Skios: A Novel (6 page)

“Supper in the taverna? Or shall I ask the kitchens to send something up?”

He shook his head and stood looking at her. She continued looking round the room.

“Well,” she said. “I’ll leave you to settle in.”

Still she lingered, though.

“You can just shut yourself away here and work if you want to … Of course, we hope you’ll mingle … Or swim, or just sit somewhere … We like to think that the keynote here is civilization. Civilized conversation in civilized surroundings … I think you’ll find most of the people here pretty receptive. Though not, of course, specialists…”

She adjusted a cushion on the sofa.

“You’re having lunch with Mrs. Fred Toppler tomorrow, as you know. She likes to talk. I should just let her…”

She readjusted the cushion.

“And then of course there’s your lecture. In the morning I’ll show you where you’ll be speaking. We can discuss all your requirements then. Just phone me if there’s anything you need in the meanwhile. I’ve put my card on the desk. Or you can find me very easily. I’m in Democritus. Straight along the path and first on the left. The veranda on the right. There’s champagne in the fridge, by the way.”

And she had gone. She had left clear enough directions, though. Champagne. Then straight along the path, first left, and …

She had come back.

“Not the veranda on the left! That’s Mrs. Toppler’s part of the house!”

This time she really had gone. Oliver looked at himself in the mirror. The man in the mirror laughed. “So,” he said to Oliver, “you’re at a foundation. And you’re giving a lecture. I wonder what it’s about.”

“Don’t worry,” said Oliver to the man in the mirror, “we’ll both find out when I give it. If by any chance we ever get that far.”

First things first, though, since the lecture was tomorrow and tonight was tonight, and might never become tomorrow. Have a bath, put on a clean shirt, take the champagne out of the refrigerator, and then—Democritus. The veranda on the right.

*   *   *

The swaying of the taxi on the bends in the dark and the thumping over the potholes suddenly ceased. After a moment the unaccustomed stillness and quietness penetrated Dr. Wilfred’s consciousness and he opened his eyes. He had no idea where he was. He had a feeling it was Malaysia, or Costa Rica. There was nothing to be seen but the narrow tunnel of bushes and unmade-up road created by the headlights, and the back of a head silhouetted against it.

“Thirty-two euros,” said the head.

Oh, yes. The taxi. No bag.
Phoksoliva
. Skios … Dr. Wilfred opened the car door and struggled stiffly out into the blackness. He felt automatically for his wallet and then stopped. Thirty-two euros? But all expenses were paid! All expenses were always paid! Before he could protest, though, he realized that his getting out of the taxi had changed everything. The night had been transfigured. He turned round. A fairy palace of light had come magically into being. Olive trees with delicate silver undersides. Wavering reflections on ancient stone walls. A flickering of bats. At the same moment, now he no longer needed it, the name of the establishment that all this was part of lit up inside his head: the Fred Toppler Foundation. Of course. For a moment he just stood and gazed. The foundation’s reputation for its treatment of visiting speakers was more than justified; never in all his travels had he ever come across guest quarters quite like these. His own swing-seat … and parallel bars … and weather station … Around the side of the house he could just see what appeared to be his own pool … It all looked like a tastefully converted and very expensive holiday let.

He gave Spiros forty euros and waved the change aside. As the occupier of premises like these he could scarcely do less.

“Have a good evening,” said Spiros.

“Even without my bag,” said Dr. Wilfred genially.

“No worries. They find it. I bring it.”

Bag, though!
Flight
bag! Still in the taxi…! No, here, hung round his neck before he went to sleep just in case he did exactly what he for a moment thought he had done.

The luxury of the accommodation made up even for the appearance of the man they had sent to meet him, not to mention all the “No problems” and “No worries.” He rewarded him, as he turned to go, by repeating the man’s own demotic salutation. “Yes, and … what was it…?
Phoksoliva
!”

The front door key was in the lock. As he pushed the door open the interior of the house sprang softly into being.

No, never before had he been in guest quarters like these! Dark traditional furniture, peasant pots, and earthenware plates. Everywhere there were little civilizing touches that made it seem more like a family home. Dolls, amateur watercolors, scattered books and magazines. The almost inaudible reassurance of the air-conditioning. On the counter in the spacious kitchen a handwritten note: “Help yourself to anything you can find. Pool towels etc. in the changing rooms outside.”

The foundation had more than made up for the shabbiness of its welcome at the airport. He felt as if he had wandered into the enchanted castle in a fairy story. The bed was hung about with swagged white mosquito netting, like the curtains around a sleeping princess. Many of the cupboards and presses were locked. Perhaps the bodies of earlier lecturers who had been lured here were hidden inside them.

Now what, though? He should probably stroll along to wherever it was that the guests of the foundation gathered and introduce himself. But when he got to the edge of the silver world at the end of the garden path the blackness beyond looked impenetrable, and the soft, welcoming nest behind him even more enticing. He went back and ran a bath, with purple crystals from an old-fashioned pharmacist’s jar. He found a bottle of local white wine in the refrigerator and a corkscrew waiting with glasses on the worktop. He undressed and folded his clothes carefully—he was going to have to put them on again in the morning—on top of the flight bag beside the bed … Lecture! Yes.

He lay back in the foam and sipped the wine. It was good. The day had gone some considerable way towards redeeming itself.

He dried his hands on one of the soft towels scattered about the marble counters around the bath, and phoned Vicki. She was back on duty again.

“Me … Here, yes. Suitcase, however, not … I know, I know. Not the airline this time, though—some idiot woman at the carousel … All my papers, yes … Not the lecture, no. I’ve got the lecture … You’re not in the office now…? No, of course not, but you might e-mail me all the bumf in the morning. All I need now is a phone number. Make contact, set their minds at rest … Not too fast—I’m putting it on the phone … 00 30—yes, go on … Wonderful … Bless you … However should we live without these magical little things?”

He pressed the new number.

“Fred Toppler Foundation,” said the voice at the other end. “How my dreck your call?”

“I just thought I should let you know I’d arrived safely. Your lecturer. Dr. Wilfred.”

“Oh, Dr. Wilfred, yes, good, thank you! You had a good flight, you found your room, is everything OK, nothing you want, sandwiches, whatever?”

“Fine,” said Dr. Wilfred. “No, nothing I want. Except my suitcase, which some idiot at the airport seems to have taken.”

“Not a problem. Leave it to me. I fix it in the morning.”

“Anyway, it’s a very nice accommodation. Thank you. I thought I’d have an early night. Say hello to everyone in the morning.”

“OK. Great. Pour yourself a bath. Run a glass of wine.”

“I already have, thank you.”

“And in the morning, OK, you come out your door, you walk down the path in front of you towards the sea, there is breakfast by the water, everyone is so pleased to see you. Sleep well.”

“I will.
Phoksoliva.
”

“How was this?”

“
Phoksoliva.
No?”

“Phoks…?”

“…
oliva.
Yes?”

“Oh … OK …
Phoksoliva
? You too.”

*   *   *

Oliver rose like a god, refreshed from the last of the bubbles in the bath, and wrapped himself in the waiting bathrobe. Straight, then left—veranda on the right. He unzipped his bag to find a clean shirt.

Except that it wouldn’t unzip. Something was jamming it. A padlock.

A
padlock
? He’d never padlocked a bag in his life!

This
was
his bag, wasn’t it? Or, to be pedantic, Annuka Vos’s bag? He lifted the cover of the red leather address tag. “Dr. Norman Wilfred.”

Good God! He had Dr. Norman Wilfred’s suitcase! He had taken over not only his identity but the physical fabric of his life! Was now possessed of everything, probably, that Dr. Norman Wilfred owned on the island of Skios! Had found it put into his hands, without any conscious effort on his part, by fate! The heavens had noted his initiative, and smiled upon it!

Perhaps he really
was
now Dr. Norman Wilfred! Had actually
become
him!

The flight tag told the same story. “Name,” it said: “Dr. Norman Wilfred. Destination: Fred Toppler Foundation, Skios.” And when he looked in the mirror this time it agreed. The man looking back at him was, yes, Dr. Norman Wilfred.

All he needed was the key to his own suitcase. Which was where? And for the first time the obvious thought came to him—one he should have thought before, but somehow, in the onrush of events, hadn’t: that somewhere in the world there must be another Dr. Norman Wilfred. A Dr. Norman Wilfred with none of Dr. Norman Wilfred’s worldly possessions, it was true, except the key to the padlock that secured them. A Dr. Norman Wilfred sustained by the dangerous belief that he and no other was Dr. Norman Wilfred, and that his rightful place in the world was precisely here, in this very room.

Where was he at the moment, this former Dr. Norman Wilfred, whom the gods had so decisively rejected?

On the island, presumably, arrived on the same plane as the new and improved edition of himself. Not more than a dozen or so miles away, since the island seemed to be only a dozen or so miles long. Still at the airport, perhaps, waiting patiently for someone to collect him. Or, more likely by now, impatiently. Phoning furiously to ask where his car was. Being told that some confusion must have occurred. Finding himself a taxi.
In
a taxi already. On his way. Raging. Almost in sight of the foundation …

At any moment now the usual embarrassments would be beginning. “I was somehow confused” the new Dr. Norman Wilfred, already fading back into Oliver Fox, would be saying. “Can’t apologize enough. A moment of inexplicable aberration … Nothing like this has ever happened to me before…”

So, no time to waste. Straight along the path at once, left, veranda on the right, before the superseded incumbent arrived. No time to put on his clean shirt—and no clean shirt to put on, anyway. Go just as he was, in his snow-white bathrobe.

He was out of the door so fast that he almost forgot to take his room key—
did
forget the champagne!—ran back to get it—and was out of the door again in a flash. Heard his phone ringing—realized he’d left it in the pocket of his dirty shirt—couldn’t go back for it, because the door was already closing behind him, and the key was where he had put it down in the kitchen while he’d got the champagne out of the refrigerator.

Bridges burnt, then. No retreat.

11

Georgie Evers came down the steps of the plane into the hot Mediterranean night, her phone to her ear, waiting for Oliver to answer.

“Hi!” he said at last.

“Hi!” she said. “It’s me! I suddenly saw there was a flight to Thessaloniki! I thought, Thessaloniki? My God, isn’t that in
Greece
? So I ran all the way to the ticket desk, I ran all the way to the gate! And at Thessaloniki—I don’t believe this!—there’s a flight just boarding…”

She stopped, because she had become aware that Oliver was talking at the same time. No, he’d stopped as well.

“So here I am! I’m in Skios! I’m just getting off the plane…! Oliver? Are you there?”

Because now there was a disconcerting lack of any further response from Oliver. She pressed End and dialed again.

“Hi!” said Oliver.

“Hi!” she said. “We got cut off.”

But he was still speaking.

“
Sounds
like me,” he was saying. “But it’s not me. It’s just my phone, pretending. Tell it your troubles, though, and it’ll listen patiently and pass them on to me as soon as I remember to press the button.”

Of course. The announcement was only too familiar. But this time it really was a bit of a bugger. She had scarcely expected him to be waiting for her at the airport, since he hadn’t known she was coming. But at least he might have been waiting at the end of the phone. Because otherwise she had no idea where she was supposed to be going. He’d borrowed a villa from someone. But what villa? Where? What was the name of the people he’d borrowed it from?

She tried once more to phone him as she waited for her bag, and again after it had arrived, but there was still only the answering machine. She felt suddenly lost and lonely. Most of her fellow passengers from Thessaloniki were Greek, and when she emerged from the baggage hall even the signs that the waiting chauffeurs and taxi drivers were holding up were in an unwelcomingly incomprehensible script. Among them, though, was one that had an English translation with it: SKIOS TAXI. It was being held up by a man with a bald head and a large belly. In the middle of his bald head was a black wart like a fly.

“Do you speak English?” she asked him.

“
Eustrabolgi
?”

“Oh, hello, yes, sorry,
eustrabolgi,
only I wonder if you could help me…”

“I wait Strabolgi,” he said. He turned round and said something to a man sitting on the bench behind him, who heaved himself to his feet and ambled slowly over. He had a large belly, a bald head, and a black wart like a fly on the end of his nose. He held out his hand.

“Spiros,” he said. “Stavros he don’t speak English good. Where you like to go?”