Aphrodite’s Smile. Stuart Harrison

       FOUR

      After Irene’s startling revelation we drove back to Vathy from Stavros. Along the way she explained that my father had been in the hospital for two weeks before he told her that somebody had tried to kill him. Irene had moved to a nearby hotel. Every morning she would spend a few hours with him and then return again in the evening after he had rested for the afternoon, then together they would talk or watch television or perhaps read. He was no longer bitter, she told me. He would hold her hand and often told her that he had been a fool to drive her away. While I listened I couldn’t escape the suspicion that my father’s reformation was remarkably convenient, perhaps explained by his close brush with mortality.

      ‘But he was not quite the same,’ Irene said. ‘There was something on his mind. What is the English word for this? I felt he was thinking about something else, even when he was talking to me about coming home. I could sense that part of him was not with me.’

      ‘You mean he was preoccupied?’

       ‘Yes. That is it,’ she agreed. ‘When I asked him about it he denied that it was true, but he could not deceive me. When you have lived with somebody for a very long time there are things that you understand without the need for words. There was a time when Johnny would never keep anything from me. We had no secrets from one another. It is difficult, I think, for a relationship to be strong when one person hides things from the other.’

      ‘You felt he was deliberately hiding something?’

      ‘Yes. I think he did not trust me to tell me what it was. He was worried I think. But also excited.’

      ‘Excited?’

      Irene frowned as she drove. ‘I do not know how else to put it. He was not unhappy or depressed any more. Sometimes when we talked of the way things were before, how he had talked so much of failure, I had the feeling that there was something he wanted to tell me, but then he would draw back and it would be gone. And then one morning when I went to visit him I found him out of his bed demanding that the nurse bring him his clothes. He was very upset.’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘I do not know. He insisted that I take him home.’

      ‘You mean upset as in angry?’

      She thought about that. ‘Not angry. Perhaps a little with the nurse because she refused to fetch his clothes, though it was not her fault, she was only doing her job. It was more that he was in a hurry. I do not know how to explain it. As if he was anxious about something. When he saw me he was very pleased. He pleaded with me to make them bring his clothes. At first I did not know what to do. I told him I would have to speak to the doctors.’

      ‘What did they say?’

      ‘That he was not well enough to leave.’

      ‘But he wouldn’t listen?’

      ‘No. And when they saw how upset Johnny was they became alarmed. They checked his medication because at first they wondered if the nurse had given him the wrong drugs. I felt sorry for her. She had not given him anything except what was written on his chart. She thought she was going to get into trouble but she told the doctors the same thing she had told me, that Johnny had seemed quite all right when she had brought him some juice and the newspaper after he had woken up. He had been sitting up in bed and talking to her, though of course he was complaining about being in hospital because he did not like being stuck in bed all day and he said the food was terrible, but Johnny always complained of these things, so it was nothing new. But when she went back later he had changed. He was very agitated and that was when he said that he was leaving.’

      Irene told me that after the doctors had checked him over they had taken her aside and warned her that though my father wasn’t ready to go home it was dangerous for him to be in such an excitable state. She had to try to calm him down or else they concluded it might actually be better if they agreed to his demand, though there were forms she would have to sign absolving them of culpability.

      ‘It was then that Johnny told me that somebody had tried to kill him,’ Irene continued. ‘He said that it was dangerous for him to stay in hospital and that was why he needed to go home.’

      ‘Maybe he was talking about the hospital food,’ I joked, though she didn’t see the humour.

      ‘No. He was talking about the night of his heart attack.’ She explained how a truck driver going home late at night had seen my father collapse on a road high above the town. ‘If Nikos had not seen him, Johnny would have died. But your father told me that he was being chased when he collapsed.’

      ‘Chased by whom?’ I tried to imagine him running under any circumstances. Even when I had last seen him he had been quite overweight.

      ‘He would not say at the time. Later he said that he did not know who it was.’

      ‘But whoever it was wanted to kill him? Why?’

      She shook her head. ‘I thought that it might be his medicine. The doctors had told me that there might be side-effects. He might have confusions.’

      ‘You mean delusions?’

      ‘Yes, that is the word. But when Johnny saw that I didn’t believe him he would not say any more. I think it hurt him. But later I thought about it again. I signed the forms and took him home and that night I wondered why he would say such a thing if it was not true.’

      ‘Are you serious?’ I said. ‘He was ill, and like you said he was probably on some pretty potent medicine. You don’t really think there was anything to it.’

      ‘But there is the way he behaved at the hospital. And afterwards at home. As if there was always something on his mind. He was worried, I am sure.’

      ‘Did you ask him why?’

       ‘Of course. But he told me that I was right, that it was the medicine that had made him think strange things. He laughed it off.’

      ‘Then surely that’s your explanation.’

      ‘But I felt that he was keeping something from me. If I had listened to him at the hospital he might have told me what it was, but because I did not believe him he would not confide in me again. After I took him home he behaved in strange ways sometimes. Every night he would lock the doors and windows, even though there is very little crime on Ithaca. It is not like the cities or what you see on television. He would often wake up at night thinking that he had heard something outside.’

      ‘You never saw or heard anything?’

      ‘No, of course not. And there were other things. He would shut himself in his study, even though he was not supposed to work. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing. And he wouldn’t let me ask anybody to come to the house. He refused to see anybody.’

      To me my father’s behaviour, while smacking of mild paranoia, sounded consistent with the possible side-effects of the drugs he was on, or else he was simply suffering withdrawal symptoms because he wasn’t drinking. I felt that guilt had distorted Irene’s view.

      ‘It can’t have been true,’ I reasoned. ‘I mean, what possible reason could anyone have for wanting to kill him? He was simply a harmless old man.’

      She met my eye, uncertainty written into every troubled line in her face. For a moment I thought there was something else she wanted to tell me, but then resignedly she said, ‘I suppose you are right.’

      The house where my father and Irene had lived for more than twenty years sat on a hillside high above the main town of Vathy. Stone retaining walls formed terraces where olive trees grew. It was a common feature of the island, evidence of cultivation going back thousands of years. Often these walls had fallen into disrepair because the landowners lived abroad, but here they were well maintained,