Moon Of Aphrodite. Sara Craven
a blow. She stopped at one of the news-stands and bought a guide book in English, and walked along slowly reading it. She didn’t feel conspicuous in the slightest. Every second person she saw seemed to be a tourist, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Using the map in her book, she managed to find her way to Omonia Square, and there she hesitated, finally plucking up courage to ask a passer-by where she could catch a bus for the Acropolis. He gave her a wide smile, then launched into a flood of Greek, interspersed with a few words of very broken English, before seizing her guide book from her hand and writing down the numbers of several buses across the top of the page. She was about to thank him and turn away when another man standing nearby decided to take a hand. Waving a peremptory finger, he seized the stub of pencil the other had been using and began to write a list of alternative numbers, beaming at Helen occasionally while his conversation with the first man became more and more heated.
Helen, aware of the curious glances of some of the passers-by, was becoming embarrassed by the raised voices and violent gestures. She tried to interrupt, but the two Greeks were by now far more interested in their argument than anything else, and after standing there rather helplessly for a moment, she decided to try and find the way to the nearest bus stand by herself.
Next time she wanted to know anything, she vowed silently, she would ask a policeman!
The heat was becoming oppressive now, and she was beginning to wish she had taken Damon Leandros’ advice and stayed in her suite with the shutters closed. Perhaps if it had been offered as advice, and less as an order, she might have felt more inclined to accept it, she told herself in self-justification. It was galling to be issued with instructions as if she was a child who could not be trusted to think for herself.
There seemed to be a great many buses about, but none of them seemed to bear any of the numbers she had been given, she realised ruefully as she stared around her. Nor were there any policemen in the vicinity.
At last, in desperation, she entered the nearest shop, a chemist’s, and this time she was luckier. The chemist, a dark young man with a beard, spoke almost perfect English, but he looked at her dubiously when she explained where she wished to go.
‘In the heat of the day, thespinis? Is it wise?’
‘I only have a few hours in Athens,’ she explained.
He shrugged, looking at her slender arms revealed by the sleeveless navy dress she was wearing. ‘You have a very fair skin. It needs protection in our sun.’ He reached to one of the shelves behind him and produced a tube of sun cream. ‘This will help a little, but you must take care or you will burn, and that is not pleasant.’
She thanked him rather doubtfully. After all, she had only come in to find out where the bus stop was, not to spend any of her small hoard of drachmas on expensive sun cream, but when she produced her money, he waved it away.
‘I do not wish payment, thespinis. It is my pleasure to do this for you.’ He smiled into her eyes with a frank sensual appreciation that sent the colour racing into her face. ‘Perhaps one day you will come back to Athens.’
He escorted her to the pavement, and pointed out to her exactly where she could catch her bus. It occurred to Helen as she moved away that with very little encouragement he would probably have come with her. And she recalled too that Greek women were supposed to lead quite sheltered lives until their marriage. Judging by the way the men behaved on the slightest acquaintance, they had good reason to be sheltered! she thought with faint amusement.
There were already several people waiting at the stop when she arrived, and she hoped that was a good sign and that the bus would be along very shortly. Time was passing more rapidly than she could have believed possible, and she had no idea how long the journey to the Acropolis would take.
But twenty minutes later they were still waiting, and Helen was ready to scream with frustration. Most of the other would-be passengers had moved back from the bus stand to find themselves patches of shade, but Helen remained at the edge of the pavement, straining her eyes as she peered down the hill at the oncoming traffic.
She noticed the car at once, because of its opulence and sleek lines. And then she saw who was driving it, and a little gasp escaped her. It was Damon Leandros, and he was not alone. There was a girl with him, dark and in her way as opulently beautiful as the car. She was smiling and talking to him animatedly, and at any moment the car would be past and gone, then Damon Leandros turned slightly to flick his cigarette out of the window, and his eyes met Helen’s across two lanes of traffic. She was thankful those two lanes existed, because as well as recognition and disbelief, she had seen the beginnings of anger in his face.
She glanced down the hill again, biting her lip anxiously. He was caught in the traffic, and couldn’t stop, and anyway this was a one-way street, yet something told her that he would be back.
A battered grey taxi swerved into the side of the road to discharge its passenger, and Helen leapt for the opening door, almost knocking over the indignant Athenian who emerged in her haste.
The driver was very dark and unshaven, and looked like a member of the Greek Mafia, but he seemed to understand that she wanted to be driven to the Acropolis, even if he displayed no real inclination to take her there. He put the car into gear with a gut-wrenching screech and hurled it into the stream of traffic, muttering all the time under his breath as he did so.
Helen, being bounced around in the back seat from one side of the car to the other, was almost numb with rage. Quite a few of the taxis she had noticed in the streets had had the same battered look, with bumps and dents, and sometimes even their headlights taped up, and if this was a sample of the way they were usually driven, she could quite understand why. She wished very much that she spoke Greek, because she doubted very much whether the conventional phrase books on sale would provide a translation for ‘Please stop driving like a maniac!’
Her only consolation was that when Damon Leandros returned to look for her, and she had not the slightest doubt that he would, she would have vanished, she hoped without trace.
The taxi stopped at last with a jerk which almost hurled her on to the floor, and she stared doubtfully at the mass of figures on the meter, wondering which one depicted the fare. The driver didn’t seem prepared to help. As she hesitated, he directed a sullen stare at her, and eventually she produced her purse, peeled off a number of notes and handed them to him. Judging by the slightly contemptuous smile he gave her as he pocketed them, she had given him far too much, she thought angrily as she got out of the car.
It was hotter than ever as she walked up the hill which led to the entrance, but near the car park was a large stall selling cold drinks and other refreshments. There were people everywhere, sitting under the shade of the trees as they ate and drank, most of them tourists, a lot of them students, propping themselves up on their bulging rucksacks. There were all sorts of accents, and Helen found she was eagerly listening for an English voice, as she made her way up the slope to the summit. She would have her cold drink later, she thought, because something told her that if she ever settled under the trees, her sightseeing would be over for the day.
The stone slabs she was walking up were warm through the thin soles of her sandals, and above her the rock towered away, crowned by a cluster of buildings. She stood there for a moment, staring up, conscious of an isolation that went deeper than mere physical loneliness, overcome by the thought of time, and the generations of feet which had trodden this way before hers—tyrants, philosophers, soldiers, slaves and conquerors—suddenly aware as she had never been of her mother’s Greek blood in her veins, and of a faint stirring deep inside her which went further than the ordinary excitement of the holidaymaker.
Following the small knots of people ahead of her, she made her way without haste through the Propylaea and out on to the vast expanse of bleached white rock which had served the city of Athens as a fortress and a religious sanctuary. The Parthenon dominated, as she supposed it had always been intended it should. Its great honey-coloured mass seemed to rear into the flawless blue of the sky, like some proud ancient lion scenting the air, Helen thought, and smiled at her own fancy.
She became aware that a group of people behind her were patiently waiting to take