The Windmill of Kalakos Page 13

  “It wasn’t meant to,” she replied.

  “You’re too transparent, Jacynth,” he said, harshly, but she revelled in his use of her first name. “You might at least try to dissemble and pretend that the days will be over-long without me.”

  “I expect you’ll leave me enough work to occupy me so that the days won’t exactly drag,” she retorted, unaware of the sharply acid tone she had used.

  “That depends on how you arrange the work. With a little manipulation, you might even manage to take a day off and go shopping or sightseeing if you choose.”

  Forgetful of his advice not to display her feelings so openly, she relaxed into a delighted smile. “Thank you, Mr. Brendon.”

  “There you go again—all charm and eagerness to please,” he muttered. Without another word, he turned swiftly and went back to his study.

  Put my foot in it again, she thought resentfully. Why must he tread me down so forcibly whenever I find a grain of plea-sure? She bent down to pick up some papers from the floor. “Yes, I’ll be glad when he goes,” she said aloud, “so that I can laugh when I like.”

  “How pleasant that you can find something to laugh at!” His voice startled her and she lifted her head so quickly that she bumped her forehead on the corner of the table.

  “Not usually when you’re here.” The impulsive words rushed out before she could stop them. She stared up at him, appalled at her own spurt of ill-temper. Then, because his level glance disturbed her and caused her heart to hammer so loudly that she believed he must hear it, she plunged still deeper into a clash. “I wish you wouldn’t spy on me,” she began angrily. She refused to look at him and added, “Well, it makes me feel uncomfortable and—”

  When she looked across at him, he was bowing to her with his hand on his heart. “Dear Miss Rowan—I’d better be quite formal—in future I’ll knock very loudly on this door if I suspect that you’re talking to yourself. I came back only to remind you of the schedule I’d like done first—if I may humbly mention it.”

  He was openly laughing at her, deriding her for her temerity, but she supposed she deserved it and was probably fortunate that he did not fly off the handle and flay her with his sarcastic tongue.

  After Mallory had left for Crete, Jacynth worked hard the first day almost without a break so that on the second she could take some time off, as he had given her permission.

  First, though, she explored the garden of the Villa Kalakos more thoroughly. By now Nikon had tidied the paths, planted flower beds and not only cleaned the swimming pool, but filled it. Later, she would swim there, although she preferred the sea, especially as an excellent beach was only a few yards from the villa, across the road and the promenade.

  The windmill still intrigued her and she poked at the wooden door at the base, but it refused to budge. When she asked Nikon if it were possible to enter, he frowned and scowled and said it would be full of rats and mice.

  “What does it look like inside?” she wanted to know.

  He shrugged his thick shoulders, then pushed the door open. “Wait!” he commanded. But no small creatures emerged and he allowed her to peer inside the stone tower. At first she could see nothing but vague darkness, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, she made out the shape of a millstone and remnants of machinery. An old ladder with broken rungs leaned against the wall.

  Her curiosity satisfied, Jacynth stepped out of the tower and allowed Nikon to pull the door into position.

  “A pity to let it go to ruin,” she commented, but the man merely smiled.

  “No use any more,” he muttered.

  Jacynth disagreed, but she was not in a position to argue with him. In England she had read of windmills turned into handsome and individually styled dwellings. But apparently here in Rhodes, there were so many disused windmills that they had lost their novelty and no one wanted to use them.

  Each morning Mallory telephoned from Crete asking what had arrived in the post and Jacynth was appreciative of the trust he placed in her that he allowed her to open all his letters, except those that were obviously marked “Private”.

  She gave him a resume of the work she had completed and told him when she had taken time off. On the day, however, when she had intended to put in a full eight hours’ stint, a telephone call from Ray Gurney urged her to drop everything and come out with him for most of the day.

  “I’ve hired a car here on the island,” he told her, “and we can go where we like. I have to visit a particular pottery, but you’d have no objection to that, would you?”

  “I’m not sure how to answer,” she temporised. “I’d no idea you were back from England.”

  “Yes, I’m launching out now. I’ve fixed up a temporary office in Athens and I’m staying in Rhodes for a few days. I can’t afford hotels, now that I have to pay my own expenses, so I’ve taken a room over a shop in the Old City. Now what time will you be ready?”

  “I don’t think I could manage today.”

  “Why not? Is that old tyrant going to stop you?”

  “He isn’t—” Jacynth began, then realised that if she disclosed Mallory’s absence, she would hand Ray all the best reasons for persuading her to play truant. “Look,” she said quickly, “let me work this morning and I could meet you after lunch. How about that?”

  “Not much good,” he said flatly. “All the people I want to visit will be taking their siesta.”

  “What about tomorrow?” she suggested.

  “No, it’s got to be today—or not at all,” he said abruptly. “Perhaps you don’t really want to come.”

  “It isn’t that,” she assured him. “The point is that I didn’t plan to take time off today and I don’t see how I can—”

  “Oh, I bet if that old Greek boss of yours asked you out for a day, you wouldn’t hesitate. You’d drop everything and jump into his car.”

  She laughed softly to hide her embarrassment. Ray was certainly correct. “Well, the situation isn’t quite the same, is it? If Mr. Brendon wanted me to go out—which is quite unlikely—we should be together and there would be no question of my taking time off unknown.”

  “Well, ask him now. Tell him—”

  “I can’t,” she interrupted. “He’s out for the day.” That at least was true. Then she saw that it might be more advantageous to accept Ray’s invitation for today while Mallory was away than for Ray to cajole her at a time when her employer was present.

  “All right,” she said. “Give me half an hour and I’ll be ready, but I must come back early in the evening and finish the work I’m doing.”

  “Oh, you do make a martyr of yourself over that man’s work,” he burst out angrily. “All right, I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with the few crumbs you can spare.” He cut off abruptly, leaving her with the feeling that she regretted now not refusing altogether. She tidied the papers on her desk, locked away the confidential files in Mallory’s study and went to the kitchen to tell Caterina that she would be out most of the day, but home in the evening.

  “Don’t cook anything for me for dinner,” she said. Then she noticed how ill Caterina seemed. The woman was sitting at the table, her shoulders bent and her thin face drawn.

  “Are you ill, Caterina?” Jacynth asked.

  “No.” She added that she was only resting and would take it easy during the day.

  As she went to her room and changed her dress, Jacynth reflected that Caterina seemed to have an enormous amount of housework and cooking to do. Even if some of the rooms in the Villa were not used much, the others had to be kept clean and there were two main meals to cook every day. Undoubtedly Nikon helped with some of the heavier tasks and probably cleaned the fearsome-looking stove in the kitchen, but Caterina was still fully occupied day after day.

  Jacynth picked up her wide-brimmed straw hat and went outside to wait for Ray. He came along the street almost immediately and she admired the dashing maroon car he had hired.

  “I’d a good mind not to bother with
you at all,” he said by way of greeting. “So reluctant to enjoy a day’s pleasure.”

  She laughed, as she settled herself in the car. “If I’d known earlier, I might have arranged the time off better, but your call was out of the blue.”

  “All the more reason you ought to have been thrilled about it,” he returned smugly.

  “Well, tell me about your business affairs,” she suggested, attempting to turn his attention away from herself and what he imagined should be her reaction.

  “Oh, rattling along quite well so far. I came to Athens nearly a week ago and I’ve made good contacts with quite a f number of promising firms.”

  “And how did you get on with your company in England?”

  Ray grinned and then let out a sharp explosion of derisive amusement. “Oh, they made a bit of a song and dance about my leaving. They said I was poaching on their ground if I was setting up in Greece, but they couldn’t do anything about it. They could hardly expect me to set up shop in the Arctic Circle, could they?”

  “I suppose they thought you were using knowledge you’d gained by working for them and putting it to your own interests.”

  “Exactly. And who would blame me for that?”

  Jacynth remained silent for a few moments. While there was probably nothing completely dishonest in Ray’s working outlook, she thought privately that his principles were those of a cut-throat go-getter. He thought nothing of “ditching”, as he termed it, the firm which had given him his first chance of acting as purchasing agent abroad. More than that, she guessed he would use the information acquired on their behalf and shape it to further his own ends.

  “I’ve one substantial advantage,” he continued, after a pause. “I know all the customers my old firm supplied and while I keep my overheads low, I can undercut their prices. I’m pretty sure I can drive hard bargains at this end, even though Greeks are pretty tough in that respect.”

  “Isn’t that rather unscrupulous?” she queried mildly. “To use your firm’s customers in England, I mean.”

  “Good heavens, no! That’s business. What about your precious boss? Do you think he stops to consider someone’s personal feelings when he’s out to make a deal?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she admitted. Perhaps the fact that Mallory’s business dealings were on the grand scale, compared to Ray’s trivial transactions, removed them to the world of high finance, but the principles of fairness should still apply. Now she wondered if her emotional involvement with Mallory had blinded her to a similar lack of scruples.

  But Ray was already launching into an account of an interview in Athens with a supplier of metalwork belts and necklaces. Jacynth listened with only half her attention, for now he was driving through the outskirts of Rhodes town and skirting the hill called Monte Smith, named, so she had discovered, after a British admiral who lived there in Napoleon’s time.

  “It’s an odd name,” she said. “Sounds like a pop singer.”

  “What does?” he demanded.

  “The hill. Monte Smith.”

  “Oh, that. Well, as I was telling you—” Ray was off again, although Jacynth would have liked him to stop nearby so that she could see the ancient stadium and the ruins of a theatre and the temple of Apollo. But she knew it was no use expecting Ray to pander to her wish for sightseeing when he was anxious to reach his destination as fast as possible.

  She had gauged the approximate distance from the Villa Kalakos and one day when she had the leisure she would take a taxi and explore the site.

  “You won’t mind if I leave you to wander around the showroom while I talk to the man I want to see?” queried Ray, when they arrived at the pottery.

  “Not at all. I shall be quite happy roaming around.”

  She saw at once, although she had no expert knowledge of ceramics, that the products turned out here were far superior in style and finish than some of those in the souvenir shops. Better, too, than the quality of the two small Greek vases Ray had given her, one of which had shattered into dust when Mallory knocked it.

  There were trays and bowls, mounted tiles to hang as pictures or use as. small cocktail mats, all with engaging designs of ships or donkeys, flowers or birds, in vivid colours that avoided being garish.

  Such variety made it difficult to decide which to purchase, but eventually Jacynth chose a fairly lightweight tray for Sara and a couple of wall pictures for herself, one displaying a galleon with billowing sails and the traditional eye painted on the bows, the other an ornately-feathered duck with a fish in its beak.

  When Ray rejoined her, he seemed elated at his business success. He was almost rubbing his hands with glee when he explained the low prices he had been able to agree on with the owner. As he took her wrapped purchases to stow in the car, he frowned. “You paid ordinary retail prices for this stuff?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Jacynth agreed.

  “That was stupid of you. I could easily have worked a discount for you. How much did they cost?”

  Jacynth reddened. “Trivial amounts. One tray and two small pictures. They were quite inexpensive and I wouldn’t have expected any discount.”

  Ray sniffed with displeasure. “Then in future, don’t be so ready to part with your money if I’m around. I can get a bit knocked off almost anything here in Rhodes.”

  Jacynth entered the car and said nothing. Even a substantial discount would have made little difference to the prices she had paid and Ray’s intensely commercial attitude annoyed her.

  He took her to lunch at a roadside café, where the proprietor, who looked more like a bandit living in the hills, thought Jacynth, than a café, owner, served an excellent meal of plaki, a fish dish with oil, tomatoes and herbs, followed by the spicy minced beef balls called keftedes, to which she was now quite accustomed.

  “Stephanos, the boss, makes some very good pastry filled with hot cheese,” Ray told her. “Care to try some?”

  “If I can manage it,” she answered with a grin, feeling her waistline. “Soon I shall have no waist at all, only a barrel shape.”

  Ray laughed, reached across and placed his hand along her ribs, giving her a gentle squeeze. “Not too much padding yet,” he observed.

  When the little flaky-pastry triangles filled with cheese arrived and Jacynth saw they were quite small, her attention was divided between the food which was delicious and the lack of sensation when Ray had hugged her waist. If Mallory had touched her in even a featherweight gesture, her reaction would have been quite different—her pulses leaping, a delicious excitement coursing her veins. But with Ray there was no such effect and she decided, ruefully, that perhaps it was just as well that both men did not agitate her in a similar fashion.

  Later in the afternoon Ray drove down towards the coast where there was a small deserted beach of coarse shingle. “Brought your swimsuit?” he asked.

  “Well, no, I didn’t think we’d be near a beach—or that you’d have time for anything so frivolous as bathing,” she added with a smile.

  “Why not? I’ve always time—or, at least generally, for beach games with a pretty girl. You don’t need me to tell you that your looks are quite stunning.”

  “Thank you,” she said demurely, although she was aware that Ray had an eye for most girls who were not cross-eyed or possessed hare-lips, and owned reasonable figures.

  “I always bring swimming trunks with me in a car, just in case there’s a chance for a swim, although if there’s no one about I don’t always bother, just go in nude. Much more pleasurable.”

  When she made no response, he grasped her arm persuasively. “Come on, don’t be shy. I’ll turn my back until you’re in the water. Lots of girls do without their bikinis.”

  “I’m not one of them.”

  “But there isn’t a soul about,” he protested.

  “Anyone might come down here suddenly—and besides, it’s daylight.” But that was a mistake, as she immediately discovered.

  “Ha! So you wouldn�
�t mind in the dark—or moonlight!”

  “No, I didn’t say that at all. You go and swim if you want to. I’m not stopping you.”

  Ray flung away from her. “You’re the most prudish thing since 1860!” He lit a cigarette, half smoked it, then threw it away. “All right, I’ll go in alone. You’re not much of a girl for a bit of fun, are you?”

  “No, perhaps not,” she agreed stonily. “It depends on what sort of fun.”

  He went back to the car and emerged a few minutes later wearing dark blue trunks. He sat beside her, then lay back full length, his hands behind his head. She had tilted her large straw hat over her face and was unprepared when his arm suddenly shot out and grasped her shoulder. She was imprisoned, held firmly down on the shingly beach, then the pressure of his mouth on her lips caused her a feeling of panic, but as she struggled to move her face away, he tightened his grip.

  “Please, Ray—let me go—” she managed to whisper when he raised her to a half-sitting position in his arms. She could feel his fingers fumbling with the zip at the back of her dress and she took advantage of that slight relaxing of his hold to wrench herself away. But now he pulled the dress off her shoulder, pressed fierce kisses on her flesh and forced her back again on the uncomfortable beach.

  Jacynth was aware of the hard strength of his body and his urge to conquer her and she recoiled from surrender. She managed to free one hand and, doubling her fist, pushed his mouth away from her cheek.

  “You’re hurting me!” she cried out, as the sharp edges of shingle dug into her back. He sat up and moved away from her as suddenly as he had first embraced her.

  “No, you’re not much fun,” he muttered morosely.

  She was too choked to answer, for panic still enveloped her like an evil cloud. She was alone with Ray on a completely deserted beach with no habitation nearer than several miles and her only means of transport, apart from her own feet, the car. If she tried to run for safety, he would overtake her in a matter of minutes, for the ground at the top of the beach was rough and stony with tussocks of grass. Her best plan, she thought, was to try to calm him down. Yet if she showed him the intense coldness she felt, that might be further provocation.