Of course I don’t mind you writing, I’ve passed your letter on to Mr. Vulliamy, who is headmaster of our primary, such a nice man, and he was very excited by the idea, I think having pen pals in France and America is getting rather old hat anyway, don’t you. I’m sure he will be getting in touch with you.

I’m so glad you’ve met Julie and June and that there’s someone else English on the island. It does sound so lovely. Do remind to write. They are awful about it.

Yours most sincerely,

CONSTANCE HOLMES

Tuesday came; again I went down to meet the boat; and again June was not on it. I felt restless, futile, unable to decide what to do. In the evening I strolled up from the quay to the square of the execution. There was a plaque there against the wall of the village school. The walnut tree still stood on the right; but on the left the iron grilles had been replaced by wooden gates. Two or three small boys played football against the high wall beside it; and it was like the room, that torture room, which I had gone to see when I came back from the village on the Sunday evening—locked, but I went round outside and peered in. It was now used as a storeroom, and had easels and blackboards, spare desks and other furniture; completely exorcized by circumstance. It should have been left as it had been, with the blood and the electric fire and the one terrible table in the center.

Perhaps I was overbitter about the school during those days. The examinations had taken place; and it promised in the prospectus that “each student is examined personally in written English by the native English professor.” This meant that I had two hundred papers or so to correct. In a way I didn’t mind. It kept other anxieties and suspenses at bay.

Wednesday came. Once again I met the boat, in vain. I half hoped for a letter, but that was in vain, too. I decided on a course of action. I would wait till the weekend; if I had heard nothing by then, I would go to Athens.

Wednesday had been a sultry day with a veiled sun, a sort of end-of-the-world day, very un-Aegean. That night I sat down for a really long session of correcting. Thursday was the deadline for handing in papers to the assistant headmaster. The air was very heavy, but about half-past ten I heard distant rumbles. Rain was mercifully coming. Half an hour later, when I had worked about one-third of the way through the pile of foolscap, there was a knock on the door. I shouted. I thought it was one of the other masters or perhaps one of the sixth-form leavers who had come cadging advance results.

But it was Barba Vassili. He was smiling under his white walrus moustache; and his first words made me jump from my desk.

“Sygnomi, kyrie, ma perimeni mia thespoinis.”

58

“Excuse me, sir, but a young lady is waiting.”

“Where?” He indicated the gate. I was tearing on a coat. “With blonde hair?”

“A very beautiful young lady. She is English?”

But I was past him and running down the corridor. I called back to his grinning face—"To phos!"—to make him turn out the light. I leapt down the stairs, out of the building and raced along the path to the gate. There was a bare bulb there above Barba Vassili’s window; a pool of white light. I expected to see her standing in it, but there was no one. The gate was locked at that time of night, since the masters all had passkeys. I felt in my pocket and remembered that I had left mine in the old jacket I wore in class. I looked through the bars. There was no one in the road, no one on the thistly wasteland that ran down to the sea fifty yards away, no one by the sea. I called in a low voice.

But no quick shape appeared from behind the walls. I turned exasperatedly. Barba Vassili was coming slowly down through the trees.

“Isn’t she there?”

He seemed to take ages to unlock the side gate we used. We went out into the road and looked both ways. He pointed, but doubtfully, down the road away from the village.

“That way?”

“Perhaps.”

I began to smell a rat. There was something in the old man’s smile; it was ten past eleven; the thundery air, the deserted road. And yet I didn’t care what happened; as long as something happened.

“Can I have your key, Barba?”

But he wouldn’t let me have the one in his hand; had to go back inside his lodge and rummage and find another. He seemed to be delaying me; and when he at last came with another key, I snatched it out of his hand.

I went quickly down the road away from the village. To the east lightning shuddered. After seventy or eighty yards, the school wall right-angled inland. I thought she might be just round the corner of it. But she wasn’t. The road did not go much more than quarter of a mile farther; beyond the wall it looped inland a little to cross a dried-out torrent. There was a small bridge and, a hundred yards to the left of that, a chapel, which was linked to the road by a tall avenue of cypresses. The moon was completely obscured by a dense veil of high cloud, but there was a gray Palmeresque light over the landscape. I came to the bridge and called again in a low voice.

“June? Julie?”

I hesitated, torn between following the road and going back towards the village. Then there was a sound: my name. I ran up between the cypresses, black spindles against the opaque cloud. After forty yards or so there was a movement to my left. I whirled round. She was standing behind one of the largest trees: a dark dress, headscarf, a cardigan draped over her shoulders; all dark except for the white oval of the face.

“Julie?”

“It’s me. June. Thank God you’ve come.”

I went to her. She looked back, round towards the road.

“What on earth’s wrong?”

“I think I’m being followed.”

“Where’s Julie?”

“Isn’t she here?”

“Haven’t you seen her?”

“Not since Friday. Oh God.” She let her head sink; and suddenly I was intensely suspicious again; both voice and movement were overwrought.

“Where’ve you been?”

She looked up, as if surprised. “In Athens.”

“But this extraordinary hour?”

“I didn’t get here till dusk. And I… well, I was frightened.”

I searched her face, pale against the black foliage. She was playing a part; and not very well. I glanced down towards the road; the whitewashed corner of the school wall. Then back at her.

“Why didn’t you wait at the gate?”

“I panicked. He was gone such a long time.” She had the amateur liar’s habit of looking earnestly into one’s eyes.

“Who’s following you?”

“Two men. They stopped when I got to the school.”

“Where’s Julie?” My voice was curt; no nonsense.

“I thought you’d know. I had a telegram.”

“That was from me.”

“I had two.”

“Two!”

She nodded. “One said 'Anne.' She told you what we arranged? I was to stay in Athens. And then yours. They both came on Sunday night. So I knew one must be false. I didn’t trust yours, because it didn’t sound like Julie. So I stayed in Athens.” There were telltale little pauses between the sentences, as if she had to have each one accepted by me before going on. I stared at her.

“Where was this other telegram from?”

“Nauplia.” Silence; she sensed my incredulity. “What happened here at the weekend?”

I went, very quickly, through the events of the Sunday.

She said, “How horrible. Oh how I wish we’d never got involved in all this.” It sounded even more artificial. In the darkness she looked hallucinatorily likejulie and I reached down to touch her wrist. She turned away; then tensed.

There were footsteps on the road. Three men were walking slowly along it. People, villagers, masters, often strolled to the end of the road and back in the evening, for the coolness. But she gave me a scared look. I didn’t trust June one inch; I knew she was lying. Yet lying as a soubrette lies, much more out of mischief than malice.