Read Online Strangers in Company by Jane Aiken Hodge - Free Book Online

“I came back the minute I heard. Fancy leaving you all on your own. Why! Anything might have happened to you. The driver’s over at that bar, drinking God knows what with a lot of friends. I had to make him unlock the bus to let me in. No Greek, mind you, but I managed. So here I am, the little nurse, and here’s a glass of water and a pill you’re going to take.”
    Not a small woman, she loomed surprisingly large in the corridor of the empty bus. “No!” It came out with a vehemence that surprised Marian. “Thank you very much. But all I need is to be quiet for a bit.”
    â€œNonsense.” Mrs. Hilton sat down in the seat beside her. “I know those heads; they go on forever if you don’t take something. My doctor gives me these—” She held the pill firmly in one hand and offered the water with the other.
    â€œNo, really. It’s very kind of you.” Marian searched wildly for an explanation for her deep, irritational reluctance to accept the kindly proferred medicine. “I’ve got an odd kind of allergy.” She found the perfect formula. “My doctor told me never to take anything without his permission. It brings me out in the most dreadful spots.”
    â€œOoh, how frightful. Where?” Mrs. Hilton was putting the pill back in a little bottle.
    â€œAll over. Ought you to take the glass back?” Anything to get rid of this friendly, intolerable woman.
    â€œMr. Cairnthorpe can, when he gets back. After all, he’s supposed to be in charge of us.” She poured thewater out of the window and went forward down the aisle to deposit the glass on Cairnthorpe’s seat. “That was a proper turn-up between him and your Miss Marten, wasn’t it?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOoh, didn’t you hear? She’s mad as fire because of this moving round business. In the bus, you know. Seems like common sense to me, but it won’t suit her nohow. So hard on the singles, she says. Stuck with the same person all the time. Proper narked she was when he stuck to his guns and said it was all settled. There’s more to that young man than meets the eye, if you ask me; I thought he was a dead loss yesterday, but I’m not so sure today. The guide chipped in, too, that Mike, and took your Miss Marten’s side, but Cairnthorpe wasn’t having any. ‘You’re the guide,’ he says, ‘but I’m the courier.’ And that was that. I don’t reckon Mike liked it overmuch, and I’m dead sure Miss Marten didn’t. Oh—here they come.”
    She moved up to her own seat, which was now two forward from Marian’s, owing to the clockwise movement of the passengers. At least, Marian thought, if they must resign themselves to the same people in front and behind them, there would be a constant change in those across the aisle.
    â€œWell.” Stella plumped down irritably in the aisle seat. “You didn’t miss much, Mrs. F. How’s the head?”
    â€œBetter, thanks.” Surprisingly it was true. Equally surprisingly, and much to her relief, Stella said nothing about the argument with Cairnthorpe.
    â€œCorinth next,” she said. “Are you game to walk across the canal, Mrs. F.?”

Chapter Four
    Mike was an admirable guide. By the time they reached the Corinth Canal, they knew it had been planned over and over again through the ages, by Nero amongst others. Hehad actually dug the first earth with a golden spade, before trouble in Rome called him home, but what with one thing and another the project had not been finished until the nineteenth century. They also knew a good deal about Corinth, city of wealth and courtesans, where the famous Lais charged ten thousand drachmae a night, but gave her favours free to ugly Diogenes, the philosopher who told Alexander the Great to get out of his sun. “‘It isn’t everyone who can afford to go to Corinth,’” Mike