Mortal Remains

by Margaret Yorke

  He turned reluctantly away; he must join the others. People moved about slowly; it was impossible to recognise anyone from a distance. An American voice rang out, close by, discussing allergies. ‘My kid can’t tolerate talcum,’ he heard incongruously.

  Patrick walked towards the great temple. Figures passed in and out among its columns and climbed up and down its steps. Two men wandered along together, talking. As Patrick passed them the moonlight revealed their faces. One, thick-set and middle-aged, was the man he had seen earlier in his hotel with Arthur Winterton; the second was the young man with a moustache who had been with Jill and Spiro aboard the Psyche.

  IV

  Celia and Joyce were not talking at breakfast. Joyce had spoken her mind after Celia had received a telephone call from Patrick at eight o’clock.

  ‘You should go to the funeral, Celia. We all ought to be there. It’s a matter of respect.’

  ‘I’d never met Dermott Murcott two weeks ago, and nor had you. He won’t notice,’ said Celia flatly.

  She hoped Joyce was jealous. A man, and a proper one, twice the size of weedy Jeremy, had invited her out for the day. Patrick Grant wanted her to go with him to Mikronisos. No delusions about his reason for this filled Celia’s mind; the motive was practical, she knew, and thought it was because he had formed a good opinion of her intellect.

  ‘Everyone else will be there,’ Joyce went drearily on.

  ‘Then I won’t be missed,’ said Celia.

  ‘It’s not fair to Jeremy. He needs support.’

  ‘Oh well, of course, if you’re thinking of him and not Dermott Murcott —’

  ‘It’s all the same thing,’ said Joyce.

  On this note they went in to breakfast and had been sitting there in silence for ten minutes when Jeremy arrived. No one else had yet appeared.

  ‘Oh Jeremy, come and sit down,’ said Joyce, brightening visibly. She patted the seat beside her.

  ‘I’m terribly late,’ said Jeremy, who was usually the first at the table.

  Patrick had returned to the hotel with him the previous night. They had said goodnight to the rest of his flock, and even Joyce and Celia had drifted off to bed, though not without a few wistful backward glances as the two men retreated into the bar. They had had several drinks together at Patrick’s expense and Jeremy had overslept by half an hour as a result; an unprecedented event.

  ‘What time do we leave?’ asked Joyce. ‘The funeral’s at ten-thirty isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. A quarter to ten will be plenty of time. You’ll have to get taxis – it’s too far to walk and there’s no direct bus from here.’ Jeremy’s worries, which had temporarily receded, loomed again. ‘Mr Hodgson will collect everyone together downstairs. I’m going on ahead.’

  ‘Of course you must. I’ll come with you, shall I?’ offered Joyce.

  ‘Oh, it’s very kind of you, Joyce, but no, thank you,’ said Jeremy, aghast at the very idea. He must have a chance to compose himself. ‘You’d help much more by keeping an eye on Mrs Dawson. I’m anxious about her already, and if it gets hot, she’ll feel faint. Perhaps when the service in the chapel is over you could persuade some of them not to follow to the grave. It isn’t necessary, and it’s a long walk through the cemetery. There are seats about the place. They could wait in the shade.’

  Joyce did not care for this girl-guide role, but she was willing to accept any crumb Jeremy might cast in her direction.

  ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ she said. ‘I’ll do my best. Celia’s not coming, though. Your friend Dr Grant is taking her out for the day.’

  ‘What?’ Even Jeremy gaped at this disclosure.

  ‘He’s fetching her at a quarter to nine and they’re off to Mikronisos on the boat,’ said Joyce. ‘I thought you’d be surprised. She should be coming to the funeral.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter about the funeral,’ said Jeremy, rallying. ‘There’ll be quite enough people there as it is. I wish some of the others would stay away.’ What could Patrick be thinking of? ‘How nice for you, Celia,’ he added, lamely.

  Patrick must have some deep reason. He had pumped him, Jeremy now recalled, about the whole group over their drinks the night before, asking what he knew about each of them and whose idea it had been to go to Mikronisos in the first place. Jeremy could not remember.

  ‘There’s no need for you to be at the funeral, Celia,’ he assured her again. ‘You were splendid after the accident.’

  For she had been: she it was who had approached the body, pronounced it dead, fetched help, and comforted the shocked companions; and she had shown much good sense during the following troubled hours.

  Celia perked up at this praise, and Joyce looked sulky.

  ‘Well, at least we won’t have to put up with your moods all day,’ she muttered, too quietly for Jeremy to hear.

  Celia did not reply. She got up and left the dining-room. Already her dress, strained across her heavy bosom, was stained with sweat under her armpits.

  Patrick arrived five minutes early, but she was ready. He beamed upon her. He was making use of her, true, but he meant to give her an enjoyable day if he could. His heart sank slightly at her appearance, but he was accustomed to finding the sound kernels of unattractive nuts, and there was something to be said for a condition of utter safety from emotional or erotic risk. Their taxi took them swiftly to the Piraeus and past the liner dock to where the island ferries were berthed. Both had brought bathing things, and Patrick carried binoculars. There was quite a crowd pushing aboard their boat: old ladies in black; young men in short-sleeved, open-necked shirts; girls in bright dresses; a dog on a lead held by a middle-aged woman with a small boy; a crate of squawking chickens; men with bicycles. Patrick, guided by the hotel porter, had bought first-class tickets, and they went up to the top deck to watch the embarkation. The boat had moved from the quay and was thudding on towards, open water when a voice hailed Patrick.

  ‘Why, hullo there! So we meet again!’

  George and Elsie Loukas, she with her head tied up in a green silk scarf and wearing dark glasses, were at the rail.

  V

  It was apparent that George and Elsie were delighted to meet Patrick again. They greeted Celia with warmth, and related what they had done since leaving Crete; they had eaten some good meals, been to Sounion, and looked up some distant cousins of George’s.

  ‘Elsie felt a little out of things, I guess, not speaking Greek,’ George said. ‘My cousins don’t speak any English.’

  The Loukases were visiting Mikronisos because Elsie’s first husband had been there before the war and said it was an interesting place.

  ‘She’s still a bit edgy,’ George confided to Patrick while the two woman were discussing education in the States. ‘I’d planned this part of our trip to be as meaningful for her as for me. I know she thinks about that first husband of hers even yet. I’m not jealous – why should I be? He’s dead and I’m not. Maybe I thought if she saw the country where he died and some of the spots that had impressed him in his lifetime it would – oh, I don’t know, kind of lay his ghost.’ He looked a little sheepish as he said this, but he was not Greek for nothing; he saw no need to deny emotion. ‘We’ve got no kids, you see,’ he added. ‘Elsie had one, with her first husband. It died. So it must be on account of me.’

  Patrick thought that this was not necessarily true, but he felt unable to reply. However, George was continuing.

  ‘We’d thought of going to Hydra – the tourist run, it is that trip – but we can go there some other time. If we get back to New Jersey without seeing this island she might regret it later. Say,’ he lowered his voice, ‘what are you doing with that girl?’

  Were they really so incongruous a pair? Patrick decided not to tease George but to answer with the truth.

  ‘She’s had a row with her friend and needs to get away,’ he said. ‘And I want her to show me the island. She’s been there before.’ He told George about Dermott Murcott’s accident.

 
‘You’re a morbid sort of guy, aren’t you?’ George said. ‘Going to look at the scene of the crime.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Patrick said.

  George was looking at him, shrewdly.

  ‘It was?’

  ‘Oh yes. No doubt of it. How could it be anything else?’ said Patrick blandly. ‘He slipped.’

  They reached Mikronisos at last, having left most of their passengers at a larger island on the way. The few houses and shops on the waterfront shone in the brilliant sunlight as the ship nosed in to the jetty. All were freshly painted, most of them white, but some were pink or blue; the mellow tiled roofs glowed in contrast. There was a small kafenion and a taverna which advertised sea-food. The Loukases, Celia and Patrick were all thirsty, so before exploring they found a table in the shade and ordered drinks. George took charge of the proceedings.

  ‘I wonder if the people who live here were all born on the island?’ Patrick enquired, with an innocent air as the waiter wiped their table down.

  George at once asked the waiter, who replied volubly. He was young, with an alert expression and smiling brown eyes. How odd of Celia to prefer the limp Joyce to young men like this one, thought Patrick; but then the waiter had scarcely glanced at her. She had scant choice if no male showed any interest in her.

  ‘He says the families here have mostly lived on the island for generations. There used to be a lot of sponge divers here, but that’s died out now from Mikronisos. Synthetic sponges, you know, stealing the market, and it’s a dangerous way of getting a living. The young people all want to go to Athens to get better paid work and the girls to find husbands,’ said George. He spoke to the boy again and then continued, ‘there are a few villas on the far side of the island. They belong to rich business-men from Athens who come in their private yachts. One man has been conducting a survey of the hinterland and plans to build a hotel if he can get permission.’

  ‘Oh, where? Pou einai?’ Patrick could manage that one.

  The boy grinned and gestured as he answered.

  ‘Over the hill there. Seems there’s a fine beach around the coast a little way,’ said George.

  ‘Near where the accident was a few days ago?’ asked Patrick.

  George put the question and the boy nodded. He went away to fetch their drinks, and Patrick wondered whether to get George to ask directly for Ilena and Yannis. He decided to leave it for the moment; the day lay ahead of them.

  They pottered along the water-front and into the few shops. Elsie seemed to have taken a fancy to Celia; they exclaimed together over the woven bags and embroideries. There were women in charge of all the shops, and most of them were elderly; was one of them Ilena?

  A jeweller’s shop attracted them, and they spent some time in its dim interior. The work was intricate, and seemed to Patrick to be ridiculously cheap. There were delicate gold earrings like those Ursula Norris had worn. Celia admired a bracelet made of fine mesh with inserts in a Greek key pattern, and Patrick bought it for her. She protested, blushing an ugly shade of crimson under her sunburn.

  ‘A reminder of Greece, and of what I hope will be a happy day,’ he said. ‘Please accept it.’

  She gave in, with a mumbled, somewhat graceless phrase of thanks.

  ‘You want to be careful,’ warned George as they emerged into the sunlight, Celia twisting the bracelet round her sturdy wrist. ‘You’ll give her ideas.’

  ‘There’s no risk of that,’ said Patrick. He wondered if any man, other than her father, had given Celia a gift in her life.

  ‘I suppose you meet all sorts of people at Oxford University,’ said George.

  He must visualise the university as a campus apart, as so many Americans did, Patrick thought.

  ‘Yes. Good fits, and misfits,’ said he. He was warming towards George, whose company was proving an asset to the day. And so was Elsie’s: she was drawing Celia out so that the girl talked with animation, and now she suggested that Celia should visit the States on a teaching exchange for a year or two.

  ‘I’ll give you our address, and you can look us up,’ said Elsie. ‘Isn’t that right, George?’

  ‘What did you say, dear?’

  Elsie repeated what she had just said, and Patrick walked on ahead of them. He crossed the paved area before the shops and stood on the quayside looking at the fishing boats moored in the harbour. Octopuses hung from the rigging, drying in the sun. Further along the quay men were mending nets.

  As he watched the peaceful scene a dinghy with an outboard motor came slowly towards some steps leading down from the jetty beyond where the men were working; Patrick saw a female figure waiting there to be collected. The woman wore a black skirt and a white blouse, and carried a basket. The man in the boat helped her aboard, taking her basket and settling her with some care on the thwart amidships. They circled round below Patrick and he had a good look at them both. The man was Spiro’s companion from Crete, the same one whom he had seen on the Acropolis the night before; the woman was grey-haired, sunburned and lined, like any Greek woman of her age, but she did not look like a peasant; there was no air of poverty about her. The dinghy, cutting a great wake as it turned, put on speed and zoomed away from the shore. Further out, at anchor in the bay, was the Psyche, Patrick recognised the boat by her lines, but to confirm it, as he raised his binoculars, there was the bright blonde hair of Jill as she stood on the deck waiting to help the older woman climb the awkward steps and go aboard.

  VI

  ‘Where’s this beach you say is so nice, Celia?’ asked George, as they walked back to the taverna for an early lunch. ‘I was wondering if it would be an idea to get a boat to take us around there when we’ve eaten. We’ll all feel like a snooze, I guess, and maybe a swim.’

  Patrick silently blessed him. He was making it all so easy.

  ‘We certainly can’t swim here,’ said Elsie, looking at the harbour. There were signs of garbage in the water, and the slight odour of primitive drainage inseparable from similar picturesque spots all over the globe.

  ‘It’s just around there,’ said Celia, pointing to where the land ran out into a small promontory to form the bay, making a natural harbour. ‘There won’t be anyone else there, I’m certain.’

  ‘Let’s do that,’ said Patrick, firmly.

  ‘You go fix lunch, then. I’ll grab us a boat for later,’ said George. He wandered off towards the fishermen, his expensive camera swinging from his shoulder. His clothes were typically American – the bright shirt, the narrow pale trousers – and he wore his hair cut very short, but his features, with the strongly marked brows and deepset dark eyes showed his origins. He looked more Greek each time they met, thought Patrick, and wondered what Elsie really felt about this sentimental pilgrimage.

  ‘You speak no Greek, Mrs Loukas?’ Patrick asked her, as the three of them sat down at a table beneath the straw roof that shaded the taverna while George talked to the fishermen.

  ‘Say, call me Elsie, do,’ she replied. ‘No, just a few words like tparakalo.’ She pronounced it with a strong drawl.

  ‘I can ask for things in shops, or where something is, but I can’t understand the answers,’ Celia confessed. She had not thought of Joyce for the past hour.

  ‘You English are bad at languages, isn’t that so?’ said Elsie.

  ‘We have that reputation,’ said Patrick. ‘Don’t you think of yourself as English any more?’

  ‘Not after all this time in the States,’ replied Elsie. ‘I wouldn’t know my way around any more. And the language changes all the time.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Idiom did alter rapidly. ‘You don’t speak any other languages?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She shook her head.

  Their beer, which they had successfully ordered without George’s linguistic aid, arrived, and he returned to say he had arranged for a boat to take them round the point in three- quarters of an hour.

  ‘We don’t want to sit over lunch too long,’ he said.

  They ordered the local
speciality, a concoction of prawns and other unidentifiable fishy bits in a cheese sauce. It was rich and good. Celia ate with gusto. Afterwards she had baclava, while the others settled for fresh peaches. They finished with coffee. George chose the strong Greek variety; the others were given a curious mixture, very sweet and only tepid, served in a glass.

  ‘Ugh, too sweet,’ said Elsie, and left hers.

  Patrick and Celia, bonded by their philhellenism, drank theirs down with false expressions of pleasure. Then it was time to meet their boatman.

  He was old and grizzled, his face and hands burnt almost black from the sun, and his vessel was a shallow-draughted old boat with an engine amidships. Her name was painted on the bow in Greek characters and Celia laboriously spelled out NAFSIKA – the Nausicaa.

  ‘I thought she came from Corfu,’ said Celia.

  ‘Maybe Charon here did too, and got kind of stuck,’ said Elsie, eyeing their mariner dubiously. It was the first flash of wit Patrick had discerned in her; perhaps George’s love- affair with this country was hard for her to tolerate. She’d become American, put the past behind her, and might not enjoy wallowing in remembered emotion.

  They clambered aboard, and as they set off, fumes from the old engine filling the air, George and the boatman jabbered away happily together. Their talk was punctuated with cries of ‘po, po, po,’ and excited gestures.

  The Psyche was nowhere to be seen. She had gone round the point in the direction they were taking now soon after the elderly woman had climbed on board. There must be a lot of traffic between the islands, but it had not occurred to Patrick that Spiro would venture far from Crete. Why not, though? The Psyche was a sound, seaworthy vessel capable of travelling in any water.