Pagan Adversary. Sara Craven

felt pleasantly tired as she walked back towards the house late on Saturday evening. She had done all the things she had promised herself to do, and had managed to fill her day too full for thought, even treating herself to the pure luxury of afternoon tea at a hotel.

      When Becca had been carrying Nicky, she had once laughingly remarked that when you were pregnant, every second person you met seemed to be in the same condition. Paradoxically, Harriet thought, when you were alone, everyone else seemed to be in couples. But then London had always been a bad place in which to be solitary.

      But she didn’t have to be alone, she told herself. If and when Nicky went to Greece, she would find a flat to share with girls of her own age. There were plenty advertised.

      She opened the front door and walked into the hall, to be pounced on by one of the downstairs tenants, looking severe. ‘Three times!’ she announced with a kind of annoyed triumph. ‘That’s how many times the phone has rung for you in the past hour and a half, Miss Masters, and you not here!’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet in bewilderment. ‘Was there a message?’

      Mrs Robertson produced a slip of paper. ‘You’re to ring this number and ask for this extension. And now if I might get back to my television programme,’ she added aggressively as if she suspected Harriet of being in league with the unknown caller to keep her from the last few minutes of ‘Dynasty’.

      Harriet dialled, and was answered from the switchboard of a famous London hotel. Faintly she gave the extension number, thinking frantically, ‘Nicky—my God, something’s happened to Nicky!’

      Alex Marcos answered so promptly that he might have been waiting by the phone. Her heart gave the oddest bound when she heard his voice, and then she was aware of something else—background noises which were quite unmistakably Nicky screaming with temper.

      She asked in swift alarm, ‘Is he ill?’

      ‘His health is perfect,’ Alex Marcos said grimly. ‘I wish I could say the same for his disposition. He seems to have been thoroughly spoilt. Last night, Yannina managed to get him to sleep with difficulty. This evening it has been quite impossible. Everything she has tried with him has failed. He merely screams all the louder and cries for you.’

      ‘He’s not at all spoilt,’ Harriet said indignantly. ‘I really don’t know what else you expected. He’s far too young to take such a complete change in his environment in his stride. He’s in a strange room with strange faces round him, and he’s frightened.’

      ‘You have missed your vocation, Miss Masters. You should clearly have been a child psychologist,’ he drawled. ‘Did it occur to you to warn Yannina that he might react in this way?’

      Harriet sighed. ‘I honestly didn’t know. He—he went with her willingly enough. And I tried to explain that it was a little holiday….’

      He said tightly, ‘Very well, Miss Masters, you are absolved. He is, as you say, a very young child, and he is deeply distressed. If I send my car for you, will you come to him?’

      Harriet swallowed. ‘Of course.’

      She heard his phone go down, and replaced her own receiver.

      She went upstairs to the flat and stood looking round rather helplessly, wondering what she should do. She didn’t know whether or not she should pack a bag with some overnight essentials. Nothing had been said about her staying the night with Nicky, and perhaps she would just be expected to get him calm and off to sleep before she was chauffeured back here again.

      In the end, she compromised by tucking some clean undies and her toothbrush into the bottom of her biggest shoulder bag.

      The car was at the door almost before it seemed possible. She would have preferred to sit in the front with the driver, but she was gravely ushered into the back, and even offered a rug to put round her, which she declined.

      It had all happened so fast that she hadn’t time to be nervous or consider the implications of what she was doing, or not until now. Sitting alone in the car’s unaccustomed luxury, she tried to compose her thoughts and emotions, reminding herself over and over again that she was only seeing Alex Marcos again because Nicky needed her, and that her concern must be for him.

      She even began to wonder whether Alex might be having second thoughts about taking Nicky to Greece, with the prospect of nightly scenes to contend with.

      The suite Alex occupied was on the second floor of the hotel, and as soon as Harriet left the lift, she could hear Nicky roaring.

      The chauffeur led her along the corridor and knocked deferentially. Alex opened the door himself. He was casually dressed in close-fitting dark slacks and a loose sweatshirt, and in spite of his ill-temper, he looked more attractive than ever, Harriet thought, her stomach tying itself in knots.

      She said insanely, ‘We should have called him Macbeth!’

      He stared at her. ‘What in the name of God are you talking about?’

      ‘It’s the play,’ she said quickly. ‘By Shakespeare. Macbeth murdered sleep in it, when he murdered Duncan.’

      His mouth twisted. ‘I imagine my unfortunate neighbours in the adjoining suites may well be contemplating the same solution. There have already been discreet enquiries from the management, you understand.’ He shook her head. ‘I never knew a child’s lungs could have such power!’

      There was a cot in Nicky’s room and he was standing up in it, gripping the bars with small desperate fists, his face swollen and blubbered with weeping. Yannina sat on a chair facing him, her motherly face contorted with a kind of despair as she talked to him in a swift monotone. A congealing cup of milk on a side table, and various untouched fruit drinks, bore mute witness to her attempts to find some form of pacification. As she entered the room, Harriet’s foot turned against something soft and she looked down to see Nicky’s teddy bear. She bent and retrieved it. Hurling his beloved toy across the room was the ultimate in despairing gestures as far as Nicky was concerned.

      He was quiet as Harriet approached the cot, his whole being indrawn, intent on producing the next explosion of anguish at the maximum volume. And then he saw her. He screamed again, but on a different note, and his arms reached for her imperatively.

      As she lifted him, he clutched at her fiercely, clinging like a damp limpet.

      ‘Thespinis Masters, I am sorry, so sorry.’ Yannina was almost weeping herself. ‘He wanted nothing and no one only you.’

      Harriet gave her a reassuring smile and began walking up and down the room with Nicky, holding him tightly and crooning wordlessly to him, as Becca had done when he was teething. Slowly the convulsive sobs tearing at his body began to weaken until he was quiet, except for the occasional hiccup. Gradually one hand relinquished its painful hold on her neck, and she knew instinctively that his thumb had gone to his mouth. His weight had altered too. He seemed heavier because he had relaxed, and Harriet knew that he was probably more than half asleep.

      Confirming this, Yannina whispered ‘His eyes are closing. Thespinis, may God be praised! Ah, the poor little one!’ She moved to the cot and began straightening and smoothing the sheets and blankets and shaking up the single pillow.

      Harriet turned and began another length of the room, slowing her pace deliberately. As she did so, she saw Alex standing in the doorway watching her, his brows drawn together in a thunderous frown. She bit her lip. Clearly her methods with Nicky did not have his approval, so why then had he sent for her? She ventured another glance at the doorway and saw that he had gone.

      When she was sure that Nicky had slipped over the edge of drowsiness into actual slumber, she carried him to the cot and placed him gently in it, smoothing the covers with care over his small body His face was still blotched with tears, she saw with a pang. She straightened with a sigh, and went to the door where Yannina was waiting for her, looking round first to make sure that Nicky hadn’t stirred.

      She had been too eager to get to his side to take much notice of