daphne’s last letter had been posted from Cowes, where she was attending the Regatta with friends.

  With the best will in the world, Sam was indifferent as to what was happening in Ella’s friends’ lives. All he wanted to know, as he finished the last biscuit on the plate and then drained his cup of tea, was what was happening in Ella’s own life and, more importantly, what part she envisaged him playing in it.

  It was October, and Daphne was spending Friday to Monday at a house party in Derbyshire. All country-house parties in October were shooting parties and although Daphne hadn’t the slightest intention of shooting a pheasant, or of following the guns with other non-shooting guests, it was an invitation she had accepted rather than face a weekend without any kind of diversion.

  These days, diversion was something she was always in need of.

  When she had packed her weekend case, it had been in the hope that at Sherwood Castle she would be able to stop thinking about Sholto; that there would be a man among the other guests with whom she would instantly fall in love; that her heartache would finally shrivel and die, leaving room for joy – or, if not joy, then at least a sliver of happiness.

  At the very least it would be an escape from having her flatmate, Sandy Crailsford, constantly trying to lift her spirits by saying, ‘Cheer up. It might never happen.’

  The first time Sandy had said it, Daphne had pushed her hair away from eyes that were sore with weeping and had said, in agonizing pain, ‘But it has, Sandy. It has happened.’

  Sandy, incapable of empathizing with anyone’s feelings other than her own, had shot her a smile, adjusted the seams of her stockings and dashed from the room to hurry downstairs to where, in the street and in a red sports car, her date for the evening was waiting for her.

  By now, whenever Sandy trotted out the same tired platitude, Daphne’s reserves of patience were wearing thin.

  The bedroom she had been allotted at Sherwood was, like nearly all the bedrooms in England’s stately piles, cavernous and chill. She stood at one of the room’s massive stained-glass windows, looking out over a topiary garden to a vista of a rolling, immaculate lawn. Since arriving she’d discovered that her fellow guests were all people she knew, which meant an end to all hopes of meeting a handsome dark stranger who was capable of ridding her of thoughts of Sholto.

  Sholto.

  In the two months since their affair had come to an inglorious end she’d neither heard nor seen anything of him. He’d been nowhere in sight at any of the social events and parties she had attended; there had been no photographs of him in Tatler; no mention of him in any gossip columns.

  She had told herself that she was glad; that she couldn’t care less where he was and with whom – when Sholto was not with Francine – he was spending time.

  It wasn’t true, though. She cared more than she’d ever thought it possible to care.

  In a sea of misery, she thought back to the nightmare scene at the Savoy when she’d faced him with what Miranda had told her. He had already been seated when she had entered the River Room, and she could remember as clearly as if a photograph had been taken the moment when, dinner-jacketed and handsome, he’d risen to his feet to greet her.

  At the sight of her there had been naked pleasure in his eyes.

  It had been pleasure that hadn’t lasted long.

  At the expression on her face, he’d said in concern, ‘What’s the matter, Daphne? Did you hate every minute of Berlin?’

  ‘I hated what I was told there,’ she’d said, her voice clipped and curt and filled with almost unbearable tension.

  She’d sat down, hoping with every fibre of her being that when she’d said what she had come to say, he would crack with laughter at the ridiculousness of it; that everything in her world would be as it had been before she’d crossed to the park bench in Unter den Linden.

  ‘What was it you were told?’ he’d asked. ‘Something about Hitler?’

  ‘No.’ She’d clasped her evening-gloved hands tightly together in her lap. ‘It was about you.’

  Apprehension had flared in his eyes, to be immediately chased away, but not before she had recognized it for what it was.

  Even before she’d said starkly, ‘Is Francine Seeley your mistress?’ she had sensed what his answer was going to be.

  Instead of leaning forward, removing her hands from her lap, holding them fiercely in his and vehemently denying such a preposterous possibility, he’d breathed in hard and then, without even attempting to deny it, he’d said bluntly, ‘Yes, Daphne. She is.’

  The wine waiter had approached their table. Abruptly Sholto had waved him away. ‘Who told you?’ he’d demanded.

  ‘Miranda.’ She’d felt so sick and dizzy she’d hardly been able to get Miranda’s name past her lips.

  He’d said, as if what he was saying was the most reasonable thing in the world, ‘I’ve known Francine for several years. We have an understanding. That understanding doesn’t affect our relationship, Daphne. Or it doesn’t, unless you allow it to.’

  She’d thought of all the other girlfriends he’d doubtless said the same thing to – the girlfriends who, according to Miranda, he’d accused of making a fuss over nothing – and wondered what their reactions had been. Had they been so besotted with Sholto that they’d accepted the existence of Francine in his life, rather as they might if Francine had been not his mistress, but his wife?

  Whether they had or hadn’t, she knew one thing for certain: she wasn’t going to join their ranks. She’d sucked air into her lungs and had said unsteadily, ‘If I’d known you were in a long-term relationship, I would never have flown to Oxford with you, and the last four months would never have happened. I thought you loved me. I thought there were good things waiting for us, and there still could be if . . .’

  ‘If I broke off my relationship with Francine?’ he’d finished for her. ‘That isn’t going to happen, Daphne. I’m sorry. I don’t take ultimatums. Not from anyone. Not even from you.’

  ‘And I’m not going to indulge in a ménage à trois,’ she’d said tightly, ‘and especially not with a Nazi sympathizer.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’

  Abruptly she’d risen to her feet, saying fiercely, ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know! It isn’t something Francine or her daughter keep secret. In Berlin, Francine was wined and dined by Ribbentrop, and now that the Games are at an end she and Miranda are still in Germany, staying as guests of Ribbentrop’s high-ranking Nazi friends!’

  It had, she’d thought, been as good an exit line as any and, taking advantage of
it, she’d swung on her heel and stalked out of the restaurant and – as Sholto hadn’t come after her – out of the Savoy. Not until she had been in a taxi speeding down the Strand had she given way to scorching, anguished tears.

  Now, two months later, the scene was as raw and hurtful as it had been when it had taken place. Bleakly she turned away from the window, walked across to a triple-mirrored dressing table and surveyed herself critically in it. She didn’t look like a woman who’d failed to come first in her lover’s life. She couldn’t imagine any man – other than Sholto – regarding her as being second best. Her evening gown was one of Schiaparelli’s slinky slipper-satin numbers, and chandelier sapphire earrings danced against her neck. With her platinum-pale hair falling jaw-length in shiny waves, she looked like a Hollywood movie star, but what was the use of looking like a Hollywood movie star when she had no one in her life to look like a movie star for?

  If it had been spring or summer, she would have travelled out to Crete to join Kate and Ella, but it was late October and the year’s dig at Kalamata was now at an end. Kate had written to her that, until the following spring, she was going to be based at Knossos, where archaeology work – cleaning and cataloguing – was always ongoing, and that Ella was going to be living in Heraklion, doing similar work at the museum there.

  The prospect of joining them in their cleaning and cataloguing didn’t appeal, and that was her problem. Since she had ended her relationship with Sholto, nothing appealed.

  From the corridor outside her room came the sound of footsteps and laughter, as a group of her fellow guests made their way towards the head of the stairs.

  She glanced down at her watch. It was time for pre-dinner drinks in the drawing room. Desultorily she picked up her perfume spray and spritzed her neck and wrists with Guerlain’s Shalimar, knowing she’d been a fool to imagine even for one moment that she would meet anyone at Sherwood who would replace Sholto in her heart and in her mind.

  Their four months together – the way she had given herself to him with such uninhibited abandon – were not something that could be replicated, and were certainly not something she had previously experienced. Determined to maintain a reputation for recklessness, she had, at Oxford, shed her virginity at the first opportunity. It hadn’t been the earth-moving experience she had been hoping for.

  Neither had the next experience, or the one that had followed it.

  After that – and until she had met Sholto – she had rather given up on sex. And then Sholto, who was experienced in a way that none of her previous boyfriends had been, had introduced her to a whole new, earth-shattering, cataclysmic world. Merely remembering their lovemaking sent a tremor through her body.

  Unsteadily she picked up her beaded evening bag. Though their love affair had quite clearly not been a life-defining experience for Sholto, it had been for her. Having experienced what lovemaking could really be like, she knew she was never again going to treat sex casually and cheaply, in the way she had at Oxford. For her, it had become too precious and glorious to want to indulge in it without also being in love.

  And she knew something else.

  She knew she had been in love with Sholto Hertford.

  And that she still was.

  Chapter Nine

  Although snow in the mountains fell early and heavily and, on top of mountains such as Mount Ida and Mount Dicte, often lingered until June, coastal areas in central and eastern Crete usually only received a light sprinkling.

  When Kate woke to a world of whiteness at Knossos on the last day of December, her first thought was that if she wanted to see the Palace of Minos under a covering a snow, this would be her only chance that winter, before tourists spoilt its pristine beauty with their footprints. She had to get there fast.

  Ten minutes later, wearing an anorak over a sweater and trousers and with a camera slung over her shoulder, she was hurrying out of the hall as the Squire headed into it.

  ‘Sensible of you to take the opportunity, Kate,’ he said, knowing instinctively where she was going and what her intentions were. ‘Another hour or two and the snow will have either melted or been trampled into slush.’

  Kate liked the Squire. That she was working at Knossos until next season’s dig had been entirely down to him, and when he spoke of things Neo-palatial and Post-palatial, it was, for her, the equivalent of being in a highly privileged masterclass. His mother’s conversation centred on far different matters.

  ‘Has your friend Daphne sent any fresh news about the King and Mrs Simpson?’ Mrs Hutchinson would ask, whenever fresh post arrived from England.

  Daphne nearly always had, so Kate had been able to keep Mrs Hutchinson happily abreast of events that the vast majority of British people still knew nothing about. That in November Mrs Simpson had petitioned for a divorce at Ipswich Assizes, and been granted a decree nisi, had concerned Mrs Hutchinson greatly.

  ‘And what is going to happen in six months’ time, when Mrs Simpson’s divorce is made absolute?’ she had asked, her knitting needles clicking fast. ‘Surely she can’t expect King Edward then to propose marriage?’

  On the eleventh of December, and via the radio, Mrs Hutchinson and the rest of the world learned that not only had the King proposed marriage, but that his proposal had been accepted and that, as his government and the Archbishop of Canterbury objected strenuously to having a twice-married American divorcee as Britain’s queen consort, he had abdicated. In his speech to the nation and to the Empire, the King – now the ex-King – had sounded isolated and vulnerable, as he had expressed how impossible it was for him to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge his duties without the help and support of the woman he loved. At the end of his speech, when he had closed with the words ‘God bless you all’, Mrs Hutchinson had wept. Kate, too, had been deeply moved and had been profoundly grateful that Lewis Sinclair hadn’t been there to see her emotional reaction.

  As she made the short walk across virgin snow to the Palace of Minos, she wondered when Lewis would be returning to Crete. When the dig at Kalamata had come to an end for the year, and Ella had moved into lodgings at Heraklion and Kate had moved into the Villa Ariadne, Lewis had remained at Kalamata and then, a month ago, had returned to Scotland.

  ‘No doubt in order to discuss with his patron just how long excavation work at Kalamata can continue, without the major find of a palace,’ Kit had said to her before he, too, left Crete to spend the winter working at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

  As Kit and others left the Villa Ariadne, new people and some not-so-new had arrived. Amongst the not-so-new had been Professor Cottingley with another batch of German students. Occasionally there were distinguished visitors. Lord and Lady Heathcote had been given the privilege of a privately conducted tour of the Palace of Minos by the Squire and, on leaving the Villa Ariadne, Lady Heathcote had left behind her an up-to-date copy of Tatler.

  Browsing through it, Kate had been startled to see a photograph of Sholto Hertford at a society event, in the company of the new German Ambassador to Great Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

  In her next letter to Daphne she had mentioned it; and in her next letter from Daphne, her friend had written:

  Sholto’s longtime mistress – from years before he met me, but still his mistress – is a close friend of Ribbentrop’s. It’s become quite the thing in English high society to be cosy with high-ranking Nazis. My poor deluded father thinks them the bee’s knees. So, apparently, does Sholto, which is yet another thing I got so wrong about him.

  Kate had reached the palace now. The ticket booth wasn’t yet open and, even if it had been, having become a member of the ongoing team at Knossos, Kate had unrestricted access and so had no need of it. With no visitors to spoil the sight of snow-covered walls and terraces older than Troy, the palace looked like something out of a fairy tale. For more than an hour, in the eerie silence created by the blanket of snow, she took photographs.

  Some shots she took were panoramic views,
such as one of snow-capped Mount Juktas as seen from the terrace of the South Propylaeum. Others were of things as small and as perfect as a cluster of snowdrops growing at the entrance to the Throne Room.

  Emerging from under a colonnade, she saw that she no longer had the palace to herself, but that she was sharing it with a small group of tourists, all of whom were unmistakably British. The guide showing them around was a Cretan girl, young and slim and very pretty. Few Cretan girls spoke anything other than a smattering of English, but Kate knew this wasn’t the case for the girl in question, because Nikoleta Kourakis’s English was excellent.

  Aware that Nikoleta had not yet seen her, and not particularly wanting to be seen by her, Kate remained motionless. Her initial assumptions about Nikoleta had all been embarrassingly wide of the mark. On the evening when Lewis Sinclair had left the terrace to meet Nikoleta in Villa Ariadne’s garden, and the Squire had said, ‘The girl will be Nikoleta, Christos Kourakis’s sister’ and Mrs Hutchinson had added that the family lived close to Knossos, Kate had imagined Nikoleta to be a typical village girl who either helped her mother work whatever small patch of land their family possessed or was, perhaps, one of Villa Ariadne’s maids.

  During her first few days at Kalamata she had discovered that nothing could have been further from the truth.

  ‘When you take Miss Tetley on her next visit to the Palace of Minos, you must both introduce yourselves to my sister,’ Christos had said to Kate, in the days before he had become familiar enough with Ella not only to call her by her first name, but to tease her as well.

  ‘Will that be appropriate, if she is working?’ Kate had said doubtfully, not at all sure how she felt about taking him up on his suggestion.