“I’m not sure I even know.”
“Then it was despicable for them to fire you.”
“Is there something you’re not telling your father?” Phaine insisted.
“You mean the reason?” Jimmie burst out.
“Do you want me to say it, Naomi?” Phaine said.
“I can say it. Though there’s not much to say. They claimed I manipulated evidence to get a defendant off.”
She gave up and laid out the details of the crisis that had cost her her job. She had volunteered to defend a Turkish restaurant owner in Dalston who had beaten two men with the butt of a shotgun during an attempted robbery. The case against the restaurant owner had obviously been brought by the two men and the attacks—or self-defense—had been witnessed by two other people who had been in the street at the time. It was politically sensitive, her partners had told her, and they had been inclined to refuse the case. She had made an argument for defending the man and used the two witnesses to great effect. The Turk was acquitted, but one of the men he had beaten suffered permanent brain damage. A scandal had erupted. Attention turned to the two witnesses. A journalist had discovered that they were friends of the defendant and had then gone on to allege that she had known this beforehand. To her father she insisted that she hadn’t, but in reality she had known. The partners were given irrefutable proof of this. In the end, it had been an instinctual call on her part: she wanted to defend a Muslim against his tormentors. There was nothing ignoble in that. Just because the three men were friends didn’t make the testimony of the two who had been in the street false. It was, she said, a setup and a matter of scapegoating.
“Well,” Jimmie said, keeping his voice flat and trying to control his indignation, “misunderstandings and mistakes at law firms happen all the time, if we’re to be honest. You made a mistake in good faith. It’s a matter for the public prosecutors, or whatever they’re called. I simply can’t understand why your own firm would turn on you like that, or take such accusations seriously. Were they afraid of another investigation?”
“They decided I’d broken their rules—”
“Had you?”
She was evasive: “In their interpretation.”
“But that’s extraordinary. We can’t have that!”
He threw down his napkin dramatically and stared at his wife as if she would take up the challenge of his exclamation. But she sat back, bit her lower lip, and shook her head.
“Calm down, Jimmie. Have a drink and calm down. I’m glad you told us the truth finally, Naomi. I knew it was more serious than you were letting on.”
But from then on Naomi said nothing, reaching for her wineglass. Her father eventually relaxed a little and wiped the unctuous sweat from his forehead—the evening was warm. Then he went back to his fish and potatoes and they let the subject go for a while.
Jimmie was thinking. What was she planning to do with herself now that she had nothing to go back to? He hadn’t realized that it was this bad. How could she have got herself in such a stupid position? She had a knack for doing that, he had to admit to himself. It was, he feared, more than a slipup or a personality clash. She had done something she didn’t want to fully own up to. It was the damnedest thing, the way she kept secrets about herself. He was sure this talent for secrecy had found its way into her way of handling controversial cases. This time she hadn’t got away with it and she had paid the price. It was a bad deal for the Codrington name.
When they were finished, Carissa came in again with three coconut puddings she had made from an Asian cookbook that Phaine had given her. The lamps shook in gusts of wind, they could hear awnings and lines around other houses rattle and snap, and somewhere on the trail to the top of the mountain a flashlight suddenly shot a beam of light into the emptiness.
“Did you see that?” Jimmie said to his wife. “Are they hunting foxes up there?”
He reached for his cigar box again. He called over the maid and asked her to put some Theodorakis on the music system. There was a song called “The One Unforgivable Sin” that he wanted to hear before bed. It would put him in a better mood. Then, like the sudden remembrance of a dentist’s appointment, he recalled that the following morning they had to go on a cruise with the Americans. He cursed silently. But then he had an inspiration.
“Nobbins, is it entirely necessary that Phaine and I go around the island with you tomorrow? You can take the boat and the staff—show your friends a good time. We don’t have to be there. You’ve done it a hundred times, so I’m not worried. Just don’t end up in Turkey.”
Naomi suppressed a wild expression of relief and merely nodded. But she and Phaine exchanged bitter glances.
“Are you sure?” the latter said to her husband.
Naomi accepted a shot of ouzo as a nightcap. The stars had been out for some time, but she had not yet noticed them. Their cold glamour provided a link to forgotten centuries. Her eye, instead, was drawn up to the silhouette of the mountain from where the flashlight had come. For a moment something moved against the darkness of the slopes, a figure scrambling up toward the little church at the summit like a giant cockroach. She downed the ouzo and forced back the tears that threatened the surfaces of her eyes, and held herself steady until it was time for a second shot. There was a brief protest from her stepmother, but father and daughter took the second one and there was a moment of healing between them. Over the years she had discovered from experience that the best moments between them were when they drank ouzo together. That double-edged and flavorless drink was their dark truce, their mutual anonymity.
FOUR
At the port the Haldane sister and brother arrived with only their father and met Naomi at the Pirate Cove for a coffee before they embarked. Amy had preferred to stay at home and do some painting and cooking, and even Jeffrey looked as if he had been prevailed upon to come by his children. He put a brave face on it, however, and drank cup after cup of sketos.
The three-member crew of the Black Orchid were also there and they all sat together. The three Greeks were suddenly interested in the explosive beauty of the American girl, and Jeffrey bristled with protective annoyance as the caffeine went to his head. Naomi was observant. The Haldane males were wearing similar khaki shorts and black-top sneakers, the same University of Pittsburgh sweatshirts and the same baseball caps. A family whose men had a uniform. It was fantastical—she had seen such things in movies—and it made them, in some way, easier to deal with. The boy was in a good mood but said nothing. He obviously didn’t need to. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do on that day.