Aphrodite’s Smile

‘It is my fault,’ she said heavily.

‘It isn’t anybody’s fault.’ I was surprised that she was blaming herself. ‘It was an accident.’

Irene shook her head. ‘He was supposed to be resting. I should not have let him leave the house.’

‘But didn’t you say he left before you were awake?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘Then there was nothing you could do. You couldn’t watch him every minute of the day. Besides,’ I added, voicing a feeling that had been forming since I had arrived, ‘if anyone should feel guilty it’s me. I should have come earlier.’

‘You should not feel badly. You have a busy life in London. Your father knew that.’

Both of us knew that wasn’t the reason I’d delayed my trip, but I was grateful for the gesture. ‘Then nobody’s to blame. You always stood by him, Irene. He was bloody lucky to have you.’

I thought back to the times I’d spoken to him on the phone over the last couple of years as he’d begun to sound increasingly defeated, and especially the last six months, when he was often half drunk. I was subjected to long self-pitying monologues during which he bemoaned a wasted life. I thought Irene must have had to put up with a hell of a lot and I felt a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t offered her any support. Before Dad’s heart attack I hadn’t even spoken to her for months. I couldn’t remember exactly when the last time had been. It was clear now just how much strain she had been under. She was pale, her eyes were dull and she looked a little thin.

‘You do not understand, Robert,’ she insisted sadly. ‘Your father was not so lucky as you think. There is something I must tell you. Before his heart attack, Johnny and I had not been living together.’

I gaped at her in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Last year, I left Johnny. You see, I am not such a good person after all.’

‘You left him? But I’ve always thought of the two of you as being so happy together.’ Even as I spoke I realised that I hadn’t actually seen them for a long time. A lot can change in eight years. I thought about Alicia. Things could change in the blink of an eye, which is about how long it took for me to see her flush her pill down the sink.

‘I should have told you when it happened,’ Irene said. ‘But of course I did not because I was afraid of what you would think of me. I have always been a little bit frightened that you would see me as the wicked stepmother. Like in the fairy-tales.’

‘I never thought about you that way.’

‘Is that true, Robert? I always wondered. After all you did not know me when you first came here. And you were so angry even though you were not much more than a little boy. How old were you?’

‘Thirteen. But if I was angry it wasn’t because of you.’

‘No. Of course I realised that it was your father who made you feel that way. It was very sad. But I thought perhaps you would not like me because you would think I had taken him away from you and so some of your anger was for me too.’

‘Maybe I wanted to feel that way to begin with. I hadn’t heard anything from him in two years and then suddenly he writes to announce he’s getting married again. I suppose part of me wanted to lay the blame on you. But you weren’t anything like I imagined. I’ve always liked you Irene. If I’d known about you and Dad I would have phoned to make sure you were OK.’

She smiled sadly, but was grateful I think for the assurance.

‘He never mentioned it you know,’ I said.

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘In September, but things had been difficult for a long time. Your father had become depressed. He always hoped that one day he would achieve something important with his work. It was his dream. But with every year that went by I think he believed in his dream a little less. Do you remember the digs he used to work on every summer?’

‘Yes, of course.’ I recalled the trenches and excavated hollows where he would happily spend his days on his knees in the dirt carefully revealing some long-buried crumbling wall.

‘There is a temple that Homer mentions in The Odyssey. It has been lost since ancient times. It was dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite.’

He had often talked about this temple where the fabled hero Odysseus had worshipped. In archaeological terms it was the equivalent of the Holy Grail. ‘He thought if he could find it, it would make him famous,’ I said bitterly.

‘It was not fame he wanted, Robert. He simply wanted to feel that his work meant something. But in the end after so many years when he did not find the temple he began to give up hope. He thought that he was a failure. He began to drink too much. At first I was not so worried because I thought it would pass. Often at the end of each summer he used to say that he would not make another excavation, then always after a few months he would change his mind. But last year for the first time since he came to Ithaca Johnny did not dig. Instead he was spending all of his time in the taverna.’

She broke off for a moment, her gaze drifting away from me across the bay. When she turned back to me she said, ‘Have you ever been in love, Robert?’

‘I suppose I have,’ I answered, surprised by the sudden change in direction.

‘It is a strange thing, don’t you think? When we love somebody we forgive them their weaknesses and their failings because we know we are not perfect ourselves. We can manage to overcome all kinds of troubles. Do they not say that to be with another person we must always compromise, and we must expect that there will be difficult times as well as good? And yet we need to know that the person we love cares for us equally. Without that the sacrifice is too great. It is all give, with no reward for our efforts.’

I had some idea of what Irene was talking about. I had loved Alicia, though once I knew that she was trying to get pregnant I no longer believed that she loved me. How could she if she had made such a unilateral decision? I couldn’t help wondering if her intent hadn’t been to make sure that I would marry her. The instant I saw her that night in the bathroom I felt betrayed and afterwards I knew I could never trust her.

In Irene’s case it wasn’t a betrayal that had driven her away, but my father’s repeated insistence that she should leave him. She told me that he began telling her that he was too old for her. When she tried to talk him out of his depression he said she ought to be with a younger man. I thought of his drunken phone calls and I could imagine how it must have been.

‘At first I told him that he was being foolish,’ she said, ‘but it was difficult. It is hard for me to explain. I loved Johnny, ever since we met I felt this way. But he changed and for so long I heard these same things. I did not feel that he loved me any more. How could he when he was always telling me to leave him? I did not know what to do.’

She broke off, her voice choked with emotion. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ I said. ‘I understand what you’re saying.’

She shook her head. ‘No. There is more that I must tell you. There was a man, an old friend. I needed somebody to talk to and he was there to listen.’

I understood then why she felt guilty to the point of blaming herself for my father’s death. I listened quietly while she explained that when she realised that her friendship with this man was becoming something more than that, she decided that she couldn’t continue to live with my father.

‘I needed to be alone for a little while,’ she said, ‘so I rented a small house in the town and last September I moved in there. Of course I still saw Johnny, but it was difficult.’

‘He knew about the other man?’

‘Yes. He tried to pretend that he was happy for me, but I knew that it was not true. I felt very bad because I knew that I had hurt him.’

‘He hurt himself,’ I pointed out. ‘By the sound of it he practically drove you out.’

‘Perhaps. But only because he wanted me to be happy. He explained this when I went to him after his heart attack. He was different then. More like the old Johnny. I told him that when he came out of hospital I wanted to go home to take care of him.’

‘What about the other man?’ I wondered. ‘How did he feel about that?’

‘He understood. You see when I was afraid that your father would die I realised how much I loved him.’

‘Then you did everything you could, Irene. You went home and you took care of him. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.’

I could see that my reassurances weren’t enough. There was something desperate in her eyes, some turmoil of uncertainty and I guessed at once that there was something else that she hadn’t told me.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Why are you punishing yourself like this?’

‘Because I could have stopped Johnny that morning,’ she said finally. ‘If I had taken him seriously, perhaps he would not have gone to the marina without telling me.’

‘I don’t understand. If you had taken what seriously?’

‘When he told me that somebody had tried to kill him,’ she answered.