Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

Then there are treks about the hills to be had, the seventh century church of a saint, the ruins of a monastery, a temple to the wine god. And there is the Venetian place, residue of the Empire of Venice, beyond the first bank of hills, the area called, for ‘fun’, Little Venice. And there is the painting course.

It will be so interesting, the course, Nick has been told. The tutors are excellent, the situation splendid. Everyone is always thrilled. The scenery - in another month he will be astounded, shattered by joy at the paintable views. He will want a taxi to get there, perhaps, or there is the bus - but half the time it is full of locals going over to the other village, and with livestock, (chickens, the odd goat, even once a small flock of sheep).

Nick waits in his hotel, which seems made for smaller humans, at least two feet shorter than Nick and more narrowly built. In a small walled garden a vine grows up a fig tree. Cicadas soon sound in the afternoons, or at least Nick hears them.

When the sun drops below the sea, now often in a glorious haemorrhage, he beholds the famous and uncanny green blink on the water.

About three - or is it five? - days later, he sees her. Kitty. Kit.

He is sitting at one of the outdoor cafe tables, with a watered ouzo, and along the terrace walks a slim young woman accompanied by a large man. The man is large, that is, in the sense of musculature and height. He is about six-four, and his big arms bulge in his jacket. He looks Greek, perhaps with a dash of the Middle East, dark, hawk-nosed. He is grinning at something the woman has said. Then they both laugh.

Kitty has dyed her hair a very deep henna red, and it is longer than Nick recalls.

Otherwise she looks, he thinks, physically the same. She wears a milk-white dress, and a sort of crocheted white cardigan, and white high-heeled sandals. Her fingernails are painted white. Her skin is still very pale. Her lip-gloss matches her hair. He is surprised somewhat that he remembers her so well that now he can identify her this ably.

Supposing it is not Kitty? Everyone has a double, etc:

No, it is Kitty. Kitty is meant to be on the island, and here Kitty is.

He sits immobile, and they both walk right past him. He is almost certain she does not see him. Perhaps, in her case, she does not remember him well. After all, she had done what she set out to do, presumably with all three of them, Nick, Laurence, Serena. It was just that, in Laurence’s case, things had gone rather too far.

She does not, as he looks at her through his dark glasses, seem troubled. Something glints in the sunlight as it lies on a chain around her neck, some small gold pendant.

Then they have turned off between a pair of mulberries, moving into the village.

Should he go after them?

He tenses to get up and follow.

Then sits back.

In a couple more days he will be going inland. To the venue of the painting course. Where else should Kitty be but precisely there, as mad Jonquil Franks had promised in her scribbled note, just below the name of the island, the identification of the house, the time of the course, the ferry. And that other thing. That other, even more astounding, thing she had written there. The thing he had been glad he had not let Serena see, or that apparently Serena had had, ultimately, no interest in seeing.

Nick takes the early bus. He shares it with about twenty persons mostly old women in black, and a coop of chickens who voice loud disapproval.

The road is steep; crags tower. The sea lies below everything, a blue rim to the sky. He might have made a few notes, on the bus. He is by now used to not making notes. A relief, a bewildering loss. He thinks probably he will not write again. Or draw anything. The art course is not his reason for being here.

Behind her in the hallway is a cool dark cavern. But the floor is a deep wine-red. It is tiled, he sees, and the interstices about these tiles show a faint paler outline, lending a definite receding perspective to the space.

“Kalispéra,” Nick says, politely.

The woman is fat and firm, dressed neatly in black. She blinks once and speaks to him in English. “This is a private house.”

“Yes, kyria. I know. I’m looking for…” Nick checks. He amends, “I want to see Kitty Andrew.”

She speaks in Greek then.

And Nick retaliates insultingly from his phrase book: “Den katalavéno.” Don’t understand.

In English the woman says, “You are at the wrong house.”

“No. I am at the right house. Perhaps she’s called Price, here. A young woman, twenty-eight years old, long red hair - about the colour of those tiles.”

As he had walked up the track from the olive groves, only now shedding their spun green blossom, the huge house had loomed behind high white walls. There is an escutcheon over the entrance, Venetian no doubt, renovated or a copy, a lion with a little ship balanced on its back. The garden is laid with flagstones and planted with three pink almond trees.

The fat woman is frowning at Nick. She says, “You are from the painting people.”

“The course. Yes, in a way.”

“That is in the village.”

“I know where it is. My name is Nick Lewis. I am here to see Kitty. Perhaps…”

The woman speaks in Greek again, but just then the big Greek man Nick saw in the other coast village days before, appears from a corridor at the back of the hall. He says something to the woman. Instantly she moves away from the doorway, and then the man addresses Nick.

“Come in, Mr Lewis. You must not worry about Pera. She is always like this, with a stranger.”

Nick thinks he does