The island, seen from the sea, looked very barren once the buildings round the harbour had disappeared. There were few trees and only sparse scrub on the grey, rocky slopes. The boatman addressed them all in the tone of a guide, and George, translating, said that there had been some volcanic eruption on the island a very long time ago destroying the thriving small community. Now some rich men dwelt on the further side, otherwise they had seen most of the population in the harbour.
‘The same eruption that engulfed Crete?’ asked Celia.
The boatman did not know.
‘Some archaeologists were working here before the war, he says,’ George relayed to them. ‘They had to stop when the war came.’
‘No one’s tried since?’
‘Nope.’
After some consultation the boatman took them in to a wide white beach with rocks on either side of it coming down to the water. Here there were a few wispy pine trees rising from the shoreline.
‘This is where you came the other day?’ Patrick asked Celia, and she nodded.
The boat grounded and they took off their shoes to wade the last few yards to the shore. Celia’s toes, already revealed in her sandals, were twisted, and she had a cruel bunion. Was there no end to her misfortunes? Patrick averted his eyes and took her arm in case she stumbled in the shallows; she must have been born disaster-prone.
The Nausicaa left them, after her captain had promised to return in time to take them back to catch the ferry.
‘I hope he won’t forget. I’d hate to be shipwrecked here,’ said Elsie.
George and Patrick had both pressed notes into the boatman’s grimy hand; he would not forget them. By this time they were all rather sleepy, and were glad to find a patch in the shade where they could rest. Elsie stripped off her dress and was revealed in a green bikini; for her age her figure was good, and very muscular; she had freckles on her back. Patrick who had brought Phineas Finn as well as his bathing things, spread out his towel and changed behind a rock. Then he settled down to read. With luck, the others would soon fall asleep; the heat and the meal had made him feel inert and he needed to opt out of conversation for a while.
Celia staked out her small encampment further along the beach, still in the shade. She walked a long way before finding a spot that suited her for disrobing; When she returned, she wore a brightly-flowered one-piece swim-suit which bulged where she did, distorting the pattern into grotesque designs. But why shouldn’t she sunbathe, like everyone else? It might improve her acne. Patrick hid from the dismal spectacle behind Phineas Finn.
After some time they all fell asleep, but Patrick started awake almost immediately; he felt it decadent to doze during the day. He took off his glasses and walked quietly into the sea. It was warm and crystal clear, and he swam along parallel to the shore with a slow, strong stroke for quite a distance. Then he lay on his back and tried to imagine the scene on the day of Murcott’s accident. Much as today; but instead of the quartet deployed on the beach there would have been thirty or so people. It would have been noisier, for they would swim or paddle, he supposed. Jeremy would have been scurrying about among them like an anxious terrier, with Joyce no doubt close on his heels and Celia brooding in the distance. Murcott had been interested in the rock formation, someone had said; so he had walked off to investigate it.
A slight movement caught his attention and he looked round to see a swimming figure approaching. The vivid colours revealed as it broke the surface told him that it was Celia. She was a fine swimmer, travelling fast through the water without splashing, her ugly face immersed. Even without his glasses, Patrick could appreciate her power.
How gratifying. Everyone could do something well, if only they were able to discover what it was, and here was Celia’s talent shown.
‘What a good swimmer you are,’ he told her.
Overcome, she submerged briefly like a herbaceous whale, vast in her floral costume.
‘I grew up by the sea,’ she said. ‘Near Clacton.’
‘Where did the accident happen?’ he asked. ‘Far from the beach?’
‘Not very far. I can’t see without my glasses, but it’s a bit to the right from where we are now. Mr Murcott was interested when he saw the volcanic evidence – it’s easy to recognise here, isn’t it, even if you’re not a geologist? He wandered off.’
‘Could you show me where he went? I’m morbidly fascinated,’ Patrick said. ‘Or is it too far in this heat?’
‘Oh no. I’ll show you,’ said Celia, with some eagerness.
‘We’ll swim again afterwards,’ Patrick said. ‘Race you back now.’
She won, and on her own merits.
George and Elsie had disappeared when they walked up the beach. Their towels, indented by their bodies, lay crumpled on the sand. Patrick put on dry swimming trunks and a shirt, and slung his binoculars round his neck; Celia appeared from behind her rock wearing a cyclamen-pink towelling dress. Her hair hung limply round her head in sodden strands like a travesty of Ophelia. They walked off over the sand on to the dusty ground beyond and began to climb.
‘Who suggested the trip to Mikronisos. Can you remember?’ asked Patrick.
Celia pondered.
‘It was Mr Murcott,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, I’m sure it was. He’d heard about it somehow. It’s not an island you do hear mentioned much.’
‘No. Not like Delos, or Mykonos.’
‘Or Santorin, if you’re thinking about volcanoes,’ said Celia. ‘Mr Winterton didn’t want to come. He said it was uninteresting.’
‘He did join you, though?’
‘Yes, he came.’
‘What’s his job? Do you know?’
‘Mr Winterton’s? He’s retired, surely? Most of these people are.’
Patrick, accustomed to elderly dons who worked for ever, had forgotten this aspect of life in other professions.
They spent some time guessing what he might have done and decided that he was that vague thing, a civil servant.
‘Murcott was, presumably, a geologist?’
‘No, I think it was just a hobby,’ said Celia.
Jeremy had been unable to supply Patrick with any of this information; he strove to keep his mind on less earthly matters and did not look in people’s passports, even when they died by misadventure. Patrick, had it fallen to him to pack up the dead man’s possessions, would have pried inquisitively through them wanting to know all he could about the man.
‘I think he worked for a charity of some sort, raising funds,’ said Celia. ‘But I’m not sure.’
‘You liked him.’ It was a statement.
‘Yes,’ Celia sounded surprised. ‘I suppose I did. He always said good-morning, and so on.’
Was she accustomed to being ignored most of the time? Patrick found that he could enjoy her company if he was not forced to look at her. Oh, how much the wrapping of a parcel matters, he thought. If she lost two stone and got rid of her acne, Celia’s life would be transformed.
‘That’s where he fell.’ She pointed.
A sheer cliff rose up in front of them, the stratified rock plainly revealed in the bright sunshine.
‘Was he clambering up it? How unwise.’
‘He must have been,’ said Celia. ‘I didn’t see him climbing, but he was lying at the bottom. He had a stone in his hand – tightly clutched, it was – as if he’d grabbed at the rock to save himself.’
They walked over to the spot.
‘Jeremy said you were splendid, coping afterwards,’ said Patrick.
‘Did he?’ She blushed. ‘That was nice of him. But you have to, don’t you, when something happens?’
‘Some people turn away from disaster,’ he said, and added, ‘I wonder what the view’s like from the top. I’d like to look.’
‘Oh, don’t you try climbing up,’ Celia besought him.
‘I’m not going up that cliff, don’t worry,’ said Patrick. ‘There may be an easier route to the top.’ He scanned the hillside. Small bushes and
tufts of greenery, now withered, sprouted from the rocks in places, and the slope beside the cliff looked less extreme. ‘I’ll look for the goat trail,’ he added.
Celia stared at him in dismay.
‘Oh, don’t you come. It’s much too hot,’ he said, hastily. ‘Can you get back to the others? They may wonder where we are.’ Patrick suspected that George had led Elsie away from the beach for some amorous dalliance; it was a pity to waste such a setting, and he wished he had come in more tempting company himself.
‘All right.’ She hesitated. ‘Be careful.’
‘I will. If I’m not back in an hour, come and look for me,’ he said.
He strode off then, and Celia watched him picking out a route among the small bushes and the bare rocks, describing a traverse to the right of the sheer drop. It looked as if once the whole slope had been more gentle, and then some sort of avalanche-type fall had created the sheer face at the foot of which Dermott Murcott had lain. Surely he would have chosen the easier ascent too? She thought about it for a few minutes as she made her way back towards the beach; then basic physical distress drove everything else from her mind, for she was streaming with perspiration and her fat thighs were chafed from the friction of walking in the heat. She turned round a few times during her journey to look for Patrick, and saw his blue shirt moving gradually upwards in a slanting course on the hillside.
Patrick had found what looked like a track made by animals: a donkey trail, perhaps, or maybe his jesting remarks about goats had been, in fact, accurate. He was soon sweating; his shirt stuck to his back, but the warm sweet air was dry and clean in his lungs. He was not wearing his Cretan straw hat; he had left it on the beach, which was a pity, for he could have done with its protection from the glaring sun. His hair fell forward as he walked along, and he pushed it back impatiently. Once he stopped and surveyed the vista around him through his binoculars. There was a liner on the horizon; it gleamed white even at such a distance. Below, he could see the pink figure of Celia wending her way back to the beach.
He walked on, taking care where he stepped, for the ground was rough and stony. The light was brilliant; every dried blade of grass stood out sharp against its fellows; each wisp of withered thyme and rock-rose was crisply defined against the dry, dusty earth from which it sprang; here and there an asphodel rose, tall and spiky, the blossom delicate, the grey stem slender, miraculously sustaining the life of the bloom in its arid surroundings. A cigarette-end, thoroughly squashed, the brand name illegible, caught his eye, and he picked it up. His own sense of smell was acute, perhaps because he did not smoke himself, and he sniffed it; it was not made of Greek tobacco. Patrick wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief and put it in his shirt pocket; he saw no more alien objects during his ascent.
At last he reached the top and paused for a moment to get his breath and bearings. Nothing stirred in the limpid air. He walked on until he stood above the spot where Murcott had been found. An older man than himself, or one less fit, might, standing there after a strenuous climb, feel dizzy, faint, or have a heart attack; he might, like Felix, simply have lost his balance.
Patrick turned his back to the sea and looked inland; in front of him the ground was level for a hundred yards or more; then it rose again and formed another ridge, not a high one. He walked towards it over earth littered with small stones and shrivelled plants. At the top of it, he found himself suddenly looking into a chasm; he stood on a hilly spine which rose up from the flatter land of the island like the vertebrae of some sleeping animal. He could see right across to the sea on the further side, and with his binoculars picked out the various villas the boatman had mentioned, white in the sunlight.
Suddenly, from nowhere, the figure of a woman appeared beneath him at the foot of the steep drop. She seemed to have sprung from the ground. She was walking away from him, and he focused his binoculars on her; a moment later she disappeared again behind a rock, then reappeared mounted, on a donkey, riding away. Her face, magnified by the glasses, sprang up sharply in his vision for an instant as she turned her head; he was sure it was the woman he had seen going out with Spiro’s friends towards the Psyche earlier in the day.
There must be a way down the cliff: he looked at his watch; was there time to climb down, investigate what lay below, and return before Celia considered him lost? Reluctantly, he decided that it could not be done; in twenty minutes she would start looking for him; he would have to return. He knew that there were caves, shepherds’ refuges, and hidden spots for fugitives on all these islands. Dermott Murcott might have had time to go down the hill; if so, what had he found?
As he turned away to go back to the beach, something flashed from near a rock close to where the woman had appeared with the donkey, as if the sunlight had caught against glass, mirror-like. Instinct made Patrick continue his turning movement; he walked away slowly, loitering to admire the view and betrayed no sign of having seen anything unusual. Thus, he saved his life.
Celia was alone on the beach when he reached it; she looked forlorn, and was very pleased to see him.
‘I don’t know where the others are,’ she said. ‘There hasn’t been a sign of them.’
‘Let’s have a swim,’ said Patrick. ‘They’ll turn up, I expect. Or don’t you want to?’
Celia did. She lumbered down the beach beside him and they swam together, up and down, both from time to time peering blearily at the land but unable, without their glasses, to see anything distinctly. When they returned, Elsie was sitting on the towel again, combing her hair; her bikini was quite dry. George was standing looking out to sea, smoking; his face wore an abstracted look, but his expression lightened when Patrick joined him.
George had offered round a packet of Chesterfields after lunch, but he was the only smoker among the four of them.
‘Have a sweet?’ Elsie offered. She took from her bag a packet of barley-sugar sweets.
‘Thanks,’ said Celia, taking one.
Patrick had one too; he felt the need of some quick energy.
Their boatman came for them, as promised, and when Patrick asked if there were time to circumnavigate the island before the ferry left, agreed that it could be done. They chugged along the coastline, keeping close inshore, and Patrick inspected both land and sea through his binoculars as they went. They saw the villas, three of them, where the rich Athenians lived; each had small private landing-stages running into the sea.
‘They’ve all got yachts,’ George passed on the information. One was tied up against its owner’s jetty; the others were presumably cruising somewhere. They passed another boat at anchor not far from land. On deck lay a blonde girl, sunbathing; she sat up to look at them as they puttered past. She was Jill McLeod, and the boat was the Psyche.
VII
Celia’s upper arms were lobster-red from the sun which had baked them during the trip round the island.
‘You’ll be sore tonight,’ Elsie told her as they sat in the saloon of the ferry bound for Piraeus again, with cooling drinks before them.
Celia did not care. She wore the bracelet which Patrick had given her; it was armour against Joyce’s future barbs.
‘You go home tomorrow?’ Patrick asked.
‘Yes. In the afternoon. We’re due at Gatwick about half- past six, I think.’
‘BEA?’
‘No – we came on a charter. Flyways,’ she said.
Patrick nodded. He was pensive, staring into his beer. He had found neither Ilena nor Yannis, but there was some mystery connected with the island, he was convinced. And what was the Psyche doing there? He thought about Libya, the Lebanon, and Turkey: all of them easily reached by a small boat which could slip in and out unseen at night. Had not such voyages been made constantly during the war, undetected? It must be easier still now. He would not be able to return to Mikronisos himself till after his expedition to Delphi; someone, however, must be told what he had seen on the island.
But then, what had he seen? A stubbed out cigarette-end, not G
reek, possibly American or British; a woman on a donkey appearing out of nowhere; a flash of light that might have come from field-glasses or ordinary spectacles. All of these things were innocent in themselves; no one had openly threatened him, and he had seen nothing to indicate the presence of contraband or anything else suspicious.
But Desmond Murcott might have had more opportunity. And he was dead.
He asked George and Elsie what they intended to do in the next few days and learned they were bound for Delphi.
‘Why, so am I,’ he said. ‘When do you go?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I’m going tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll meet up there.’
‘Say, why don’t we go together?’ said George. ‘How did you plan to travel? On the coach?’
‘I was going to hire a car,’ said Patrick.
‘Honey, wouldn’t that be a lot more comfortable than the coach?’ George said. ‘Would you mind if we came along? We’d share the cost, naturally.’
Patrick tried to decide quickly whether he did mind.
‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying,’ he prevaricated. ‘Certainly one night; perhaps more.’
‘That’s O.K. If you want to come back at a different time, we’ll get some other transport for the return trip. We’ll be staying a night too.’
Patrick made up his mind. To refuse would be churlish.
‘Of course we must go together. It’s a fine idea,’ he said.
‘You can call us at the Hilton when you’ve got it all fixed,’ said George. ‘We’ll be glad to fit in with you, time-wise. You’ll be keeping your room in Athens while you’re in Delphi?’
‘Oh yes.’ He might lose it altogether otherwise.
‘We’ll be doing that too.’
They dropped Celia off on the way in to the centre of Athens; she mumbled grateful words as she got out of the taxi. Patrick would have liked to find Jeremy and hear how his day had gone, but that would have to wait. If he went with Celia into the hotel, he knew she would cling to him like a limpet.
Mortal Remains Page 9
