by Alison Fell
Ignoring him, Wiltraud addressed herself to Kyriaki. ‘I wish to have a lawyer,’ she said, with a defiant tilt of the head. He didn’t have to look at Kyriaki to know how suprised she was that Wiltraud hadn’t asked before.
With a shrug of resignation Kyriaki began to reel off the formula. He dived in before Ridotti could translate. ‘Someone helped you, didn’t they? Who are you protecting, Wiltraud?’
Ridotti gave him a reproachful look, and he signalled his apology. ‘You may retain your own counsel,’ she intoned, ‘otherwise we will appoint a duty solicitor.’
Wiltraud rifled through her wallet and produced a business card, which she passed across the table to Kyriaki.
They already had enough to charge her, if not with murder, then on a string of counts ranging from concealment of evidence to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.What frustrated him beyond measure was the thought of all the questions that would never be answered, now she had the protective cover of a solicitor.
His mind seethed with possible scenarios, and a few impossible ones to boot. All young people believed they were immortal, and he had personal experience of the methods they used to cull themselves – base-jumping, sky-diving, hard drugs, alcohol. Over the years he’d come to see solid sense in the ways so-called savage peoples formalised their rituals of manhood; without such regulation, young men seemed compelled to invent their own, ever more lethal, rites of passage. What he was beginning to suspect was that Kruja’s steamy fantasies could no longer be written off as ravings. If he’d tried to turn them into action – with or without the aid of a third party – well, he wouldn’t be the first, would he? Even so, in Yiannis’s personal catalogue of entirely avoidable accidents, this had to be one of the saddest, and the most bizarre.
55
Ingrid takes the beach route back from the Shoestring, sandals in hand, paddling a little unsteadily through the shallows. She’d drunk quite a lot with her meal, wanting to brazen it out, float on the hot sweet breath of the evening. Hutchinson was open, as always, on the table, but only for camouflage: without her glasses she couldn’t read a word. It had been less of an ordeal than she’d expected. By the time she arrived the foreign tourists were paying their bills and heading home to bed, while the Greeks – self-contained units whose infants dozed in buggies with frilled sunshades – gave her casual glances which never quite turned into stares. The waiter, obviously recognising her, treated her with such respect that she assumed he’d seen her with Yiannis, and was minding his ps and qs.
She weaves her way through the scattered sunbeds, climbs the steps from the beach, and pads up the street, stopping to rinse the sand off her feet at the outdoor shower in the alleyway. As she puts her key in the lock she sees the note peeping out under the door
The rush of gratitude weakens her knees, the surprise like a secret she’s been keeping from herself. Yiannis can’t call her, this she knows. But of his own free will he has come looking for her. Pushing the door open, she picks up the note and searches impatiently for her reading glasses.
Dear Miss Laurie, she reads, and for a split second the formality taps a chilly reservoir of disappointment.
Elsa Henderson phoned, your to ring her, its urgent. Regards, Lynda.
She sits down at the kitchen table to get her breath: Elsa is the least alarmist person in the world – she’d only call if things were critical. Heart hammering, she grabs her bag and dashes out of the apartment.
The call-box is on the corner where Main Street joins the tarmac road which leads to the Totem Bar and the new holiday apartments. There’s a rusty bus-halt beside it where nothing ever stops. She punches the numbers in by the light of the street lamp and gets straight through
‘Elsa?’
‘Speaking.’ The voice is wary, but determined. ‘Ah, it’s you, pet. I was in two minds about calling.’ The line is so clear that Elsa might be in the bus shelter two feet from the kiosk. What sounds like BBC Question Time is playing in the background.
‘It’s Mother?’
‘I’m afraid so. Not the worst news, mind you, but not the best either. She’s had a stroke, or maybe several. TIAs, they call them. Transient Ischaemic Attacks.’
‘She’s in Hospital?’
‘No, pet, they’ve moved her to the High Care Unit for the moment.’
‘Jesus, Elsa!’ She shuts her eyes, remembering. She’d gone out for a cigarette, lost her way in the labyrinth of corridors, and stumbled on the enclosed courtyard. Outside the glass doors High Care patients lay in padded chairs shaped like a cross between chaise longues and hip-baths, their heads lolling back, their faces tilted up helplessly at the sky. No one talked. In the eerie silence their eyes followed her. ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ one of them cried, and she saw then that these old folks were of no interest to one another. All their hopes were focussed on the ambulant, of which she, at that moment, was the sole representative.
‘Is she conscious?’
‘Aye, she’s conscious all right. It’s affected her speech mainly.’
‘She can’t talk?’
There’s a pause in which Ingrid hears the tell-tale click of a cigarette lighter. ‘Well, after a fashion.’
‘After a fashion? What sort of things is she saying?’
Elsa coughs dryly. ‘I’m not a speaker of Mandarin, pet, I couldn’t rightly tell you.’
Outside the kiosk insects blunder around the street lamp, foreign and phototropic. Her mind seems to be on overload, most of its functions given over to the questionmark that has suddenly appeared over her mother’s place in the universe. ‘But she could get her speech back?’
‘Anything’s possible, even at her age. They’re not ruling it out, at any rate.’
The moon is high and distant now, as though preparing to renounce its bond with the Earth and soar off on some independent track. ‘Do you think I should come?’ she says hopelessly, knowing she has no option.
‘When do you fly back?’
‘Not till Saturday.’
Elsa clears her throat. ‘It’s just, well, they’ve stabilised her for the moment, but they seem to think she could have another of these TIAs at any time.’
Ingrid watches her fingers winding in the telephone cord, separating out the spirals. There’s a vacuum where her stomach should be, as if some ghostly surgeon had sucked the contents out through the navel. Elsa hasn’t once said she needs you but she doesn’t have to. She takes deep breaths, her energies marshalling themselves around a series of practical tasks – tests to run, doctors to chivvy, consultants to contact – tasks which mean that Greta will be shored up, reinstated, and set to rights. The alternative – she has a bathetic vision of her mother, wandering about like mad Mrs. Rochester, lost in the ruins of language – simply can’t be entertained.
‘I’ll get the first flight I can,’ she says, before the black hole can catch up with her.
Elsa hesitates. ‘I think that’s best, dear.’
‘I’ve got to go, Elsa, I’ll let you know.’
‘Mind and take care of yourself, now!’
‘I will, Elsa.’ Without a pause for thought she locates the cellphone number in her wallet, and punches in the numbers.
Yiannis answers immediately. ‘Nai, embros’
‘I have to get home. My mother’s had a stroke.’ Her voice trembles on the last word but doesn’t break.
Yiannis listens without interrupting. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he says at last.
‘You said you could get on to Gaylene if …’
‘Of course. I’ll ring her straight away. You know, however, that the airline offices won’t be open till the morning?’
His tone is cool and formal: it might be a conversation between two computers. She hears the background rumble of traffic, passing laughter. A car door slams shut and the acoustic changes. ‘I’m just leaving the Station. Give me half an hour.’
‘You’re coming here?’ she asks stupidly.
‘Well, what else do you suggest?
’ says Yiannis.
Shock has turned her stone cold sober. Back at the apartment she throws herself into the practicalities of packing, lining the bottom of her holdall wiith the cardboard folders which contain her Kober notes, wrapping her Liddell and Scott in a beach-towel that’s board-like, stiff with sand and salt. Once she’s stowed her laptop in its case she pulls clothes from their hangers and flings them on the bed. Thanks to Sofia’s ministrations the place, at least, is shipshape. From the drawer where she keeps her passport and currency she sorts out a note for her tip. At the back of the drawer she finds her house-keys and a handful of English notes and coins which look unfamiliar now, faintly fraudulent, like Monopoly money.
When the knock comes at the kitchen door she hurries through to answer it. Yiannis has already pushed it open, and stands on the threshold. His face is drawn, his eyes bloodshot. He looks like a man who has had a hard day and doesn’t expect it to get any better.
He nods when she gestures him to come in, but doesn’t greet her. ‘Gaylene doesn’t think there’s anything free on the charters. You may have to go Olympic via Athens.’
‘Fine,’ she says. This means a seven hour journey, as well as the Glasgow shuttle from Heathrow, but right now it doesn’t seem to matter.
‘She’s going to check and call me first thing in the morning.’ His face is careful, wiped clean of expression. It occurs to her that he intends to stay, although it isn’t clear what this implies. Are they to sleep chastely in the beds Sofia has separated?
As if in confirmation, Yiannis pulls out a chair and sits down at the kitchen table. Producing cigarettes from his shirt pocket, he lights one and lines the lighter up meticulously with the packet. Perhaps he means to see her safely to the airport, use his authority to oil the wheels. She imagines saying goodbye at Passport Control, submitting herself to the serial abuse of electronic security. Passing beyond his jurisdiction into a tunnel between worlds. She considers all this briefly and from a distance, feeling her status subtly altered to that of a person for whom allowances must be made.
‘I should finish packing,’ she says, looking around distractedly. Yiannis drums his fingers on the oilcloth, which Sofia has wiped clean of crumbs; she has also replaced the vase of plastic begonias, centering it neatly on its white lace doily. ‘You’ll have a Metaxa?’
Yiannis shrugs. ‘If you are.’
She fetches the bottle and sets two glasses on the table. Her hand trembles as she pours, spilling brandy on the oilcloth. He stands up and takes the bottle from her. ‘Let me.’
Snatching the pristine doily out of range, she finds a cloth and wipes up the spreading puddle. Yiannis waits until she sits down again and hands her a glass.
‘Yamas!’ he says, raising his own, but his voice is flat, the gesture constricted. Suddenly she misses that lively eagerness of his; she wishes she could give it all back to him, conjure up his boyish gleam.
‘I’m not fun company, I’m afraid.’
‘Fun isn’t what I came for, Ingrid.’ The Greek glower reminds her that an offence has been committed, for which she hasn’t been forgiven.
A light wind blows in through the open door, fluttering the curtains and stirring the ash in the ashtray. She can see the dark fringes of the palm tree in the garden and, beyond it, a sky pierced by the bright insistent points of stars. Already Crete feels like a lost Eden, a country she can’t re-enter, while Scotland is still as insubstantial as a dream. The air that strokes her skin is soft as silk but tomorrow it won’t be, when she steps out into the cold Gasgow rain.
Through the open bedroom door she can see skirts and trousers draped across the single bed. She wonders briefly what she would say if he wanted to make love to her. That sex would feel sacrilegious, like fucking on a grave? Call it fate, call it what you like, the trajectory has a grim inevitability. Going home, returning to the chthonic realms of the mother.
She retrieves the dishcloth and uses it to corral the ash that has drifted across the table. ‘You look shattered,’ she says. ‘You’ve been interviewing?’
Yiannis shrugs impatiently, as if to say there are matters of more consequence than tiredness. ‘That thing Kruja wrote? Looks like it might not be so far from the truth after all.’
She stares at him, cradling her glass in both hands. ‘The piece about the tests?’
‘As if life didn’t set enough tests of its own!’ Leaning forward, he seizes the bottle and pours another inch into his glass. He glances interrogatively at Ingrid, who shakes her head, covering her glass with her hand. ‘Maybe he was desperate for a result. Purification, Instant Karma, who knows? At this point I have absolutely no idea.’
Ingrid hesitates. ‘Should you be telling me this?’
‘No,’ he admits, with the twist of a smile.
Nocturnal noises come from the studio above: a toilet flushes, bedsprings creak complainingly.
‘The hieros gamos,’ she says suddenly, changing her mind and reaching for the bottle, ‘- the marriage between mortal and incarnated god. Couldn’t these terms of Kruja’s – honey-breathing, pollen-eating – be epithets for sex?’
A spasm of anger crosses Yiannis’s face. She watches his hand make a fist and release it.
‘Let me ask you something. If you wanted to have it off with the immortal, would you choose a god-forsaken dump like Anesmospilia to do it?’
The crudeness hits her like a slap. ‘It’s not the kind of place I fancy spending the night in, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Well, Kruja did, whathever the fuck else he was up to.’
Her mind flashes on the wind-burned hillside, the short moon-shadows of the stones. She stares at him, confused. ‘But surely he was found at Panomeli?’
‘Someone moved the body.’ Yiannis has turned his head away, as if contemplating his separate future; half of his face is in shadow, and on the other half the light cast by the table-lamp strikes gold glints from the evening stubble on his jaw.
‘But you don’t know who?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
Ingrid stands up and pushes her chair back. ‘I’d better get moving.’
‘You’re not on the plane yet!’ Extending his forefinger, Yiannis rotates it backwards. ‘We still have time.’ He gives a perfunctory laugh. ‘Well, at least you’ll be spared the pleasure of meeting my mother!’ His eyes meet hers for a second and flicker away. He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Ingrid. Forget I said that.’
As the misery crowds in on her she shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak. She thinks of Elsa at the airport in her anorak and golfing cap, the red Fiat heading north through the dense dripping fir forests that flank the A9. Beyond that is a blank, a closed door behind which everything or nothing waits to be done.
Yiannis jumps up and, taking a swift step towards her, squats down beside her chair. ‘Look, London’s only three hours away!’ He takes a bracing grip on her knees, like a coach trying to inject confidence into a flagging athlete. Frustrated energy radiates from him. ‘You’ll be back. I feel it.’ Over his shoulder the moon has moved into view above the silhouette of the palm tree, on the wane now, its right sector deflated.
She smiles weakly, wishing she could believe him. ‘Do you?’
Straightening up, he stands above her, hands on hips; his eyes dart around but his torso is rigid, his jaw set mutinously against fate. ‘I want to hold you!’
She nods, speechless, and bursts into tears.
56
There were few people about at such an hour: an early water-skier cutting delicate arcs across the calm sea, an old man plodding along the verge with a basket of newly picked figs, his singlet visible through his cheap nylon shirt. Yiannis drove slowly, with one hand on Ingrid’s knee; she had placed her own hand over his, and kept it there.
Earlier, watching her apply mascara with ritual concentration, he’d wondered just how beautiful a woman had to be before she believed it
‘Can’t fly without it,’ she exp
lained. ‘Keeps the plane in the air.’ Her smile was brittle, the grey of her eyes paler than ever in the dark fringe of lashes. He’d understood then that she had to paint some kind of safe place for herself, even if each stroke of the brush set her farther apart from him.
In the night the barriers had fallen, and he thought he’d seen her for what she was. He remembered the limp curls of her hair on the soaked pillow, the storm of weeping that had followed their love-making. When a woman cried like that after orgasm, you couldn’t help but think that the tears had flushed away all the doubts she’d been casting on love.
At the airport the first tour buses were already decanting a horde of travellers who, although bound for chilly northern cities, were still optimistically togged out in scanty beachwear. A long white awning had been erected on the forecourt to shield the growing queues from the heat of the sun. He saw surfboards, souvenir sombreros, youths downing cans of lager at 7 in the morning.
The PA system in the Terminal squawked out instructions in three languages, all of them incomprehensible. He carried Ingrid’s bag to the Olympic desk, flashed his warrant card, and was directed to the priority check-in. According to the TV monitor the Olympic flight was already boarding.
Hurrying her through Security, he smiled at her guilty face framed in the scanner gate. People were glancing at them curiously
‘I feel like your prisoner,’ she muttered as she retrieved her laptop from the conveyor belt.
‘Perhaps you are,’ he replied, on a reckless surge of optimism.
They reached the Boarding Gate just as it was closing. There was a brief skirmish with the Olympic girl before she let them through. Outside the glassed-in building the dazzle made him squint. He put on his sunglasses and lugged Ingrid’s bag down the white-hot steps and across the apron, where operatives in fluorescent tabards waited to wheel away the boarding gantry.
