The Swallows of San Fedora

THE SWALLOWS OF SAN FEDORA Betty Beaty

As an air hostess Emma was accustomed to dealing with almost any awkward situation, but her assignment in Sicily seemed to be proving more than usually problem-filled. On the face of it, it was the most glamorous job, taking a party of VIPs around all the most romantic spots in Sicily and the Mediterranean, but the passengers brought more than the usual quota of problems with them. In particular, the attractive Count Leon Orsini and his lovely sister Ghislaine intruded more into Emma’s personal life than she would have wished. And there was the autocratic Captain of the aircraft, Mark Creighton, a man who seemed determined to put Emma in the wrong at every turn. How could she cope with it all?

CHAPTER ONE WHY did it have to happen the first time I flew with the formidable Captain Creighton—the telephone ringing just as I was all dressed up and ready to go? Half-way to the flat door in fact with .my little round cap on exactly right, not a crease in my uniform, and with my suitcase of exactly the right size and weight in my hand. I honestly tried to shut my ears to it. But that metallic shrilling always sounds to any stewardess like a hand laid on your arm. Or perhaps more aptly that morning, had I known it, a bullet in the back. For because we often fly off to the ends of the earth at the behest of the phone, the ringing might mean an important message, an alteration of flight plan, and I can't think of any stewardess of my acquaintance who would ignore it. I remembered, of course, all I'd heard via the grapevine about Captain Creighton, the new broom who was to sweep the Phoenix Airways skies cleaner than clean. I looked at my watch. Two minutes to nine. Come hell or high water, this morning of all mornings I daren't be late. Reporting time for both stewardesses of the special luxury flight (advertised all channels peak viewing time) is ten hundred hours. The bus to Grantwick (London) airport passes the end of our road at 9.05, and it takes me three minutes to walk to the top. Yet, I glanced out of the window at the heavy overcast, it might be to say the flight was postponed, the incoming aircraft diverted, or as it was Captain Creighton in command, perhaps that he was going to do a personal spot check on procedures. I put down my case. I took the three fateful steps back to the table. I lifted the receiver and said, 'Hanley 2397.'

I waited for the breezy Briefing Room voice to answer. Instead there was the sound of heavy breathing. Then a heavily accented, agonisingly slow voice asked, 'Do I have the pleasure of addressing Stewardess Emma Harrington?' 'You do,' I replied immediately, squinting down at my wrist watch which seemed to be accelerating in direct opposite to the treacly slowness of my caller's voice. 'Can I help you?' He was not to be hurried. 'The stewardess for the San Fedora flight this morning?' And just to make sure there was no mistake, 'To San Fedora in Sicily?' 'One of them. I'm the number two, and I have to leave now ...' 'A moment, please, signorina. I will not keep you long. This trip you stay for ten days at the Castle of San Fedora itself?' 'We all do—crew and passengers. We keep the aircraft and do trips from there.' 'And you will meet my old and trusted friend, the Count Leon Orsini?' 'I expect so.' 'Then please!' As if he had X-ray eyes and had seen the almost reflex movement of my hand to replace the receiver. 'Do not hang me up. The point I come to.' 'Quickly, please.' 'I ask a favour,' the voice pleaded.

I hadn't the heart to refuse. 'Tell me. But hurry!' 'It is of great brevity, signorina. It is simply this —to repeat to my old and trusted friend the Count this simple Sicilian saying.' 'Which is?' I glanced at my watch again and winced. Slowly he droned, 'The rule of three. Two are gone, how stands the tree.' 'Is that the message?' 'That and no more.' Then with sudden sharpness, the man said, 'You will give that to the Count as soon as you arrive!' And without even waiting to say goodbye my caller hung up. I was left holding the dead receiver in my hand, and the foolish jingle running through my mind. Then I came to. I dropped it like a hot potato into its cradle, picked up my bag and ran. Two strides to the flat door, a quick flip down of the Yale lock, a sharp pull and the door slammed behind me. I nudged the dial on the milk basket to One with the toe of my shoe. My flatmate was due back from the States tonight. Then I was running down the road, holding on to the little cap the Phoenix Airways Paris couturier designed for us, my suitcase bumping against my legs as I skipped the grey April puddles. I crossed my fingers that the bus would be late. Thirty seconds before I reached the stop it sailed past the corner, lights on, windows steamed up. I know that stewardesses of all people are not expected to panic. But I did. I hardly noticed that it had begun to rain again. I almost forgot my wretched caller's message. My mind was filled to

maximum capacity with all the gruesome grapevine details about Captain Creighton. I had of course never met him. Nor, to give him his due, had many of Phoenix Airways staff. He's our new Flying and Operations manager brought in specially by our parent company. This very special, very different and now world-famous San Fedora holiday was his brain-child. And here was I, normally efficient and punctual, about to be late for it. I stood for a moment while the driving rain dampened my face and clouded my chromium buttons and removed the shiny bounce from my freshly shampooed pageboy hairdo. Blossoms from the Japanese cherry trees blew down forlornly and lay like sodden confetti in the gutter. The odd car hissed by in a shower of muddy water. Only a few now because the nine o'clock rush hour was over. Above me, invisible in the overcast, a jet aircraft whistled in the circuit. I looked at my watch again, and took the only possible course of action. I stepped out into the road and held up my thumb. A lorry driver stopped almost immediately. 'The airport? Sorry, ducks. Turning off at Pound Hill.' And then my luck dramatically changed. An immaculate white Rover drew up behind the lorry. The driver sounded the horn. An anonymous face stared at me through the clear fan described by the windscreen wiper. An arm covered in a fawn burberry reached across and opened the passenger door. Keen direct blue eyes regarded me thoughtfully from under dark and level brows. Those brows were drawn together in slight irritation as if only his better nature made him stop for a damsel in distress. 'Grantwick?' a deep voice asked me.

'Oh, yes, please. Are you going that way?' 'I am.' 'It's terribly kind of you. Thank -' 'Get in.' I stepped into the warm dry interior gratefully. The man held out his hand. 'Let me put that case in the boot for you.' 'No, really, it's all right here, thank you. I can put it between my feet—save time.' I smiled faintly, blushing, aware of my wet shoes on the clean tan carpet. 'In a hurry, are you?' 'Not now. I was.' I settled myself back thankfully against the leather upholstery. Almost immediately the man accelerated past the slow-moving lorry and we were away. I glanced sideways at the driver. I saw a man of about thirty with high cheekbones, a stubborn upper lip and a well-formed jaw. Thick brown hair darkened with the rain. Broad shoulders under the burberry. Large capable-looking hands resting lightly on the wheel. 'In fact I'll be early now,' I volunteered, relief making me garrulous. 'Good.' 'I missed the bus.'

A faint smile, disclosing little laughter crinkles round the blue eyes. 'So I gathered.' 'The phone rang just at the last minute.' 'A man, no doubt.' I didn't deny it. 'I don't normally hitch a lift.' 'I should hope not.' He paused. 'Never know who you might meet.' 'But this morning of all mornings, I simply had to -' 'Special trip of some sort?' 'Special skipper.' 'Special in what way?' He shot me an amused look of masculine superiority. 'Keen on him, are you?' 'Heavens, no! Quite the reverse.' 'Poor chap.' The driver pulled down the corners of his lips in mock commiseration. 'Oh, he wouldn't mind.' 'Insensitive?' 'As a log.' 'And no doubt old as a tree?' 'I don't know his age. But on the elderly side.'

The driver overtook a couple of cars in a bow wave of muddy water, and brought us back into the inner lane again. Then he shot another sideways look at me. I noticed for the first time that his eyes had those very thick curly lashes that emphasise the blueness of a man's eyes. I remember thinking how incongruous and yet attractive they looked in that otherwise austere face. I didn't hear his last remark because I wasn't listening properly and I had to ask him to repeat it. 'Not worth repeating really. I simply said that age is relative to one's own.' It was an indirect question. I answered it. 'I'm twenty-three,' I said. 'Footloose, we know.' He jerked his head towards my silver half wing. 'But how about fancy free?' I said nothing for a moment. Because that is an impossible question to answer to a stranger. Difficult even to answer to oneself. I stared out through the wet window at a grain elevator wearing a coronet of red obstruction lamps, at the lead-in-lights planted incongruously in wheat fields like giant lords and ladies. The jet-age come to the countryside. And as incongruously wasn't I the symbol perhaps for the jet-age girl? The so-called sophisticate more familiar in a street in Tokio or Beirut than Manchester or Brighton, the world my beach ball? And didn't I nourish the unfashionable but fashionless idea that somewhere in the world there existed one man and one man only destined to love and be loved by me? And when you look around you, doesn't that dream of one man and one love seem to be just exactly that, a dream? For I've seen girls I knew at school who've already married and separated. My own

parents were killed when I was eight, and I was brought up by an aunt divorced and living alone—apart from me. So I said to the driver that morning what most girls would say about something very close to their heart—the exact opposite. I gave a bright little laugh, exactly in keeping with my bright stewardess smile. 'I'm still waiting,' I said, 'for Mr. Rich to come along.' 'Too bad you lost Onassis,' the driver answered lightly enough after a slight pause. I had the feeling he was disappointed in me. Though why I thought that I don't know. 'There'll be others!' 'I'm sure there will be.' He trod a little harder on the accelerator. Lead-in lights gave way to approach lamps. Factory buildings passed in a blur of speed. A 707 came low over us on final. 'Well, you'll be in good time for your Captain Bligh,' the driver said as the beginning of the wire mesh fence came up. 'He sounds a monster.' He eased his foot off the accelerator. 'Tell me more.' And because I was impatient with myself, I expanded on Captain Creighton's daunting disciplines. How he had suspended an incompetent First Officer. Offloaded a steward smuggling on a very minor scale, reduced a stewardess to tears. The telling of them was oddly relieving to my self-dissatisfaction. Though to give myself my due, I didn't go so far as to mention Captain Creighton by name. The captain in question could have been in command of any of a dozen Phoenix Airways departures leaving that morning. The driver listened in silence.

'I suppose,' he said in the end, and smiled lazily, 'that your dislike couldn't be anything to do with the colour of your hair ?' 'Me? Mine?' 'Red.' 'Dark auburn,' I corrected. 'I've always found red-haired people quick to espouse causes. Not always the right ones either.' 'Have you had much to do with red-haired people?' 'On occasion.' He smiled. 'They tend to be loyal but mistaken—the girls especially.' As we slackened speed under the terminal building bridge, I changed the subject and began to thank him. He waved my thanks away. 'My pleasure.' I thought he was going to ask my name, but he didn't. 'If you just drop me at the gate. I haven't far to walk.' 'Certainly not. It's still pouring. I'll take you to where? The Briefing Room? You don't want to arrive like a sodden summer,' he removed a damp blossom of Japanese cherry from the shoulder of my uniform jacket, 'for that terrible Captain ... whatshisname? I don't think you told me?' I didn't answer. I watched with a kind of distant surprise as he negotiated his way round Grantwick's many and deceiving lanes

till he stopped with impeccable judgement outside the green door of the Briefing Room. 'Thank you again,' I said, getting out quickly. 'I can't tell you how grateful I am.' This was the point where if romantic dreams were reality he might ask me when I was returning, and perhaps suggest that we meet again. But all he did was smile frugally and say, 'That's all right. I'm glad I came along. Besides, I found the journey most illuminating.' An odd adjective to use, I remember thinking, as he accelerated smartly and drove off.

'Off or on?' Kim Baverstock my co-stewardess was already in the Briefing Room as I walked in, and this is the normal greeting that everyone on Phoenix Airways gives her. The question refers to her engagement to Ground Control Officer Eric Dudley, which is on and off these days quicker than the alternating flash of an Aldous lamp. And yet another example in this jet age of the inappropriateness of what the romantics call 'being in love'. More eloquently than words, Kim held up her denuded third finger left hand. 'Off, of course. Finally this time.' She gave a bitter couldn't-care-less smile which in itself boded no good for the trip. For Kim is an adult version of the girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme. When she's feeling good and it's flashing on between her and Eric she's very, very good and there is

no better stewardess treading the air space. But when it's Off, horrid isn't the right word. But nit-picking is. And Kim is senior to me and a Number One. 'Eric Dudley is just not my type,' she added, thumbing through the papers contained in the Flight Briefing Folder. 'I can't think what I ever saw in him.' Neither of course could the Phoenix Airways grapevine. Kim is a tall good-looking Nordic type in her late twenties. She's photographed on the front of our luxury holiday brochure—an athletic outgoing person, very reassuring and popular with the passengers. An extrovert. While Ground Control Officer Dudley is the exact opposite. He is a quiet studious introvert— unassuming, but meticulously good at his job. Clever even, But, the all-wise and all-seeing grapevine declares, simply not a match for her. Unfashionable as always, perhaps espousing as the driver said, the wrong causes, I like him. He has those rare qualities of loyalty and integrity. I even ventured to say I liked him as the door opened and the Briefing Officer came in. 'Then you don't know Eric,' she hissed back. 'Any more than you know how to press your uniform properly. Our Briefing Officer hasn't missed a crease.' 'I pressed it all right.' I smoothed my hand down my skirt. 'It was super when I left.' 'Well, it isn't now.' 'I'll run the iron over it in the rest room.'

'There won't be time.' She checked her watch with the big electric twenty-four-hour clock above the Briefing Officer's desk. 'Special security check, isn't that so, sir?' 'It is indeed, Miss Baverstock.' I swore mildly. The Briefing Officer, a retired steward of mature years, clicked his teeth. 'And well you might,' Kim said. 'It's Creighton.' I dabbed at my cap badge, while Kim went through the folder of flight instructions with the Briefing Officer. In this folder is set out all our instructions for the coming flight. The names of the crew, who are the passengers, what stores we shall take on board, what type of bar we shall uplift, what meals we shall serve, even the text and timing of our passenger briefings, as well as all the forms and landing cards we require. 'Any V.I.P.s?' Kim asked the Briefing Officer. 'Well, on this special flight, they're all V.I.P.s.' 'True.' 'There is perhaps just one small note. Here.' He indicated the passenger list. 'Seat 25. He doesn't like anyone sitting close to him in flight, so he's booked both seats.' 'Claustrophobic?' Kim made a note. 'Possibly.' 'Has he paid for them both?' I asked.

'Certainly.' I sighed, 'How odd.' 'Miss Harrington,' the Briefing Officer said, 'when you've flown as long as I have you'll know the world is entirely populated by people who are odd.' With which baffling remark he swept out and left Kim to question me on emergency drill, which is the next step of the pre-flight procedure. 'Fair enough,' Kim admitted grudgingly after ten minutes of gruelling questions. 'I'd give you ninety-nine per cent. Of course Creighton likes a hundred.' 'Is he really as bad as all that?' 'Worse.' She made a detour to avoid a puddle. It had stopped raining. 'Mind, they say he's more human these days, these trips.' 'How come?' 'A woman, of course. What else?' 'One of our lot?' 'Don't be naive. Creighton's a high-flyer. The Countess, no less— our host's sister.' 'Attractive?' 'Never met her. I've not done this trip before either. But,' she said as she pushed the catering section door open, 'long may the affair continue.'

'Amen,' I replied fervently, 'to that.' 'Good morning, ladies,' the Catering Officer came waddling towards the counter, smiling. 'A pleasure to see you girls.' With a sweep of his chubby hands he indicated our catering uplift awaiting Kim's inspection. On ordinary flights, the catering uplift, these days, is supervised by the Redcaps or traffic coordinators, but on this San Fedora flight with special crockery, special cutlery and special food this personal inspection is part of the service. 'All set for a little unaccustomed luxury?' the Catering Officer asked us. We nodded and said that we were. He watched with approval as Kim checked our special bone china uptake as critically as if it had been personally washed up and wiped by Eric Dudley. She found a cup with a mark the size of a midge's footprint and handed it back piously to the catering assistant. 'Do you know why we're having this special security check?' I asked him—catering officers are approachable beings, and real grapevine experts. They make the F.B.I, appear plodding amateurs. He shrugged his plump shoulders. 'Could be because it's Sicily.' 'The Mafia,' Kim looked up and said with relish, 'Sicily's most famous export.' 'But not to here.' For the first time in my flying life, I felt a tremor of fear. I remember thinking that of all the places to be suddenly afraid in, the catering section with its appearance of an outsize kitchen was about the most unlikely.

'I read,' Kim said, regretfully passing the silver cutlery as perfect, 'that the Mafia has a network everywhere.' She glanced around at the big steel ovens and refrigerators, the giant sinks and sterilisers winking in the fluorescent lighting, as if should she so choose she could produce a Mafia agent out of any one of them. On the closed circuit television set I watched our flight detail, PH. 157, creep up the departure list. 'But how could the Mafia be connected with our flight?' I asked. 'Of course it couldn't be,' the Catering Officer authoritatively—and yet not quite authoritatively enough.

said

'It's just, I understand, that they're taking no chances.' 'About what?' I asked. The Catering Officer lifted a corner of the immaculate linen cloth which covered the freshly made canapés. He appeared for a moment to be lost in admiration of the chef's undoubted art. Then he murmured vaguely, 'They're all very anxious that this partnership between Phoenix Airways and Count Orsini goes well.' 'Isn't it?' 'Oh yes, so far, so good.' 'I've heard,' said Kim, determined we should share her disillusioned mood, 'that the Count has enemies.' 'Who hasn't?' 'Rather more than you or me.' Kim put a tick beside the canapés. 'About as many as Eric Dudley,' she added unkindly under her breath.

The Catering Officer stared at us thoughtfully for a moment. He beckoned us to lean closer over the counter. 'Just between these four walls,' he whispered, 'it's nothing to do with the Mafia. Just some poor demented crank phoned up.' 'Not a bomb?' I tried to keep my voice steady. 'No, positively not. Nothing really to do with the airline. But they have to make certain.' 'We couldn't agree more,' Kim grimaced. 'Don't worry, they will. Captain Creighton would see to that.' Together we checked the last of the food trays. Our flight detail moved up the little television screen with daunting inevitability. 'Well, have a good trip, ladies.' We walked to the door. 'I've just remembered,' I said to Kim, 'I had an odd phone call this morning.' Kim eyed me with mild interest. 'A man asking me to take a message. That's why I was late.' Kim assumed her Number One expression. 'I had a call from my maiden aunt asking for some Etna lava stone for her nature table. But I wasn't late.' She hitched her sling bag on to her shoulder. 'That's what people think a stewardess in the family is there for— carrier pigeon service.' She opened the door and we stepped out from the warm-smelling catering section on to the wet tarmac. Moist air blew in our faces.

'That's how it all began,' I said. She didn't ask me what, and I don't suppose I'd have told her if she had. I was suddenly wondering, rather wistfully, if I'd ever seen the man in the burberry driving the white Rover again.

CHAPTER TWO MUCH had to happen before I saw that man at the wheel of his white Rover again. And I was too busy from then on to give much thought to him. The coming flight with Captain Creighton cast its shadow over me as Kim and I busied ourselves with the pre-flight preparations. Amenities—magazines, morning papers, cotton wool and toiletries—were all uplifted and signed for, the bar type number 5 brought from the bonded store. We checked in at the cabin staff office. We picked up our airline mail from the pigeonhole in the Admin. Office. The chief training stewardess had sent us each a memo. Kim gave me the gist while I took off my skirt and ran a hasty iron over the worst of the creases. 'It begins: The management would emphasise the importance of the flight for which you have been selected.' Kim broke off to say sharply, 'I don't know what our Queen Bee would say if she saw you now!' 'The same as Creighton,' I said, hastily ironing the other side. 'What else does she say?' 'In a nutshell, to mind our P's and Q's with the Orsini family when we get there. Not to slurp our soup, that means. To observe local customs. And to remind us that because the aircraft stays there, we're on duty all the time.' For on this luxury holiday the passengers have the benefit of a private air cruise of the Mediterranean, using the airfield and the Castle of San Fedora as their base. 'Which has its advantages and disadvantages,' Kim said, still talking about the memo, as ten minutes later, we walked down the

corridor of Ops Block towards the Departure Finger. 'Fine for the stewardesses if it's a friendly crew. Grisly if it's Creighton.' 'Which is why you girls are in luck!' The door from the Ops Room had opened. A young man in our company uniform closed it behind him and then advanced towards us. He was of medium height, stocky, sandy-haired. He somehow inserted himself between us, and laid a reassuring hand on each of our arms. There was, I noticed, a pair of silver wings above his left pocket. For one blissful moment I dared to hope that Captain Creighton had gone sick, and that this young man was our skipper. 'Never fear,' the young man said, relinquishing Kim's arm but not mine, waving in an extravagant gesture. I noticed just two and a half gold stripes on his cuff. 'Strutt is here.' 'The First Officer,' I sighed. 'Don't look so disappointed. Promotion is just around the corner. I'll be a four-ringer before you've time to say you're wonderful, darling.' 'Emma, this is Peter Strutt,' Kim said in a resigned tone of voice. 'He and I have flown together before.' 'Well, don't sound so miserable about it! We had a jolly good trip. I remember we ended up at L.A.P. Staff Club with you and Eric ... oh, I know -' the jolly smile faltered, 'it's Off, is it?' 'Absolutely.'

'Not to worry. Gives up-and-coming lads like me a chance. Seriously, though -' 'I don't want to be serious, Peter. Talk to Emma, if you must talk.' 'Gladly.' The young man transferred his bright hazel eyes to me. It was a friendly, humorous face, with a turned-up nose and light sandy brows. 'Strutt in name, but modest in nature.' He extended a square hand and shook mine. I was suddenly reminded of those large capable-looking hands on the wheel of the white Rover. I felt a little pang of something like sadness twist inside me. 'What was all that you girls were saying about Creighton?' 'Nothing really,' I smiled. 'Just the sound of our finger nails being bitten.' 'Captain one hundred and five per cent? He's all right really.' 'Why do you call him that?' 'Because just so long as you're one hundred and five per cent efficient, you're all right with him.' 'A tall order,' I said, smoothing my skirt where the iron hadn't quite succeeded. 'Well, he manages it.' 'You sound as if you quite like him?' 'He's a man's man,' Peter Strutt said loftily. 'Where is he now?' I asked, glancing nervously behind me down the long rubber-floored corridor.

'At C and I. Frisking and then aboard. Hope you girls haven't got half your dressing tables in your handbags. Gives the machine the twitters.' 'That would make it unanimous, then,' I sighed, waving as we left First Officer Strutt at the door of the flight crew room. Outside on the tarmac, the paraffin tanker was already alongside our executive jetliner, Tango Uncle—the flagship of our small fleet of the most luxurious medium-sized aircraft in the world. I watched its amber refuelling light winking against the grey overcast. Like the promise of a sunlit holiday to come? Or like a flashed Morse code warning? I often wonder if I felt more than the usual pre-important flight qualms that morning. Looking back, I rather think I did.

'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Creighton and his crew welcome you aboard this Phoenix Airways flight to San Fedora. Our flight time will be two hours and forty minutes. We shall be flying at twenty-eight thousand feet -' Kim's carefully enunciated, beautifully modulated voice interrupted the tide of piped music which had lapped around our thirty-three passengers as they settled themselves into their pink and plushy seats, blotting out all those niggling little background noises so necessary before a flight could begin. Everything now was going like clockwork. Our traffic co-ordinator or Redcap had just checked and left. Ship's papers, the bar,

amenities and catering uplift were all aboard. The fuelling had been accomplished. The tanker had withdrawn its hose. The blipping amber light, promise or warning, was extinguished. No passenger had been late or mislaid. No one had left a coat or a camera in the dutyfree lounge. No crew member had come without their security pass. No one had forgotten their passport or discovered that it was out of date. Even the special security check had been swift and satisfactory. The hooped metal detector had screamed over our handbags, but the airport guards had done no more than shake their heads tolerantly over our metallic-cased lipsticks and eye-liners. No one had been discovered with a gun or a, giant pair of scissors or a paper knife with a honed blade. And our passengers themselves as they boarded looked comfortably rich but unremarkable. By the time the last of them had let me stow their hand baggage and coats, I'd almost forgotten how the day had started. Almost forgotten the man in the white Rover. But not quite. 'The man in Seat 25's wanting your attention,' Kim whispered, coming back aft from the intercom set. She pointed to the red pearl of the steward call-light glowing in the bulkhead above the seat in question. I remember looking down the cabin, and my heart giving a little lurch. For if romance were still alive, this is where I should have seen the back of a strong neck and proudly held head, a pair of broad athletic shoulders. I didn't, of course. The head was blue-black, rather long-haired and very sleek. The shoulders were covered in an expensive lightweight suit, and no more than average wide.

'He's a bell-pusher,' said Kim, naming one of the three deadly sinners in the stewardess deed book. (I can't mention the other two). 'You'll have trouble with that Seat 25.' I sighed with my secret disappointment. Not because of the threatened extra work. Nor because I had any inkling that Kim's remark was the understatement of the year. Nor because I guessed that this man in Seat 25 would be instrumental in changing our lives, that he would remain a man of mystery, so that however well I got to know him, I would always think of him as Seat 25, with the little red light that should have warned us glowing above his head. 'Good morning, sir. Can I help you?' I smiled and looked down into a face quite different from that of the man in the white Rover. A swarthy bearded face, handsome in a rather swashbuckling way. Hooded dark eyes regarded me, their expression unreadable. But a small pulse beat nervously above his cheekbone, and there was a white scar running down his jaw, disappearing into the neatly trimmed beard. I put his age in the late thirties, but he might have been younger. 'You the stewardess?' He spoke roughly in a deep, heavily accented voice, Sicilian I'd guess. 'I serve this starboard side, yes.' 'Then I'd like a bottle of champagne.' I explained that I couldn't open the bar until we were airborne, but that I'd be happy to bring it along to him as soon as take-off was accomplished. I prepared to move on. The man became expansive.

'This champagne,' he said, the dark beard parting to show very white regular teeth, 'is for me, a celebration.' 'I hope you enjoy it, sir.' 'I would enjoy it more,' he leaned forward to read my name brooch, 'if you would share it with me, Miss Harrington.' 'I'm afraid we're not allowed to. But thank you.' 'Extricate yourself,' Kim whispered, sighing. For in our job we get used to nervous passengers who try to engage the stewardess in conversation throughout take-off and landing, and during the entire flight too, if possible. But I didn't think he was one of these. Nervous, yes. But not of flying. Besides, if anyone was nervous it was I. Time at this stage of the pre-flight runs out fast. As Number Two I'd been briefed to report up front that passengers are strapped in and the rear door shut. Naturally I was anxious not to be a second late for the well-known Captain Creighton. 'I've done my side,' Kim said loudly. 'Coming.' I leaned over, switched off Seat 25's call-light and went aft to check the rest of my starboard seats. I shut the rear door, and secured it. The last glimpse of the damp Surrey landscape was wiped out by the huge duralumin door. Already I could feel the faint vibrations of the hydraulics as Captain Creighton and Peter Strutt went through the pre-take-off check list. I stopped to pick up a magazine that someone had dropped. And when I straightened, Seat 25's call lamp was on again.

'Get up front,' Kim frowned, looking at her watch. 'The Captain was in a filthy temper when I gave him the ready-to-receivepassengers report.' She gave me a little push down the aisle. 'Leave Seat 25 till you get back.' But as I passed him, the man shot out a hand and grasped my arm. I remember looking down on it, noticing it in the way one notices seemingly unimportant things. A large, rather ugly hand, wearing a large equally ugly ring, fancifully engraved and enamelled with a dark blue bird of some sort. A swallow, I supposed it was. 'That champagne I ordered, Miss Harrington -' the accented voice asked slowly. 'What vintage can you offer me?' Seat 25's white smile had, I thought, a mocking edge to it, as if he meant deliberately to delay me. My nervousness increased. I gabbled out the names of the three vintages we carry. The man inclined his head. 'You speak so fast, I cannot catch what you say.' I repeated the names loudly. 'I think in that case, I'll choose -' But I didn't wait to hear his decision. A dull muted bell sounded in the intercom panel behind me. A summons from the flight deck. The pre-take-off check list must be complete. Captain Creighton was wanting to know why in heaven's name the stewardess hadn't appeared at his side. With a murmur that I would return in a moment, I freed my arm and fled up to the connecting door. I paused in the small mail lobby to adjust my cap, to wipe a cuff over the chromium buttons,

to lick my lips. Then I thrust open the door to the flight deck proper. Familiar though it now is, I caught my breath momentarily as I always do, at the magic of it. It is a cross somehow between an Aladdin's cave and a space-age laboratory. Outlined against the grey sky-filled windscreen and the winking complexities of scores of bejewelled dials were two men's heads. The younger, seated on the right, turned as I came in. Necessarily speechless because of the R/T head set strapped to his chin, Peter Strutt winked. Captain Creighton remained apparently absorbed in the voice coming through the set. Then in slow motion like a figure in a dream, or more accurately like a figure in a nightmare, he turned. I blinked my eyes to wake myself. But the nightmare remained reality. I found myself staring into cool blue eyes under level brows. The wide austerely sculpted mouth was unsmiling. The broad shoulders now wore the familiar blue uniform. The disguising burberry had gone. But one thing there was no disguising. The formidable Captain Creighton, my Captain Bligh and the man in the white Rover were one and the same man.

Somehow I got out the prescribed message. 'Passengers strapped in and the rear door secured, sir.' Captain Creighton's sardonic gaze remained fixed on my face. I was too stunned to do anything but stare woodenly back. My blank expression no doubt confirmed his assumption that I was one of those couldn't-care-less types in search of a rich husband. Stewardesses tend to have that reputation these days anyway, though it's quite erroneous. After all, I'd told him that, hadn't I? Mr, Rich hasn't come along. Stupid words at the best of times.

'Good,' Captain Creighton said crisply, when I'd delivered my piece. He looked at his watch. 'I'd begun to wonder if the cabin staff had called a go-slow.' 'No, sir.' 'I'm relieved to hear it.' He awaited my explanation. 'A passenger rang at the last moment.' Captain Creighton digested this information. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. 'A passenger bell this time? Not the telephone?' I shook my head, cursing this morning's conversation. 'A gentleman passenger?' 'As it happens, sir, yes.' 'And it certainly does happen, doesn't it, Miss Harrington?' I shrugged. That could be interpreted as another couldn't-care-less gesture. But I was out of my depth. 'You seem to be delayed by bells today, Miss Harrington. Not summoned by them.' Behind me Peter Strutt let out a loud and sycophantic guffaw of laughter. A bit disloyal, I thought. When you're flying with a strict disciplinarian like Captain Creighton, the crew normally stick together. Though sharing the flight deck with a powerful personality like Captain Creighton would try anyone's loyalty. Besides, I was experiencing an uncomfortable disloyalty within myself. A kind of fifth column computer had begun to store little

bits of information about this man whom the rest of me disliked so much. Like the fact that he read John Betjeman, and had a bitter and devastating sarcasm. The way his hair grew down the back of his neck, and the fact his legs were rather too long for comfort with the rudder pedals, the way his blue eyes seemed to bore right through, and yet come up with the wrong answer about you. Besides dozens of small things like the shape of his fingernails, the cleanness of his hands, the immaculate creaseless whiteness of his shirt. The computer even questioned who washed it for him. Whether contrary to Kim's information the Captain was in fact married. Or whether the Countess had a rival this end of the flight, rather like Alec Guinness in The Captain's Paradise. Of course I recognised that this ambivalence on my part was due to his sudden change of identity. An attractive young man, my rescuer, no less, from the dragon had suddenly changed under my very eyes into the dragon of the airline himself. Making a mockery indeed of any romantic ideas I might in my stupidity have briefly nourished. I became aware that Captain Creighton was addressing me again sharply and incisively to recall my wandering attention. 'I said you haven't been with the company long, Miss Harrington?' 'Five months, sir.' 'Nor have you flown with me before?' 'No, sir.' 'Pity.' The faintest curl of his lips. 'It might have done you good.' 'How?' I dared to ask.

'You'd have got your priorities right,' he said quietly. 'Which, sir?' 'Punctuality. Prompt service. Good discipline. Meticulous observation of company rules. Immaculate appearance.' His eyes flicked over me and then held mine. 'What else ?' I knew he wasn't thinking of those attributes at all, however admirable. He was thinking of my stupid remarks in the car, especially those about looking for a rich husband, and despising me for them.

CHAPTER THREE KIM had finished the safety briefing when I got back. She was stowing the demonstration oxygen mask. 'About time too/ she muttered irritably as I squeezed past. The Seat Belt and No Smoking signs were lit, but Seat 25's call light was off. He was studying the wine list, his eyes lowered. 'I didn't take any nonsense from that customer,' she said. 'I simply gave him the wine list and told him to read it till we're airborne.' She paused while the port jet ignited. There was a quick lick of orange flame, a cloud of black smoke, a whoosh of hot gas, the curious nostalgic and old-fashioned smell of burned paraffin. Then the starboard jet lit. The two engines settled to a high continuous whine. Pieces of paper, twigs, last autumn's leaves and bits of debris scudded back in the twin cone of the slipstreams. The terminal buildings wriggled in the heat shimmer. The aircraft flexed itself, champing impatiently against the restraint of the brakes. Then, skilfully eased, Tango Uncle moved gently forward. A ground marshaller stood back clear of the jets and waved. I saw Seat 25 wave back to him. 'A funny customer, your Seat 25,' Kim remarked, switching the cabin intercom over to music. 'He wants watching.' 'You don't think there's anything really suspicious about him, do you?' I asked nervously. 'What do you mean ?'

'A hijacker or something?' 'Of course not! Everyone's been checked, haven't they?' 'I suppose so.' 'Well, there you are.' Tango Uncle was trundling now round the taxiing track towards the head of runway zero eight. Kim peered out through the window as a jumbo jet took off. 'Time we weren't standing here,' she shooed me in front of her to take-off positions at the back. She sat herself down and fastened her seat belt. I eased myself in beside her and did the same. This is about the only time on a short trip that stewardesses are able to sit down and chat to one another. 'Well,' Kim asked, as the jet engines shrieked up to take-off power and the aircraft danced on its toes like a boxer waiting for the bell, 'how did you make out with Captain Creighton?' 'Indifferently.' 'I didn't think you'd be his type—any more than Eric Dudley's mine.' That again. I didn't argue. I simply murmured she was right about Captain Creighton. 'He likes them very small, very dark and very beautiful.' 'The Countess?'

'So I'm told.' Kim brought out her compact from her pocket and checked her make-up. 'Did he tear a strip off you re your uniform, and the creases therein?' I shook my head. 'You surprise me. There are splashes on your tights too.' 'Meant to change them.' 'Consider yourself lucky. Thoughts of Countess Ghislaine must have sweetened his mood.' I nodded, though I didn't think it was that. The fifth column inside me noted that this Captain Creighton had his own meticulous sense of justice. To silence it, I asked Kim what else she knew about the Captain's affair. 'Nothing much really. Except I've heard her brother doesn't approve.' 'Why?' 'He wants her to marry some rich old man. And talking of the brother, he's quite a dish himself.' 'The Count? I'd imagined he was old.' 'A stewardess rumour to put others off the scent,' Kim said drily, as the run-up swelled to a crescendo. Tango Uncle began to rush forward down the runway. The lamps whipped past us closer together. And then there came those last two hard thumps before a jet lifts off. Precisely at twelve noon, Tango Uncle climbed steeply into the grey Surrey sky.

Our strange mixed company was airborne.

Looking back on that trip with hindsight I feel there should have been something to warn us—a thunderclap or lightning flash or red wine spilled on a white cloth. Instead there was only a silent explosion of dazzling sunlight as we broke cloud and burst into a new and empty world of cerulean blue sky carpeted like a dream in endless pink foam. But warnings rarely come in the manner one immediately recognises. And Seat 25's call bell glowing red along the white bulkhead caused me no qualms other than the necessity to hurry. I unstrapped myself and went aft to the galley. From the cabin I could hear Kim switching the intercom to Voice and the usual after-take-off briefing. 'Ladies and gentlemen, you may now smoke. Captain Creighton and his crew take this opportunity to wish you a pleasant trip. The drinks trolley will be coming round shortly...' Through the soles of my feet, I felt the aircraft level, then bank and turn over Avery Beacon and the Hampshire border, in a movement of precision and skill which would probably be unnoticed by our passengers. The champagne glass that I put on the worktop didn't vibrate or move by the fraction of an inch. I was suddenly reminded of those capable-looking hands that I'd first seen on the wheel of the white Rover and I remember wishing the day had started differently and that fate had somehow given me a better chance. Though for what, I didn't seem to be able to tell myself.

Instead I thought of the Countess Orsini and San Fedora. Up at the front First Officer Strutt would be reporting back to Airways. 'Tango Uncle on course for San Fedora 1' I said the name over and over again to myself, as I wrapped the bottle in its white linen cloth, and stood it in the silver bucket of crushed ice. And even then, on smooth flight in full sunshine, the name had a fateful ring. Before I went aft to the galley, I glanced down at the melting cumulus carpet. Through toppling ravines of insubstantial cloud I caught glimpses of world far below—minuscule fields for Lilliputians, the silver snake of river, the coast and flat greyness that was the Channel, a big ship shrunk to a chip off a matchstick. A world in fact to which we no longer belonged. And to which, though I didn't suspect it, none of us would return quite the same again. All I knew then was that Seat 25 was switching his bell on and off in a manner that threatened to short-circuit the indicator system. I lifted the bucket on to the special champagne order trolley and went forward into the cabin. 'I'm sorry you had to wait, sir.' I wheeled the trolley up to his seat and stood beside him. Close to he seemed younger than I'd at first guessed. He had donned a pair of dark gold-framed glasses. They made his already baffling face more mysterious still. Besides, they had given him an advantage. I know that behind their shelter he was surveying me from head to toe. Then he smiled. The lips looked very thin, I thought, under the dark moustache. 'I am used to waiting,' he said in that deep thicktimbred voice.

I have waited many years already to celebrate this. I can wait a little longer.' He whipped off his glasses and stared up at me. The hooded eyes fastened on my face, inviting my question. 'What are you celebrating, sir?' I asked, busying myself with the opening of the bottle, and apologising for not being able to uncork it in the usual grand manner. 'The return of the poor peasant.' He put his glasses back on, 'To his own dear native land.' He sighed. 'To Sicily, sir?' 'To San Fedora itself, Miss Harrington.' 'This holiday must be tailor-made for you then, sir.' A bitter smile played round those thin lips. 'More, how you say, tailor-made than you can ever know, Miss Harrington.' The smile seemed to turn inwards. I wished I could have seen the expression of his eyes. Instead I watched his hands as he waved them for me to pour the champagne. Rough peasant hands, I noticed, with that incongruous ring glinting in the sunlight and the blue enamel swallow seeming almost to take flight. 'You are going to see old friends?' I asked, and handed him the glass. He smiled at my ignorance. He gazed down at the bubbles, cradling the glass gently in his hands. Then he raised the glass in a silent toast. 'Do you know one thing better than to see old friends, Miss Harrington?'

'Old relatives?' I asked. The smile broadened. 'To see old enemies.' 'I'll bet you a week's telephone stand-by, you're going to get Seat 25's life story by four-course instalments,' said Kim, with senior stewardess cynicism, as we met up briefly in the galley over lunch preparations. The four courses come almost ready, but we have to grill the duckling and steaks at the infra spit and serve each of the courses separately. 'No bet,' I said. 'He's the lonely type.' 'Lonely-for-trouble, more like,' Kim shook her head. 'He has an expression at the back of his eyes like Eric Dudley.' I pointed out that Seat 25 was wearing sun glasses. But it's impossible to argue with Kim when she's anti-Eric. So I picked up my first trays of avocado tartare, and it was during the serving of that, exactly as Kim had predicted, that the story of Seat 25's life began. France, far below, was starting to rise to the Massif Central and I was mixing a little more tarragon vinegar in with the oil for him when Seat 25 told me, that after some catastrophic event, unspecified, he'd worked his passage to London from Sicily seven years ago. He had got a job at the Dorchester, learned the catering trade and bought his own restaurant. High above Lake Lucerne, pouring shrimp sauce over lightly poached brill, that one restaurant had expanded to many. Seat 25 had branched out into property. He had worked by day and by night. He had discovered—how did I say—the Midas touch. He had sent for his only relative, his grandmother. Still he made money and more money.

'Why,' I asked, handing the silver sauce boat now to the patient passengers immediately behind —a Mr. and Mrs. Parker from Bristol, 'did you want so much money?' 'I was driven by a burning ambition.' He obviously didn't want to tell me what. I was able to escape to Mr. and Mrs. Parker, and vague remarks about Clifton suspension bridge and the view of the channel from Durdham Down. 'A mercy that I do the flight deck,' Kim muttered, hurrying past in the aisle. The southern foothills of the Italian Alps were crinkled and brown like walnuts under our feet. I was serving Seat 25 with grilled duckling in orange glaze. And now he talked about San Fedora itself. I recognised by his vehemence that we had come to the subject closest to Seat 25's heart. 'Let me warn you, Miss Harrington, San Fedora is very feudal and evil still. There is the Count and his family. The somebodies. Then there are the nobodies like me.' 'Did you work for him ?' I asked. 'I did.' 'Did you know him well?' I arranged tiny segments of mandarin orange on his plate. 'If by cleaning a boy's shoes you know him well, yes. Even then he made me feel like something under his feet. There are people who have that quality.' 'I know what you mean,' I said wryly, glancing up at the flight deck door. 'And not all of them counts.'

'Ah, but the wheel has come full circle for this count. It is he who will clean our shoes, eh, signorina?' He watched me pick up the buttered tips of asparagus in the silver scissors, spoon out the French beans and new potatoes rolled in parsley. 'In those days we all knew what hunger was.' I remember at that point feeling moved by Seat 25's account. Maybe he noticed the softer expression of my face. For suddenly he seemed determined to shock me. 'Then in this same month of April we were not so hungry!' 'How, sir?' I smiled politely and prepared to move back to Mr. and Mrs. Parker. 'April in San Fedora is known as the Time of the Swallows. Those same swallows that fly north to you in Britain from Africa. They are exhausted after their journey over the sea. They look down,' he touched the porthole, 'as we now look down. They see our rocky island. They think it is a safe place to rest. Down they come, the little innocents, in their thousands. And…' 'And?' My face clouded. 'In their thousands we young men snared and netted them.' 'Killed them?' 'Of course. And ate or sold them.' I said nothing. 'You are shocked and sad, signorina? For them?'

'For all of you,' I said, and took a step back. Once again he put his hand on my arm. Once again that ring wrinkled in the sun. 'Then you should not have come to San Fedora, signorina. There is much that you will hate. It is beautiful, yes, but underneath it is cruel. It is not at all as it first seems to be. People are different, underneath. Most of all the Count is not as he seems.' Roughly he pulled my arm closer to him, so that he could whisper. 'It is only a small cruelty to live by snaring swallows. But the Count Orsinis of this world live by destroying people. So always, signorina, they set human snares.'

'There is a saying in our country,' Seat 25 announced as we stood at the head of the passenger stairs, with the little sunlit airport of San Fedora spread out below us, 'that we think seven times more often of the man we hate than the man we love'. We had landed at the small airport of San Fedora half-way through a golden afternoon. Captain Creighton, despite the shortness of the runway, had made a faultless landing. The whole of Sicily, except for Etna's crown of dense white, lay bathed in sunlight. And because this was April, everywhere the little dark blue anchor shapes of swallows wheeled and circled around. Seat 25 was the last passenger to disembark. He stood in that doorway, drawing in great gulps of the warm air that smelled of the sea and almond blossom, and a dry indefinable smell that I later found out was the porous volcanic rock from which San Fedora is built. Clumps of hibiscus grew round the perimeter track. Beyond the airfield were orange groves and olive plantations, the backdrop was a steep-sided little mountain, with a towered

bewailed castle silhouetted dark against the blue sky at the top. I saw Seat 25's eyes were fixed on that castle as he repeated his old Sicilian saying, and the buildings of an ancient village that stretched like some spurned beggar unsuccessfully up towards it. 'I don't think that's altogether true,' Kim said pedantically as she sealed the bar preparatory to its being impounded in the bonded store. 'I know a man I hate, but I hardly ever give him a thought.' Seat 25 eyed her derisively. Derisively too he eyed me as a clanging down the crew steps heralded the disembarkation of the pilots. 'And whom do you hate, Miss Harrington?' 'No one,' I replied virtuously, watching the two blue-clad figures begin to walk across the tarmac. 'Not even the Signor Capitano?' He spoke in a loud carrying voice. 'Who taketh the name of the Commander in vain?' Peter Strutt turned and grinned as if anxious to dilute Captain Creighton's company. 'You're late disembarking, sir.' He addressed Seat 25. 'No snags, I hope?' Both pilots paused and looked up at us. Both smiled. I felt myself colour. 'None whatsoever,' Seat 25 bowed. 'I am simply finding it difficult to tear myself away from this charming company.' 'You'll be late for the taxis,' Captain Creighton frowned at his wrist watch. Lateness and I seemed to be inextricably bound together in

his mind. 'The girls have jobs to do, sir.' Pointedly, Captain Creighton waited for Seat 25 to descend the steps and join them. Then looking up at us and jerking his head towards the castle, 'I don't suppose either of you fancy a walk.' His expression melted into a small secret smile towards me. 'Or thumbing a lift.' He said it so gently that something made me reply equally softly, 'You never know who you'll meet.' It was the wrong thing to say. Seat 25 took it as some cue for himself. 'Oh, yes,' I heard him say in that rough carrying voice of his, as the trio of them marched off across the tarmac together, 'who you meet! Just so! She is so anxious, that one, to meet the Count. All the way over here, I tell her of him. I tell her he is cruel, but she does not care. The ladies seem to understand . ..' The voice faded. I collected the last information wallets and opened the hatch for the automatic loader. The cleaners were already coming aboard, dark handsome men and women who looked, but for their pleasant smiles, as if they might have been distant relatives of Seat 25. They waved at us both as we descended the metal steps. One of them pointed to the swallows wheeling overhead, and cried, 'Much love! Much good luck!' 'Not for them,' I murmured. Kim didn't ask me what I meant. She was too absorbed, I suppose, in her non-thinking about Eric Dudley. Now orange and lemon blossom mingled with the sharpened tang of the sea. I thought I could hear waves breaking against rocks. There were no other aircraft on the aprons. The airfield was quiet except for the roar of

car engines forming up outside a small building of volcanic rock which said in four languages, 'Welcome to peaceful San Fedora.' 'Wishful thinking, do you suppose?' I said to Kim, 'or dramatic irony?' 'The simple truth, I hope.' Now that the flight was safely over, she seemed to have forgotten her suspicions. I mentioned Seat 25. 'Oh, him. He's harmless. A bell-pusher, that's all. He might graduate to number two sin, but that's as far as he'll get.' I didn't argue. I didn't want to believe there was anything really suspicious about Seat 25. So I put in my landing card and showed my passport and my security airfield pass, and followed Kim out to the last but one of the cortege of cars. They looked like something out of a 1930's gangster film. Old black Renaults, with small windows that you expect to shatter any minute into a bullet-hole. There were only two other passengers besides Seat 25 who hadn't already gone-—the Naylands from Melbourne. On their honeymoon, I suspected. The two pilots were filling their flight report in Ops. They'd left a message not to wait for them, so we got in. The engine started and we began the climb up the perilous hillside. It reminded me of the old advertisement for dentifrice. Hairpin bend followed hairpin bend. And if not Giant Decay, at least a minor landslide or a broken fence or a herd of goats or a laden cart waited to trap the unwary. We roared through the outskirts of the

village. We passed a whitewashed church wearing a garland of wheeling swallows. Seat 25's excitement increased as we climbed. I saw his hands gripping the upholstery in front. Once he waved them to point out the cable car. Once to show the sheer drop down to the sea. Then we were rounding the last hairpin bend. The craggy rockface gave way to walls as intricately jointed as an Inca ashlar. They rose smooth and dark and sheer. High above them, piercing the blue sky, soared an extravagance of rococo towers and vaulted roofs. Then the limousine slowed. A sudden break in the wall showed tall pillars, surmounted by statuary of some, arrangements of birds, tall iron doors, bolted, but which opened smoothly at the hooting of our horn. The doors swung inwards to disclose a fairy palace indeed. I caught a glimpse of green lawns, and darker hedges, fountains rainbowing the sunlight, a riot of many-coloured blossoms, rose arbours, orange and ilex groves. I heard water tinkling in some grotto. I heard the muted sound of familiar voices as the previous carloads of passengers explored the secrets of the garden. I smelled an almost overpoweringly sweet fragrance. While the swallows wheeled and cried overhead. Those then are my excuses and my reasons. The scene was set. There was the fairy palace. It waited only the prince. And the prince it was that came. A young man walking almost shyly across the green lawn, one hand in the pocket of his white cotton jeans, one hand outstretched in welcome.

CHAPTER FOUR I AWAITED the Big Scene. Here together at last in the enchanted garden of the castle were the Demon King in the shape of Seat 25, and Count Leon Orsini, a natural Prince Charming. Yet charming was too insipid an adjective for Leon Orsini. Beguiling suited him better. Guileful better still. I studied that slender young man with the profile like the head on some ancient Greek coin as he bowed low over the Australian bride's hand. He raised it to just short of his full sensuous lips. Then he did the same with Kim's and then mine. A gentleman who above all else revered women, you might have said to describe him at that stage. Who was old-fashioned enough to even put them on a pedestal. All sorts of romantic ideas flitted through my brain that warm afternoon as his bold dark eyes looked deep first into Kim's and then mine. Searching for something, I thought, romantically again. Someone perhaps to love him for himself. Not for the title or his castle, or his manifest importance in his own microscopic empire. Yet still at the back of my mind I waited with apprehension for the big scene. For the loud bang and the puff of black brimstone smoke, when hero met villain and Seat 25 and the Count faced one another. None really came. Seat 25 was standing just behind me. Kim and the bride had turned to admire a huge magnolia tree in perfect bloom. Somehow, though I couldn't see Seat 25's face, I could feel his tension. I remember the slanting sun cast his bulky shadow past me right up to the young Count's feet. I noticed that as, graciously, the Count took a pace forward to offer Seat 25 his hand, he trod on that unmoving shadow.

It seemed to me then like some silent unfought victory. 'Welcome to San Fedora.' The Count smiled his sweet beguiling smile. The Count's hand, slender, well-shaped, unmarked by work, was outstretched. He wore a gold signet ring on the third finger. It was very beautifully wrought. That's all I noticed then. Except I thought I caught a hint of deep blue in it. Then I stepped aside so that the two men could shake hands. They didn't. Seat 25 kept his hands firmly in his pockets. Lazily, he swung himself backwards and forwards on his heels so that his large heavy shoes dug into the fine lawn. He surveyed the Count from behind those dark disguising glasses. He drew a deep breath. And I suppose, if scene there was, it came then. 'I am no stranger to these parts, Count Orsini,' he said slowly in heavily accented English. With Seat 25's first word, or rather with even his indrawn breath, the Count I swear had recognised him. Every line of his handsome face, every muscle of his lithe body stiffened. The bold eyes blazed hatred. In a metamorphosis more baleful and immediate than the Demon King's wand, our Prince Charming host changed to some wild predatory creature at bay. I remember hearing the beating of my own heart and the trivial laughter and distant muted voices of the rest of our company. I saw the sensuous lips draw back from the white teeth. And then it seemed it was all my imagination. The scene melted away. The snarl became a sweet beguiling smile. The Count's dark eyes twinkled. His expressive face declared unfeigned pleasure. His whole slender body relaxed. He threw his arms wide in a gesture, expansive and delighted.

'You are Sicilian, my dear friend! Then welcome back. More than welcome. Thrice welcome.' I winced, and wished he hadn't said that. For as every schoolboy has to remember, but not so many adults can, those are the words with which Macbeth welcomed the ill-fated King Duncan to his castle. On the night he murdered him. But that horrid question didn't seem to worry anyone else. And I didn't suppose it was of the slightest significance. The Naylands smiled with pleasure at the Count's kindliness. 'And what part of the island are you from, my very dear friend?' Still Seat 25 swung himself laconically backwards and forwards. 'From hereabouts, Count Orsini.' 'Really!' 'I worked for you once, Count Orsini.' The Count's smile widened. His eyes brimmed with laughter. 'That I do not believe.' 'Nor I,' smiled Mr. Nayland, the Australian bridegroom, speaking for the first time. 'I don't reckon any of my hired hands 'ud be screwy enough to come back visiting me.' 'Exactly!' The Count clapped Seat 25 on the shoulder. 'That's what I mean. None of them would ever want to set eyes on me again.' His laughter increased. He made what was supposed to be a joke, 'Except to kill me.'

Everyone joined in the forced merriment. Except me. And Seat 25. Though Seat 25 gave a bitter little smile. He bided his time till the Count had formally welcomed the Australians, and our little party was about to move off to join the others deep in the heart of that lovely garden. 'Oh, I think you know well why I have come, Count Orsini,' he murmured so softly and through such tight-drawn lips that I doubt if anyone else knew he spoke. And even softer, so that I was never sure I heard aright, the Count answered him. I hoped I wasn't right, because what I thought the Count said was, 'In which case, death would be infinitely preferable.'

But if I had heard aright, what was death preferable to? Dishonour? Was this ancient feudal fortress also one of the last bastions of the old romantic ideas of chivalry? Did these clusters of slender glass-topped turrets now fitted with expensive bathrooms and skilful reproduction furniture, these long stone corridors now sumptuously carpeted in first-grade Wilton, these narrow defensive windows now hung with silk brocade and emerald velvet, echo to sentiments more in keeping with their original Crusader age? Were the comfortable lounges and the solarium, the grand dining room more tuned to the clash of chivalrous swords than the tinkle of tableware? I had little time to ponder these ideas. For though the castle had been renovated and redecorated in a luxurious manner by a luxurious hand, the allocation of bedrooms for our special tour had been haphazard. Some of our elderly passengers had found themselves in third floor turret rooms, beautiful to behold but too

narrow and difficult of access for a lift to be fitted. Others were not near enough to friends they had booked with. Some twin-bedded requests had got double-bedded rooms and vice versa. It seemed, too, that either we had arrived in the middle of siesta time, or else the castle was understaffed. There were handsome apologies from the Count, assurances that the rooms could easily be changed. And that when his sister Ghislaine returned, all would be well. We must remember that well-known British virtue of patience. But holidaymakers arriving at their new hotel are not known for their patience. They wanted to change out of their travel clothes and get into the magnificent pool or stroll in the beautiful gardens. So it ended up with Kim and me reorganising the rooms and humping the luggage. 'Where is she, I wonder?' I demanded of Kim as we dragged a suitcase belonging to an elderly archaeologist down one of the many winding stairways. The bag felt as if it contained half a Roman road, and the thud of it struck weird echoes from the stone walls. 'Ghislaine? Gone to meet our Captain Creighton,' she answered. 'The pilots haven't turned up either yet, you notice.' Our voices fluted round the well of the stairs, dying away to a whisper in the tall raftered ceiling. 'The three of them,' Kim remarked bitterly, setting the case down as we reached the next floor, 'are probably sitting in some orange grove.' 'Drinking local wine,' I said.

'Plucking orange blossom for her hair, more like.' Kim hummed the Wedding March. I said nothing—not because the picture in any way depressed me, but because my eye had been caught by another of the coats of arms with which this castle was liberally decorated. This one was high in the centre stonework of the corridor wall. Sunlight flooding in through the tall oriel window picked out its many deeply carved complications. While I rubbed the palms of my hands where the suitcase handle had chafed, I stood and studied it. A massive eagle, rather like the eagle of ancient Rome, was being carried off in the beak of a tiny strong-winged bird. I stood on tiptoe. I identified that bird with an odd prescient feeling of inevitability. That meaningful bird, of good or ill omen, the swallow. That same strange coat of arms was carved on the hexagonal landing of the suite which Kim and I shared on the top floor of the southernmost turret. The suite consisted of a bedroom each with a balcony, and a bathroom in between. It was carved in the baroque fireplace of each of the bedrooms, and wrought in gilt in the shower fitment above the white marble Cleopatra bath. I pointed it out to Kim later that evening. After three hours spent lugging cases she was in a mood to claim her senior rank and the first bath. I watched her subside into scented foam as deep as summer cumulus, while I repaired the damage to my nails. 'Odd sort of crest,' I remarked. 'They're an odd sort of family.'

I finished the varnish on one hand and waved it dry. 'Attractive, though.' 'Very.' She soaped her arms slowly. 'Not falling for him, are you?' 'The Count?' 'Who else?' I thought she gave me a sharp sideways look, but I may have been mistaken. 'Anyway, he's a rogue.' 'I suppose he is.' 'I know he is.' 'Who told you?' 'Grapevine gossip,' I replied lightly, and began on the varnish of my other hand. 'More often true than false.' She rested her head on the frilly flowered bath cushion. She became quite expansive. Her temper improving, I suppose, as the bath did its soothing work. 'I also heard there are people here in Sicily, as of now, who want this Orsini-Phoenix arrangement to fail.' 'Overworked stewardesses please step forward,' I smiled, and blew on my nails. Kim shook her head. 'I'm really serious. The Mafia. Some say the Count was once part of the Mafia himself.' 'Cross your heart and hope to marry Eric Dudley?'

'I'd sooner die,' she said. And I remembered what the Count had said at the end of that little scene-that-never-was. It was at that point, too, that I remembered the message, till then pushed to the back of my mind by all we'd had to do since we arrived. 'I'll give you that the Count has enemies,' I conceded. 'And Seat 25's one of them.' 'Exactly. What's more, the Count's afraid of him.' 'The Count's not afraid of anyone,' I replied warmly. She smiled slowly. 'Sure you haven't fallen for him?' 'Quite sure. But I'm also sure,' I added thoughtfully, 'that he isn't quite what he seems to be.' I walked over to the window. I pulled the silken-tassel and opened the modern slatted blind. A hundred feet sheer below us, the ornate stylised garden had filled up with darkness like some underwater cavern. Stalks of light from the dining hall and the solarium and the downstairs turret windows criss-crossed that darkness like the lamps of prison guards, illuminating here an ilex tree, there a clump of flowers incandescent white in the darkness. And as I watched, the furtive shadow of a man crossed one white stalk of light. I saw him turn, freeze and then cautiously stare up at our cluster of turrets. An anonymous face unidentifiable at this distance as the white flowers. A fairy-tale castle, I had thought when we arrived. With even the young Prince Charming thrown in. Or was this the Land at the top of the Beanstalk, where somewhere the giant lurked? Or less fancifully, but more ominously, was it still a feudal fortress as it had been for twelve hundred years? In an island

where now the Mafia reigned, where everything was beautiful but dangerous. 'After all,' I said as I closed the blind, 'no one in San Fedora is quite as they seem to be.'

I even wondered if the girl who knocked on Kim's bedroom door shortly after nine was whom she announced herself to be. Kim was still putting the finishing touches to her hair, so I opened the door. 'I am Ghislaine, Orsini's sister.' 'Emma Harrington.' The girl took my hand briefly in her tiny bird-boned one, and swept, as I stood aside, into the room, picking up the skirt of her crimson wild silk dress as she walked, carrying her head very high to increase her height. To the same end, her blue-black hair was piled on top of her small head. She was slight, like her brother, with a thin well-boned face and large dark eyes set Moorishly aslant under ruthlessly plucked spidery brows. She was, I guessed, about nineteen or twenty. And though she had tried to make herself look older, the net result was the opposite. But old or young, her attraction was timeless. I watched her walk over to the dressing table and introduce herself to Kim. 'I must apologise that I was not here in person to receive you. But I had so hoped to see you all at the airfield itself, when I met, alas, only your Captain.' She stared from Kim to me eyes bold as her brother's as if to dare either of us to contradict her. Kim smiled broadly but said nothing.

'Your brother was very helpful,' I murmured. 'And most welcoming.' 'I thought it would be good, yes, if he met you for a while on his own,' she said, changing excuses in mid-stream, 'therefore we did not immediately hurry back. Your Captain wished to take a good picture of Etna. She was smoking pleasingly this afternoon. And there was a fine plume.' Ghislaine was, I noticed, one of those people who warm to a story as it goes along, whose inventiveness increases with the size, to put it bluntly, of a lie. 'I didn't know Captain Creighton was interested in photography,' Kim remarked drily. 'He is interested in everything.' Ghislaine spread her little hands. 'To do with San Fedora, that is,' she added coyly. 'He has fallen in love,' a pause, 'with the place.' 'How nice.' 'He wishes to come to live here.' 'Let's hope he succeeds,' Kim answered. 'The castle's big enough for the whole operating crews of Phoenix Airways.' The Countess eyed her sideways, scenting sarcasm. 'I kid you not at all,' she said with dignity. Kim sprayed the back of her hair and stood up. 'Nor I you,' she murmured pacifically. 'You are ready now, yes?' Ghislaine smiled the beguiling Orsini smile. 'May I say you both look very beautiful.'

We murmured a similar compliment back, though without her finesse. 'And how did you find my wicked brother?' she asked, sweeping ahead of us down the turret stairs. 'Wicked,' Kim smiled. 'You kid me? Yes?' The Moorish eyes held a hint of shadow. The expression made the thin face oddly waif-like. I could see very clearly then why a man like Captain Creighton would fall in love with her. 'Yes.' Impulsively as we descended the sweep of the stairs, Kim patted the Countess's arm. Ghislaine looked over her shoulder at us, and scowled. 'But he really is wicked, my brother. Deeply wicked. Cruel.' She stamped an adjective on each stair. 'Autocratic, unreasonable, feudal—a tyrant.' At some speed we reached the next floor. The Countess appeared to combine her hostessly duties with some rather hastily executed household chores. She paused here to pull a curtain over a window, there to trim the cluster of ornamental candles that graced the head of every stair. 'You do not find tyrants, they tell me, in England these days?' 'I'm not so sure,' I said. 'Board any aircraft, open a little door marked Flight Deck, and there you find a tyrant.' 'You kid with me, Emma.' 'Only half.'

'But I kid with you not at all. To my brother, an independent woman is hemlock. He will keep me a prisoner here,' the Countess Ghislaine said, peering out through a thin slit of stone staircase window. 'Until I marry the richest, oldest, ugliest man in the whole world.' 'Mr. Rich again,' I sighed, but to myself, not aloud. I felt sad for the Countess—and for some reason, sad for me. 'There's a lot to be said for riches,' Kim said as we began our descent of the second staircase of some dark polished wood. The stairways of the main castle increased in splendour as they descended. 'Especially if you've never had them.' 'There is a lot to be said for freedom if that you have never had,' the Countess paused to pull a silken cord and disclose on this next stairway the portrait, in oils, of some handsome, elegantly clad forebear. 'Protection from sunlight,' she explained. 'That way my brother, he keeps me! Always away from other people's sight, never out of his.' I remember wondering then if there was perhaps more to the Count's obsessive protectiveness than met the little Countess's eye. But not very seriously. For we had reached the magnificent galleried first floor on which the most expensive suites were located. It is connected to the hall by a circular staircase of white marble reputed to have been carved by Bernini. The landing is shadowy, panelled in bog oak, lit only by wall sconces and the mild upward light from the central staircase candelabrum of blue Venetian glass. A gift from Garibaldi, the Countess said, to their great-great-grandfather. 'For some wickedness, have no doubt!' The Countess grimaced. 'If Garibaldi were alive now my brother

would have himself a million such candelabra,' she trimmed a guttering candle hastily. She smiled at her little joke. She gathered great bunches of the wild silk material of her skirt in her hands and shooed us ahead of her towards the formal staircase. Then somewhere along that high galleried landing, I heard a door softly open, and a softer footfall. Out of the corner of my eyes I glimpsed a shadow more solid than the rest, peaked by candlelight, menacing. 'My brother says -' The Countess broke off in mid-sentence and glanced over her shoulder. Her expression changed. The lighthearted malice went out of her voice. She sounded breathless. '— That a woman should only leave the care of her father or brother for that of her husband.' 'In that your brother is quite correct,' the solid shadow stepped into the light of the sconces. A broad smile gleamed white in the black beard. Seat 25, the Demon King, now dressed formally for dinner, advanced another pace. Once again I waited for the Big Scene. One again it didn't come. Instead there followed a scene that I, sentimentally, found rather touching, but which Kim, who is more cynical, pronounced afterwards as 'pure theatre'. The Countess stopped and smiled, seeing, I suppose, simply a rich stranger, handsome in his own swashbuckling way. She extended her regal little hand. Seat 25 took it. Then he dropped to his knees. He drew the Countess's hand first close to his left breast, and then, as appeared customary, almost but not quite to his lips. The gesture was humble and curiously reverent. And this strange contradictory child of a Countess, with her talk of freedom and her relish for her

own power over men, revelled in his homage like an unexpectedly crowned queen. 'Your accent, sir, is ... Sicilian ... yes?' 'Yes.' She addressed some questions to him in Sicilian. He nodded in affirmation and with almost convincing humility to each one. But he didn't raise his eyes—maybe, as Kim suggested later, because he didn't dare let her read their expression. Then Ghislaine seemed to sense our curiosity. Or perhaps she wished to savour his reverence without our sceptical eyes. Anyway, she suddenly rounded on us, chin tilted, haughtily dismissing, ancient customs of conducting guests to dinner now dispensed with. 'Go down, please! Your passengers will be wanting to dine. I will join you soon.' As Kim and I reached the head of the staircase, I glanced back. Seat 25 had risen to his feet. He towered over the little Countess. He was talking earnestly and carefully as if repeating a message. I forgot about the little scene on the landing. I remembered my own undelivered greeting to the Count. Even when the candlelight threw their conjoined shadows on the panelling so that they looked fleetingly like victim and huge predatory beast, the picture hardly impinged on my imagination. I saw an exquisitely dressed Count Orsini standing in the huge hall far below, and with the unrecognised haste of someone embracing their fate, I hurried down the formal staircase towards him.

CHAPTER FIVE 'So you have a message for me, Signorina Emma?' It was past midnight when I finally succeeded in pinning down the Count. We were sitting after the very late dinner by the French doors of the salon, on gilt and velvet chairs. A trio in local costume were playing in the minstrels' gallery. Most of the guests had gone to bed. All evening I had pursued the colourfully dressed Orsini as he flitted from group to group with the determination of a collector. And with the delicate antennae of a peacock butterfly, he had eluded me. I had tried to repeat that stupid message as our host Orsini had bowed over my hand in the hall. But he had silenced me by what seemed a genuinely anxious enquiry on the whereabouts of his wicked sister. (Wicked appeared to be the favourite endearment in the Orsini family). I had tried to waylay the Count as he conducted the passengers from the solarium where they were sipping their aperitifs through into the magnificent dining hall. He had complimented me on my dark green dress and invited my opinion on the silverware, in the Orsini family for five hundred years, and on the lace table mats, hand-made in the local village. And as a sop to my impatience, 'We shall talk perhaps over dinner, yes?' So I had tried to catch his eye throughout the meal. We were all at one long table, and I was on the other side and three places away. I also tried to talk to him over coffee on the terrace, and while helping the passengers to choose their liqueurs. And all these under the cynical glance, the worldly-wise seen-it-all-before smile of Mark Creighton.

Unfairly, I'd thought, he had been placed next to Ghislaine at the foot of the dinner table. So the passengers either side of them hardly got a look in. He did speak occasionally to the archaeologist's wife, and Ghislaine threw the odd meagre crust to Seat 25, but otherwise they were, as Kim later remarked, as selfsufficient as Noah and Co. Now they had both disappeared. Only half a dozen couples still danced on the floor. The Count was theatrically indicating that he was graciously pleased to receive my message. I remember thinking he was a most extraordinarily good-looking young man. 'No, on reflection let us go into the garden where it is certain there is no one to overhear.' He saw me look round the distant couples so manifestly out of earshot with something of Captain Creighton's cynicism. 'Nor anyone who can lip-read, Emma.' He opened the French windows with exaggerated caution. It was all what Kim would have called pure theatre'. Pure theatre outside too. A full moon had risen high above the pointed lips of the ilex grove. It blanched the stone and bleached the marble, sharpened the shadows and inked the neat hedges, like some skilful engraver's pen. It threw our shadows ahead of us down the steps, along the stone-flagged path, flicked them beside us as we turned over glossy-leaved rhododendrons and scented oleander. I thought of the shadow of Seat 25 and Ghislaine and some sixth sense made me shiver. 'The message was -'

The Count laid his hand lightly over my mouth. 'Not now, dearest Emma.' 'Why?' I asked. Laconically, 'Because I say so.' 'And is whatever you say always done?' 'Invariably.' Then, as if at his own pomposity, the Count laughed softly. 'I am not such a pampered aristo as you think I am. Nor,' he took my hand, 'did I keep you on tenderhooks all evening simply because you look even prettier when you are, how you say, frustrated? Though,' he lifted my hand to his lips and this time kissed it, 'that came into it.' 'You have a cruel streak,' I said. 'Perhaps. But then what man has not?' I couldn't answer that, so I said nothing. 'It is all part of his machismo. His, how do you say, maleness.' I kept silent while he led me through a complication of hedges, paths, flower beds and topiary till I heard the rushing of fast shallow water and we came to a little stone grotto with a clear waterfall cascading down the rock face behind a statue hewn out of blue-veined white marble. 'Diana,' said the Count, drawing me down on to the round marble seat in front of the statue. 'The huntress,' I replied.

'I used to think when I was a boy,' the Count reminisced, 'that I would not marry until I met a woman as beautiful as she. I used to imagine being pursued by her.' I felt he was drawing some analogy between my pursuit of him this evening and his rather precocious schoolboy dreams. 'English boys,' I said drily, 'imagine scoring goals or making runs.' 'That is precisely why women do not fall in love with them.' And though I said nothing, he read my thoughts. 'Except, of course, my wicked little sister. And she is not a woman at all, but a child, who does not know her mind.' Then he inclined his head and asked me what the message was. 'The rule of three. Two are gone, how stands the tree?' I tried to watch the Count's face as I repeated it, but it was in shadow, while mine was softly lit by moonlight. I thought his body tensed, and he remained quiet while some clock in the garden chimed the quarter, though of what hour I wasn't sure. 'How did you come by this message?' I told him. 'Describe his voice! Did he sound old or young? Describe his accent.' I did as he told me, ending up with, 'He said it was just some greeting, some old Sicilian saying. That he was an old friend of yours.'

The Count leaned forward into the beam of moonlight. Every line of his face was clearly etched. Gone was the foppish Prince Charming. I saw again the blazing angry eyes, the tight drawnback lips of some wild animal at bay. 'Shall I tell you what that message means?' he snarled as if I were the originator of it all. 'If you want to.' 'Cababisco! I do want to.' He put both hands on my shoulders. He even shook me in his anger. But for seconds the explanation didn't come. I even began to think, He is a liar like his little sister and he is even now for some devious reason making it all up. I awaited a lie of Orsini magnitude, but like the big scene it didn't come. His quick ears had caught the sound of feet and voices before mine did. He made a movement so sudden and unexpected that I was momentarily limp. Those angry arms that had been so vigorously shaking me pulled me to him. Then he freed one hand and tilted up my chin, and before I'd time to protest or even thought to, he had closed my mouth in a passionate kiss. I say passionate, but for all its ferocity it was devoid of sexual passion. The passion was fury. I could even see that his narrowed eyes were open, they glittered in the dark like a cat's, watchful and waiting for the walkers in the garden. Then I heard the footsteps stop—very close. I struggled. The Count's arms were like steel. Inconsequential thoughts fled through

my confused mind. You are not so weak and spoiled and idle as you pretend, Leon Orsini. Then I heard a woman's voice—Ghislaine's, high and sweet and yet pleading. 'Don't be angry with them, Mark. My wicked brother is overcome by the beauty of Diana.' And I heard Mark Creighton say clearly and contemptuously, 'Ironic but apt.'

I saw nothing of the Count the next day, and nothing important happened. Except one tiny incident, one small proverbial cloud no bigger than a man's hand. Except that this was no bigger than a woman's. Mine. It took place on the familiarisation tour of the south-eastern coast with a visit to our sister village of San Lugano. We set off that morning in the same fleet of old-fashioned Renault limousines and we had an almost hundred-per-cent turn-out. The only absentee was Seat 25. Fairly natural, really. He must know the whole area like the back of his hand. Yet for some reason his absence worried me—perhaps because it's easier to worry about other people's problems than it is one's own. I was well aware that some time, perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow, I would have to face Captain Creighton, and that if his reputation was justified and my assessment of him correct, last night's episode would not pass without comment.

I was fortunate or unfortunate that I happened to be in the same taxi as Mr. and Mrs. Parker from Bristol and the elderly archaeologist and his wife. The archaeologist was a fountain of information— and just as ceaseless. No comments were required from me, except the occasional smile and nod. While my ears echoed to entablatudos and hexastylos and crepidomas, my eyes were free to stare out over orange and lemon groves in full scented flower, at ruined Doric columns wreathed in bee orchis, while my mind harked back to the half enchanted castle of San Fedora with its beguiling host and hostess and its unwanted antagonistic guest. That Seat 25 had some vengeful mission towards the Orsini family I now had little doubt. I'd seen the mixture of anger and apprehension on the Count's face. I'd witnessed Seat 25's endeavour to disguise his hatred of Ghislaine under the mantle of synthetic courtliness. And the thought of that dark black-visaged pirate alone in the under-staffed mountain eyrie with Ghislaine and her brother made me uneasy. Then my mind came full circle, and I reminded myself, albeit reluctantly, that the two pilots were in the castle on stand-off, probably asleep. Physically they were more than a match even for the hefty Seat 25. But were they in subtlety and Sicilian deviousness? As pilots they lived and moved in a world of mathematical accuracy and trust, an implicit faith in the other man to do his job fairly and faithfully. When the duty flying controller said Runway 08 or the Met forecaster gave them nine-tenths cloud and three hundred yards visibility, they did not mean something wildly different in Orsini and Sicilian fashion.

No doubt love would lend to Mark Creighton some subtlety. And at the thought of his defence of his beloved little Countess, I experienced a discomfort of a different hitherto alien sort. As romantic orange groves gave way to the beginnings of terraced vineyards I began to see a sadder landscape. Without the archaeologist's pointing finger I saw the walls of those fruitful terraces and even the animal shelters and cottages were made of sciara volcanic stone, black and sinister as Seat 25's beard. 'They say in Sicily that the vine grows well where the volcano has scorched,' the archaeologist said. 'Terror and joy, hand in hand— that is Sicily.' Inside the comfortable limousine that remark did no more than make us smile, and anticipate the local vino mezzamontagna, wine of the half mountain, that we would sample with our lunch in the village a mile or so further up. This was set for us on white-clothed tables in the loggia at the back of a small hotel. The roof was of intertwined growing vines in tight bud. They gave off a sharp heady smell and sent a waterfall of shadow and sunlight over the stone floor. After we had eaten tagliatelli and lamb baked in fig-leaves, and canolli, a huge cream horn with lumps of chocolate, the entertainment began. A gypsy trio —a fiddler and two pipes— struck up. First a mournful tune to which an old woman sang an oddly powerful accompaniment, then a gay quick jig like folk dance tune. Half-way through two of the band thrust their pipes down the tops of their red wool socks and pulled Mrs. Nayland and me to our feet. When I returned, the old gypsy woman was sitting in my place; Mrs. Parker was trying to get her to read her palm.

The hotel proprietor explained that the old gypsy woman would only read palms if she was in the mood. Otherwise her entertainment was songs. Today she felt like singing—sad songs. Finally Mrs. Parker had her way. The old woman mumbled a few perfunctory predictions, took the two pound notes and thrust them into her gown. Then she got up. I was standing beside her. Suddenly she seized my hand. She cupped it in both of hers, staring. I saw the sweat break out on that dark crinkled forehead. I felt her hand tremble under mine. She said something hoarsely and rapidly to the proprietor. I saw him glance horror-struck at my face. Then she shut my hand tight, flung it from her, and strode away. Someone, that blessedly unrufflable Mr. Nayland, I think it was, made some quip at which everyone laughed. The shadow on our gaiety was brief and a passing only. We drank coffee in the dappled shade and the Australian insisted that we all had a small liqueur with him because he wanted to let us all into a secret, one he was sure we'd never guess. They were on their honeymoon! We all pretended immense surprise. The gypsy trio played a Sicilian love song. The old woman had gone. But somehow that shadow grew with me, so that when we drew up again at the castle gate and they swung open to disclose those sunset-tinted lawns again, I half expected someone to come out with grim news, tidings of disaster. It was almost an anti-climax when all that was there was a note on the polished hall table in a firm and vigorous hand addressed to me. It invited—no, summoned me, to meet Mark Creighton in the library at eight-thirty sharp.

One thing I knew, it wasn't for pre-dinner sherry or a cosy chat about the day's outing. I dressed thoughtfully and with care in my most conservative evening dress. It is black and slim-fitting with a scooped-out neckline, edged with a crisp white collar, demure as a nun. The black emphasises the whiteness of my skin, and perhaps subconsciously I wished for some of that whitewash to. spill over on to the character that was me. The collar makes my hair less dark, shows up its random coppery streaks. I had brushed that hair thoroughly and dressed it with care. I parted it on the middle, pulled it back and tied it in a black velvet bow. I surveyed myself in the long cheval mirror. Jane Eyre could not have looked more innocent. I glided through the bathroom and knocked on Kim's communicating door. 'Enter, friend.' She was sitting at the dressing table in her bra and pants, putting on her make-up. She raised one eyebrow. 'I'm going straight down,' I said. 'A date?' 'Captain Creighton wants to see me.' She paused with her eyeliner pencil in mid-air. 'Any idea why?' 'Yes.' 'Hence the penitential raiment?' 'Is it obvious?'

'To a woman, yes. To a man, no.' She outlined one handsome greyblue eye. 'Want to tell me about it?' 'Not specially.' 'Guilty or not guilty?' 'It's a misunderstanding, really.' 'Always is,' she said equably. She insisted I had a squirt of her special irresistible perfume, My Sin of all things. 'Anyway, good luck.' 'I'll need it.' 'You sure will.' She smiled at me in the mirror till I closed the door behind me. Outside on the landing I looked at my watch. I had five minutes to descend the three flights. I took my time, checking my reflection in every ornate mirror in every night-backed window, lest a hair had become ruffled or a spot appeared on my whiter-than-white collar. And on every floor that strangely powerful little swallow glanced down derisively at me. At exactly eight-thirty, I walked between the flanking suits of armour and knocked on the heavily panelled library door. 'Come in.' Captain Creighton's voice was neutral. He was standing by the stone fireplace, a foot in the flagged hearth, one arm resting on the heavy mantel. Flames from the log fire, lit for decoration rather than use, for the night was warm, played on his face, highlighting the severe but handsome bonework of it.

He straightened and turned as I came in, and his face subsided into shadow. But before it did I'd seen the firelight catch a gleam of something like amusement in the normally cool eyes. 'Good evening, Emma.' It is customary on ground periods for the flight deck and cabin crew to call one another by their Christian names. The fact that he had not returned to the formal mode of address gave me hope— illusory, as it happened. 'Good evening, sir.' 'Would you like to sit down?' He pulled one of the heavy leather armchairs forward. 'I'd rather stand, sir.' 'So would I.' He smiled faintly and returned to his stance by the fireplace. I kept just short of the fire's brighter illumination. 'Are you cold?' He indicated my bare arms. I shook my head. He couldn't see me shaking, and anyway it was fright, not cold. 'One thing you have learned, Emma.' 'What's that, sir?' He looked at his watch. 'Punctuality.' I began to say 'I am normally punctual,' but gave up when I saw the tightening of his lips. I let my sentence trail into silence.

'But,' the voice sharpened, 'you've also got a lot of other things to learn.' 'Such as, sir?' I raised my eyes questioningly. 'Discipline for one thing,' he answered sharply. 'Decorum for another. An old-fashioned word, perhaps, but there's a lot to be said for that sort of old-fashionedness in a girl.' He looked into the fire. I think, by the momentary softening of his expression, he saw the Countess's piquant old-fashioned face in its glowing heart. 'I don't think decorum's old-fashioned at all, sir!' I exclaimed angrily. 'Then behave with it.' 'I do.' My voice too had acquired a cutting edge by this time. He drew in his breath slowly. Again the mouth tightened ominously. 'You obviously,' he said at last, with manifest restraint, 'have vastly different ideas on behaviour from mine.' I shrugged. 'And different priorities.' I didn't nod, but he took my agreement as read. 'Naturally, perhaps!' He seemed to remind himself. He spoke softly. 'You're almost a decade younger than I.' And Ghislaine is almost a decade and a half, I murmured. But not aloud.

'When you're young you think you know all the answers. But in reality,' the voice hardened again, 'you know hardly any.' 'I don't think that,' I whispered, but he didn't take any notice. 'You accept the values of a highly materialistic age. You think a rich husband -' He suddenly stopped himself. He seemed to clamp his teeth shut on whatever lecture he was about to give, and to revert to a more mundane one. 'By behaviour such as last night's,' he went on, 'you make yourself,' he paused, reluctant I think to use that next word, 'cheap.' 'I am not cheap!' I snapped in fury, advancing into the firelight, feeling the warmth on my cheek, though not just from the flames. My head and my colour were up. I knew my eyes sparkled with anger. 'Then don't act as if you were.' His voice was like a slap. 'I didn't,' I said, less certainly, while everything inside me declared that I had. Captain Creighton didn't press the point. He'd won it. 'I could explain,' I began. He eyed me gravely. I thought to myself that he might well listen, if only I could really, explain. 'I had a message,' I said, 'for the Count. And I was delivering it, that's all.' His lips tightened again. 'That's all!' he exclaimed. 'Just that!' He stood up straight, towering above me. 'Don't you understand that even at home it's unbecoming to behave like that? Here in Sicily

you're in a different society, where women are more protected, where such behaviour is—unthinkable.' He shot me a searching, intent look. I said nothing. 'Furthermore, while at San Fedora you are on duty. You know that. Your briefing told you.' I nodded, eyes lowered. 'People judge the airline by you.' It was all quite irrefutable. I said nothing. 'And while you're here, you are in my charge.' I looked up at that. But it wasn't really contestable. He was the master of his crew, even here.' 'And I shall see that you behave properly.' He looked me full in the eyes until I lowered mine. I don't think he liked what he saw there, for though he waved at me dismissingly, he added one stinging rider. He said in the coldest words I've ever heard, though they were true enough. 'How you behave off duty in the U.K. is of no interest whatsoever to me.' So chilling did I find them that I immediately turned and walked towards the door. I hardly heard the rest of it. 'Meantime, stay clear of Count Orsini.'

'I owe you, dearest Emma, an apology.' Leon emerged from the shadows by the pool the following evening just after seven. I remember thinking that the Captain's order was easier given than carried out. It was dark, but the flagstones around the pool were still warm to my bare feet. We'd just returned from an air excursion to Malta. It was strenuous even for the passengers, gruelling for the cabin staff. We'd served breakfast and midmorning coffee on board. We'd lunched in Valletta at the Phoenicia overlooking the Grand Harbour, then taken the passengers a trip by dhaissa for the more adventurous, or by horse and cart for the more sedate. We had a picnic tea near the salt pans of Sliema. Drinks and dinner were served on board, landing at San Fedora just before nightfall. The evening was warm, not a breath of wind. Our feet were killing us. Kim had claimed seniority and the bath again. I changed and went down to the pool. Now the Count blocked my way past the little wrought iron chairs and tables, and the vivid umbrellas furled for the night. At least Captain Creighton and Peter Strutt were still at the airfield. I glanced nervously over my shoulder for the headlights stabbing the night, listened for the grind of an old limousine up the mountain side. All was quiet. Not even the lightest breeze rustled the myrtles. 'Do not worry, Emma. Your Captain will not be back yet. My wicked sister has a penchant for meeting aeroplanes and for delaying their pilots.' He smiled bitterly. 'Besides a penchant for men— usually the wrong sort.' 'I wouldn't say that,' I contradicted with a warmth that surprised both of us.

'Dearest Emma.' He still made no attempt to let me pass. The Count sighed. 'You have, how you say, a delightful character.' 'And you have an apology, you say,' I reminded him. His smile broadened. 'We do not want to have to make it a double one, eh?' I sighed. I could feel the warmth of the tiles through the soles of my feet, but the evening air now was cooling. 'I'm longing to get into the water.' Immediately he was all concern—exaggerated, of course. 'Then so you shall.' He stepped back, waited while I unfastened my towelling robe, then took it from me, draped it over a chair. He stepped back while I slid into the still gently warm water. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared among the myrtles and the bougainvillea, as suddenly as he had come. Seconds later he was back, changed into swimming trunks and jumping into the water beside me. He surfaced to laugh infectiously at the expression of my face. Then he was swimming with long vigorous strokes down the length of the pool, sending back little waves that broke into tiny iridescent bubbles in the lights of the castle. He laughed as he came back and bobbed up beside me. 'I apologise, Emma, for everything. Last night I behaved monstrously—unpardonably.' He swam for a moment and came back. With his wet hair and that pointed malicious smile on his face he looked like some satyr. 'Your raisi, your skipper, was furious.' My heart gave a funny little leap. 'He tore me, how you say it, in strips.' 'Off a strip.'

'Oh, not just one, Emma. Many, many strips, I do assure you.' I laughed. We swam side by side down the pool. We hauled ourselves out at the other end, and sat with our feet dabbling in the water. The air was heavy with the smell of myrtle and bougainvillea. Romantically, the Count pulled me a flower and stuck it into my wet hair. I felt at that moment curiously happy. But not for long. Leon sighed. 'He said, your capitano, it would have been within his right, by our customs, you understand, for him to insist that I marry you.' He lifted my left hand and kissed it mockingly. I said nothing. I watched the lovely iridescent edging to the swirls my feet made in the water. 'But you would not have liked that, eh, Emma?' 'No.' 'Why, dearest Emma?' I shrugged. 'Am I ugly? Unprepossessing? Is my breathing,' he put his mouth close to mine, 'malodorous?' 'No.' 'Then why draw away?' 'I didn't.'

He put his hand on my shoulder. I came nearer to reassure him. Unfairly he kissed my lips. 'Why would you not like to marry me? Your raisi said you would marry me if I was as old as a tree, and as ugly as a warthog.' He laughed at my horrified expression. 'He does not greatly understand women.' 'He doesn't understand them at all.' 'You do not like your signor capitano, eh, Emma?' 'No.' 'Hate him a little, perhaps?' 'A lot.' Leon Orsini sighed. 'Enough of him. Tonight, Emma, while he is away I want to talk to you of serious matters.' He paused. The silence in the garden was heavy and watchful. Far away, I heard a muffled engine. Then the Count spoke slowly. 'Emma,' he took my hand, this time in a comradely manner, 'I need your help.' He lowered his voice. He wasn't playacting, I'd swear. 'Of course,' I murmured, surprised by his quick change of mood. 'If I can. But in what way?' The hand holding mine squeezed harder. The ornate ring dug into my damp skin.

'Last night,' the Count spoke hardly above a whisper, I had to bend my head very close to his to catch his exact words, 'I did not finish what I was telling you. We were interrupted. I was going to tell you what the message you brought meant.' 'You don't have to,' I said. I thought I heard a car engine. I thought a distant headlight had whitened the night sky before being hidden again behind a promontory of that twisting upward road. The Count waved his hand to indicate that he wished to tell me. 'It was a warning,' he drew a deep breath, 'that my sister Ghislaine's life is in imminent danger.'

I sat for a second without knowing what to say. I forgot about the car and Captain Creighton. Or if I remembered, I didn't care. I know I shivered and my teeth chattered, but not with cold. I remember Leon fetching my wrap and putting it round me. I remember he stood over me, looking down, his dark eyes concerned, and a tiny bit astonished. I can't quite describe his expression except to say that he looked like someone who's just put a drop too much paraffin on a bonfire. But I'm sure I was wrong. And then that expression changed. He sat down beside me again and talked very quietly and seriously about attempts by the Mafia to break him. They had made two, the third was imminent. If only this agreement with Phoenix worked, San Fedora would be prosperous enough to be free of the Mafia. No more omerta. Leon had tried to find out where they would strike. Now this message—which meant that the Mafia would attempt to bring him to his knees, get at him through his sister. 'Do you know who your enemies are?' I asked.

'I know one of them. He came with you.' 'Seat 25?' The Count nodded. 'And you think he's come to kill her?' 'Or worse.' 'What could be worse?' The Count sighed. 'You are innocent, signorina, in the ways of real wickedness.' 'Have you told anyone else?' 'No one, cava mia. Omerta.' 'What does that mean ?' 'The brotherhood of silence.' He pulled me to my feet. 'Come, you are cold.' He rested his hand on my shoulder. 'I have told no one else because I trust no one else.' 'Captain Creighton. You could trust him.' 'No, signorina.' 'Why?' 'He does not understand women. He is not sufficiently devious. Already without knowing of the danger, he wants me to let Ghislaine go to England.'

'Marriage?' 'Si.' We walked down the flagged patio towards the castle in silence. Light from the windows fell full on our faces. I felt mine must be an odd one for the Count to read, had he chosen to try. 'No.' Firmly, 'You, believe me, signorina, are the only one who can help.' 'How?' I asked. 'By keeping with Ghislaine as much as you can. By being always vigilant, being very friendly with my little sister and me. Becoming almost, how you say, one of the family.' I digested this in silence. My only feeling was that I would like to have done more. 'Is there no other way to help? Won't you both be pursued by the Mafia for the rest of your lives?' The Count laughed. 'No, little one. The workings of the Mafia are very strange, very Sicilian, very contradictory. But win this round, and I will be let alone—master. I play for time. And you will help me? Yes?' 'Yes.' 'And you will tell no one? No?' 'No.' We had reached the corner of the west wall. Sharp pebbles in the drive pricked the soles of my bare feet, but I was hardly conscious of them. Hardly conscious of the hooting of a car horn, the twin

arcs of wheeling headlights, as Captain Creighton and Peter Strutt returned. 'Then let us seal the bargain, cara mia.' I put out my hand. Leon waved it away. 'In Sicily, there is only one way to seal a bargain, with man or woman.' He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me chastely on each cheek. But all the eyes behind the quick flick of the headlights could see would be me, this time in a half-naked Count Orsini's arms.

CHAPTER SIX OMINOUSLY, Mark Creighton said nothing. Technically Kim and I were free, she in the morning and I in the afternoon, to do what we wanted. But in fact we're really supposed to mingle with the passengers for the 'day at leisure', either talk to them by the pool or go down with them on the cable car to the beach, or whistle up some transport if they feel like a shopping spree. Mindful of my promise and Leon's horror story of the night before, I piously stayed in the Castle and helped Ghislaine with her household duties. In the clear light of a Sicilian morning I was not sure of how much of his Sicilian story-telling I believed. As I helped a surprised and I think suspicious Ghislaine to make beds, sort cutlery and arrange fresh flowers, my mind was sifting through what Leon had told me, for the golden gleam of something like truth. I accepted as true that he thought Ghislaine was in danger. That the Mafia came into it somewhere I also believed, just as I also believed in Seat 25's hostile intent. 'You should go out into the sun,' Ghislaine said. We had finished our flower arrangements in the shadow-chequered hall and were now helping a housemaid pull out a chest. The chest had an Orsini coat of arms carved on its centre panel. I'd asked Ghislaine if she'd like me to dust it. 'You are already too pale as it is!' She examined her olive-skinned face in the gold-framed mirror. The mirror didn't have to be asked who was the fairest of them all.

'Swim in our pool.' The Moorish eyes challenged me. 'But by day—the night air is cool. Get yourself bronzed and beautiful.' I knelt down and examined the crest carved deep in the chestnut wood. 'Oh, dust it if it makes you happy!' She watched me run my cloth round the graceful delineation. 'What does it mean?' I asked. I saw her glance over her shoulder. She answered in a different stagey voice, rather nervous and defiant like a child whistling in the dark. 'That big eagle is power—in Italy, it used to mean. Though,' she snapped her tiny fingers, 'it could be anything. Any menace. He is the big and powerful enemy. But the swallow, he is, in Sicily, the clever one, good and clever.' 'In England too,' I said. 'In some parts they call them "God's scholars".' 'Here,' she said, throwing her voice, 'here they are the Orsinis, the clever and good who in the end carry off him, the big bully.' 'How about your wicked brother?' Ghislaine elected not to hear. But she was irritated with me. She wanted me away. She spread her thin little arms to the sunlight streaming narrowly through the tall windows throwing sharp etched shadows over the marble floor. 'I think you strange English like the shadows. I shall so much miss the sun when I come to England!'

I turned quickly in surprise. 'Are you planning -?' I began to say, but stopped. I glimpsed a shadow I most certainly didn't like. The far sentinel suits of armour at the library door, threw a double dusky image, a taller, heavier built shade than ever that fifteenthcentury armour could have clad was momentarily cast on the tiled floor. The head turned. I caught sight of a bearded profile. When I looked again, the shadow had gone.

That night I lay in my turret room, listening to a rising mountaintop wind and all the little sounds that an old building makes as it settles for the night. At least I persuaded myself that those were natural sounds I heard, not the creep of an assassin. The wind rustling the hedges in the garden far below like a stealthy body crawling along. The tapping on a windowpane near mine was the twiggy scrape of the japonica. The creak of the stair, the sound like an opening door was cooling wood. That deep-voiced murmur far away was the sea, all fluted up by the queer acoustic effect of the turret. But still my mind wouldn't smooth into sleep. Remarks, phrases, the events since we'd arrived, questions, kept bobbing up like driftwood in my memory. I tried going over the arrangements for the flight to Rhodes tomorrow—another strenuous one for the cabin staff. I repeated what was in our Briefing Folder like people count sheep. Though it wasn't only for that. I felt out of my depth in this feudal island. It was as if Tango Uncle had swept us at six hundred miles an hour back through time as well as space. We'd landed

somewhere in the seventeenth century, and I wanted the reassurance of a known, trusted, and yes, disciplined way of life. I suppose the chemistry worked. I must have fallen asleep, for I woke suddenly with that certainty that some alien sound had roused me. The wind had died away. There were no creaks on the stairs. The full moon streamed in through my undrawn curtains. But the distant murmur that was the sea was louder. I listened. Not the sea—voices, men's voices. Memories of the Count's warnings flashed in my mind. I could think of nothing except that an attempt had been made on Ghislaine's life. Still half asleep, I thrust back the bedclothes. I opened my bedroom door cautiously and tiptoed on to the landing. The voices, funnelled up by the turret acoustics, came up loud but garbled. Someone, the Count, I think, was shouting in Sicilian. I fled down the turret steps with no clear idea in my mind of what I was expecting to find or what I was expecting to do. Down the second floor staircase. The Count shouted something now in English. With my foot on the first floor landing I stopped in my tracks as if an arrow had pierced me. The other voice, angry but tautly controlled, was replying— Mark Creighton. 'You're two centuries behind the times! You can't stop Ghislaine marrying, with or without your consent.' 'But I can, I tell you.' Mark Creighton replied something in a low voice, that I couldn't catch. So that was what it was about! I remember sleepily rubbing my eyes and turning to climb back to my room. Then I heard footsteps, unmistakably Creighton's, ringing out on the flagstones of the hall, his tread on the stairs. Mindful of my undressed state, I slipped behind the floor-length velvet curtains at the landing window to let him pass.

The Count was following the Captain up. 'Listen,' he was saying in a more conciliatory tone, 'let me explain again. It is necessary for her, for me, for everyone that Ghislaine marries this Baron. He is rich. I have it arranged since she was ten.' 'And he was sixty-three!' 'She told you?' 'She's told me most things.' Mark Creighton climbed a few more stairs. I had the terrible feeling that he might be able to see me, and that my bare toes might impossibly be peeping out from under the velvet that swept the floor. 'So much,' the Count said bitterly, 'for family loyalty.' 'When a girl's in love her loyalty's to her future husband!' 'In love! In love!' derisively. 'Do you really think she is?' Quietly, now standing on the landing, right in front of me, Mark Creighton said almost shyly, 'I know she is.' 'Then she is more foolish than I thought.' 'Perhaps.' 'Love in a cold climate, with no money!' I heard the Count shudder. 'Your idea of poverty is different from mine.' 'I grant you that!'

'You should be thankful,' Mark Creighton added bitterly, 'that she doesn't want to marry for money. There are plenty of that sort of girl around.' And with that contemptuous remark he said goodnight. First his footsteps and then the Count's faded down the corridor. I glided out of my hiding place, and, sad for many things, climbed up to bed.

The night's weird window-tapping wind had died by nine o'clock the following morning, but it had left the blue sky streaked with white, little tumbles of round-topped cumulus cloud, and escaped strands from Etna's dense fleece. As Kim and I walked across the tarmac at a respectful distance behind the pilots, I saw Captain Creighton glance up at them with that keen assessing expression he used most frequently on me. And while he read the weather portents in the sky, I tried to read my personal portents in the set of those broad shoulders, and the carriage of that well-shaped head. I had begun trying to read my personal portents earlier than that. After my scramble upstairs the night before, I had lain awake asking myself two vital questions. Did he see my toes sticking out like ten tiny white mice from under the velvet curtains? Did he see Count Orsini kiss me as we left the swimming pool? And when I did fall asleep, I dreamed that the answer to both those questions was 'Yes'. Astonishingly, a happy yes. Far from disciplining me, Captain Creighton, like one of the Castle's knights, had gone to do battle with his rival. And the two had quarrelled because Captain Creighton wanted to marry not Ghislaine, but me. And in this dream, the velvet curtains had

shrunk till my bare toes were there for any lover to see. With a glad cry, or an oath, Captain Creighton had swept them aside and me into his arms. I'd wakened to find it was an oath—Kim's. She was dragging back the bedroom curtains and telling me to get up tout de suite and pronto if I wanted early breakfast before the flight. She had already flung a pillow which I now clasped lovingly to me. I didn't tell her about the dream. In our training, we have a potted passenger psychology course. I'd learned enough about the subconscious to know what Kim would make of that one. Besides, I had enough problems—problems that looked much worse by day. However much my treacherous subconscious tried to deceive me, Captain Creighton did not love me. Nor did the Count, they both, in their different ways, loved Ghislaine. And if I was to believe the Count, her life was in danger. And if I was to believe Captain Creighton my humble career was in ruins. An adverse report, immediate dismissal, another ticking off for disobedience—that was my choice. A daunting enough prospect to cloud any Mediterranean morning. So I made a point of bravely meeting Captain Creighton's cool gaze as he came into the solarium and said 'Good morning.' Just as I'd made a point as I came downstairs of ensuring that the velvet curtains did indeed sweep the floor. My stare was returned with blank indifference. The length and intensity of mine caused the faintest raising of his brows, but nothing more.

I studied him as he ate his croissants and lemon preserve at the other end of the long sunlit table. He ate frugally, without wasting a sideways glance at anything but the marbled sky. Now I studied his back view, I listened as he made some remark to Peter Strutt. I couldn't hear his words, but his tone seemed relaxed, friendly even. I listened to the clipped ring of his footfall as he mounted the metal steps to the flight deck, firm and forceful. I looked at his profile— a little grim. He had seen. I listened to the shifting muffled sounds the pilots make as they go through their before take-off check. From beyond the flight deck door I hear Peter Strutt laugh. Nice, I thought wistfully, to be on those sort of terms with that sort of man. And then Kim bade me hurry with the 'dressing' of the toilets and go up front to give Captain Creighton the 'Ready-to-receivepassengers' report. And I had the opportunity to study my portents at closer range. Captain Creighton looked younger. His shirt sleeves were neatly rolled up. His muscular arms were deep brown. So was his neck and broad brow. The beginnings of a smile played round his mouth. It died away when he saw it was me. I stood, my toes now encased in well-polished black leather, beside his seat. I saw Captain Creighton glance down. Only to see if my shoes were immaculately clean? 'Sir?'

'Yes, Miss Harrington?' 'Preparations complete. Cabin ready to receive thirty-seven passengers, sir.' I ought to have been thankful that Seat 25 was with us. But I wasn't. 'Thank you.' A cold smile curled the Captain's lips. He had seen. 'What's up with you?' Kim hissed as the passengers came aboard, happy and smiling in their summer clothes. 'Someone trodden on your corns?' 'My toes,' I said. 'Which one?' 'All of them.' 'Smile just the same,' she said. I smiled. He might just not have seen. I smiled hopefully through that perfect take-off, dead on ten-thirty local time. Still hopeful, I watched the white pillow of cloud over Etna slide beyond our starboard wing, the dark and craggy hinterland of Sicily shrink and pale with mist and distance. When I took up the flight deck fruit juice, Captain Creighton had the crew confidential reports open in front of him. I looked anywhere but at them—at the instruments, the panel, out of the windscreen window. The altimeter read 39,000 feet. Clear air now

all over the Mediterranean. I could see little silver jets transparent as minnows, Malta like a small brown mole, the toe of Italy, Crete coming up on the right, the white puffball over Sicily. I didn't have to look to see what name he was frowning down upon. 'That will be all, thank you, Miss Harrington.' I was being dismissed. 'You'll be wanting to serve passengers lunches.' A reader-over-shoulders as well as an eavesdropper. He had seen. I returned to the back and served my side with their lunch. Busily clearing away, trotting up and down the aisle, reason reasserted itself. Surely if Captain Creighton had seen either Leon and me together by the pool or me behind the curtains, he'd have demanded an explanation, had me in the dock before now. If he'd seen both he'd have had my head on a charger. 'You are very trista this beautiful day, signorina,' Seat 25 said. He beckoned me closer. 'Some man, perhaps?' 'Several,' I said with truth. 'Don't get involved with Seat 25,' Kim whispered, pointing at the glowing Seat Belt sign. 'Time's getting on.' Through the porthole, I could see the mountains of Rhodes, green and brown, dotted with little white cubes of houses. The aircraft was losing height rapidly now. We banked to the left. I went down the aisle checking that everyone had extinguished their cigarettes, then slid myself down on the rear seat beside Kim. 'Sorted your problem out?' she asked me.

'How did you know?' 'You've been looking like Eric when he's lost a blip on his radar screen.' 'Odd,' I said thoughtfully, 'how often the name of Eric crops up these days.' 'Only in a derogatory way,' she replied defensively. I reminded her of the old Sicilian saying. She didn't reply. We came lower. Green fields, a fringe of a beach lapped by a laceedged sea. It was bumpy down here, and cloud clung to the hills. The airport below looked pitifully small, built on a flat ledge, barely tolerated by the mountains that surrounded it. 'Nasty,' Kim commented as we came in crabbing sideways. 'See those fang-toothed mountains? Reminds me of going into a lion's mouth.' She stretched her long legs in front of her. 'It's times like these I'm glad it's Creighton.' 'Might be Strutt getting a landing.' 'Modest-in-Nature? Never!' 'Don't be so sure.' The wheels skimmed the surface of the runway. The touchdown was as soft as a kiss. 'Creighton?' she demanded. 'Creighton,' I admitted.

Up to the white box of the airport building we taxied. Abruptly, the engines stopped. Then Kim stood up and explained that we would be going to the ancient town of Lindos where we would be transported to the Acropolis and the ruined Temple, by donkey. Briefly she sketched in the history of the town, that before Christ it was one of the five Mighty Cities. The rise of the merchants, the capture and domination by the Turks. Then she opened up the main door, and between us we shepherded the passengers down the steps. A fitful sun disappeared before we were half-way across the ramp. A strong wind blew so hard that it was difficult making our way to the airport building on which there is a huge notice, 'Welcome to the Sunny Island of Rhodes'. That's a bit ironical, I thought at the time. Half an hour later, I knew it was a real understatement. We went through Customs and Immigration—no trouble at all. To the little cafe on the left of the passenger lounge for thick Turkish coffee while we waited for the coach. I was just about to sit next to Mrs. Nayland who was putting a new film in her camera, when a voice behind me said quietly, 'Miss Harrington.' I jumped as though I'd had an electric shock. My mouth went dry. I turned my head. 'Yes, sir?' 'Mrs. Parker will be sitting there. There's more room over this way.' Eyes lowered to shield their wary expression, I followed him. Right away from the others he led me to two hard wooden chairs beside a round glass table. It's only because it's crowded, that's all, I said to myself. Give the passengers more room. He'll be bringing over our coffee and we'll have a chat about Rhodes.

He sat down. 'Bring me my coffee,' he said. I was just about to sit down myself, but I bobbed up again like a rabbit. 'Yes, sir.' I knew then. I knew all the way up to the counter and all the way back again. My hands shook so much, most of the coffee spilled over into the two saucers. He took up a packet of sugar, unwrapped it slowly, dropped the two lumps into his coffee, picked up a plastic spoon, began to stir it. 'Miss Harrington ... I had reason to speak to you the other night.' I stared at him blankly. 'Sir?' 'About your behaviour.' 'Oh, yes.' I threw back my head as though I had just remembered. 'That.' 'And I gave you specific instructions in order to lessen the likelihood of a repeat performance.' When I said nothing, he looked at me sharply. 'Well, did I or didn't I?' 'You did.' 'The customs of Sicily are different from those in Britain, and it behoves the employees of this airline, particularly on this special flight, to behave with strict decorum and in accordance with local ways.' He paused. 'Don't sit there saying nothing! Yes or no?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Yes ... yes ... yes.'

'I told you to keep away from Count Orsini. Even more so than most Sicilian men, he has a fixed belief that English girls are easy You are here not in your private capacity but as a representative of the Company, and you will not behave in such a way as to reinforce that belief. I gave you specific instructions, and no sooner is my back turned than the two of you start... disporting yourselves by the swimming pool.' I lowered my eyes, penitent hands on my lap. There was a silence. It was over. It could have been worse. He hadn't after all seen my tell-tale toes. Hopefully I raised my eyes. It wasn't over. 'And, if that wasn't enough,' he said, 'there was last night -' This time I lowered my whole head as though on to the block for him to chop off. '—dashing round the corridors of the castle in your nightdress. I don't know what you were doing or what you were up to, but on the most charitable interpretation, it was most unseemly.' He finished his coffee, reached for his pipe, filled and lit it. The blue eyes regarded me icily. 'Wasn't it, Miss Harrington?' 'I wasn't doing anything. It was just that -' 'Wasn't it, Miss Harrington?' I felt my face burning. 'You've got it all wrong. I heard something and -' 'Wasn't it, Miss Harrington?'

It was no use. I wouldn't be able to tell him anything. He'd never understand. So I just said, grudgingly and a bit sulkily, 'Yes.' 'Yes, what?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Miss Harrington, impertinence won't help you. I'm trying to be as charitable as I can. I should really suspend you, and send you back to Grantwick. If it hadn't been this special service I might have done. There are other possible punishments. I've considered various ways of dealing with you.' He looked at me with sudden exasperation. The blue eyes sparkled with anger—a young man rather than the skipper of the aircraft. 'I'm not at all sure that when in Rome, do as the Romans. I'm not at all sure you shouldn't be treated in the same way Sicilians treat their erring women -' Then the mask of authority descended again. His eyes were cold and bleak. My knees felt weak. My beastly revealing toes were numb, my hands and head hot. I thought, miserably, I was in the lion's mouth all right. 'However,' he said bitterly, 'I spoke at some length with our host,' an odd tone edged his voice, 'and I decided not to punish you at all.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'Thank him,' he explained. Captain Creighton's voice was steady and unimpassioned, 'He explained that there were,' he said the next words slowly, 'extenuating circumstances.' 'He told you that?' I asked in a rush of relief. 'He did.'

'I'm glad,' I said simply. I felt that explained at least sixty per cent of my crimes. 'I didn't think he'd tell you.' 'I think I, of all people, had a right to know.' 'Yes. But Leon wanted to keep it a secret.' Captain Creighton gave me a strange look. His voice had a hateful ring. 'I can't think why. And you of course wanted him to tell me?' 'Yes,' I said. 'I thought the more people knew the safer it would be.' And on that, Captain Creighton gave me a little nod and walked away.

CHAPTER SEVEN THE town of Lindos was built a thousand years before Christ, and the road up to the Acropolis is a spiral staircase of cobblestones, shallow steps and twisting alleys, which nothing wider or faster than a donkey can negotiate. The twentieth-century air-conditioned motor coach set us down at the foot of the hill in the Square of the Fountain, and we wandered in twos and threes up towards the hirer of donkeys. Captain Creighton, walking between the archaeologist and his wife, led the way with Kim and Peter Strutt and me bringing up the rear. The air up here was cool and dazzlingly clear, the sun hot. Our leisurely footsteps echoed over the cobblestones. Progress was slow. The way was strewn with itinerant sellers of souvenirs and little open shops where men tooled leather, fashioned gold and silver, and women wove baskets. The narrow street smelled of fragrant smoke, crushed garlic, oranges and leather, and increasingly, as we came up to the stalls, of that warm unmistakable smell of donkey. Long before our party arrived, word must have sped up to the hirer of donkeys that we were on our way. A dozen donkeys were lined up behind a long splintered wooden mounting block. More little grey, dun and dark brown creatures waited in the rough stalls. Captain Creighton, Seat 25 and the hirer himself were haggling when Kim and Peter and I arrived. 'Peter!' 'Sir?' 'You take the first lot up.'

'Seriously, sir, do I have to actually get on, sir?' 'You do, Peter.' Captain Creighton looked over the top of my head. 'Kim, you take the next bunch.' He helped the older of the passengers to choose the more comfortable-looking of the donkeys, and then gave them a hand up on to the curious wooden saddle contraption. He still ignored me. I hadn't been told what to do, so I waited. I hung around under the thatched roof of the stalls and fed the rest of the donkeys with Phoenix Airways sugar lumps I'd stuffed into my handbag. There is something very comforting in the smell of donkeys, something very companionable in the way they lip the sugar and blow their warm breath over the palms of your hands. I glanced up to see Captain Creighton standing looking down at me. His back was to the sunlight, his face in shadow. 'I don't take sugar in my coffee,' I said, immediately guilty. I felt rather than saw his smile. He ducked down under the low roof and stood beside me. 'Don't be so damned defensive, Emma.' 'Difficult, really,' I stroked one of the long ears, 'to be otherwise— considering.' 'Considering what?' 'My track record,' I said, and smiled. 'What had to be said has been said,' he stroked the donkey's nose.

'But -' Happily, the hirer of donkeys came up then, so I didn't have to try to explain something I knew I never really could. 'Now your turn, Emma.' Captain Creighton stood back and let the hirer choose my donkey and hand me up on to it. It was a young pale grey jenny, with a dark brown cross on her back, hardly visible beneath the cumbersome wooden saddle that looked as if it had been nailed together out of orange boxes. One of the hirer's numerous assistants pulled us out into the narrow street. A little crowd of villagers lined the way gazing at us smilingly. I led the way with the Australian honeymooners immediately behind, and Captain Creighton on a dark brown donkey bringing up the rear. At least that's how we started out. For a hundred yards or so, while steep cobbled streets gave way to dark shadey alleys lined with shuttered dwellings and then flagged and treacherous steps, my small grey donkey allowed herself to be pulled forward. Itinerant photographers lurked in dark doorways snapping us as we went. Youths rushed out to press the photographer's business card into our hands. We ducked our heads to avoid luxuriant branches of bougainvillea that spilled over high white walls. Through chinks between those walls we glimpsed the blue sea far below. Our legs brushed walls set with exquisite ceramic tiles. The hirer's assistants pulled and whipped and shouted and cajoled. The donkeys climbed—mine with reluctance. I could feel her resentful muscles under my thighs. I knew exactly how she felt. I tried to sit lightly as we started up a flight of triangular marble steps on which her tiny feet had very little hold. She took them like a bird. Beyond was a walled path empty of

houses wide enough for the animals to go in pairs, and it was there, in the easy part, that she, donkey-like, elected to stop. Those four small feet dug into the gravelly path like tent stakes. Under her youthful grey hide the donkey had muscles like iron. Cajoling, sugar, pulling and whipping—till I stopped them—was of no avail. The donkey man sweated and swore and jumped up and down with frustration. The Australian couple trotted past me, then Mr. and Mrs. Parker. One by one all my group of passengers went by. I was left with a furious donkey man whose repertoire of English was, 'No-go. Kick-a-bum.' Then Captain Creighton. 'Trouble, Emma?' he asked me, kindly enough. ' 'fraid so.' 'Queer animals,' I hoped he wasn't going to make the corny analogy between donkeys and women. He didn't. He listened, head on one side, to a torrent of Greek from the donkey man. Captain Creighton had changed into a white open-necked shirt. His throat and arms were nut brown. The sunlight made his eyes a vivid blue—that and a spark of amusement which he didn't quite allow to reach his lips. 'Speak Greek, by any chance, Emma?' 'Not a word.' 'Understand any?' I shook my head. 'Do you know what he's saying?' He nodded as the donkey man gesticulated extravagantly from my little grey to Mark Creighton's dark brown animal.

'I get the rough drift, Emma.' 'Does he reckon we should change mounts?' 'No. I'm too heavy for yours. But he reckons yours will probably come along with mine.' A little pause. 'She's a bit young apparently to be properly licked into shape.' He almost smiled. With an effort he didn't. The two donkeys were nosing each other with pleasurable recognition. Watching them, I said in a mild voice, 'Your Greek was good enough to find out all that, was it, sir?' 'Amazing what one can understand of a foreign language, Emma.' 'When one wants to, sir?' 'I promise you,' he said, urging his donkey round and forward, 'that's what he said. I'm no Orsini.' Almost immediately, demurely, mine fell into step beside Captain Creighton's. 'Seems they pressed some of the younger ones into service for the first time today because we're a big party,' Mark Creighton eyed my little mount with kindliness. I patted her neck and nodded. Maybe the kindliness was catching. 'She's used to following mine, Emma.' 'An odd coincidence, sir.' He gave me a quick unaffected smile. 'Not really, Emma. They're mother and daughter. That's how they train them—tied together.'

The gleam in his eyes invited my pert comment to that. 'More merciful than the way some humans get trained, sir.' 'More sure, Emma. And certainly there's much to be said for it.' We both laughed. I had not known how devastatingly attractive he was when he completely relaxed—or apparently relaxed. I thought in my ignorance that he had sloughed off his command, that he'd put my lamentable track record out of his mind. And not being someone to hug a grievance myself, I put it out of mine. I felt a moment of contentment as unlikely as it was unexpected. A sky of intense blue arched above us, one shade lighter than the sea below. The water in Lindos Bay was calm and waveless as stretched silk. The air smelled of lemon and almond blossom, wild orchis and asphodel. The sun gilded the soaring columns of the Acropolis on the crest of the hill. From where we were now we could see the little coloured specks of people, our party no doubt, climbing the steps to the summit. We didn't hurry. Captain Creighton's mount was the pacemaker, and deliberately he dawdled. There was no sound except the rhythmic beat of hoofs in the soft sand, and the donkey man muttering regretfully to himself behind. Only my heartbeat, in the silence, seemed to alter and hurry. We were virtually alone, and Captain Creighton seemed to want us to be alone. Gently, lullingly we swayed in rhythm side by side. We didn't talk, the silence had a comfortable unstrained quality. My eyes followed a white bird rising slowly in that deep blue sky, ponderous, fullthroated like a 747. I lowered them to feel Captain Creighton's eyes on me. 'What were you thinking, Emma?'

'Nothing really, sir.' 'Can't you drop the sir? We're off duty. Besides,' he gave me a funny rather wintry little smile, 'Emma and Sir sound like some strict Victorian husband and his meek Victorian wife.' I wanted to ask him how about a strict Elizabethan captain and his meek number two stewardess. A few minutes ago I might have done. Now I sensed what might be coming. 'And you wouldn't want that.' 'No,' I said because he wanted me to. There was a long pause, an uncomfortable quiet. It lasted while we rounded the curve of the path and came within sight of the dismounting post immediately outside the crumbling Acropolis walls. 'Besides, I wanted to talk to you, quite off the record.' 'Man to man,' I said wryly. 'Something like that.' 'Not man to woman?' 'Certainly not Captain to stewardess.' 'Dutch uncle, then?' He gave me a sharp what my aunt used to call old-fashioned look, as if to see if I was in the right mood.

'You haven't, I understand, any parents, Emma.' He said it gently. I experienced a delusory lift of the heart that he had taken the trouble to find such matters out. I shook my head. 'Any brothers or sisters?' 'No.' I smiled thinly. 'Spoiled only child, that's me.' 'Don't be so damned defensive, Emma.' A quick sparkle of anger, the Captain showing through the mantle of the Dutch uncle. 'Sorry.' 'Then for heaven's sake, take a bit of advice from someone a bit older.' 'You, sir?' He winced at the reversal to Sir, but ignored it. He then began on a terse little lecture— not, as I'd expected, on behaviour, but on men and marriage. I listened meekly, head bent, while our donkeys trundled up the last quarter mile towards the dismounting platform. I wasn't quite sure what was the object of it. 'Are you saying,' I spoke slowly, 'that you're against marriage ?' 'You know damned well I'm not. For heaven's sake, you're not thick.' 'What, then, sir?' 'I'm saying that it must be for the right reasons.'

His donkey was accelerating a little now as it saw the finishing post in sight. Impatiently, Captain Creighton flung at me, 'And money isn't one of them.' I drew a deep offended breath. I had fallen behind on my little grey. I pattered after him. 'You think,' I began breathlessly, 'that I'd marry for money?' 'You said so.' 'I didn't mean it!' Miserably, I watched him dismount. 'Besides,' I called to him, for there was no one except a solitary Greek photographer to hear, 'the Count explained to you!' 'Very fully.' Captain Creighton held out his arms to lift me down. I tried to swing myself clear of the wooden cradle-like saddle, but my legs weren't long enough. Captain Creighton grasped me round the waist, lifted me high in the air. For one fleeting moment I allowed myself a dangerous illusion. I looked down on his thick brown hair, his upraised face, his eyes, deliberately avoiding mine. Then he was swinging me down. I. allowed myself an extravagant indulgence. I let my fingertips just touch his hair, light as a moth's wing. He never noticed. He set me down. 'The Count,' he said solemnly, 'put me very clearly in the picture. I was hoping . . . ' He didn't say what he was hoping. He broke off and stared down at me searchingly, found me wanting. 'You should take a leaf out of Ghislaine's book, Emma.' A warm sentimental smile broke through the solemnity of his features. 'In what way, sir?' 'Marry for love.'

'Is that what she's going to do, sir?' And was that still small voice really mine? 'If it's in my power to persuade the Count.' 'I'm sure you will, sir.' 'I think so too.' There was a long silence. I drew in my breath. It came noisily like a gulp. 'It's the only basis for marriage.' 'I don't agree, sir.' That was my voice again, loud and slow this time. If he had said the earth was round I'd have similarly disagreed. 'Besides, there's no one I love.' Coldly, 'Not even the Count?' I began to shake my head, then stopped. Why did he ask me that now? After the Count had explained? Exactly what had the Count told Mark Creighton? Then I resumed the vigorous shaking of my head. What did it matter now anyway ? Mark Creighton began to say something, thought better of it and bit the words off. The archaeologist had gathered a little group around himself and was waving at us to come and admire the structure of the ruined gateway. Captain Creighton left me where I stood without a backward glance, stiff-backed. Though I had the distinct impression that he snapped, 'That makes it infinitely worse 1'

Certainly he avoided me for the rest of the outing. And I kept out of his way like some untouchable, not even letting my shadow fall on him. On the descent, I rode a common or garden donkey with no preference except for cropping purple orchids as he went. My little grey and her mother were at the head of the cavalcade, ridden appropriately by the Australian honeymooners, Mr. and Mrs. Nayland. I thought of that donkey with affection. Enough to make me go along with the passengers eager to collect their snaps from the photographer's stall in the Square of the Fountain. At first I couldn't find it. When I did, it was hardly worth buying. Only my little grey's face and ears were visible. The rest of the picture was Captain Creighton and me. Mainly me, being lifted off, with one of those trick-of-the-camera foolish expressions on my face, and my hand reaching towards his hair. 'So, of course, in the end you had to buy it,' Kim said as four hours later we slid the catering uplift into the metal slots in the galley. 'Had to. Couldn't bear young Peter Strutt laying his mitts on the thing.' 'Not to mention the Skipper.' 'Exactly. He might stick pins in it.' 'Well, let's see what Mr. Jones's rival's been up to, then!' I let her have a quick peep at the photograph and then slipped it in my cabin overall pocket. In a little while I'd throw it in the disposables bag. But not yet.

'How come you've got that Eric Dudley look on your face, Emma?' 'Trick of the light.' Kim pretended to believe me. She sent me to 'dress' the toilets and told me it would be good practice for me to do the briefings over the P.A. She herself would do flight deck dinner and reporting. Not unusual, I assured myself as we settled the souvenir-laden passengers, and then strapped ourselves in for take-off. Some number ones do change duties on the return leg. But not Kim, I thought as Tango Uncle climbed into deepening dusk. I glanced down. Behind us and below, set in Homer's wine dark sea, lay the airfield of Rhodes, shrunk now to a round brooch of lights bisected by the double pin that was the runway. To the east lay indigo night. But far to the west on our heading we could see over the curve of the earth the pink glow that was someone else's sunset. I felt there was a lesson in it for me somewhere. But right then all I could think of was that Kim must have been told by Captain Creighton to keep me out of his sight.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE next day, officially at leisure, I stayed close to Ghislaine again. For though I had more than a suspicion at the back of my mind that I was being manipulated, I couldn't see quite how. Nor for what purpose. All I knew was that here in this enchanted castle of San Fedora people lived, worked and were motivated differently than they were at home. Women were treated both better and worse—more cosseted but more repressed. Men quarrelled with each other one moment and the next were bosom friends. What was said one day was like yesterday's newspaper, it did not hold good for the next. There were no blacks and whites. The white of truth could if the pressure were strong enough, be split into all the shades of meaning of the spectrum. And all the truth I knew for certain was that I'd given a promise. And a promise I would keep— until the Count released me from it. I'd sought him out immediately after breakfast. I found him in his study on the other side of the library. I had to knock twice before he called in Sicilian what I assumed was 'Come in.' 'Oh, it is you, Emma!' he said with relief. He was thrusting some papers away from his desk into a briefcase. He shut the drawer and locked it as I came in. He was dressed formally in a dark suit, the only concession to his flamboyant taste a pink Edwardian shirt and satin tie. 'I'm pleased you caught me, as you say.' He checked his watch with the ornate gilt one on his mantelpiece. 'I am about to leave for Palermo. Business, you understand? I wanted to have a word with you before I went.' He dipped into his pocket, brought out a key, locked his briefcase, checked that all the drawers of his desk were locked and then came from behind it up to me. 'I shall

be away all day, maybe longer.' He put his arm round my shoulders. 'You will stay with Ghislaine, yes?' 'Is it really necessary now? Everything seems quiet.' 'The calm before the storm, Emma!' Gently he propelled me towards the door. 'Besides, silence, in Sicily, is omerta.' 'What is that?' 'Silence. The Mafia watches.' I said nothing. 'So with me away it is more than ever necessary. I rely on you.' He opened his study door as if there was no more to be said. 'Come, see me off at the car.' He propelled me across the hall, across stalks of morning sunlight and pools of shadow. He lowered his head close to mine and whispered, 'Yesterday while you were away, never was Ghislaine out of my sight.' 'But Seat 25 was with us.' 'True. But he is Siciliano. Everywhere he has accomplices. Besides, I had business to tell that wicked girl of her marriage.' He put his hand lightly over my mouth. 'Please, no silly English talk of whom she wants to marry. There is no such thing. A nice girl does not know her mind. She is like the tides, the moon. Yesterday's love is today's hate.' I moved my head. 'I'm sure she doesn't like me tagging around after her.' 'Then she must, as you say, lump it!'

'Captain Creighton doesn't like it either!' 'Naturally. It makes difficulty for him in his Ghislaine marriage plan.' 'That's really why you want me to stay with her, isn't it?' I asked softly. 'No. No!' He looked offended. 'She is in real danger. You do not believe me quite.' He drew himself up. 'Would I lie to you?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Only in the best of all causes,' he said. He kissed the top of my head and ran lightly down the steps. He paused half way down, and called back, in a stagey voice, as if he sensed we were overheard, 'No, Emma, I cannot release you from your promise to me.'

'You are too trusting of my wicked brother, Emma,' Ghislaine said later that afternoon. We were on our way, somewhat after Kim and the others, to the beach below. I had helped her with her morning chores, and waited after lunch when the others had gone, while she had a purely fictitious siesta. Now we walked straight as the crow flies across the headland and down towards the village and the cable car. It was a warm, breathless afternoon. The sky was a hazy blue, the sea calm. The path took us between piles of rock smothered in purple, beside ancient twisted olive trees, their weird trunks contorted into witches' faces, but their young pointed leaves silvery in the sun. Below I could see the little white puffs and dark green heads of an orange grove. Behind us, Etna was hidden by the only cloud in the

sky, and it reached half-way down to the vineyards on her flanks. The volcano looked very close. 'A sign of storm,' said Ghislaine, following my glance. 'We have many storms in this island, not all of them with thunder.' She looked at me meaningly. I asked her if she ever worried about Etna, and she said no, she was used to her. Never ever had the volcano reached near the castle. She made it sound as if mighty Etna would hesitate to take on such a challenge. But her brother now, his wickedness did worry her. 'You are not the first, I tell you, Emma, that he has seduced.' I said nothing for a moment. Distantly I could hear goat bells. Strange unknown birds rose out of the stony rock vegetation as we approached. The ubiquitous swallows wheeled high in the blue. Before I began to feel sorry for the eagle in the Orsini coat of arms, I reminded myself that the Countess's command of English was not so idiomatic as her brother's. I pointed out that the Count had not seduced me, nor tried to, and that seduce was the wrong word in this context. 'On the contrary,' she replied, swinging her gaily coloured beach bag, and scanning the empty headland with narrowed eyes. 'I use that word in its ancient Latin meaning. Seduce. Lead you in his ways.' I skirted a huddle of rocks. A green lizard watched me steadily as the Countess now scanned the little ribbon of road that winds round every headland like a brown bias binding. Then as my shadow fell on him, the lizard flicked away into a crevice. The Countess transferred her inscrutable Moorish eyes to my face.

'And his ways are wicked, Emma. I kid you not at all.' 'Your brother,' I said picking my words more carefully than I picked my way over the rock-strewn path, 'is naturally very concerned about you.' I sounded very stuffy and terribly English. 'My brother,' she said, mimicking my tone, 'is naturally very concerned about my brother.' I shook my head. 'Whatever he has asked you is for his purpose!' I said nothing. 'And what is his purpose, you will ask me? Well, I tell you! Money and more money. And how will he get it? you must ask.' 'How?' 'By marrying me, his little sister, to an old man filthy rich. Do you know what he say to me? Marry him. Soon he will die. Married to you, he will be glad to die. Then you marry who you like.' In righteous indignation she marched ahead of me down the path. Thorny white-flowered plants caught at the hem of her pink linen slacks. From where we were then, there was no habitation except the turrets and towers of the castle behind us. In front, the terracotta roofs of the little hillside village. There was silence all about us that I hadn't noticed before. The goat bells had stopped. No sound came up from the village—not even the barking of a dog. I remembered the Count's words. Silence—Omerta means the Mafia watches.

I saw Ghislaine glance over her shoulder, not nervously like me, but as if she expected someone to appear. 'And now my brother tells you to follow me around, so that I cannot meet the man I love.' 'That's not why!' Indignantly, I kicked a little stone off the path. An untidy black and white bird rose squawking. The sound echoed in the thundery stillness. And before the echo died, I heard another sound—a high rhythmic whistle, blown on some metal instrument. The rhythm accelerated like hurrying feet. If Ghislaine heard it, she gave no sign. 'Then why?' I shrugged. In the face of what might happen the argument seemed trivial. 'Because, perhaps, if I marry money, it is not so necessary for my brother to marry an heiress.' The implication was as unmistakable as it was offensive. I told her so with the added anger of a nameless apprehension. Immediately she was all repentance. She turned on the neverfailing Orsini charm. 'Forgive me, Emma. I kid you. Also,' she added in a very respectful tone, 'I believe you. Truly.' She could think of no higher compliment than that. She put her hand on my arm, and I turned to smile rather uncertainly at her. My eye caught a glint of something—the sun on a piece of broken glass perhaps. I stopped and looked all round. There was nothing. Piles of rocks above and below. Nothing moving.

'I think when I come to England, I shall model myself, as you say, on you.' 'I wouldn't.' 'You are right, Mark says no.' 'Mark?' 'Yes. He said he would not like me again if I tried to monkey you.' 'Ape.' 'No difference! Neither ape nor monkey like you.' She put her hand on my arm. 'He say you -' But I never heard what it was he said or she said he said. For some reason I had turned my head away from her. I saw this time an unmistakable glint among the boulders, moving with infinite slowness like a snake. Or a gun, carefully sighting. I acted fast. And not just instinctively. It was as if for the last fifteen minutes I'd been expecting something, and my emergency training had made me subconsciously ready. I grabbed Ghislaine's thin little shoulders and sent he hurtling into the matted carpet of succulents, with me on top of her. Simultaneously the hillside echoed to the crack of a rifle. Something whizzed close above my head, then snapped and spurted into the rocks in front of us. Heavy white sea birds rose into the sky. The swallows diminished to specks.

Another shot—to the other side of us this time. Perhaps our assailant assumed we'd wriggled to the shelter of those rocks. I listened for footsteps. I could smell the yellow pom-poms and aromatic grey leaves of some mountain plant, and something that could be rifle smoke, not so far away. The hillside settled to silence. Slowly the sea-birds came winging near. At the third shot a huge gull faltered in flight, plummeted down in a pathetic little scatter of feathers about sixty yards to our left. Ghislaine tried to straggle to her feet, but I kept her where she was. My eyes were on the bullet scar in the rock in front of us. 'What is wrong with you, Emma?' 'Ssh!' I put my fingers to my lips. Like that with my head pressed against the hillside, I could hear the sound of footsteps higher up the slope getting fainter and fading away. I let five minutes tick by. Then I let her get to her feet. 'You are just frightened of some poor peasant.' She abused me all the way to the cable car. 'April is the season for trapping and killing birds, foolish one. They roast the big fowl at Easter. The little ones they send out with ribbons on their tails.' I didn't argue. I kept close to Ghislaine now as an outer skin. I insisted we come back from the beach en masse with the rest. For why had the poor peasant not come forward to claim his shot? And why had he aimed so badly that the top of my hair was singed?

The thunder held off all the next day. The humidity rose. The cloud cap thickened over Etna. The Count did not return.

Ghislaine accompanied us to Taormina, where a motorboat trip was laid on to the Blue Grotto. I understood from Kim that it was the skipper's suggestion, though a malfunctioning fuel gauge on Tango Uncle kept both pilots at the airfield, so neither of them came with us. Fairly predictably, Seat 25 did. Had I not been warned of his evil intention towards Ghislaine, I would have guessed it on that excursion. He sat immediately behind Ghislaine and me on the coach. He leaned forward and tried to engage her in conversation. Once or twice he spoke softly and urgently to her, in Sicilian. He had a curious and terrifying charm when he spoke to her like that. In the boat, he sat beside her, one arm lightly resting on the rail behind her. A quick movement, an arm round her neck, and she could have been somersaulted into the deep blue Mediterranean swell. Or, looking round the town a quick push maybe as a car came hurtling round the narrow crooked streets, a shove as we stood over a sheer drop among the ruins of Greek theatres and Roman temples. If was as if Seat 25 and I were on the same fearful wavelength. Whenever there was the possibility of exploiting a dangerous situation, he was there. And so was I. It was like playing chess with a malevolent master of the game. I was exhausted by the time we got on the coach. I dozed most of the way to San Fedora. The evening air was heavy. There were no stars, and no ships' lights out on the inky black sea. Just before we got to San Fedora I glimpsed the garish brooch of red and green and white lights that was an aircraft overhead. I heard the whistle of the jets—Tango Uncle on air test, probably. I felt uneasy with the only two men I really trusted away.

As soon as Ghislaine said she was going to have an early night, I went up to bed. I left the little Countess at her room door. Perhaps it was the thunder in the air, perhaps the near miss which she had so lightly dismissed yesterday. Whatever it was, I said to her on impulse, 'Lock your door, Ghislaine.' I pointed to the heavy medieval lock and key below the more modern crystal handle. Ghislaine smiled, with bitterness. 'You know so little, you liberated English miss, of Sicilian ways. In San Fedora, the unmarried girl does not lock herself in. That lock is fashioned to lock only from the outside.' She laughed at my shocked face. 'But not now?' I protested. 'In this day and age?' She shrugged. 'But what if there was a fire?' I asked, sounding terribly English, severely practical. 'I would have to escape down the outside turret steps. The real Sicilian nobleman believes,' she said, warming to her story or becoming more confiding, 'that there are worse things that can happen to a woman than to be burned alive.' 'They'd take some finding,' I said. 'Not to my brother. He is cruel, that one. Already twice he has locked me in. Once when I was eighteen after I had been on a culture tour in London. Then he locked me in.' She paused and bit her lip. The dark Moorish eyes were contemplative. I could see her imagination going to work on the next incident. I was too tired to wait till she'd dreamed it up. I said, 'Well, tonight, why don't you let me lock the door from the outside? And I'll keep the key?'

Immediately the Countess's hackles were up. 'Ah, you fool me not. My brother ... he has told you to!' 'No! No one told me. I'm worried about you, especially after yesterday.' But she wouldn't hear of it. She let herself into her bedroom and almost shut the door in my face. 'For the last time, Emma, I can look after myself! I'm a thousand years older than you. I'm older than the oldest old woman in England. We Sicilians have ancient wisdom. You believe anything.' Just before she slammed the door, she hissed through the fast closing crack, 'You have no guile!' She made it sound a shameful omission. Small wonder that when I slept, I had weird dreams. Tired though I was, it took me a long time to drift off. In accordance with our luxurious not-a-dull moment programme, there was an entertainment typique on the terrace for those gallant few of our guests who were not flaked out by the day's excursion. A quartet was playing Sicilian folk songs and dances. The music drifted up to me, loud and clear on the still and thundery night air. One of the quartet had a thin metal whistle. The shrill piercing note was exactly like the one on the hillside yesterday before the rifle shots. An entertainment typique, so a typical whistle, probably owned by every man and boy on the island. Not some warning, directed at me. Despite my reasoning that whistle penetrated my dreams. That and the footsteps. Just before I dozed off, I heard the sound of car doors slamming and footsteps on the gravel. I remember thinking the pilots had returned, and sleeping more easily for knowing that.

Strange fragments haunted that sleep. I was suspended from duty by Captain Creighton, I was locked in the turret room. I heard his footsteps on the stairs. He was about to force some confession out of me; I don't know what the confession was except that I knew even in the dream that nothing in the world would make me confess it. Then I heard the Count's voice, only it wasn't the Count's face, it was a man in his clothes who had the blue feathers and beak of a swallow. He was fighting with Captain Creighton and Captain Creighton had turned into the eagle. And through these silly fragments came that thin metallic whistle, skewering them together. And now the whistle was joined by drums. The drums swelled and the whistle died. Lights flickered in my eyes. There was a noise like a rushing torrent. I woke. The storm was at its height. The castle shook. I went to the window. Rain water poured down the panes. The light wind of a thunderstorm fingered the curtains. Lightning such as I have never before seen—pink and red and purple streaks ripped open the night sky, exposed the boiling upward whorls of the giant thunderheads. In its flaring illumination, more brilliant than the brightest neon, I saw the dark bulk of the quiescent volcano, the castle walls running with rain, every leaf and flower and twig more clearly than by day. The quartet had long ago gone, the castle was quiet. I put on my dressing gown and walked up and down my room, every nerve ending tingling danger electric as a cat. I even considered committing the unforgivable sin of waking a peacefully sleeping stewardess. But I wasn't yet jittery enough to do that. The storm rose to a crescendo. From every towering black thundercloud reverberated the most fantastic sound. It seemed to

echo from Etna's massive flanks and bounce back again, ricochet in the mountainous interior and go rolling out reluctantly to the dark sea, just as the next explosion began. I'd learned in lesson three of our technical syllabus that these thunderclouds have the explosive force of nuclear bombs. I'd never believed it before. I did that night. At the height of the storm the rain stopped with the eerie suddenness of a tap being shut off. Drain water tinkled along garden gulleys and roof gutters, then that too died away. There was an interval between thunderclaps, but the brilliant lightning continued unabated. In the quiet between the thunderclaps I thought I heard Ghislaine's voice cry out. Then lightning came again. I saw the towers and battlements of the castle silhouetted against a jagged flash of acid white. Its flickering earthing path just touched the ornamental tip of the farthest tower. The tip glowed an incandescent white, the glass cap on the top of the tower cracked. A pile of slates went hurtling down like a pack of cards flicked aside by the heel of a giant hand. I leaned right out of the window. The sound of the tiles shattering on the flagstones of the terrace were lost in the thunderclap. But another noise just below me was not—a cautious heavy footfall on the outside steps. I stretched further out, and called down, 'Who's there?' No one answered. The next flash showed me—a man crouched at the top of the steps outside Ghislaine's windows, face upraised to see where my voice came from, illuminated, pale and frightful in the lightning light. Seat 25, a hand upraised to shield his eyes from the quick brilliance. The glint of metal in his hand.

I didn't wait to see or say more. I fled across the room, down the stairs and then the next stairs, down the little bit of corridor to Ghislaine's door. The key had gone. I turned the handle. The door was locked. I hammered with my fists. 'Ghislaine, open the door!' I hammered again. No answer. I put my ear to the door. Not a breath of sound. I put my eye to the keyhole. Black as the grave. I ran down the next two flights of stairs, crossed the hall and on to the solarium. The glass door was locked, but the key was in the hole. I turned it and ran out into the terrace. I climbed the steps, slowing for the last two, afraid what I would find. Ghislaine's window was open at the bottom. Her curtains were half drawn. I called her name twice— no answer. I put my foot over the sill. A flash of lightning showed me an empty bed. I fumbled for the cord of the light switch. The room flooded with pink. I put my hands on the bed, and the sheets were cold. I walked to the bathroom, opened all the doors of her many fitted cupboards. No Ghislaine. I leaned out of the window again. The lightning-lit garden was empty. The thunder rumbled, diminished away. Not a stick stirred. The night was still. I could see a break in the overcast and intermittently a handful of stars. I turned to hammer on the door to the landing. I turned the knob and the locked door opened. I half expected to see someone else on the other side of the door, key in hand—Ghislaine perhaps. But the wide landing was empty. I fled along to the Count's room. The door was rimmed in light. I knocked for some reason discreetly on his door.

'Leon! It's me.' 'Emma?' 'Yes. Open the door, please.' I turned the knob myself in my distress. The door opened. I'd expected it, for some unknown reason, to be locked too. The Count was half way to it, one hand extended to throw open the door. He was wearing a dark red velvet smoking jacket. He had a drink in his hand. Behind him stretched the enormous room, more a sitting room than a bedroom, with thick mushroom carpeting and brocade curtains that swept the floor and kept out the storm. There were velvetcovered armchairs, a long tooled leather table, a drinks cabinet, open. The soft lights gleamed on bottles and glasses. And then someone sitting in one of the velvet armchairs got to his feet. At first I thought it was all part of the bad dream. I thought if I blinked my eyes the tall angry figure would go away. 'Emma!' Captain Creighton made no attempt at courtesy. 'What the hell are you doing here?' 'She has come to see me, of course.' Leon made it worse by putting his arm round my bare shoulders. 'A drink, Emma,' he said as if I did this every night of our lives. Then at the expression on my face, 'No, Mark, I kid you. It must be some emergency, otherwise she would not come.' In some peculiar Orsini way he made the truth sound false. 'The storm,' he said as if prompting. 'Did it frighten you? Has it clipped one of our silly little towers again?'

'Ghislaine,' I said gulping, not sure now if I was sounding a genuine alarm, or telling tales. 'What about her?' The Count smiled tolerantly as if he hadn't a care in the world about her. 'She isn't in her room.' There was a second's silence. Mark Creighton eyed me intently, as if in all fairness, suspending judgement. That I might have expected. It was the Count's reaction that astonished me. 'Of course she is! I kissed her goodnight and wished her Vovo! immediately I got home.' 'But not now! Besides, I saw a man on the steps outside her room!' 'And you think he might have run off with her?' The Count took a sip of his drink, rolled it round his tongue. Then he burst out laughing. 'How did you see this man?' Captain Creighton asked me, as if there were something improper in that too. A figment of my frustrated imagination, no less. 'In a flash of lightning.' The Count laughed. 'It is said in Sicily that we see...' 'I don't care what the hell is said in Sicily!' I stamped my foot. 'Ghislaine is not in her room!' I grasped Leon's arm. Captain Creighton raised his brows. A born actress, his raised brows said.

'Come and see. Please!' 'Oh, very well.' He set down his drink on the tooled leather table. He rushed to open the door for me, bowed me through it. They both followed. Our shadows flickered on the corridor panelling, mine hurrying, defensive, theirs disbelieving. I stopped outside Ghislaine's door. It was the Count who turned the knob, a kind of double reverse motion that I was too upset to notice. I began to call Ghislaine, but he put his fingers to his lips. 'Don't wake the poor child,' he said gently. 'She isn't here . . . ' I began to say. Light from the corridor beamed in and spotlit the pink flounced bed. On the frilly pillow, saintly faced in deep sleep real or feigned, lay the little Countess. Her dark hair tumbled and spread over the pillows, her shapely little hand rested lightly on the turned back sheet. Discomfited, disgraced, I still had time to notice that Mark Creighton was staring down at his Sleeping Princess with an expression that baffled me.

CHAPTER NINE THE Count walked out on to the terrace for breakfast the next morning with a lighter step and a broader, more enchanting smile. 'Sunshine after the storm,' he spread his hands and beamed at his guests, and drew in the unbelievably sweet smell of the garden after last night's drenching rain. I felt he did not altogether refer to the garden or last night's storm alone. Something had happened at Palermo. Life was good, every muscle of his lithe body proclaimed. He was dressed in cream linen trousers with a silk, chocolate-coloured shirt. His dark eyes were gay. He went from table to table, enquiring after everyone's health and sleep. 'Not disturbed by the storm?' he asked. 'Too tired after the Taormina expedition to care?' He laughed with everyone at once, walking the terrace, very much the king of his castle. I even wondered if poor Ghislaine had given in and agreed to marry the rich old man. But I didn't think so. 'Yes, indeed,' the Count replied in answer to Mrs. Parker's question. His trip to Palermo had gone exceedingly well. It had taken longer than he had expected, but it had been a thousand times more rewarding. And now he felt he owed himself a little relaxation. Maybe he owed the oracle of Arethusa a little offering. For as we cool British knew, the Sicilians had more than a little respect for their old gods. Somehow Sicily's own Arethusa had done him well. So both he and his dear little sister would accompany us to Syracuse, to the stone quarry gardens and the grotto of Arethusa. It was the first time I'd heard the Count call his sister anything but wicked. The endearment worried me. An Orsini was tricky enough

alone, in enmity with its sibling. Conjoined they would be formidable, indeed. Then Ghislaine descended for breakfast clad in a sleeveless trouser suit of virginal white, simplicity itself but shrieking Paris. She slipped an affectionate hand through her brother's arm. My apprehension deepened. Kim buttered a fragment of freshly baked croissant and smiled, 'A little swallow whispers to me that someone has at last got her own way.' 'Ghislaine?' 'Who else?' She took a sip of coffee. 'What say you ?' she asked of Peter and me. 'Wedding bells?' Peter Strutt pared the skin off a lump of pineapple. 'Could be.' He hummed the wedding march. 'An Easter bride, perhaps.' Kim shook her head. 'She would first have to visit the U.K.' 'Why?' 'For the canuscenza - introduction to his family. I heard a whisper…' 'Another swallow?' I asked bitterly. 'Same one, actually.' 'Didn't you know,' Peter eyed me with sympathetic kindliness, 'that there's always a hot line between Phoenix skippers and number ones?'

Kim neither denied it nor confirmed it. 'The buzz is that she's coming back with us.' 'I said you girls were underworked coming out! There's that vacant seat by your friend Seat 25, Emma.' 'I just don't believe it,' I said far too vehemently. 'Then take a load of that.' Peter jerked his head and eyed me sadly. The Countess had now left her brother's side and flitted like a beautiful white butterfly to where, appropriately, Captain Creighton was sipping coffee with Mr. and Mrs. Nayland. the honeymooners. Before Captain Creighton had time to rise to his feet, Ghislaine had flung her arms round his neck and kissed him with childish abandon. Even I found the scene oddly touching. So did everyone else. Even that demon himself, Seat 25, smiled with assumed indulgence at the idyll. 'Another good guy bites the dust,' Peter Strutt commented. 'Ah well, Em, you'll just have to make do with me!' 'I'll give Ghislaine this,' Kim sighed. 'She really seems to love him. I'd never do that to Eric in public.' We discussed in suitably lowered tones, all we'd heard of this Mark Creighton-Ghislaine affair. How apparently they'd fallen for each other the very first trip Captain Creighton flew out here for Phoenix when he arranged this mutually beneficial tour six months ago. 'According to the grapevine,' Peter told us, 'she used to phone him every week from here, without fail. And that must have cost a bomb.'

I had further, better, proof of her devotion to Mark Creighton later that day—our outing to Syracuse began immediately after breakfast. A hundred per cent passenger turn-out, plus the two Orsinis. We'd been able to book the modern motor coach again, so we went almost en famille, the Count as he boarded stopping down the aisle to make quips and jokes with each and every one of our passengers, setting the undoubtable seal of success on the holiday. Naturally Mark Creighton sat next to Ghislaine, and I had the Count next to me. He lost no time in repairing his slightly fractured image in my eyes. 'Forgive me, Emma, if I caused you embarrassment last night. Ghislaine promised me that she never left her room. You had a bad dream! The storm—there is nothing like a Mediterranean storm. You have read the Odyssey, yes -?' 'No.' He then launched into a long account of its perfect description, especially of storms. 'Ah, no wonder in their terrible light men saw monsters, cyclops, sirens. And women saw men on staircases.' He laughed at his own inept joke. I said nothing for a while. Mark and Ghislaine were seated on the opposite side of the coach near the front. I couldn't hear their conversation, but I saw, as if photographed on some sensitised tissue in my brain, every adoring gesture, every flicker of her wicked eyelashes she made towards him. 'So I take it you're no longer worried about Ghislaine's safety?'

'Less worried, dear Emma. Less. Since my visit to Palermo I am satisfied -' he chose his words carefully, 'that her future is more secure.' 'You won't make her marry that rich old man?' 'How could I be so cruel?' I had nothing to say and stared out. The coach had descended the steep hillside and now we sped along the fertile coastal strip. Figs and lemons, orange and almond grew everywhere. But everywhere too among the green glossy leaves and the heavily scented flowers peeped innocent-looking scatters of rock, black as from any hell fire. The walls of the fields, the animal shelters and cottages here were made of that same black volcanic rock. Plenty and terror. No wonder the inhabitants were changeable as their fortunes. 'Always I shall of course worry about my innocent little sister.' He gave Mark Creighton an unfairly supercilious glance. 'No man, I feel, can look after her like myself. And England is a somewhat uncivilised country. But -' he spread his hands, 'one only has to look on her face to know she is in love.' 'I thought -' I began to say, and then gave up. Arguing with an Orsini was like trying to escape from a spider web made of unbreakable nylon. But Leon took up my unfinished sentence. 'You thought I did not believe in such a state of being.' He touched my hand. 'Let me say this.' He lifted my hand to his lips. 'You have taught me.' I wasn't listening. I was looking straight ahead of me. Like all these big buses, there was a big convex mirror for the driver to see

the whole of the bus behind him. I was suddenly aware that Captain Creighton was watching the reflection of Orsini and me. Unfairly, in repose, his face wore an expression of aloof disdain.

Once at the stone quarry gardens of del Paradiso, but not till then, the Count relinquished my hand, and became at least briefly the charming host to everyone again. He was a mine of historical and botanical information, but careful, even in his newfound ebullience, not to trespass on our friend the archaeologist's unofficial domain. Count Orsini named the trees, the myrtle, the ilex and the brush palm qiummari. He pulled blooms of oleander and sprigs of maidenhair fern and gelsuminu (jessamine) to present to the ladies. He found bee-orchis for Mrs. Parker, and held back the rope-like stems of hibiscus which drape the entrance to that earliest of all caves, known for over two thousand years as the Ear of Dionysius. The Ear is briefly a high fissure in the face of the stone quarry side. Its tearfulness is manifold and it lies partly in the dank deep smell, the atmosphere, as if the terror it shrouded two thousand years ago could never be expunged, partly in its contrast to the .brilliantly coloured sunny gardens outside on the quarry floor. The visitor wends his way, relaxed, through the scented gardens. Then at the swish of a curtain of purple hibiscus, he steps into the past and into terror. For inside this narrow cave in 400 B.C., the Syracusans packed thousands of political prisoners, and a prison that cave remained for fifteen hundred years after that. 'Here,' the Count said, 'we have a listening device that makes the Watergate bugs archaic.' He pointed out the curious roof which

twists in upward convolutions rather like an ear, till it disappears at an invisible point to some unknown nerve centre. 'A whisper in this cave could be heard, magnified a hundred times, in the throne room of the Emperor Dionysius.' 'And where is that?' Mrs. Parker asked him. 'Alas, dear lady, none knows for sure. Somewhere among the ruins at the top of the quarry.' Then, his duty done, the Count whispered to me, 'Come, Emma! You don't want to hang around in this damned cave. It smells of sadness, does it not? I shall show you something much more interesting. There is a Roman piscina we can see if we climb these steps.' No, he did not think it a good idea if we waited for the archaeologist and his wife, nor for anyone. He wanted me for a little while on my own. Soon we would be, like the swallows, literally winging our way to our cold country. He would like briefly to show me some of the delights of his. He held my hand lightly as we climbed a wide flight of steps which led to the lip of the quarries. Here instead of the lush vegetation of the quarry floor the ground was covered in fractured mosaics and a litter of broken columns and pediments. Lichen and maidenhair fern erupted among the ruins. 'I told you once,' Leon said, 'that the Orsinis are the clever ones, did I not?' 'You told me several times.'

The Count laughed. 'And now I will prove it to you—should it need proving.' He picked his way, with me following through what must have once been a ruined township. Only the foundations remained, a cluster of columns here and there, and a few walls. 'Observe.' He pointed to an exquisite floor mosaic intricately patterned with mystical beasts and emblems more fearsome than even the Orsini coat of arms. 'Now come up here.' He led me up three shallow steps, past a broken wall, into a ruined alcove of the kind that might house some sacred statue. The alcove guarded nothing but a fluted hollow, a dark mouth disappearing into a darker throat. Out of that mouth came a curious shuffling sea-sigh, like a shell held to the ear. 'Come closer.' Leon put his arm round my shoulder. His face was close to mine. 'Listen!' I heard a mutter of familiar voices, like crossed lines on a bad telephone connection. 'I, Leon Orsini, have found where the ear of Dionysius exits.' He put both hands on my shoulder, 'Am I not the clever one?' I smiled, 'You are.' Behind me I heard the archaeologist's voice come out of the dark mouth with a didactic, 'One of the first natural listening posts of history.' The Count laughed. 'Do you not also find me attractive as well as clever, Emma?' I raised my brows. 'Last night you said you liked me.'

'So 1 do.' He took that as an invitation. One arm slid round my shoulders. One tilted up my chin. He planted a kiss on my lips, of surprising force and passion. I recoiled. I pushed my hands against his chest. Then like the cry of the temptress herself, Ghislaine's voice rose out of the wall mouth. 'Oh, Mark,' that voice cried in tones of absolute sweetness and sincerity, 'I'll always love you!' The voice dropped to a mutter of endearments which I closed my ears to. I stopped pushing the Count away. I went limp and pliant in his arms, I returned his kiss with warmth. That warmth burned off some of the cold misery inside myself. But the kiss lit no fires in me. I hated myself for it. 'Today,' Leon held his cheek against mine, 'you teach me a little more of love, yes?' I said I didn't know much about it myself. I disengaged myself from his arms and began to walk towards the steps. He held on to my wrist, swinging my arm backwards and forwards. 'I think you could be, how do you say, very loving.' I said nothing. 'Is there someone else you find more attractive than me?' Leon asked with amused disbelief. 'Not really.' 'Yet, Emma, your kiss surprised me. It was as if you hated me—or someone else.' 'Someone else.'

'Do I know that someone else?' 'Not really.' 'Is he someone you think yourself in -' he paused to give the next word a derisive quality, 'love with?' 'I once did.' 'But not now?' 'No.' 'Tell me about this rival of mine. Is he handsome?' 'Not very.' 'Did you meet him here? In our island of superstition and sunshine?' 'I met him a long time ago. He gave me a lift, one morning in the rain.' 'It sounds very British.' The Count winced. We had reached the head of the wide flight of steps from the quarry floor. He stood for a moment arms folded, surveying our group meandering among the gardens. 'But perhaps Arethusa will yet be kind again. You like me here and now a little?' 'More than a little,' I said. I had spied Mark Creighton, aloof now even from the Countess, staring up at us, scowling against the sun. 'Quite a lot.'

'Now I will tell you all a story.' Leon Orsini sat himself comfortably on the wide stone wall that surrounds the Fountain of Arethusa. Wisely, our Syracusan outing brings us to the Fountain in early evening when the twentieth-century environs are curtained in darkness, and the grotto regains its ancient magic and mystery under the indigo blue and starry Mediterranean night. The darkness cloaks the road and pavement, the little stalls selling decorated toy carts, and hand-painted parchments made from the papyrus that grows at the once sacred water's edge. The huge modern port becomes a fairyland of swinging lights. Even the vendors of hot almond pastries and stewed lumps of squid become no more than warm, orangy glows between the glistening of the fountain and the darker glistening of the sea, a stone's throw beyond. Discreet ice white arc lamps carefully placed glitter on the cascade of clear water that feeds the pool. Aquamarine floodlights among the papyrus send the reeds' spindly shadows over the glazed water where bream the size of speckled trout hang motionless just below the surface. 'Come nearer.' Count Orsini beckoned us like children around him. Like children we obeyed. Leon was at his most beguiling. Delighting in showing off his beloved island's mysteries, his dark eyes gleamed. He smiled his most enchanting smile. Even this odd setting, this mixture of modern and magic and myth was his and he revelled in it. And we hung eagerly on his words. Only Mark Creighton stayed a little distance away, serious-faced, suspicious perhaps of the Count's volte-face, suspicious that his good humour might break as fragilely as the bubbles in the cascade

and that he would be left with the Count's opposition to Ghislaine's marriage again. Or maybe Captain Creighton, severely practical and infinitely less volatile, was mindful that some danger might still lurk to his bride in this island. From suspicions to superstitions. The Count was talking. 'Easter, my friends, as in your cold country, is here the time of weddings. Before they took place, the affianced couple, the fidanzati, would come and ask the oracle Arethusa's blessing. Man and girl, each would take a reed, so.' He leaned over and grasped a bunch of the rushes that edge the pool along with the papyrus. 'Then twist each one to make a little raft, so -' His thin, clever fingers worked quickly. He held up his handiwork. 'Then they would toss them into the fountain where the fresh water comes tumbling in. If the little barges nudged each other, then,' he spread his hands, 'the marriage would be good.' He sighed. 'If they drifted apart, then not so very good. And if,' he made a dolorous face, 'they totally sank, then perhaps their parents had made, as you English say, one hell of a big mistake.' The Count watched our reaction good-humouredly. He laughed at our slightly superior British smiles. 'Further, let me say, especially to you, Signor Capitano Mark, no master of his ship in the old days would leave on any voyage without first floating his reed on the pool and seeing if she sailed into smooth or rough water.' 'We've got rather different aids now,' Mark Creighton said with a smile. 'None better than Arethusa,' the Count replied. He jumped down lightly from the wall. His audience smiled even more indulgently at him. 'And I now tell you one story more. He who laughs last

laughs best, as you British have it. It is an indisputable fact that your own Admiral Lord Nelson, no less, came here. He sailed his reed and then took water for his fleet. And he wrote that he would have victory in the Battle of the Nile, as he did indeed, because the water would bring him good fortune.' 'So put that in your British pipes and smoke it,' Peter Strutt whispered. 'And who are we to argue with the Admiral?' Mark Creighton strolled over and stood beside me, smiling faintly. I could see that all this superstitious nonsense, even though it was primarily to please his beloved Ghislaine, was irritating to him. His blue eyes held a fixed, cold shadow. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, rocking himself backwards and forwards on his heels, looking, I must admit it, slightly superior. But our passengers' superior smiles had vanished. At the mention of such an illustrious precedent, all their repressed superstitious longings came to the surface, and they were eager to test their own fortune, at an oracle more proven than the morning papers' horoscope. Even the older ones whose marriages had cemented for thirty or forty years, and who were going on no more of a hazardous journey than our return flight to Grantwick airport, were leaning over the wall at some risk and discomfort to secure the reeds. I stretched over and grasped handfuls of the hollow stems. I distributed them to the passengers. I felt Mark Creighton's eyes on my face. Eagerly, the passengers disappeared to the other side of the pool. Ghislaine was standing on the wall near the cascade, holding up her reed barge, showing everyone how well she had made it.

Momentarily Mark Creighton and I were alone. I didn't know what to say to him. I had the curious feeling that I could read his mind— the magic of the Fountain, I suppose, and yet what I read there was so manifestly one hundred and eighty degrees to the truth that even there and then I had no difficulty in dismissing it as the illusion it was. We both stared down at the tarnished surface of the pool, at the fish hanging still as water-shaped stones. The hidden lights flung the shadows of our two heads joined in that strange mirror surface. I wondered if it was an omen, and if so, of what? Then Mark Creighton said a strange thing in that deep voice of his, 'I wonder if Lord Nelson was thinking of his Emma when he came here?' Though I'm sure I imagined the emphasis on his, and at least I didn't have to make a reply. There was a shout from the rest of our party. Ghislaine was about to throw her reed barge in. 'You're wanted,' I said with a sharpness that was directed at myself, not at him. I watched him straighten and walk away from me, not at all the joyful bridegroom to be. Then, as Ghislaine swung her arm to throw her reed, I saw to my horror Seat 25 jump up beside her. I tried to run across the few yards that separated us, but the rest of the passengers were crowding in between. 'Ghislaine'! I shrieked at the top of my voice. She hardly turned. As in a nightmare, helpless, I saw Seat 25 raise his hand. In front of us he was going to hurl her into that depthless, swirling pool. I tried to shove between Mr. and Mrs. Parker, but they were holding hands tightly. I hammered on the archaeologist's back.

Seat 25's heavy hand described a delicate arc. A small green object hurled into the pool beside Ghislaine's own craft. Everyone was leaning over the wall, watching. In the full floodlight, Ghislaine's barge nudged Seat 25's. Ghislaine danced with joy on the stone wall like some little water nymph. In slowly dawning comprehension. I saw her throw her arms first round Seat 25's piratical neck, then round her brother's, then round Mark Creighton's. 'See, Arethusa has given her blessing. What did I tell you?' 'She means her brother's spies have confirmed that your Seat 25 makes Onassis look like Oliver Twist,' Peter whispered. 'Mark,' she smiled, releasing Captain Creighton, 'I shall always remember it was you who interceded.' Then, misty-eyed, we unsentimental British watched the first kiss of the engagement. It was protracted and ardent. 'You understand now, dearest Emma, that there are worse things to a Sicilian lady than death.' 'No,' I said. 'I think one would have to be very clever to understand the ways of the Orsinis.' Leon didn't take that as a reproof. Orsini-like, he took it as a most delicate compliment. I tried to catch Mark Creighton's eye, but he wasn't looking in my direction. With a cynical smile he watched Seat 25 toss handfuls of rose petals into the pool, and the passengers, now that Ghislaine was safely launched, tried their luck with theirs.

I saw at least three middle-aged couples holding hands, watching their fates bob and twist in the currents. I remember Mrs. Parker saying that if the Fountain of Arethusa did nothing else it renewed and reminded people of the sweetness that they took for granted. But the Fountain of Arethusa had not quite finished with us. It was the rose petals, those delicate, white fragments floating on the surface, that caused the tiny upheaval. The bream, enticed by hopes of food, suddenly awoke from their death-like stillness. They swam, broke the surface, nosed the petals. By the time they swam off disappointed again, half the rafts had swamped and sank. Even Seat 25's and Ghislaine's had disappeared. No one seemed to take too much notice at the omen. Or if they did, in true British style, they kept their lips tight and said nothing.

CHAPTER TEN 'THERE are in the whole world,' Ghislaine said with the didactic authority of the fidanzati newly engaged girl, 'only two sorts of men—those who understand some of the time, and those who understand none of the time. That is why my fiancé is unique. He understands all of the time.' The afternoon sun on the castle terrace glittered on the cheap swallow ring she was wearing on the third finger of her left hand. It was about ten sizes too big. 'I remember your fiancé wearing that on the trip over here,' I sighed. The holiday was nearly over. Only the Easter Procession remained, before our departure the following Tuesday. 'I gave this ring to him when I was thirteen. The smith in the village made it secretly for him. He said he would return when he had made his fortune and claim me.' 'Devotion!' drawled Kim. We were sitting by the pool making little paper streamers for the carnival. The day was at leisure. Most of the passengers were swimming or playing tennis. 'Think what agony he had to undergo—to leave me, leave his country, work by day and by night. Endure my brother's hatred, his threats—of death even,' Ghislaine said, warming to her subject. 'And did you never see him? For nearly seven years?' 'That was the time Job or someone worked for his beloved wife, was it not, Signorina Kim?' 'Jacob.'

'And did you really not see each other for seven years?' I asked. 'Well -' she laughed, 'when I was in London, yes, I saw him.' 'After which your brother locked you in your room?' Ghislaine smiled and nodded. 'Also twice I go to Switzerland to ski, and then he flies out to meet me there. No brother. No room to be locked in.' 'You wouldn't get many Englishmen carrying a torch like that,' Kim said with finality, and bit off a thread. 'Eric Dudley would,' I said. Kim ignored me. 'How about our Captain Creighton? You've got a high opinion of him, haven't you?' Ghislaine pondered her words as if she intended to give us nothing but the absolute razor edge of truth. 'Very, very high—as a man. But he wouldn't be, how you say so -' 'Malleable?' Kim suggested. The word was beyond the Countess's vocabulary. 'No, no, not that.' 'In a word, so easy to twist round your little finger,' Kim said abrasively. 'In a word, yes,' the Countess agreed with one of her disconcerting lapses into complete honesty. She stitched the little paper garlands for a moment without raising those Moorish eyes, the very picture of innocence and compliance.

'Besides, I was not in love with him. Had it not been for that,' she said sweetly, 'I would have accepted him.' 'As what?' I asked sharply. 'My husband. What else?' 'He wouldn't make the grade, wealth-wise,' Kim said practically. 'But my brother is in awe of the Signor Capitano. He respects him, believes him! Mark would get his way. And my brother would just have to marry an heiress himself.' She paused and added significantly, 'As it is, now my brother is free to choose where he will.' A long sigh. 'He will make a saintly husband, my dear brother.' 'Did he really propose to you? Captain Creighton? We all thought he was going to. I did. So did Kim. The grapevine -' Ghislaine interrupted me indignantly. 'But of course he proposed to me—begged me, on his knees, in the garden of Diana. The moon was full -' Half-way through her story she became disenchanted with it. 'No, that is not quite true. Always your Captain Creighton, my Mark, has helped me. He is like a brother to me. But to him I am what you call in England the fairy at the top of the Christmas tree, what Mark calls the Impossible Dream. Never in words would he say he loves me. But he does, I know. A girl can always tell. You know that?' I said I did. For some reason Kim agreed with me. We both looked sad, for different reasons.

I remembered Mark Creighton's face at the Fountain of Arethusa, that cold fixed shadow in his blue eyes as he looked across at Ghislaine. Fairy at the top of the Christmas tree and the Impossible Dream were rather fanciful and an Orsini way of describing it. But right then I couldn't think of a better.

I woke at first light—that glimmering in the sky that heralds dawn. I thought that in our ten days stay I had grown accustomed to the odd noises of the old castle. Yet an unaccustomed noise had wakened me. I lay for some reason holding my breath, listening, as if I knew the noise had been slight, nothing but the usual early morning sounds drifted up to me on the still air. The clatter of a bucket, the drag of a donkey cart bringing in the daily fresh fruit, the cry of its driver arricca, the twitter of birds. I reminded myself it was Easter morning. Childish memory had wakened me, perhaps, carried me back to myself at the age of seven. Easter morning and boiled eggs with painted faces, and decorated chocolate ones on the breakfast table. Different celebrations awaited us today. Most of the passengers were going down to the village to watch the procession—a mixture, the Count had told us, of religious, civil and social celebrations. It begins with two processions, one carrying a statue of Jesus, and the other a statue of the Virgin Mary. Their joyous meeting in the Square is the focal point of the celebrations. Every milita (flagstone) in the little square would already be decorated by pavement artists, home-made garlands, bunting and candles hung from the trees. Itinerant marionette showmen would have erected their stalls. There would be a triuntu and a parade of decorated carts with a prize for the best.

I sat up in bed, still listening, my mind alert, going over the preparations Kim and I had to make before our departure for London tomorrow. And going over too, though more reluctantly, some of the things that had happened since we'd arrived. I was haunted in all these thoughts by Mark Creighton's withdrawn and shuttered face. Because if Ghislaine were as she declared, Mark Creighton's 'Impossible Dream', even more desirable had that dream become. For happiness suited Ghislaine. In the two days since we'd been to the Fountain, she had blossomed like an exquisite bud unfolding into an exotic flower. Happiness also suited Seat 25, the Demon King turned Prince Charming. The dark piratical face had grown gentle. It broke into spontaneous irrepressible smiles. His hooded eyes glowed with an indulgent unashamed devotion. 'What love does to a man!' Kim had exclaimed disgustedly yesterday evening as we watched them dance very close to the strains of a waltz played with great feeling by Mrs. Parker. 'He reminds me of Eric Dudley,' I said. 'And just as nauseating,' she replied, but with less conviction. Everyone of course had been delighted by the partito, delighted that the Countess was to accompany us back to England where, as is customary, the bride would stay for a while with Seat 25's only relative, his elderly grandmother whom he had brought to England. The wedding would take place of course in San Fedora. We would all be invited. 'Could be a tourist stunt,' Peter Strutt said. 'Nothing like a wedding to make you girls misty-eyed.'

'The men are pretty misty-eyed too,' Kim reminded him. But girls or men, it seemed there remained only one person aloof. Only Mark Creighton seemed to me withdrawn, in shadow. It struck me, sitting up there in bed listening for the recurrence of that sound, that Mark Creighton, man of honour that he undoubtedly was, had worked selflessly and devotedly for the happiness of the woman he loved. Piecing together, bit by bit, Ghislaine's strange love story, we knew that from the beginning of his acquaintance with the Orsini family, Mark Creighton had tried to persuade the Count to let his sister marry whom she wished, and that Ghislaine was old enough to choose for herself. But now that she was about to marry the man she loved, his own loss had, as it were, come home to him. There is a kind of impetus in the struggle to achieve something, but a terrible sense of anticlimax when the achievement leaves oneself, alone and bereft. The thought of Mark Creighton's disappointment made it impossible for me to go to sleep again. The noise had not recurred. The cart was being unloaded. I heard the shouts of the driver, the thud of sacks, the twitter and flutter of birds. I got out of bed and opened the window, saw the curious false dawn over Etna tint the ghostly sky, then to the east, the quick thrust and glitter of orange light. A solitary white bird flew heavy-winged, its breast tinted with the dawn glow. No other birds. I leaned out of the window. A few sparrow-type birds hopped in and out of the box hedges. Yet somewhere, birds fluttered and twittered. Louder when I drew my head back into the room—the twitter and flutter of birds above my head.

Now I knew what had wakened me—that unaccustomed too early sound of birds. I dressed quickly in jeans and T-shirt and went on to the landing outside. A small stone staircase twisting and narrow leads from the landing up to the ornamental glass hood at the top of the tower. The hood's purpose is purely, according to the Count, for repairs inspection. And of course anyone with a good head for heights can get a superb view of the island. It was seldom used. The steps were swept once a week by one of the housemaids, and the first thing I noticed when I set foot on the first step was the print of a shoe in the light powdering of dust. After the first curve of the winding staircase, I was in darkness. I felt my way round the next curve by keeping my left hand on the wall, and my right outstretched in front of me. As I climbed the noise of birds increased. I shivered slightly. I stood for a moment, resting my hand against the wall, wondering if I should go down and wake Kim. But for what? A bird trapped in the tower, or even two or three. I continued up the steps. My right hand encountered a panelled door, my feet rested together on a small landing. Loudly now I could hear the noise of birds, the twittering and that alarming feathery fluttering sound. Coward that I reproached myself for being, I remembered a Hitchcock film called The Birds, and I stood for a moment with my bare arms goosepimpling with fright. Then my fingers found the handle. I gritted my teeth, turned it. The door opened and shuddering I went inside. A flash of deep dark blue, like a silk curtain, rippled in front of my eyes. I put up my arm to shield my face. The curtain swooped, twittered, dived, soared, then solidified, dashing itself in hard

painful thuds against the glimmering window panes. Feathery wings beat round my head, flicked backwards and forwards across a naked electric light bulb. Swallows—fifteen, twenty, maybe more like thirty if one counted the two lying either stunned or dead on the floor. My mind worked slowly. I stood for a moment with them flickering round me, while my eyes took in the single open window over which someone had fixed a circular wooden trap, so that the birds, attracted by the light, could get in but not escape. Outside, a now fiery dawn stretched long fingers across the sky, it burnished the window walls of this tiny horrid prison. The swallows' agitation seemed to increase. I scrabbled around for the electric light switch, found a new cord, pulled it. The light went off. I crossed the wooden floor, snatched down the wooden trap and flung the window wide. The birds were too disorientated by terror to recognise escape. I went round every latched and locked window. The catches were rusty, but I hammered them with my fists till they gave. This tower top acted like a wrecker's light. I threw every window wide. I waved my arms above my head till all the birds went fluttering out. I watched them swoop, dive, soar like a zigzag of ink across the sky, then I stooped and picked up the ones lying on the floor. One was dead, its neck broken. I could feel the other's heart still beating as I cupped its body in my hands. I stood resting my elbows on the window sill, hoping the warmth of my hands and the smell of the morning air would revive it. I stroked its back with my finger tips. I didn't hear Leon Orsini's step on the stairs. 'So -' He stood framed in the doorway, not sure as he told me latex, whether to bully or propitiate. He said the sun at that moment

touched my hair, it glittered red—Apollo's warning. He decided to propitiate. 'You, Emma, have found my little surprise for my dear little sister?' He came into the tiny glass room and stood over me. He actually put his arm round my shoulders, and I couldn't shake it off because I didn't want to startle the swallow. He even leaned over and gently touched the bird's back with his finger. 'Pretty things.' 'Then why trap them?' I asked angrily. 'That other one's dead.' Leon made a face of mock concern, then changed it into a fair imitation of the real thing. 'Thousands and thousands die on the way over to your cold country. What difference does one more make?' 'A difference,' I said. 'Besides, a lot more would die before the day was out.' 'Only a few.' The swallow in my hands quivered. It tried to flutter its wings. I opened my hands and let it rest on my flattened palm. It puffed out its feathers, then perched, its claws clutching my fingers. 'You are a very lucky swallow, sir,' Leon smiled wryly. He still had his hand on my shoulder. He bent down close and put a kiss on the back of my neck. 'And I am very unlucky.' He was not altogether referring to his escaped swallows, but I pretended he was. 'What did you want them for?' 'For this afternoon, Emma. For the procession. I wanted to revive an old custom in honour of my sister. Until a few years ago, on

Easter Day in the square we would release a flock of sparrows with ribbons tied to their wings and tails.' 'Didn't they get tangled up?' 'Dear Emma, yes. A few.' He kissed my neck again. 'But only the more stupid ones.' 'Who didn't know how to disentangle themselves and fly quickly away.' I looked directly into his eyes. He replied without smiling. 'They made a very pretty sight. They gave much pleasure.' 'To whom?' 'To me, for one.' I said nothing. I held my hand out through the open window. Any moment now the swallow would fly away. 'And today I thought, to please my little Ghislaine, instead of humble sparrows we would decorate and release our Orsini swallows.' 'But they're not your swallows,' I said, sounding very English and didactic. 'No,' the Count sighed heavily, 'they are indeed not mine—as you remind me.' He watched the swallow in my hand try its wings, dip its head and suddenly take off. The expression in the Count's eyes was meaningful and unhappy. I could see he wanted to make some analogy between that bird flying away and my leaving tomorrow.

'It seems,' he turned me round to face him, 'that I am not very successful in making,' he paused, 'beautiful creatures,' he cupped my face, 'stay with me.' 'You shouldn't try to trap them,' I said breathlessly, feeling his fingers grip my face, not sure how to escape, not even that I wanted to. 'I only trap them when there is no other way.' He smiled banteringly, so that I was unprepared for his next move. He bent down quickly. His warm parted lips gently brushed mine, explorative and tantalising, then they closed on mine. His fingers released my face. He clasped me to him. I had never before been kissed with such an angry and demanding passion. His voice when he spoke was in utter contrast—cool, formal, mocking even. 'Will you marry me, Emma?' I drew in my breath sharply. 'I know this is not the way to ask you, but I have no other choice. I could apply perhaps formally to your Captain…' 'No,' I said quickly. 'To the Captain part? Or the proposal?' 'To both.' For a moment the Count looked genuinely discomfited. 'Do you not love me, Emma?' He sounded astonished. I shook my head. 'I like you,' I said, recovering my composure. 'At least, I like you most of the time.' 'Moments like this apart?'

I smiled, 'Moments like this apart. In any case, it's usual for the man to tell the girl he loves her first.' 'In England?' I nodded. 'But yes, I think I love you, Emma. I respect you. I like you always. Not even moments like this apart. I believe what you say.' I smiled at that highest of all Orsini compliments. 'You love most this place and everything that goes with it,' I said. 'I think I love you too.' 'You don't.' 'How do you know?' 'You would know,' I said softly. 'Why else am I not angry that you release my swallows? Why else do I, Orsini, come cap in hand apologising in my own home?' 'You would know,' I repeated. Leon gave me a long steady look. He drew in a deep breath. But all he said was, wryly, 'Poor Emma. And he loves someone else.' He put his arms round my shoulders in a brotherly gesture. 'My wicked sister, perhaps.' He walked me towards the door. 'It seems,' he said gently, 'that it is not only the little birds who get entangled, in San Fedora, is that not so, Signorina Emma?'

CHAPTER ELEVEN DEPARTURE for London (Grantwick) was eleven hundred hours G.M.T. Kim, the operating crew and myself were picked up at the castle promptly at nine, almost an hour before the rest. We left our passengers finishing the last of their leisurely breakfast on the terrace. Ghislaine was downstairs, ready and extensively packed. I counted five red leather and gilt-crested suitcases. The Count would accompany her to the airport and see her safely on board. The air that morning was very still. All the flowers and the shrubs in the garden stood unmoving and unruffled by even the lightest wind. There was a delicate almost photographic graining to the light as if the atmosphere was filled with the finest blue pollen. Fittingly, the garden seemed drenched in the heavily sweet smell of orange blossom. The castle floated weightless as in a dream. One of the same fleet of elderly Renaults who had first brought us up here waited outside the main door. Captain Creighton sat up in front beside the driver. He gave us all a pleasant good morning, and remarked that the weather looked splendid. He then closed the little glass panel between us, effectively dispensing with the need for further conversation. He looked taller and less approachable in his uniform again, immaculate, professionally cheerful. And a million light years removed from me, as if that little glass panel were a spaceman's helmet. And I had about as much chance of penetrating it, if I were so inclined, as I had of landing on the moon. Or was it, I thought as we accelerated out of the castle gates, that our stay here had been a brief enchantment, which now was definitely over?

Peter Strutt settled himself comfortably in between Kim and me. He tried resting a negligent hand on each of our knees, till each was returned to him. 'This yours?' Kim asked. 'Why, so it is!' 'If you say a rose between . . . I'll bale out,' Kim warned. She examined the set of her uniform cap in her compact mirror. It seemed a long time since we'd set out on this journey. I don't think any of us were coming back from it quite the same. Certainly not Kim. Certainly not Seat 25. Certainly not me. Nor the man sitting up at the front who'd once been the kindly driver of that white Rover. 'Nothing was further from the old master-mind, dear Number One. Do I ever talk in clichés?' 'Frequently,' said Kim. 'All I was going to say,' Peter winked at me, 'was that Eric Dudley would give his best dentures to be in my place right now.' 'He doesn't wear dentures,' Kim exclaimed indignantly. 'You mean that dazzling smile is for real?' He ducked his head as Kim made a threatening gesture. But she grinned. The name of Eric Dudley did not raise her hackles quite so sharply or instantaneously. I stared out at the alternating view of sun-burnished sea, and craggy rock face as the Renault sped round the hairpin bends .of the road at considerably greater speed than we'd come up. I smelt

the dusty volcanic rock mixed in with the almond and orange and lemon blossom. Peter patted my shoulder. 'So Leon didn't make you fall for him, Em?' 'How do you know?' 'Oh, I keep my ears to the wall.' 'Ground,' Kim corrected. Peter turned back to her. 'Seriously, though, I bet Eric's counting the blips on his radar screen.' Peter hummed Red Sails in the Sunset. 'Watch out that you're on course and at correct altitude.' 'Will do. I'll even call him up and tell him we've got V.I.P.s on board. Kim snapped her compact shut. 'Do that.' 'The Countess and the future Mrs. Dudley. Wouldn't be surprised if Tango Uncle doesn't get priority landing.' Prophetic words. Even as I smiled, some faint stirring of fear told me they were that. Once at the airport I forgot about my stirrings except the necessity to stir up the catering section of San Fedora's tiny airfield. We had a heavy local provisions uplift to supervise as well as the bar to collect, and whatever amenities their store ran to. These days, because of the speed of jets and the pressure of airport traffic, this sort of supervision is normally done by the Redcaps. But of course

not at a little one-runway field like San Fedora, now proudly flying the Orsini flag in honour of the V.I.P. departure. They did, however, have a small briefing room where Kim, as Number One and in accordance with Phoenix's unbreakable rule, made me answer questions about the safety procedure aboard the executive jetliner. What to do in case of sudden pressurisation failure, or if the Captain had to de-pressurise, where the emergency exits are and how to ditch. These questions satisfactorily answered, she allocated my duties for the flight, my passenger briefing and safety position, and the jobs on the ground that she wanted me to do before we were airborne. She would chase up Amenities and Bonded Store, and do the preflight cabin inspection. I could uplift the luncheon indent, hence my need to stir up San Fedora Catering. I could see the little cortege of black cars just coming down the last stretch of the hillside road as I pushed open the door into Catering. The roof of the leading car was piled with Ghislaine's many handsome pieces of red leather luggage, covered in plastic to shield them from the grit. At this distance it looked weirdly like a funeral cortege. But I didn't allow myself to think about that. I crossed the strip of concrete floor to the Catering counter. These places smell the same the world over. Of all the exotic dishes that are prepared or stored in them, coffee, garlic, curry and detergent triumph above everything else. San Fedora was no exception. The assistants are usually overworked and formidable. Not so here. At least four smiling white-overalled helpers indicated in mime rather than coherent English that the menu was not quite ready. They mimed pressure of business, though on the movements

blackboard there was only one departure. Tango Uncle BP.567 to ... they couldn't even get the name right. The G of Grantwick was upside down. Disproportionately, that childish mistake bothered me.

'Trouble?' Kim asked me when I finally got on board Tango Uncle. 'Not really. Just the Sicilian equivalent of manana. The fresh fruit cart hadn't arrived or something.' 'Got it now?' I nodded, and uncovered a corner of the sweet-smelling basket of oranges plucked in their leaves, purpled bloomed grapes, fresh figs and green almonds. 'We'll have to get a move on. Captain's aboard. Passengers are in Customs and Immigration.' She helped me store the containers in the special slots under the galley worktop. From the front we could feel the small movements of the aircraft as the pilots went through their pre-flight check list. The kerosene tanker had withdrawn its hose. The smell of paraffin hung in the air, mixing in with the vanishing holiday smells of Mediterranean sea and sunwarmed lemon groves. The articulated truck came alongside with the passenger luggage. Three white-overalled loaders began to stow it in the hold. The Countess's elegant crimson cases with their gilded monograms stood out against the rest. Five pieces, I counted them. A pretty penny to pay in excess, I remember thinking. Then another loader rushed over the tarmac pushing a hand trolley bearing a newer, more crimson, more gilt and elegant piece that the rest. The other

loaders accepted it with a genial shrug. Typically Ghislaine, I smiled wryly as I turned away to check the galley water heater. 'I've dressed the toilets,' said Kim, 'and the cleaners did a super job on the cabin. A whole army of them.' She continued to stare down the cabin, frowning. 'Ever get the feeling there's something not quite right, without knowing what?' 'Often,' I sighed. 'I've been through the check list twice,' she went on. 'We haven't forgotten anything. So it's not that: 'How about forms?' She patted the shelf where we keep our paper work. 'Landing cards, A.B.O.s, X.S. 144s. All present and correct.' 'Maybe we'll find Ghislaine hasn't got her passport or something?' Kim shook her head. 'I checked last night. I insisted on seeing it.' 'You don't trust her?' 'Let's say neither Orsini is one of truth's most dedicated disciples.' 'Absolute strangers,' I said with feeling. 'Then why -?' she began to say, but didn't finish. I looked at my watch. The gesture recalled her effectively to our duties. She told me to go up front and report cabin readiness. As I walked down the aisle, I could see through the porthole windows the passengers on the other side of the tarmac waiting to

be led aboard. There was a crackling on the R/T as I pushed open the flight deck door, otherwise silence. The metaphorical glass barrier was still around Mark Creighton. He eyed me coolly and distantly as I came in. There was a tension about his lips. This, I suppose, is how a man looks when he's about to pilot home with another man the girl he loves. 'Cabin ready to receive passengers, sir.' 'Red aisle carpet laid out?' he asked me contemptuously; his eyes momentarily held an angry spark as if ignited by some inadequately repressed sympathy in mine. 'In a way, sir.' 'And you'll see she gets V.I.P. treatment?' I wasn't sure if it was an order or a jibe. 'If you wish it, sir.' 'Of course I don't wish it, Miss Harrington. You'll treat her the same aboard this aircraft as everyone else. No matter who -' he bit the next words off. I heard him tell Peter Strutt to get them loaded, and finishing Captain Creighton's sentence for him, I went back to receive the passengers. They came as one might have expected like a Royal bridal procession, the Count and Countess at the head, taking precedence over our only too cooperative guests. Leon, Seat 25 and Mrs. Parker were all carrying smart pieces of what I suspected were Ghislaine's hand baggage, and the archaeologist was half hidden under a bouquet of roses and maidenhair fern.

I had the doubtful privilege of Ghislaine sitting on my side of the cabin. But at least I had no difficulty in settling her into her seat. Willing male hands stowed her hand baggage, brought down her head cushion, showed her how to adjust her seatback for when take-off was over. The Count stood half way down the aisle watching them with a slightly superior smile on his face. When she was settled he embraced her with great affection. Then he shook hands with Seat 25 and kissed him on both cheeks. Each then clenched a fist to the other—a gesture, as Kim said later, somehow typifying the love and hate that seemed to run together with such astonishing rapidity. Look after her or else, I suppose it meant. 'And now it is also the moment of truth and goodbye for us, Emma.' The Count stood beside me at the top of the passenger steps. 'Promise you will take care of my little sister? And of course yourself,' he added as an afterthought. He took my hand and conveyed it to just short of his lips in the same formal courteous gesture he had used when we arrived. I felt that as far as he and I were concerned, some invisible wheel had come full circle, and were back to the beginning again. I watched him walk slowly down the steps without a backward glance, proudly and possessively, slowly surveying the small rocky corner of the world of which he was monarch. I am right, I thought, he is in love with his kingdom. Almost immediately two loaders swooped down and wheeled the staircase away. Our brief relationship, whatever it had been, was severed.

The tiny airport buildings and the volcanic rock village wriggled in the heat haze behind us as Tango Uncle took off over the Hat calm

of the windless sea. The peak of San Fedora with its castle on the top and all the rugged interior blurred under the swirling angel-fish tail of our twin jets. The magnificent coastline dwindled to corky brown ridges floating in a blue pond. Even Etna shrank to no more than a white-iced cone beyond the tip of our banking starboard wing. Had it not been for the Countess sitting very close to Seat 25, the last twelve days might never have happened. Yet underneath, our stay in that enchanted castle had worked its indefinable but potent magic. As I waited for the seat belt sign to snap off, I watched Mrs. Parker stretch a motherly arm to pat Seat 25's shoulder. She was the proud though nominal duenna for the Countess on this trip. She had undertaken to see her safely into the care of the elderly grandmother. Across the aisle, the Australian honeymooners were in deep and earnest conversation with the newly engaged couple. The archaeologist signalled to me. He had made a mimed enquiry as to the safety of Ghislaine's bouquet, now standing in a plastic jug of water in the galley at the back. Their champagne, with the compliments of the Captain, was chilling, the ice was already crushed. Everything was going smoothly. The hidden snag that Kim had sensed had not materialised. The seat belt sign snapped off. We reached the top of the climb and levelled on course over the little knobs of the Lipari islands, where Sicily has deported the most deadly of her Mafia leaders. I went aft to the galley to collect the first of the flight deck orange juice. 'Well, Miss Harrington,' Captain Creighton said, taking his glass and eyeing me over the rim, 'glad to be on your way home?'

Home has always been a very evocative word to me. It conjured up a picture of a very long time ago. I suppose I looked misty-eyed. 'No, I see you're not.' 'I'm always a little sorry when a trip's over.' 'Especially this?' 'I've enjoyed it, yes, sir,' I said cautiously. 'I never doubted that.' The austere lips tightened. 'Still, there will be others.' He drained his glass and set it back on my tray with a gesture of finality. I asked him when he'd like flight deck lunch, before or after cabin serving. He looked at his watch. 'After.' A quick incurious glance over me. 'Passengers comfortable?' 'Yes, sir.' 'And how are our fidanzati?' 'Blissful, sir. Miss Baverstock is serving them their champagne now.' I handed Peter Strutt his orange juice. He raised the glass. 'To your bonny grey eyes. Em, as they say in Sicily.' 'Do they?' Captain Creighton asked him coldly. 'Where?' 'Well, you know, sir, they say that sort of thing a lot,' Peter Strutt's clear boyish skin coloured. 'Fancy themselves God's gift to the weaker sex.'

'Possibly.' Captain Creighton studied the instrument panel suspiciously, and then carefully adjusted a knob. 'Glad you gave the Count the bird, Em. Had me worried for a while.' 'Mr. Strutt!' Captain Creighton exploded. 'Sorry, sir.' 'Kindly remember you're on the flight deck, not on the -' I didn't wait to hear more. The flight deck door clicked shut behind me. I stood for a moment leaning against it, gazing at the happy scene. Relaxed and friendly faces smiled up at me. In front sunlight from a clear blue sky streamed in through the porthole. Everyone was sipping pre-lunch drinks. The fidanzati were clinking tulip glasses bubbling with champagne. The smell of expensive cigarettes hung in the warmth. Outside the wings seemed to float motionless on thin air. Eight miles below, apparently motionless, lay the dark blue of the sea, a finger nail of yellow, specks of white backed by brown and green came up—the Italian Riviera. When I was half-way down the aisle, the flight deck P.A. came on. 'This is Captain Creighton. We are now about to cross the coast of Corsica at Ajaccio. We shall pass over Turin and the Plain of Lombardy. You won't see much because we've come into cloud.' The amplifier suited his deep voice. It sounded quite different from the clipped tones he had used to me on the flight deck.

I paused to chat to the passengers and point out what we could see of the sights. 'Skipper sounds in a good mood,' Kim remarked when I reached the galley. She had switched on the ovens where the main course is re-heated, and unwrapped the special Spongs for lifting hot servings. 'Everything's going well.' I screwed up the bottles, put them away and cleared the tops for lunch serving. She crossed her fingers. 'Too well.' 'There's a bit of weather over England,' I said. 'All northern Europe is clamped.' Already clouds were coming up. I lifted a pile of trays and set them, then began to unpeel the foil cover from the seafood salads. There was a thick piece of paper underneath. It was damp and sticky from the shrimps and lobster. I exclaimed in irritation. Then I freed the piece of paper. A rough scrawl on it seemed to leap up and hit me with physical force. I stood absolutely still, numb with fright. Kim glanced at me curiously. Then she snatched the paper out of my hand. We both stared at it, cringing away from it as if it were a snake. BOMB, it said in a huge and hasty scrawl. There was the round face of a clock pointing to one. And underneath, like a signature, the outline of a swallow. Somehow, with an effort, I kept my hand steady enough to read my wrist watch. It was just twelve-twenty-five.

CHAPTER TWELVE 'IMMEDIATE descent!' Quietly Captain Creighton moved the throttles back. Gently he edged the nose down. Like a dowager descending a steep staircase, Tango Uncle left twenty-nine thousand feet towards the soft fluffy tops of the low stratus far below. No one would have guessed that seconds ago, I had just told Mark Creighton that there was a bomb on board. 'France is covered in fog. Not a hope of emergency landing there.' He spoke calmly. 'We'll still hold course far Grantwick, Mr. Strutt. Descending a hundred on top. Should be around a thousand feet. If anything does happen, we'll take her right down. And Miss Harrington -' He sounded like a stage manager giving the actors and actresses their directions in a dress rehearsal. His voice was relaxed and confident. There was not the slightest tremor in the hands that carefully guided the aircraft to safer but bumpier altitudes. On his knee rested the terrifying piece of paper, the scrawled clock face set at thirteen hundred hours. '—I assume Miss Baverstock is doing a search aft?' 'Yes, sir.' Just momentarily his eyes met mine. 'What have the passengers been told?' 'Pressurisation trouble, sir.'

'That's all right for the moment.' 'May be a hoax, sir,' Peter Strutt said hopefully. 'Some daft Herbert doing it for the kicks?' 'More than likely, Mr. Strutt,' he nodded. The aircraft was fully depressurised now. We had levelled off. The altimeter was registering twelve hundred feet. Sunlight silhouetted our shadow on the wispy tops of the low cloud that blanketed the earth below. 'All the same, Mr. Strutt, search up front here. Give particular attention to the mail locker. Now what's the time?' He might have been checking in order to work out a new estimated time of arrival. 'Twelve-thirty-one, sir,' Peter Strutt said in a hollow voice, as he climbed out of his seat. There was a pallor under his sun-tan, just as I knew there was under mine. I was resting my hand on the back of the left-hand pilot's seat, for comfort as well as to steady myself. The longest ten minutes of my life had just gone by. I saw the second hand of the watch on my wrist sweep round once, twice, three times... 'Nothing up here, sir,' Peter reported. 'Thank you, Mr. Strutt.' Mark Creighton pressed the buzzer on the crew intercom, lifted up the microphone. 'Miss Baverstock?' 'Sir?' Kim's voice, dry and edgy as mine would be, was magnified by the tinniness of the telephone. 'Any joy?'

'Nothing down here, sir.' 'Where have you looked?' 'Luggage racks, under the seats, cupboards, toilets, everywhere, sir.' 'Passengers suspicious?' 'Seat 25 asked if he could join in the game.' Grimly, 'He may have to very soon.' He paused. 'When there's a bomb scare, where is the most usual place to expect trouble?' 'Baggage compartment, sir?' 'After the mail locker, exactly. Be so good as to roll back the carpet and unlatch the hatchway. Miss Harrington and I are coming aft to help you search.' He switched off the microphone. 'You've got her, Mr. Strutt?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Report to Grantwick. Tell them to stand by for an emergency landing. Estimate thirteen-thirty.' Captain Creighton unstrapped himself. As for me, I seemed to have taken root where I stood, my hand still clutching the back of his seat like a lifeline. As he turned to get out he saw it there, stiff and rigid. Very gently, he took hold of my fingers and disengaged them. The gesture was more tender and loving than all the Sicilian noblemen rolled into one. Yet ironically, for all Mark Creighton's confidence, it convinced me that the threat was real, our peril imminent.

There was someone else besides Kim in the galley at the back of the aircraft. A black-haired head turned. Dark spectacles hid the eyes. 'Captain, excuse me!' Seat 25 said urgently. 'It is apparent to me there is troubles. I have been asking Miss Baverstock how I can help?' He took off his dark glasses and regarded Mark Creighton direct. 'And now I know it is as I feared.' 'What do you mean?' Seat 25 lowered his voice. 'There is a bomb on board, yes?' Captain Creighton passed the macabre note to him. The Sicilian's face contorted. 'The Mafia! Their third and final attempt to break Orsini!' 'But this isn't from them.' Captain Creighton tapped the note. 'No, no, no! The Count has loyal friends. It is a warning, just as he had a warning before. This is from some worker, maybe at the airfield who could not express in English much. But enough.' He clenched his fists. 'Ah, but they have gone too far this time! Win or lose, live or die, the whole of San Fedora will rise against the Mafia.' Captain Creighton cut short his bitter spiel. He looked at his watch. 'Let's make it live.' 'We can't waste a second.'

'Fifteen minutes to go. Miss Baverstock and you, sir, get below. Search forward working aft. Miss Harrington and I will work aft towards you. But first, Miss Harrington, get the Australian, Mr. Nayland, he's a steady chap, to be responsible for the passengers while we're below. It's time I made an announcement.' He didn't say just in case, but then he didn't have to. Kim and I exchanged glances. Captain Creighton used the cabin staff P.A. to give his little talk. I couldn't call it an announcement, because it didn't fit into any of the briefings we're taught for such a horrifying announcement as this. He didn't even talk to them like their Captain. He spoke as a friend. He said that he was fortunate enough to have been able to get to know them all personally and therefore to be certain that none of them would panic. He told them the truth. What the note said, and our interpretation of it. He told them Peter Strutt had alerted every country we flew over, that we would be given priority landing, and every aid. Every air station would be listening out for us. He himself was certain we would make a safe landing. He asked them to stay calm, but if they could remember anything suspicious or unusual at the airfield they were to tell Mr. Nayland, who had agreed to act as temporary steward. It would be bumpy at this low altitude, but much safer. The talk, unhurried though it was, took only three minutes. As long as a phone call, I remember thinking. I thought of Ghislaine's loving calls to Seat 25. At the end of Mark Creighton's talk there was a stunned silence. Then someone began to clap and the rest of them joined in. A declaration of solidarity, I suppose it was. That thin clapping echoed our footsteps, Captain Creighton's and mine, as we descended the metal steps into the hold.

Airborne, at the best of times, the hold is a frightening place. One is aware of the pitiful fragility of flight, the thinness of the metal skin that separates everyone from the gigantic clouds and turbulent air currents outside. You can feel the punch of the wind, hear the howl, the amplified screech of the jets, feel the air rolling and breaking round you like an invisible tempestuous sea. But now it was like descending into the dark cellar of childhood nightmares, the cellar where some unidentified evil lurked. It was cold. It was lit, but shadowy. The lights were not made for searches such as this. They threw Kim's shadow and Seat 25's on the curved duralumin skin walls. They lit the impossible mountain of freight and luggage, over ninety bags, and dozens of crates as tall as coffins, and cardboard boxes of fresh cut flowers. I remember an hysterical laugh rising in my throat. It wasn't the Impossible Dream now, it was the Impossible Task. And all the time some monitoring voice at the back of my mind shrieking louder than the wind, 'Think.' But how, and of what? My mind seemed to have become like a cinematograph gone wrong, full of quick fragmented inconsequential pictures. Ghislaine's radiant face at the Fountain of Arethusa, Mark Creighton's fingers gently disentangling mine, the Count watching me hold the little swallow. The swallow that had haunted us throughout the trip. 'Think,' the voice insisted as my feet echoed now down the metal cake walk along the centre of the hold. 'Think I' it shouted in tune with the banshee jet howl as we scrambled the bags and crates aside.

From up forward came the splintering sound of Seat 25 levering back a freight lid. The smell of lemons mingled in with that of raw wood and kerosene and leather and fear. Mine. 'Ten minutes,' said Captain Creighton, almost to himself. I looked at the load to be searched. And now it was like a terrible examination, which you couldn't possibly finish in the time, where failure was certain and the penalty was death. Where there were ninety-odd baggage articles and a dozen freights, and the only clue was a swallow. Something to do with the Orsini family and therefore possibly Ghislaine. 'Think of anything unusual,' Captain Creighton had said. Suddenly my mind calmed and cleared. The only unusual, but then typically Ghislaine occurrence, had been the extra piece of new baggage brought on after the others, by a different loader. Suddenly I was rushing forward. I seized Seat 25's arm. 'How many cases did Ghislaine bring?' 'It is not important!' he said desperately, and shook my hand off. 'We're not searching the locked baggage. Hers was all locked. They couldn't have put anything in.' He was tearing desperately at a canvas-covered package. Sweat ran down his forehead. 'How many?' I shouted. 'Five,' he hissed back as if to placate me. 'Six came on. I saw them—I swear. One came on after the others!' I could hardly speak. Excitement constricted my chest. My breath

came in quick gulps. I seemed alternately to yell and whisper. 'It was new, brighter red than the rest.' I didn't know if the others heard or if they heard whether they were taking the slightest notice, or whether I was hysterical and imagining it all. All I could see for certain was right in front of me. Seat 25's watch. And the time at five minutes to one. Time swelled and shrank. That five minutes became simultaneously the longest and shortest of my life. The watch disappeared. I was standing by the luggage stowed, thank heaven, in neat piles. Ghislaine's red flamed out like a warning. 'New, you say.' A pause. 'Here, by God!' I heard Mark Creighton's voice. 'New.' And then the sharp note of his voice. 'Open up!' Footsteps. 'Quick!' Another flickering leap in time. Then Kim and I were kneeling on the metal floor pulling back the tremendous bolts of the hatch. Wet windy air blew in our faces. I could smell the sea. Curling streamers of cloud raced past in dissolution. Not all that far below I could see the grey sea, swell of waves and the curl of intermittent white caps. 'Get back! Upstairs, the three of you!' Kim and I struggled to our feet. I heard the clatter of footsteps ascending the hatch steps. For the second time in less than half an hour I was paralysed. But not with terror.

I stood there because I could not have left Mark then. I saw that too-new case go hurtling through the hatch. I saw it spin, gust back in the tremendous slipstream. Then just as it began to plummet down to the sea, just as Mark dragged forward the hatch cover, there was a flash. A dazzle of orange reflected back in our eyes from the mist. Then a tremendous roaring sound as though we were in the middle of a thunderstorm. The next moment I was thrown hard against the bulkhead, as Tango Uncle turned over on her port side and started skidding sideways towards the water.

Tango Uncle ... Tango Uncle... The anxious voice of Control—only thirty minutes later, but it sounded like three hundred years. Mark Creighton had fought his way to the front as the aircraft skidded, pitched and yawed like a wild animal out of control. The bomb, exploding in mid-air, had torn part of the tail plane and jammed the rudder. Between them, using the engines, the pilots had stabilised the aircraft and inched up higher into the sky. A curtain of foggy mist covered the green fields of Kent and Sussex as we limped towards Grantwick. On many radar screens Tango Uncle had been a small blip, anxiously watched and tenderly treated, being passed on along airways cleared of all other aircraft. The radio aerial had been affected by the blast of the bomb, and for a long time the pilots could get no message through. Even now they were having difficulty hearing us. I had come up front with some iced orange juice for the pilots. Sweat was pouring down their faces, but as they gulped it down they both grinned and put their thumbs up. I stood between them

watching the grey cotton wool of the mist bandaging the windscreen as we started descending. 'Nervous?' 'Not at all, sir.' 'Passengers all right?' 'Fine! Mr. Nay land's had them all singing.' 'Romantic songs or Waltzing Matilda?' 'Both, I think.' The altimeter was unwinding rapidly. 'As you did such a good job with that case,' Mark smiled faintly, 'would you like to stay?' He indicated the jump seat. I slid myself in before he changed his mind and fastened the straps. Peter Strutt winked. The blast had knocked me backwards, cracking my head sharply against the door. The resulting bump, coupled with the excited aftermath of shock, played weird tricks with my imagination and me. I saw tender looks that weren't the next moment there. I caught timbres in voices, or at least in one voice, that vanished in the succeeding sentence. I felt alternating elevation and despair as if my moods were like the winking lights we trailed low across the overcast sky. Not that I was worried about our safety. Like our passengers, I felt absolute confidence in those strong hands now gently correcting the control column, to bring us to a safe landfall. 'Tango Uncle ... do you want a ground-control-led approach?'

'We certainly do!' said Mark Creighton. 'Roger,' the controller said. 'Turn at Two-Five-Two degrees and stand by.' And at the next moment, as if he had been listening in at the keyhole, Eric Dudley's voice, trying to be calm and neutral, 'Tango Uncle ... this is G.C.A.... are you receiving me?' 'Yes, Mr. Dudley. And treat us like eggs,' Peter Strutt replied, and then to Mark Creighton, 'Sorry, sir.. . just keeping him on his toes.' The voice at the other end sounded more cheerful. 'Will do. Steer Two-Five Two degrees. Descend at five hundred feet a minute.' Eric Dudley was nursing us down to earth through the mist by radar. 'Are you ... is everyone ... all right?' 'She's fine, Eric.' 'Turn left, left on to Two-Five-Zero degrees.' Now the voice sounded infinitely relieved. 'Hold Two-Five-Zero.' Gently he eased us down. I could hear his voice through Mark Creighton's earphones—slow and quiet. 'Your rate of descent is good. Your course of Two-Five-Zero quite O.K.' The altimeter needle slipped past eight hundred feet, seven hundred, six hundred. Still nothing but mist outside. Still we descended trusting the calm voice at the other end, the skilled hands here.

Four hundred feet. Mark Creighton leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, peering ahead. Nothing. Just Eric Dudley's voice, 'Turn left, left at Two-FourEight. A hundred feet above the glide path. Steepen your rate of descent.' Three hundred feet. Rain poured over the windscreens. 'We can't go round again, Eric.' Peter Strutt's voice. 'We've got to get in this time.' 'Roger.' A pause. 'Steady . . . you're on the glide path.' Two hundred feet. 'Your rate of descent is good. Your heading of Two-Four-Eight degrees is quite O.K.' A hundred feet. I saw Mark Creighton's hands tighten on the throttle. Then Eric Dudley's voice, loud and sharp. 'Throttle back! You're over the runway. Land straight ahead.' The mist parted like a curtain. A piece of elephant grey runway with a white line in the middle and a fringe of sodden green on either side came towards us. The next second the main wheels touched softly. We were down.

As we wheeled off the runway on to the taxi track, fire engines and airport trucks, two dark blue police cars with blipping lights, materialised out of the mist and escorted us triumphantly towards the ramp.

Back in the cabin, Kim gave me an inquisitive glance. Mr. Nay land was still continuing his shepherding of the passengers. Addresses were being exchanged. Ghislaine was issuing blanket invitations to her wedding, while Seat 25 explained the diabolical workings of the Mafia. He indicated our escort of two police cars. 'The Mafia began because simply we in Sicily had not that—an honest police force. People banded together to make their own justice. Still in Sicily the Mafia has its own rules. Three times Orsini is victor. The Mafia respect strength. The Count now will be left alone, master of his little kingdom.' Seat 25 put his arm round Ghislaine's shoulder. 'Which is what he most loves.' Everyone seemed to be talking at once. My head ached. I hardly listened. I helped Kim assemble the bar forms. She still eyed me inquiringly. 'Since when are you allowed to join the high and mighty up front for landing?' she asked. I shrugged. In the cold light of a wet April afternoon, I knew I had imagined those tender looks, those oddly sweet smiles. 'Reward for being a good girl,' I said lightly. 'For once,' she said, and smiled. She signed her name at the bottom of the A.B.O. and added meaningfully, 'Still, antagonism and love, they tell me, often go together.'

I didn't ask her what she meant by that. I daren't. Hope is sometimes as painful as despair. 'Did you know,' I asked her, 'it was Eric who brought us down ?' 'I guessed it might be.' She tried to sound casual and failed. 'Well, he did all right, didn't he?' 'Why don't you tell him so, Kim?' 'I might at that.' Even with my head throbbing, I knew those were memorable words from Kim. Then the mobile steps came up against our fuselage. The door opened. In a bluster of damp air, the Customs officer came aboard. And the police. Afterwards I couldn't remember how long it went on for. The police, debriefing, Customs and Immigration, and then the police again. I can't remember how many times we went over the story. All I can remember is that when we'd finished most of the light had gone out of the day. A mournful rainy twilight was coming up. I was alone. Kim had accompanied me to the end of the Operations corridor, where a tall man with a thin clever face—Eric Dudley—waited to claim her. They didn't remember I was there in the first place, so they certainly didn't notice when I left. I stood for a moment on the kerb outside the Ops block, I turned up the collar of my jacket against the rain. I looked at the darkening and overcast sky. Now that Tango Uncle was safely

down, the other aircraft held in the stack for our emergency descent were coming in thick and fast. When I lowered my eyes again, the white Rover had drawn in to the kerb. Captain Creighton got out and opened the passenger door for me. He was wearing the deceiving fawn burberry again. 'Get in,' he said gently. 'Please.' I hesitated. I didn't want him to feel in any way obliged to. 'I can get the bus.' He shook his head. He put his hands on my shoulders. 'You can't.' 'Why?' 'Because I've no intention of allowing you to.' I blinked my eyes and smiled. 'And if you don't get in, I shall have to carry you in, and that wouldn't do at all.' We walked the few memorable steps to the car in silence. He shut the door carefully behind me. He picked up my case and put it in the boot. I felt suddenly that I wanted to remember every detail of what was happening, however mundane, however seemingly unimportant. Mark sat himself down in the driver's seat. 'Besides, there's something I wanted to talk to you about.' He turned the key in the ignition. I asked him what.

'Have you no idea?' He smiled for the first time, uncertainly. 'No.' 'It would be a great help if you had.' 'The Mafia bomb?' He looked disappointed. 'We've talked enough about that. I never want to hear the word again.' He let the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb. The wet road sizzled. 'Is it about the Orsinis?' 'In a way.' He frowned. He seemed for once at a loss for words. We drove slowly through the airport gates. He was too abstracted to return the airport guard's salute. 'Did you know that Leon told me you'd fallen in love with him?' I gasped. Then I said, 'Did you know Ghislaine told me you were in love with her? Hopelessly in love.' 'No!' We both laughed, a little loudly, a little unnaturally, a little nervously. We remarked on what colourful personalities, what charming, lovable but undoubted liars both Orsinis were. Then we stopped laughing. There was a heavy silence. Mark Creighton negotiated the roundabout, turned off on to the quieter country lane, frowned at the deserted road ahead. It looked as if he was never going to speak till we reached the fateful corner where we'd first met. I glanced at him sideways. I suddenly noticed his

capable hands were tense on the wheel, a small pulse beat at the side of his cheek. For the first time since I had met him, the formidable Mark Creighton looked nervous. Not in command of the situation. In need of help. 'Was that,' I asked gently, 'what you wanted to talk about? The Orsinis and their wedding?' 'No,' he said very slowly, and eased the car to a halt on the grass verge. 'I wanted to talk about us, and...' He looked at me shyly. 'And?' 'And ours.' He made it sound like a question. But I didn't have to answer it. There are some things better expressed in the touch of a hand than in words. An arm clad in a fawn burberry came round me, I felt myself hugged to a wonderfully safe-feeling chest. His lips closed over mine. I kissed him back with all the warmth I had never felt for anyone else. When he released me, he cupped my face in his hands. 'To think I once believed you loved Leon Orsini!' 'Well, I didn't.' 'The trouble with the Orsinis,' Mark laughed, 'is there's often a grain of truth in their untruths.' I smiled. From the safety of his arms, it all seemed quite amusing.

'You see, Leon used the warning about the Mafia's third attempt to get you to stay close to Ghislaine.' 'And keep her away from Seat 25.' 'Exactly.' 'Till it was proved he was immensely rich!' I sighed. 'I could never keep up with their quick-change moods.' Mark tilted my chin. 'I don't want you to.' 'But how about Ghislaine? Was there a grain of horrid truth in what she said? That from the beginning you were hopelessly in love with her?'' Mark nodded. 'A grain of truth,' he said teasingly. 'I was in love. And, from the beginning, yes.' He released one of my hands and dipped inside his pocket. 'But not with her. With you.' Shyly, he held a small tattered fragment out to me on the flat of his hand. The once sodden blossom of Japanese cherry glowed in the darkness. 'That first day?' 'That first moment.' I smiled. 'Convinced, Emma?' 'I didn't need convincing,' I said. I wanted to tell him that unlike the Orsinis, his simple work was enough. If he said he loved me then assuredly he did. But I didn't need to say that either.

Mark kissed me and I told him that way. And then he said that it was time he took me home. It had stopped raining. The clouds had melted and there were a few stars.