Aphrodite’s Smile

STUART HARRISON
Aphrodite’s Smile

DEDICATION

For Dale, who has to put up with me

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Part Two

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

French was drunk, which wasn’t in itself an extraordinary event. He wobbled slightly as he stood at the bar and, raising his hands in the air, surveyed the assembled crowd.

‘My friends,’ he began loudly, ‘in gratitude for the welcome you have extended to me during the years that I have been privileged to live among you, I will make a gift to the people of Ithaca.’ He paused for dramatic effect, and waited until he was sure that he had everybody’s attention before he continued. ‘This year the Panaghia will once again take her place at the head of the procession to Kathara.’

There were murmurs of surprise from those who had not heard the Professor, as he was known among the locals, make this same claim two nights earlier. Everybody on the island knew that the statue of the Holy Virgin had been stolen more than sixty years ago, and the Professor’s claim was greeted with interest or scepticism, depending on the listener’s point of view.

The bar was in a narrow street at the far southern end of the harbour around which the town of Vathy had been built, separated from the wharf by a row of run-down houses. Half a dozen zinc tables lined the footpath outside where old men played checkers and drank ouzo. Inside the air was thick with cigarette smoke.

French leaned against the bar to steady himself and peered around at a blur of faces, wagging a finger at nobody in particular. ‘I know there are those among you who will doubt me. I confess that for a time I myself thought that all of these years I have spent searching had been in vain.’ A slight wave of nausea momentarily overtook him and French belched softly.

Some of those present crossed themselves or briefly touched the crucifixes they wore around their necks, silently praying that the Professor’s claims weren’t merely the result of drinking too much wine. Before she was stolen, the statue of the Panaghia had been at the centre of the festival. After the procession to the monastery, the people would approach her one by one and silently pray for her blessing for the coming year. Perhaps if she was returned, the Holy Mother might send more tourists to the island so that it could prosper as its neighbour Kephalonia had. All summer long the charter jets disgorged their cargoes of package holiday-makers across the strait, though distressingly few of them made the ferry trip to Ithaca.

Spiro, however, was not among the more optimistic of those present in Skiopes bar that night. He had come to drink beer and forget his terrible day. To begin with, the engine on his boat wouldn’t start, and then, when he had managed to coax it into life and eventually put to sea, it was only to rip a hole in his main net after it became entangled with some piece of junk floating beneath the surface a mile offshore. In the end he had returned with barely enough in his catch to cover his costs and he was not in a good mood. ‘You talk too much,’ he muttered sourly to French, lifting his eyes from his almost empty glass.

Annoyed at having his train of thought interrupted, French frowned briefly. He was in full flight now, his imagination fuelled by the realisation of a dream he had pursued for almost a quarter of a century. ‘You will see, Spiro,’ he replied. ‘Even you will have reason to thank me, though of course gratitude is not what I seek, nor has it ever been.’

‘And pigs will fly,’ Spiro sneered. He was in the mood for an argument with somebody and this arrogant Englishman would do. He was sick and tired of hearing his crap anyway.

‘You are an ignorant man,’ French proclaimed. ‘You should stick to fishing, about which you at least know a little.’

There were a few chuckles around the smoky room, since it was common knowledge that Spiro was possibly the worst fisherman on the island. Spiro glowered from beneath heavy brows. ‘At least what I do is honest work, fit for a man. I do not waste my time with my nose stuck in books.’ He held up his hands for emphasis. His fingers were short and thick with calluses.

The Professor was an educated man, however, engaged in scholarly work, and for such men life was different. So though one or two heads nodded in sage agreement, most did not. Besides, Spiro had few friends.

French dismissed Spiro’s remarks with a wave of his hand. ‘I would not expect you to understand, Spiro, but some men, like myself, are destined not for the toil of workman’s labour as honourable as that may be, but rather we are driven to pursue knowledge through history, promoting understanding of ourselves through the understanding of our forebears. This work may look easy to you but it too has its difficulties, believe me.’

‘Difficulties!’ scoffed Spiro. ‘What do you know of difficulties? Do you put to sea every day even when the wind is howling from the south? When the waves toss the boats of poor fishermen like children’s toys and the cold freezes your fingers to the bone? Do you risk your life just to feed your family?’

Though it was an impressive speech, nobody in fact could remember Spiro risking anything worse than the possibility of a headache in the morning from drinking too much wine, and that alone would prevent him from putting to sea. French, however, barely heard him; he was addressing himself to a wider audience.

‘Consider the years of painstaking research that does not always bear fruit. Do you think that Sylvia Benton and her colleagues from the great British School of Archaeology in Athens simply stepped out one morning and made their discoveries in Louizos cave by mere happenstance? A site that is considered by many of my esteemed colleagues today to be the rival of Olympia and Delphi. Perhaps the very first site of panhellenic worship in all of Greece.’

Most people present had little idea of what precisely French was talking about, partly because he had a habit of slipping from Greek into his native English when he’d been drinking, though all of course knew of the cave at Polis Bay where a famous archaeologist from the thirties had discovered some pieces of ancient pottery. Nevertheless, to show their support a chorus of vocal approval rippled about the room.

But Spiro was not to be so easily beaten in an argument. ‘At least nobody can say that Spiro Petalas lives off the money his wife earns,’ he declared. ‘How can a woman respect a husband who cannot put food on the table, eh? And if a woman cannot respect her man, how can he satisfy her? Soon she will look elsewhere to find a real man, a man who can take care of her.’

It was true that French had lived for years primarily off the money that Irene earned and it was common knowledge that she had left him last year, as Spiro had indelicately reminded them. But though this might once have bothered him, it no longer did. ‘When the world learns of my discovery,’ French said, ‘there will be money. More than you can imagine. The tourists will come in their thousands and the whole island will prosper.’

‘You have been too long in the sun I think, old man, or perhaps it is the wine,’ Spiro scoffed. ‘Why should tourists come here to see a statue of the Panaghia? To us she is important, of course. But not to anybody else.’

Spiro gloated in triumph when it seemed for a moment that he had the upper hand, because what he said was undoubtedly true. Unfortunately even if the Professor had found the missing statue, it was difficult to see how even she could work a miracle.

French, however, merely smiled secretively. ‘Perhaps the Panaghia is not the only discovery I have made,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there is something else, something that all the world will want to know about.’

The room waited with anticipation for the Professor to continue. People leaned forward in their seats and an expectant hush fell over the room. Spiro Petalas was suddenly ignored as if he had become invisible.

French blinked. It occurred to him that he had been indiscreet and that in fact it would have been better to have kept his mouth shut for now. For a moment the room wavered and wobbled so that he felt disconcertingly as if he were trapped inside a large smoky jelly. His stomach lurched and he wished that he hadn’t eaten quite so much of the seafood stew earlier. Food was one of his weaknesses and he’d long since given up trying to prevent his waistline expanding further. Sobered by a sense of unease that overtook him as he focused on the faces staring back at him, he searched for one in particular. Even though it wasn’t there, he decided that he should leave.

‘I refuse to bandy words with an ignoramus,’ he announced loftily, dismissing Spiro and putting an end to their discussion, though the fisherman gave a sly grin of triumph.

‘You are full of shit,’ Spiro said.

Those looking on shifted awkwardly on their chairs, averting their eyes to the walls or the ground. Though it was regrettable that a fat pig like Spiro had been so impolite as to humiliate the Professor, there was truth in what he said. It seemed that French had unfortunately indulged his love of wine a little too enthusiastically again. The crowd looked on in silence as he set down his half full glass and managed the short walk to the door. One or two of them wished him good-night and advised him to get a good night’s sleep.

At the door, French looked around one last time searching among the faces for one that held sinister intent, but he found only expressions of sympathy.

Reassured, he began the walk home.

It was a half hour walk from the bar to the house. The route took him away from the waterfront along narrow streets that zigzagged up the steep hillside, connected at intervals by sets of concrete steps. The climb was exhausting and French stopped often, his heart pounding deep in his chest as it struggled to supply his bulk with oxygenated blood. When he had caught his breath he pressed on. The night air was fragrant with the scent of jasmine and bougainvillaea, although French admitted that it was spoiled somewhat by the sour odour of his own sweat mingled with the reek of alcoholic fumes. His head was clearing a little now that he was out of the foggy atmosphere of the bar. Enough that he was already regretting the hangover he would have in the morning and being so careless with his talk. Careless talk cost lives they had said in the war, though he had been too young himself to remember.

Half-way up a set of steps, a single lamp fixed to a wooden power pole cast a light that glistened on the waxy leaves of a large magnolia in full bloom with pure white flowers. The sky was lit with a myriad stars. They seemed almost close enough to touch, creating the illusion that upon reaching the top it would be possible to step off into space. From behind, French heard the sound of a stone skittering on concrete. When he looked back he saw only deep shadows close against a wall. His heart skipped a beat but nothing moved. After a while he hurried on.

From within patches of garden the sweet powerful smell of mint wafted on the night air. Another time it might have been pleasant, but by the time he reached the top of the steps, French felt quite ill. He paused until an attack of dizziness passed. Far below, the lights from the restaurants were mirrored in the harbour. As he admired their effect he glimpsed a movement and this time he swore that he heard the sound of footsteps. He experienced a prickling of unease. It was just his imagination, he told himself, though not very convincingly.

Moving on, he hurried along a street past terraces shadowed with grape vines supported by rusting iron trellis. The houses petered out and the road wound upwards through olive groves. As he turned a corner the lights from the harbour were lost from sight and the road was abruptly smothered in thick, heavy darkness. Breathing heavily, French paused to mop his brow with a handkerchief. He was sweating profusely. Behind him the sound of footsteps dogged his progress, any pretence at stealth now abandoned. There was something chilling in their purpose. He felt the darkness close in around him like a shroud. Unfortunate analogy he thought grimly.

‘Who’s there?’ he called out with false bravado. The footsteps stopped briefly, then resumed and quickly picked up pace.

A peculiar sense of calm descended over him. He would not spend his last moments consumed by fear. If he were going to die he would face his killer and look him in the eye. He wondered if it was the alcohol that fuelled his bravery, though he no longer felt drunk. Briefly, he wished he hadn’t said so much at Skiopes. If he’d kept quiet he might finally have found a measure of success towards the end of his life. He might also have had the chance to put things right with Irene and Robert, and at this thought a wave of regret welled up inside him.

The footsteps were almost upon him. French drew himself up and prepared to face his fate, determined to cling to the remnants of his self-respect. And then from around the bend came the unexpected sound of an approaching engine. The road wasn’t used much at night, but perhaps on this evening some greater force was at work. Or perhaps it was just luck.

The footsteps stopped. An indistinct figure was visible no more than twenty feet away. Something glinted in the light. A blade perhaps? Seizing his chance, French turned to run, though his bulk reduced his flight to more of a shambling stumble. He gasped for breath, his heart bursting. He could feel the spot in his back where the blade would enter and pierce his liver. The sound of the approaching vehicle grew louder, drowning out the footsteps behind him and then he was bathed in the headlights of a truck and a voice called out.

‘Professor? Is that you? What are you doing? Slow down before you hurt yourself.’

It was Nikos. He ran a haulage business between the towns on the island and as he climbed down from the cab French almost wept with relief. He turned to face the figure pursuing him but the road was empty.

Suddenly a devastatingly sharp pain gripped his chest. His mouth opened and closed silently as his knees gave way and he felt himself sinking to the ground. He heard Nikos call his name, but it sounded as if his voice came from a long way off, and slowly the lights from the truck shrank to a pinprick.

His last conscious thought before darkness overcame him was that this must be the gods’ idea of a grim joke.

PART ONE

ONE

The phone rang at six. I was already up so I took the call in the kitchen hoping that it hadn’t woken Alicia. She had been working long hours lately, leaving at seven in the morning and sometimes not getting home until nine or ten at night. I thought her boss could manage without her for an hour or two.

I wondered who was calling so early. I lifted the receiver feeling the faint stirrings of disquiet, unexpected calls at odd times being harbingers of bad news. When I heard Irene’s voice I experienced an odd reaction of both relief and dread combined.

‘Robert, is that you?’ Her accent conjured an image of the house where she and my father lived overlooking the town of Vathy. I could almost smell the dry earth and olive trees and, involuntarily, I glanced to the window. Outside, London was waking to a leaden May sky. The leaves on the trees in the square dripped steadily onto the pavement below.

‘Irene, yes it’s me.’ I became aware that I was clenching the phone with a vice-like grip and I took a breath to relax myself. ‘What’s happened? Is something wrong?’

‘It is your father. He had a heart attack.’

I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

‘He is in the hospital in Argostoli. They brought him on the ferry to Kephalonia this morning.’

The knowledge that my father wasn’t dead gradually seeped into my brain. The attack was serious, but no longer immediately life-threatening. As she continued to explain what had happened, Irene’s normally thickly accented pronunciation of English was exacerbated by emotion. She sounded distraught.

‘Where are you?’ I asked her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am fine. I am phoning from the hospital. Your father is sleeping. They have given him medicine.’

‘You sound tired,’ I told her, though what I meant was that she sounded shattered. Emotionally spent. I recalled her saying that she had been at the hospital most of the night.

‘Yes, I am a little tired. But I will be all right.’

‘You should get some rest. Why don’t you go home? I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do there anyway.’ She didn’t reply, and in the silence that followed I thought we had been cut off or else she hadn’t heard me. ‘Irene, did you hear what I said? You should go home.’

‘Yes, yes. I am sorry. I heard you. But I will stay here. They have put a bed in Johnny’s room for me.’

She seemed hesitant and I wondered if she really was OK but she assured me that she was.

‘It is just that I am tired, and I have been so worried about Johnny.’

She had always called him Johnny. I’d never become entirely used to it because when I was a child and we still lived in Oxford, my mother had always called him John. Everybody had. He taught at the university then, and John seemed natural for a middle-aged academic who wore corduroy trousers and tweed jackets. But when he went to live on the island of Ithaca he seemed to shed that persona, and when I first saw him there he was born again as a tanned and bearded figure who wore shorts and short-sleeved, open-necked shirts for most of the year. He had developed a fondness for Greek food and wine and indulged heavily in both. Johnny suited him, and in some ways he was like somebody I had just met.

I continued to offer Irene long-distance advice as if she were the one who was ill. ‘Make sure that you eat something,’ I told her. ‘Don’t worry too much.’

There was a short silence and then she said, ‘Robert, you understand that your father is very ill?’

I realised that I hadn’t mentioned my father. I hadn’t questioned anything that she had told me. ‘But didn’t the doctors say he’s in no danger?’

‘They say that he will recover if he rests. But he will need to take medicine and he will need to change the way that he lives.’

‘He’s a tough old bird. He’ll be fine, Irene.’

‘He is not so tough as you think, Robert. He is getting old.’

I detected a vague censure in her voice. It was several years since I had last seen him. I counted back in my head and surprised myself when I realised that it was actually closer to eight. He’d seemed robust enough then but a lot could happen in that length of time. I had to admit that I had picked up on the changes in him during our infrequent phone calls. There was a time when he’d always put on a cheerfully optimistic front. He’d talk about some dig that he was working on or about the museum he ran, and pretend not to notice my lack of interest. When he asked what I was doing I gave monosyllabic answers. After every call I would feel tense and physically drained. But for a couple of years now it had begun to seem that keeping up the pretence had become too much for him. His enthusiasm for his work had waned. Occasionally he’d even been drunk when he called and I’d been subjected to long self-pitying monologues about his life being a failure.

‘How old is he now?’ I asked Irene.

‘Seventy-two.’

I was eleven when he left England, almost twenty-five years ago. He would have been about my age when I was born. Seventy-two didn’t seem so old, I told myself.

‘I thought perhaps you could come and see him,’ Irene suggested.

I leaned my forehead against the wall. ‘I’d like to. Things are busy at the moment. But I’ll see what I can do.’

A heavy accusing silence reigned over the phone line. I felt a pressure building in my head. A hiss of static prompted the temptation to replace the receiver quietly as if we had been disconnected, a notion I dismissed instantly.

‘He is your father, Robert,’ Irene said gently.

‘I know.’

‘He needs you.’

My eyes stung and my chest felt tight, as though I was being constricted by an iron band. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I said. I coughed, a choking involuntary sardonic laugh. My father needing me. That was almost funny.

Alicia was there when I hung up the phone. ‘What is it?’ She put a hand on my arm, a gesture of concern. As I looked at her I experienced a sudden tidal flow of tenderness mixed with gratitude that she was there. I had never seen her look more beautiful. She was wearing a long nightdress and her hair was mussed from sleep, a crease in her otherwise flawless skin where she’d lain on the edge of the pillow. She was a little pale I thought, and there were faint smudges beneath her eyes.

‘It was Irene.’ I put my arms around her and hugged her tight. I was a head taller than her and she felt slight against me. There was something of the wide-eyed innocent about her even though she was almost thirty. The first time I saw her I thought she’d looked lost, which in fact she had been. Literally. She was studying a street map with a worried frown. That had been three years ago.

She laid her head against my chest. ‘What did she want?’

I breathed in the scent of the shampoo she used and her face cream mingled with the early morning sexiness of her skin. I’m an inch short of six feet, but holding Alicia always made me feel taller somehow. It was the way she sank into me. Surrendered. Her body moulded against mine. ‘My father had a heart attack. He’s in hospital.’

She drew back a little so that she could look at me. ‘Will he be all right?’

‘Apparently.’

Alicia had never met him, or Irene, but she had spoken to both of them on the phone. I’d explained early on in our relationship that I didn’t get on with my dad. She knew the history. ‘I’m sorry.’ She rested her head against me again. She didn’t offer advice, she didn’t question me and she didn’t try to comfort me except by her presence and I loved her for that.

‘Families,’ I said wryly. I smiled and kissed her. ‘Who’d have them?’

As I turned away I glimpsed Alicia’s quick anxious frown and I realised my mistake. She wanted children and I was fairly sure that she was afraid that I didn’t. When she’d moved in with me we’d agreed that if we were still together and felt the same way about each other in a year’s time then we’d get married and start a family. The year had come and gone, but when we talked about it I always found a reason to delay things. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her. I just thought it was a big step.

I went back and kissed her again. She looked surprised. ‘What was that for?’

‘Because I love you.’

She studied me intently. ‘Do you? Really?’

‘Really.’

She kissed me back. ‘God. I love you too. I really do.’

At the weekend, I decided. At the weekend I’d ask her to marry me.

I spoke to Irene on the phone twice over the next forty-eight hours. My father’s condition continued to improve and the doctors were ever more confident that he would make a full recovery providing he made the necessary changes to his lifestyle. Every time I called, Irene asked me when I was going out there. I told her as soon as I could. I decided that since he was out of danger I should wait until he’d regained his strength, besides, there were things that needed my attention at work. She didn’t completely buy it, but she didn’t push the issue. She kept telling me that she would take care of him when he was allowed home. She’d make sure he kept to the doctor’s regime. I thought it was a little strange the way she kept assuring me, almost as if I doubted her, but I put it down to tiredness.

In fact it wasn’t a good time for me to be leaving London. I had started my company when I was still in my mid-twenties, having come out of university with a BA and not much idea of what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to spend it in the present rather than in the past like my dad. After a few years of intermittent travelling, and having tried banking and marketing, I decided that I didn’t really mind what I did so long as I didn’t have to work for anybody else. I raised some money and bought a run-down flat in North London which I fixed up and sold on for a profit. Since the work had been easy enough and the rewards surprisingly good, I did it again, so next I could afford to do up two places at once. Then I bought a big old house in Chingford that had been let as bedsits and tiny flats with shared bathrooms. With a daunting amount of debt, I set about converting the place into three apartments, each occupying a single floor. I sold two for what it had cost me to buy and renovate the entire building. The third one was pure profit, and London prices were about to take off.

By the time I was thirty I was worth several million on paper, but a year later I was not only broke but badly in debt. I’d invested heavily in an office tower but the main contractor had cut corners on a previous project and one of his recent buildings had been declared unfit. A whole morass of corrupt dealings with suppliers and officials had been exposed by one of the national newspapers, and when the contractor filed for bankruptcy nobody would come within a mile of the half-completed building I part-owned.

In the five years since then I had clawed my company back to profitability. I was more cautious about where I invested and for the most part I followed a strategy of developing a broader range of smaller properties. In another year or two I could begin to relax a little.

My company offices were within walking distance of my house. The day after Irene first called with the news about my father I arrived at work early. Tony Allen was the only one there. I had a small team who all had a stake in the business, and Tony had been with me the longest. He was ambitious and hard-working and was usually at his desk around seven. I’d given up telling him he didn’t need to burn himself out a long time ago.

That morning he didn’t know that I was there. His office door was open and, as I went to the coffee machine, I could hear him talking on the phone. He mentioned the name of a warehouse property that we had been trying to buy in Fulham. We already had plans to turn the building into the kind of trendy offices favoured by advertising agencies and the like who didn’t mind paying high rents. It was a big project and I had taken a lot of convincing, but Tony had been chipping away for a long time. He thought I was too conservative and, though I reminded him that I’d almost gone under once, he told me that was in the past and I shouldn’t let it hold the company back. In the end I’d relented enough to agree to the deal, but a couple of weeks ago Tony had told me the seller had suddenly upped his price by a third and he didn’t think we were going to be able to reach agreement. The last I’d heard the deal was dead in the water. I wondered if something had happened to resurrect it. The way Tony was talking it sounded that way.

Back in my own office I forgot about the Fulham project. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad. Part of me wanted to fly out to Ithaca but another part looked for excuses not to. I was thinking about Alicia too and my decision to ask her to marry me. I loved her, but I wondered if this was the right time to be making that kind of decision. Half an hour later Tony passed my office and when he saw me he looked surprised, even startled. He started to come in, but my phone rang and as I reached for it he pointed to his watch and mouthed that he’d see me later.

It was some time in the afternoon when we crossed paths again. As we chatted I recalled the phone conversation I’d overheard that morning and I was about to ask him if things had changed when he said that he’d heard again from the company that owned the warehouse.

‘Might as well forget that one for now. They’re not going to sell,’ he said.

I said that it was a pity and he joked that I was probably secretly relieved. I smiled but didn’t say anything. After he left I remembered his expression when he’d seen me that morning and I thought about the call. I went to my office and sat down. After a while I called a friend of mine and asked him to do me a favour.

That night at home Alicia came and sat beside me on the couch. ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Liar.’ She play punched me. ‘Is it your dad? Did you speak to Irene today?’