"No Passion in the Mind"

by Alex Castleton

Copyright ©2005
ISBN: 0-87714-917-8 eBook edition
ISBN: 0-87714-344-7 PB edition

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

DEDICATION

XXXX

THE AUTHOR

Alex Castleton is a nom de plume for Phania Moles who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Greek parents who had to flee the ancient Byzantine centers of Greek civilisation in Anatolia (then part of the Ottoman Empire) after the disastrous failure of Venizelos's military adventurism against Mustapha Kemal Ataturk's emergent Turkey.

The author was born and brought up in Alexandria and educated in Greek schools where she acquired fluency in French, Arabic and English in addition to her native Greek - until her family was again forced to uproot itself following the Egyptian nationalist revolution led by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956. She went to the U.S. to further her studies and there met her Australian husband-to-be who was a postgraduate student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

After their marriage the couple settled in Townsville in the tropical north of Australia, and Phania became a naturalised Australian citizen. Both pursued teaching careers and also collaborated in writing, several works of an academic character being published by Rutgers University Press, New Jersey.

Alex Castleton simultaneously pursued her separate interests in the writing of fiction, however the demands of full-time teaching and bringing up a family meant that her writing was for a long time consigned to the bottom drawers of her study desk.

No Passion in the Mind is her first novel, the title taken from one of Francis Bacon's essays, "On Death": "There is no passion in the mind so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death…Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it" - all points of reference to the story.

THE BOOK

He was the man of every woman's dreams. Two women loved him. He loved them back. Yet they rejected him. Why? The Greek-born family matriarch is determined to marry off her grandson and heir to a woman of her own choice. He is torn between a "traditional" sense of loyalty to family and a more "modern" conception of love and marriage. Twice, his prospective brides have their own hidden agendas first for accepting then rejecting him. A suspenseful tale of love, hate and revenge, crisply and compellingly told, unfolds.

***

The entire action of the story takes place within six months against a backdrop of prolific but sometimes menacing natural beauty in and around the sugar-cane fields of tropical Australia - a land of savannah plains, World Heritage-listed rain forests, relentless and occasionally cyclonic deluges, endless glistening beaches, seductive South Pacific islands and the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef. The same few months of the narrative correspond with the planting, ripening, burning and harvesting of the sugar-cane which also serve as a kind of underlying metaphor for the protean relationship between the two principal protagonists.

Sample

"Nothing happens gradually in the tropics. Abruptly night becomes day and day night. When the sun rises it overwhelms the dawn; when it sets night rushes in to shield the earth. Rain in summer gushes, never dribbles, then stops; when summer ends there is relatively no rain at all. A short, tentative winter succeeds the omnipresent summer; spring and autumn have no meaning…."

***

When the mango winds start in October you know that summer has come.

The cicadas know it, too. Their shrill noise begins at dawn and continues in a grating monotone like a myriad gears grinding together. By noon the trees in which they hang resonate with their strident sound and sweat with their sprayed secretions. Against these and the dazzling glare of the mid-day sun my eyes become narrow slits. It is time to find a shadier sanctuary which the spare palms are no longer able to provide.

"Mr Newton! Mr Newton! Over here! Over here!" Olive's bellow pummels the air which is like molten toffee; the leaves crackle and crunch under her thongs; the capacious frame moves towards me, shivering and wobbling; her arms are outstretched, her face red with excitement. She stops just short of collision, but she embraces me with such strength that I am temporarily inert. She tries to regain her breath which reeks of beer and perspiration.

"What's the matter, Olive?" I say, trying to disengage myself from her embrace.

"You'd never guess what's happened, Mr. Newton." Her eyes burn and her shout is victorious. "I've won! I've won! I've won a hundred quid in the bloody Casket!"

She waves a ticket and a newspaper cutting in front of my face.

"Goodness, Mr. Newton, you look hot. Come up into the bar out of this blazing sun."

We walk to the hotel.

"Now, sit down, love, I'm going to shout you a beer. Don't move. I'll be

back in a sec. At last my luck has changed!" She laughs exuberantly and walks to the bar.

Luck? Fate? Judy wouldn't have called it either, and of course it wasn't, but I wonder if she would have come into our room in the hotel if it had not been for the excitement of winning her own prize.

* * *

I suppose we each of us have our own private justifications for just about everything we do, which we assume to be reasonable and patent to everybody else but seldom are.

It is rather like the generals of World War I in the book I read in the train on the way to Cairns. Probably no other episode in history was more fully recorded and written about. Everyone seemed to be conscious, as they lived through it, that they were watching one of the great upheavals of mankind; the generals in particular all felt the hand of destiny lying heavily on their shoulders. Yet when it was all over, and despite the 0lympian courage and sacrifice, the war turned out to be a monument to failure, tragedy and disillusion. It had not led to a better world.

So the generals and the politicians felt impelled to recount their deeds and justify their actions. But when the library shelves groaned under the weight of their memoirs, how closer was the truth?

So it is, I suspect, with us all. Each person's truth, like that of the events of history, is separate and subjective, made up of little bits seen, experienced, forgotten - or not even fully apprehended. It is like a kaleidoscope made up of many coloured fragments whose design changes by the movement, however slight, of merely handing the tube to another person. The picture is different but the fragments are exactly the same.

I must have begun to realise that when we woke next morning and rushed to the railway station. Apart from the fact that Joanna had locked the connecting door between the two rooms of our suite; apart from the fact that her demeanour appeared resolute but in no sense resentful or impolite - the picture might have been exactly the same as the night before, almost as though nothing had happened. That we read and hardly spoke after breakfast in the dining car was similarly not all that unusual.

The scrub thinned out north of Cardwell, and the train was again running

through familiar sugar country, when I looked up from my book to think aloud on the sorry hopes of nations.

"Tell me, Joanna," I said, breaking the silence, "if two nations can never see anything in exactly the same way, can there ever be peace on this earth? Or, for that matter," I added, as another thought occurred to me, "understanding between people?"

"When I was a little girl," she replied," we were taught about Basil the Bulgar-slayer who blinded a whole army and left their commander with one eye to lead them home. To the Greeks he is a hero; to the Bulgarians their soldiers are martyrs; to both, their hopes of conquest and revenge have brought only misery. There can only be happiness when people learn to banish hopes and expect nothing from life. If they learn not to want things they will find out that they don't really need them. They can then be happy with the good that has happened in the past and may happen in the future."

Joanna the little philosopher, I thought.

As we drew into the railway station in Cairns and saw Gary and Charles waiting on the platform I was in no sense surprised when I felt her link her arm in mine. I don't think that anything she said or did could ever again surprise me.

Charles saw us through the carriage window and bounded along the platform in pace with the train. When we got out he behaved as though we were returning from a protracted absence overseas, smothering Joanna with kisses and affectionate embraces.

Joanna for her part responded in kind, presenting her most frivolous, unaffected and child-like face. Charles wanted to know every detail of our movements in Townsville; Joanna in turn obliged with a colourful commentary of that which she thought it in Charles's best interests to know.

"The two of you must have had a marvellous time, Joanna," Charles gushed. "You sound as if you even liked Townsville, which amazes me; I find it ugly."

"Yes, but its ugliness is so beguiling, Charles."

"I never thought I'd hear anyone say that ugliness was attractive."

"I said 'beguiling', Charles. It has a character in its shabbiness which I agree is brittle, but brittle like the beauty of a once lovely woman. It is the kind of place which I think must either repel people or enchant them."

"Well, it repels me. It's the last place on earth that I would want to live. Even their one and only hill is a joke compared with the mountains here around Cairns. And the views! You'll forget Castle Hill once you've seen them."

I thought that Joanna would never forget Castle Hill.

In Cairns the mountains came commandingly close to the town and the sea. It was only a short way to the gorges where heavy trees bore orchids and vines.

As we drove to the hotel I was conscious of a kind of overhanging cloud which formed from Joanna's persistent reflections upon ugliness, which, if I had not known her better, might easily have been construed as the outpourings of a gloomy soul.

Of course Charles didn't notice; anything Joanna said he listened to with wide-eyed admiration, fascination even. He only saw in her the cheerful smile dispelling the clouds that might have predicted a storm. But I am sure Gary did.

Her current mood had first become evident in our talk on the train, then again on the station. It continued over dinner in the hotel. Gary and I had been having a drink in the bar, and when we went into the dining-room Joanna and Charles were already there, engrossed in earnest conversation.

"….it might have been only the ambition of individual men that led to the building of the pyramids, but that doesn't detract from the greatness of the achievement," Charles was saying.

"Charles, I am not denying that men are capable of achieving wonders, as you call them. I am just suggesting that too often not enough thought is given to their cost. I see no mystery or symbolism in the Sphinx, only the ghosts of the thousands of tormented creatures who laboured and died to build it. To me it has the face of death."

"You're not going to tell me that man is evil?"

"Yes, Charles, that is precisely what I am saying because to me the end never - I repeat, never - justifies the means; and for one man to pursue an evil end is sufficient to show the real nature of all men. We can only consider ourselves fortunate that many men - perhaps the majority, though I have my reservations about that - have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to reveal their real natures."

"But Joanna," Charles protested, "that's the most pessimistic thing I've ever heard. If you are to be believed there is absolutely no hope at all for the human race."

"Well, there may be, Charles - though I personally doubt it - but only if the voices of some individual men are heard, men who see the truth clearly and who know what needs to be done if man is to redeem himself."

Charles squinted at her disbelievingly. "You mean great men like Alexander the Great, or Napoleon, or Winston Churchill?"

"Heaven forbid! No, Charles. I mean artists who have been sensitive enough to show us through their music, sculpture, poetry and prose that if man aspires constantly towards a condition greater than himself he may be capable of attaining it."

"Like Corneille?" Charles's sarcasm he intended to be withering.

"If you wish, yes." She turned to Gary and me. "Can we order now, Richard? I'm hungry."

"Really, Joanna," Charles persisted, "what is it in Corneille that makes him almost a god to you?"

She sighed and looked at him patiently. "It's not easy to explain, Charles. It's what the French call the Corneillean soul. It has to do with a beauty and grandeur that are almost more than human but which do exist in individual souls such as those he tries to create in his characters."

She stopped briefly, looked at him and smiled; then she went on: "In other words, Charles, it is not enough to recognise that evil, ugliness and weakness exist all around and within us, we must also have an ideal which offers us a choice of something better."

"I'm sorry, Joanna, but you've lost me completely. For minds I'll choose yours; for feelings I'll choose mine."

He brushed back his blond, sandy hair with one hand, clasped Joanna's across the table with the other, flashed his sparkling white teeth in a grin from ear to ear and appealed to her with his dancing blue eyes.

Charles was comfortable in his alluring good looks, without being arrogant, and the accord between them was mutual, instantaneous and artless. They laughed in unaffected appreciation of each other, Charles's tall lithe frame leaning back in his chair and almost tipping it over, which only made them laugh the more. I wished that Joanna could be as much at ease with me.

She left immediately after dinner with the excuse that she had found the train journey quite tiring. Charles, disappointedly left out, announced that he would go and survey the "talent" of Cairns and strutted out.

Gary and I went into the bar and collapsed in armchairs with a brandy each. For a long time we did not speak; we did not have to.

"How is everything going with you and Joanna, Rick?" he asked, lighting up.

"Not bad. I don't have any complaints, Gary."

"She's looking well. The last few days seem to have done her good."

"Yes."

"On the other hand you look pretty done in. Haven't you been sleeping well?"

"As a matter of fact I didn't sleep well last night."

"You know, Rick, the more I see of Joanna the more she baffles me. Sometimes I think that all the pieces of the jig-saw are coming together; then I find that they don't fit at all. She has an interesting way of thinking - which I find refreshing - but I can never be sure how deeply she has thought about things and, least of all, what she really feels about them. It's as though she doesn't want anyone to reach her. Even with Charles - though it's obvious how much they like each other - I get the feeling that she is using him as a foil...no, 'using' is the wrong word, but do you know what I mean?"

"I know, Gary. I feel exactly the same way. I can't decide whether my beautiful wife is a half-baked intellectual, a charlatan or a saint. I never know when she is pulling my leg and when she isn't. Perhaps there's a very simple explanation. Her age. You remember what great know-alls we were at eighteen and how deeply we felt about everything."

"Perhaps you're right, Rick. Anyway, I can't imagine that living with her would ever be dull. I think I envy you." He drained his glass and put it on the arm-rest in a single arching movement.

"You're right, Gary, life with her is never boring for an instant, though I can't say that it isn't occasionally confusing. Still, I'm resigned to the fact that she'll let me see her real self only when she is ready. It may be a long wait. For sure she won't let me hurry her. But I'm prepared to be patient."

Again there was a long pause before Gary spoke. He looked at me pensively and straight in the eyes. "You love her very much, Rick." It was not a question.

I did not have to wonder at my lack of hesitancy in replying. "Yes, Gary, I do, very much. Come on, we'd better hit the sack now if we're to stand a chance of keeping up with Joanna and Charles tomorrow."

It was not a question of keeping pace with the two of them on the next day only, but on the three that followed. The district offered an abundance of beauty that satisfied the senses fully; not only that, Gary and I were caught up in the dizzying whirlwind of Charles's determination to show Joanna everything. From mighty pounding waterfalls to mystic blue lakes, from exquisite coral cays to unending beaches, nature had excelled herself in a display of almost embarrassing virtuosity.

Through my blurred consciousness of all these places flitted the images of Joanna and Charles, holding hands, laughing, running along the beach - the one soft and floating in a white dress, her hair trailing under a broad-brimmed straw hat, the other tanned and glistening in black trunks - Gary and I strolling behind.

Occasionally, Joanna would break away, dodging, squealing in delighted escape to the safety of four beckoning and welcoming arms, Gary's and mine; occasionally she stood alone and still, looking out across the sea with an expression of rock-like impassivity.

I am not sure what I found the most bewildering - the sheer range of colour and contrast wherever we went, the rapidity with which one place succeeded another, or the kaleidoscope of moods in this person whom I called my wife.

The journey of my sensations was that of a roller-coaster, like our drive from Cairns to Port Douglas, up and down crouching promontories, around shy secluded beaches, in and out of dappled forests. And from time to time Jonnna would look at me with those deep dark eyes, contemplatively, questioningly. Tenderly?

Port Douglas was one of the oldest towns in North Queensland, a charming relic of the days when miners disembarked in their frantic scramble for the mineral riches of the Hodgkinson and Herberton. It was now only a haven for tourists, fishermen and retired folk. We hired a boat and went fishing for "doggies" off the beach.

Joanna, at Charles's urging, tried her hand with rod and reel from the stern of the boat. A mackerel struck, silver and slithering, and her solemn expression dissolved into one of dismay. Before Charles realised what had happened fish and rod disappeared beneath the surface of the sea.

"Bloody butter fingers!" said Charles, fierce, diving overboard. He reappeared a moment later, clutching the rod, and clambered back into the boat. Joanna shrieked with delight at his discomfiture and red-faced annoyance.

"I don't see what's so funny, woman," he said sternly, you've lost a good fish - and almost my best rod."

"I'm sorry about the rod, Charles, but I'm glad the fish got away."

"You're nuts, Joanna. How can you be glad about losing such a beautiful fish?"

"For precisely that reason. It was beautiful."

"You don't mean to tell me you did it on purpose?" he exploded.

"I suppose I did, yes."

"I'm damned if I understand you, Joanna."

"We understand, Charles, only what we want to understand."

"I can do without that philosophical shit, too; I'm not in the mood."

Now it was Gary's turn to explode: "Charles! And we can do without the swearing, too. I think you owe Joanna an apology."

Joanna patted Charles's head and smoothed his hair in the manner of a mother soothing an errant child who, though naughty, possessed such charm as could only be forgiven.

Charles melted, returning her indulgent smile with a look of brotherly affection - tinged, I am sure, with a mote of infatuation. Joanna whispered something in his ear. They looked at each other and giggled.

"Why don't you two tell us what is so funny so that we can all share the joke?" Gary prompted.

"It's Joanna's birthday on Monday, and she wants to know what I'll be giving her for a present. What can you give an old woman of nineteen?"

"Really?" Gary said, turning to me. "We'll have to celebrate, Rick."

I felt vaguely resentful of this further intrusion into our lives, but there was no point in being sullen; I had to conceal from her the extent of my love, at least for the time being until she should be ready to accept it. There was no other way.

"We certainly shall," I said, "and I know what you can give Joanna for a present, Charles - yourself!"

She looked at me, her face frozen, eyes flashing.

"You're a good dancer, and you know how much Joanna likes dancing. We'll have a dance party at the Queen's on Monday night. But what would you like to do during the day, my dear?"

"I think just to be left alone to make myself beautiful for the evening."

I should not have been surprised to hear a tone of mocking coquetry in her voice; instead she just smiled at me.

"Women!" said Charles with delighted disgust.

At the jetty Joanna was first to leap out of the boat, Charles hopping and tripping behind her in an attempt to pull a pair of shorts over his trunks while in hot but vain pursuit. They were still breathless when Gary and I caught up with them in the restaurant on the hill overlooking the river.

There were parakeets in the granadilla vines which wreathed the restaurant's garden in a necklace of brilliant green. Joanna was sitting with her back to the sun which had sunk to a huge red pendant in the west, framing her face in a halo of light against the purple shadows in the garden. I had always liked Port Douglas, and at that moment I should have liked time to stop in it. She seemed to me the very incarnation of purity.

Gary tugged at Charles's arm and dragged him unwillingly towards the bar. "Come, little brother. Let the lovers have five minutes peace at least. You can help me get the drinks."

Joanna looked at me, her face breaking into the sweetest of smiles.

"I love the calm that pervades this place, Richard. My heart is completely at peace, and I don't know why."

"Do you know that you are very beautiful when you smile, Joanna?"

I took her hand without thinking and brushed it across my lips. The spontaneity and simplicity of the movement had only one meaning. I withdrew my hand nonetheless.

She was still smiling with undiluted tenderness.

"Sometimes, Richard, I think that you can be as gracious as my father."

Gary and Charles reappeared and, with great racket and flourish that was

completely out of character, Gary played the barman with a silver cocktail-shaker.

"Joanna, here is my specialty, prepared lovingly for you with my own hands because no-one can make a frozen daiquiri like I can. Today, Charles, even you can have one."

He filled the four glasses, raising his own solemnly and ceremoniously in the air.

"To you, Joanna, and may life bring you only joy."

"You are all so kind to me. I could not have three finer companions."

She tasted the drink politely, nodded in approval and emptied the glass in three gulps.

"Hm, Gary, that was magnificent. I have never tasted anything quite so refreshing. What is it?" she said, holding out her glass for a refill.

"I cannot tell you, my dear; not even you," he said. "It is my most cherished secret."

I didn't know what Gary was up to, but he insisted on topping up Joanna's glass at every opportunity. I was on the point of warning her about the potency of the concoction when Charles glanced at me mischievously, raising his glass.

"I am glad that you appreciate us, ma belle," he said. "Let us therefore toast Australian manhood, paragon of all that is most noble in human kind."

She laughingly entered into the spirit of his tomfoolery and drained another glass.

"So you have no regrets about coming to Australia?" Gary asked, trying to look innocently inconspicuous as he filled her glass again.

"No, Gary, I never have any regrets. It is as Edith Piaf sings it: if you trace your destiny and follow it there can be no room for regrets. You take the good along with the bad and treat them both as equal. Cheers!"

She stood up rather unsteadily, excusing herself to go and powder her nose.

"Rick, old mate, I think that tonight your wife is going to talk," Gary said.

"Listen, Gary, you'd better take it easy. She's not used to alcohol. She's happy now, but go too far and you might regret it."

"Don't be a spoilsport, Rick. You know I wouldn't do anything to upset her. But a little bit of grog does wonders for loosening tongues."

The waitress brought our dinner just ahead of Joanna whose eyes were still shining.

"I don't know what it is," she said, "but I feel decidedly light-headed. It must be the magic of this place."

"Or the magic of life?" Gary prompted. "Don't you think that life is beautiful, Joanna?"

I could have clobbered Gary because, just as I feared, the smile on Joanna's face evaporated. How well I knew that remote, faraway look in her eyes! And by now I resented it for I was convinced that it and it alone, whatever it meant, was all that really separated her from me.

"Life, dear Gary," she said, "is one of the few things about which we have no choice. So let's just say that life is to be lived - if possible making the most of it."

"But Joanna," he persisted, "you must surely believe that life is more than that!"

"No, Gary, I don't. Life might indeed be beautiful, but as man spoils it I'm inclined to agree with Sophocles: 'not to be born is best'."

"All right, since you enjoy quoting so much, I know one too: 'The world is full of wonders but none more wonderful than man.' There! What do you have to say about that? Come on, Rick, tell her who said it."

"I'm damned if I know. No doubt a Greek, too. I'd plump for Plato."

Naturally the little know-all put me in my place with matter-of-fact brutality.

"No, Sophocles."

"All right, Sophocles then," Gary conceded. "But what do you have to say about it?"

"It is precisely because man is so wonderful yet chooses evil that makes him so repulsive."

"Jesus, Joanna!" Charles groaned, "you're incredible. You really are. I don't know how you manage to do it, but sure enough the conversation always finishes up under a shroud of despondency. Well, it's been such a mighty day and I refuse to be gloomy. Who wants to come for a swim?"

"Excellent idea! Will you come too Joanna?" Gary asked.

"No. I'd rather just go for a walk along the beach. Will you come with me, Richard?"

"Of course."

We walked down on to the beach as the sun dipped below the line of trees with a last crimson flick. Ragged pools of shadow from the taller trees stretched towards the water's edge then crept into the sea, merging and dying in the darkening water.

Low waves lapped on to the beach and fell back over the carpet of shells with a faint crinkling rustle. There was a moment of awed silence, then the next wave hushed.

We walked arm in arm. Soon even Charles's shouts became indistinguishable from the whistling sound of the sea and the noises of the night.

"Would you like to sit down for a while, Joanna? I'll go and get some drift-wood and make a fire."

She swung around, moving in front of me, her hands sliding upwards across my chest and under my arms, her body pressing urgently against mine.

"No, Richard, no. Don't leave me here by myself," she whispered and there was a tremor in her voice, poignantly appealing.

I lightly stroked her hair, but her sheer physical proximity was unendurable. It was all I could do to prise her arms from around my body without seeming rude. As we walked towards the harsh street lights which flickered feebly through the haze of hundreds of fluttering insects, she clung to me.

The consciousness of our closeness seemed to me for the first time unreservedly mutual; it remained with me on the drive back to Cairns which I hoped would never end, when in the back seat of the car she lay against me. Her hand hardly strayed from its resting-place on my chest.

Once I saw Gary and Charles look at each other and there was tacit understanding between them as to the propriety of silence. Only once, just before we reached the hotel, did Gary proffer a polite leer in the interests of restoring a state of convivial normalcy: "You've been very quiet, Joanna," he said.

I made acknowledgment on her behalf in the same knowing spirit: "Any normal person would be after your bloody alcoholic specialties."

We drove back to Townsville on Sunday afternoon, dropping off Charles at the Grammar School. Gary decided to stay over in the Queen's, too, since he could make good use of Monday shopping around the medical suppliers - and buying a present for Joanna.

On Monday morning she said that she would walk into town by herself to go to a hairdresser, which I welcomed: apart from the car, I thought that a strand of pearls might also be very appropriate for the occasion.

When I went out about an hour after Joanna a sharp burst of rain came down in a shiver of arrows; before I reached the centre of the city the weather had steadily deteriorated. She arrived back at the hotel shortly after noon. Joanna was soaking wet.

"Joanna, where have you been? You're all wet." I took the parcel she was carrying and helped her off with her jacket. "Go and change quickly before you catch a chill."

"Can we have lunch in the suite, Richard? I don't feel like going out again."

"Of course. Now, hurry up and change."

I rang room service and ordered a bottle of champagne with lunch; the necklace I put on the table where lunch would be served.

The waiter had gone when she came back into the room wearing a royal-blue dressing gown, nipped at the waist; without her customary high-heeled shoes she seemed very tiny and delicate. I handed her a glass of champagne with one hand and the pearls with the other.

"Happy birthday, Joanna."

"Richard, what is it? Not another present?" She opened the package slowly and looked at the pearls. "They are beautiful, Richard. I have never been spoiled so much before on a birthday."

She came to me, stood on tiptoes and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

"To you, Joanna," I said, raising my glass.

"To us," she said. Her eyes were glistening; in fact she wiped them, turning away with embarrassment.

After lunch she asked to be excused for the remainder of the afternoon so that she could make herself beautiful, as she put it, for the evening ahead of us.

She went into the next room, and I heard the shower begin to splash. I lay on the divan to listen to the water and watch the last of the champagne bubbles spiral to the top of my glass.

There was a certain sensuousness in the contemplation of her showering, the effect of which upon me (reinforced, no doubt by the champagne) I found delicious; closing my eyes I treated myself to the luxurious indulgence of fantasy. A life with Joanna unfolded before me, crowded with images of contentment, pleasure, softness, permanence; a spreading warmth flooded my body, engulfing all consciousness.

I drifted off into a deep sleep. I dreamed that I was holding Joanna in my arms. She was writhing in my embrace, seeking unity and separation, demanding salvation and oblivion, expressing with her lips a passion of the mind that was wordless but never more eloquent. Still she was kissing me, kissing me, and I strained against her. Her laughter was echoing, echoing... and I opened my eyes.

"Shit! What the hell are you doing here?" Judy was lying on top of me, tears of laughter streaming down her face.

"Although the kiss was obviously not meant for me I enjoyed it immensely."

I pushed her off me and sat up.

There, framed in the doorway, stood Joanna.

"Joanna!" I cried out.

She looked impassively at Judy and said softly, "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

Then she turned around, walked back into the other room and closed the door behind her. I heard the key turn in the lock.

Judy stood up, looking amused. "Oh dear, I hope I haven't done anything wrong."

"For Chrisakes, Judy, what kind of an idiot are you coming in here and playing games like that?"

"I'm sorry, Rick, really I am. I was just downstairs in the bar celebrating with some colleagues. I heard this morning that I got my Ph.D - and I saw Gary walk in. He told me you were both up here, and I came to ask you and Joanna to join us. No-one answered when I knocked, but the door wasn't locked so I just peeked inside and there you were - lying on the bed and looking so contented and vulnerable. Well, I just couldn't resist doing what I did. I'm sure if you explain to your wife she'll understand."

"You're a bloody fool. You ought to have known better. I'm sure you wouldn't think the situation so funny if you were in Joanna's shoes. Now please get out."

I could not remember having felt before as angry as I did at that moment. It was all I could do not to handle her roughly as I pushed her through the still open doorway.

"Joanna!" I knocked at her door but there was no answer.

"Joanna, please open this door!"

There was a sound of the key being turned in the lock but nothing more. After a minute or so I opened the door and went in. She was sitting at the dressing-table, her face layered heavily with some cream, utterly expressionless; her hands were twisting hair-curlers, slowly, meticulously, tightly.

"Joanna, what you saw in there is not what you are thinking... Joanna!"

"I'm not thinking anything, Richard. It was all my fault. I shouldn't have come into the room without knocking. You can be sure that it will never happen again."

There was a tone of bland unconcern in her voice that made me cringe.

"Joanna, you must let me explain..."

She interrupted before I could go any further. "You don't have to explain anything, Richard. You are free to do whatever you like whenever you like. That was our agreement, and I respect it - as I hope you do. Now, if you don't leave me alone I shall never be ready for tonight. Will it be all right if I meet the three of you in the bar at six o'clock?"

She stood up to go to the bathroom. The interview was at an end.

I did not mean to slam the door behind me, but I was not thinking clearly. In fact feelings of desperation were gnawing at me. Why didn't she let me explain? In fact why didn't I insist on explaining whether she wanted me to or not? It was impossible that she did not know by now what my feelings towards her were.

I went to see Gary. I had to talk to him.

"Gary, come and have a drink," I said, as soon as he opened the door. "I want to talk to you."

I dragged him almost forcibly out of his room. He looked at me and knew instantly that something was wrong.

"What's the matter, Rick?" he asked.

"Nothing's the matter," I said, trying to appear calm, but by the time we reached the bar I had blurted out the whole story.

"Well, what do you think, Gary?"

"What do I think? What the bloody hell do you expect me to think? What would anyone think? I can't understand how you could be so bloody stupid! No-one could be blamed for thinking that you were some kind of Casanova. You'd better do some fast talking, boy, and sooner rather than later."

For the second time that day I saw her framed in a doorway, this time on Charles's arm, laughing, looking at him adoringly. Her hair was done in soft curls, Josephine-style, and she wore a black dress, strapless, covered by a guipure blouse tied in at the waist. Her beauty was riveting. The black lace accentuated the whiteness of her décolleté. She was wearing the pearl necklace. They saw us, waved, and crossed the room to the bar.

"Joanna, you look smashing!" exclaimed Gary. "Here is a small token of affection from Charles and me. Happy birthday."

She unwrapped the gift, her face radiant. "It is lovely. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Charles." She kissed them both and at once pinned the jade brooch on her dress.

"According to the Chinese jade brings good luck and happiness," Gary said. "I wish you both of these in great abundance."

"What I need in great abundance right now is food," Charles suggested. "Are you two soaks going to buy us a drink first? What about a frozen daiquiri, Joanna?" he asked, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye.

"Charles, you're impossible!" she said in affectionate rebuke. "I'm going to have orange juice, and so will you. I'm still feeling the effects of the champagne that Richard and I had with lunch."

She said this looking at me lovingly, engagingly, in a way that made me feel a complete bastard. If only she had been angry, indignant, even sad, I should have understood and made some excuse to take her aside and apologise. But she behaved as though nothing had happened. It was the same all through dinner and later when we danced, her smiles never more scintillating, her demeanour never more composed.

Charles monopolised her, which at first I did not mind because the limbo and the twist were not really my style, but she leaned into him with the kind of responsiveness that seemed to me taunting. Charles was conscious of his attractiveness to women, and his eyes reflected a definite pleasure that Joanna, too, was obviously experiencing. I realised with some irritation that he was now a grown man.

The pair of them were quite starry-eyed. Yet she couldn't be that happy, surely? If she were, it must mean that she hadn't given a second thought to the scene with Judy. I suppose there was another interpretation, too: she would have no second thoughts in any case if I meant nothing to her.

But, damn it, she must have some feelings towards me! Her whole attitude of the past few days couldn't have been an act for the sake of Gary and Charles. I had to know one way or the other.

It was midnight when Gary said that he would have to drive Charles back to school. She thanked them for a day which, she said, she would never forget.

"Joanna," I said, when we got back to the suite, "I must talk to you."

"I'm very tired, Richard. I want to go to bed now. You can talk to me tomorrow if you want to."

She began to walk into the other room, and I grabbed her by the arm.

"We will talk now, Joanna!"

She turned and faced me. There was no joy in her face now, only hate.

"You are hurting me," she snapped. "And you know I don't like to be touched."

"You didn't seem to mind being touched by Charles."

I despised myself for having said it, but it was done. She looked at me, and laughed, and laughed. It was a bitter laugh that stung me and unnerved me. I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"Stop it! Stop it! Can't you see that I love you and that you're driving me mad?"

She stopped laughing and gave me a look which I found more hateful than her laughter. It contained nothing - neither surprise, nor amusement, nor coldness, nor pity, nor anger. Nothing.

My voice was a soft plea: "Joanna, I love you very much. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, I can believe that. Now will you please let me go to bed. I'm very tired." Her voice was emotionless and flat.

"Is that all you have to say?"

Her eyes now gleamed with anger, and there was a tremor in her voice when she spoke. "What do you expect me to say: how thrilled, how honoured I am? Well, I am sorry, Richard, but I am not, nor can I ever be. I feel very sorry for you. It seems to me that you are perpetually in love with somebody, but not necessarily me. Perhaps tonight with me; this afternoon with that girl; yesterday or the day before, who knows?"

"I'm not in love with Judy and never was. She came to tell me that she had just got her doctorate and to invite us for a drink. For God's sake, Joanna, I love only you. Can't you see that?"

"Was that what you said to the next girl you met after you gave your love to Aliki?"

"Aliki! What are you talking about Joanna? I don't deny that I loved Aliki. I loved her very much - but that was a long time ago."

"You loved her very much! Is that why you killed her?" She was deathly pale now and trembling. I reached out to touch her but she shrank back in revulsion and loathing.

"Joanna, what are you talking about? Aliki..."

She interrupted me, her voice trembling with malevolence. "I was only nine years old at the time, but I remember as though it were yesterday. Do you have any idea what she went through, loving a man like you? Yes, she loved you until the day she died. Did you know that? Does it give you satisfaction to know that she died in my arms with your name on her lips? Now get out of here and leave me alone. I can't stand the sight of you. Get out or I'll scream!"

I cannot remember walking into the next room. Nor do I remember ringing room service and ordering the bottle of scotch which lay beside me, half empty, next morning.

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