Free Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon Page A

the shopping for the house, but never mingled with the locals.
    “I asked Mrs. Vasos if I might borrow her bike for an hour or so to go down to the beach. She agreed, and I changed into trunks, took a towel, a book, my cassette player and some tapes, and rode off. At the bottom of the road, a mile this side of the village, there was a turn leading to a path running through mounds of sand and low beach growth to the water, but since the road curved just beyond, I had no way of knowing what I’d find. I was surprised to see the Citroën parked under a carob tree. I leaned the bike on its stand a good distance from the car and went along the path to the beach. It was mostly pebbles and rocks like so many European island beaches, so I stayed back in the sand. Fedora was nowhere to be seen, and I had the place to myself. I dropped my towel and bag and stepped across the stones to the water, swam for fifteen minutes, and came out, looking back up to the terrace above. I was able to make out a dark head and a touch of white shirt, and decided it must be Kritos. Mrs. Vasos had said he was every bit as thickheaded as I suspected; his prime virtue, apparently, was that he refused to have anything to do with the villagers.
    “Another dip and I went back to my towel, spread it, got out my book, and lay in the sand. I read on my stomach, chin propped on my hands, at right angles to the shoreline. My eye kept darting from the page to the horizon, where a string of freighters was working its way out beyond the headland. Then, way down the beach to my left, coming around the point, I saw Fedora. I’d brought along my spyglass which I trained on her. She was wearing the straw hat and had a wicker carryall in one hand, with a pair of espadrilles hung on the handles. Occasionally she would bend and pick something up, inspect it, throw it away or drop it in the basket. As her face focused more clearly in the glass, I saw that it looked sullen and unhappy, and her free hand absently stroked her cheeks—the strokes seemed hard ones, almost slaps, as if she were subconsciously punishing herself. When she came closer I kept low until she disappeared beyond the rise of the hollow in which I lay. She hadn’t seen me—or so I thought until, a moment later, as I moved to straighten my towel, a shadow fell on it. Looking up, I was surprised to see what I had not expected to see, namely Fedora. She was standing at the top of the rise behind me, staring down at me impassively, a bit curious, but no more than one would be about a worm or some crawling insect. There was disdain there, and hauteur, and the visible aloofness that was so much a part of her legend, just as I’d noticed it that day at the Louvre, but somehow aggravated now into petulance.
    “‘We are pri-i-i-vate here,’ she stated before I could utter a greeting. ‘No trespassing permitted.’
    “I said I was not a trespasser, but the lessee of the gatekeeper’s cottage.
    “‘You play your music too loud,’ she snapped out next.
    “‘So do you,’ I replied, but with a smile. Her heavy-lidded eyes pondered me ungenially for a moment, and she gave a little shrug, as if to say so what. Her boredom showed in her whole expression; her mouth sagged open, her large eyes seemed to float in an unfocused state, as if they lacked the impulse to actually see what they were looking at. She wore a lot more make-up than I’d seen on her before, and her hair was dyed, lighter than I remembered, and carelessly styled. Older, yes, lined, yes, unhealthy, yes. Still, for a woman of her years she looked remarkable.
    “I’d scrambled up and given my name without mentioning our former meeting, but since the name appeared to mean nothing to her I added that I was a friend of Viola Ueberroth’s. She made a nasty face. ‘She’s a silly thing, isn’t she?’ Well, I thought, Vi’s loyalty certainly had never rubbed off on her friend. ‘How do you know her?’ she asked idly. I briefly explained