“You don’t have any regrets, do you?” he went on when they were at the port and in a cafe waiting for sunlight.
“Not at all,” she said. “I just don’t remember anything.”
His face fell, but he forced himself to smile.
“Well, there’s that, I guess.”
“I thought there was someone on the terrace.”
“Couldn’t have been. So you did have a bad dream?”
“I must have. But it seemed real.” Her voice sounded empty and disengaged, as if she was not convincing herself.
“No one can break into these houses. They’re like fortresses. That’s how they were built. All the families were once at war with each other.”
An hour later the first ferry came gliding across from the mainland. Its lights were full of swagger, and when it had docked they watched as a sullen crowd of arrivals made their way down the gangplank and onto the quay. They were mostly Greeks, Hydriots probably returning from visits. But after they had all disembarked and fanned out into their hometown, a man who was obviously English in some way came after them, limping and pulling a bag on wheels and dressed in a summer suit that looked forty years out of date. Since he was about seventy himself, however, it was incongruously flattering or at least unremarkable. He wore sunglasses though it was still dark, and he seemed, for a moment, bewildered as he stood alone on the quay, unmet and unknown. His bald head shone under the lamps. He looked around, and for a moment she thought he was going to approach them and ask them for directions. A tremendous dithering tact suggested his provenance.
“He looks lost,” Toby said gallantly. “Should I?”
Without waiting for an answer, he got up and went over to the old man. They talked out of her hearing and then Toby came back affably to the cafe.
“Poor guy is booked at the Bratseras. So I gave him directions. It’s a three-minute walk.”
“Who is he?”
“How should I know? Some old tourist. They’re a dime a dozen.”
“Alone?”
Toby shrugged it off.
“Most old people are alone these days.”
But she wasn’t convinced. There was something oblique and wary about him, a lack of tourist cheer.
As soon as he had appeared, he disappeared, and having disappeared he was forgotten. Sam walked home alone as the sun came up and was in her bed long before her family woke. She slept through most of that day. Out in the fields the olives stood fixed by a manic heat and the world around them had gone dead. Their leaves shone bright as steel in the windless glare. The effects of the alcohol and the coke had worn off, leaving her clear enough to feel keenly the disgust that came in their wake. There was a note on the kitchen table that her parents and brother had gone hiking and would be back for dinner. They were so distressingly active when they were on vacation.
As if in rebellion against them, she took a long bath before dressing in a plain white summer dress and going out to read on the porch. Gradually her level common sense returned. She began to think about Naomi again. She called her, and to her surprise Naomi answered. Sam suggested she come down to the house and they could chat alone. Soon, then, Naomi herself walked out of the gloom and came up to the gateposts at the bottom of the path with a quiet but paradoxically purposeful hesitation. It had been five days since they had seen each other.
FIFTEEN
“Are your parents here?” Naomi said as soon as Sam had gone down to the gates and they were alone together on the path.
“They’ll be back any minute.”
“Should I come up and be normal for them?”
“I guess that would be good.”
“Otherwise they might wonder…”
They went back up to the porch and sprawled on the sofas.
“I went to Mandraki with my mom,” Sam said, “and you wouldn’t believe how annoying she was being.”
“Just be cool with them. We need to be calm right now.”
“They don’t suspect anything. They never would.”
“Have you been all right?”
Naomi was unruffled herself, and anxious to be solicitous.
“I’ve been sleeping badly,” Sam admitted.
“Same.”
“What about Carissa?”
“I let her go for three days to see her family. It seemed better to do that.”
Sam nodded. “She’ll appreciate that.”
“I didn’t want to be in the house alone with her, frankly. This whole time I’ve been wondering if she gave them the tea like she said she did. I’m not saying she didn’t, but it crossed my mind.”
“Are you serious?”
“I can’t prove it. But I just can’t see how he could have woken up like that.”
“Maybe he didn’t want the tea. Maybe she gave it to him but he didn’t drink it?”
“I checked the cups in their room. They were empty.”
“You can’t just blame Carissa.”
Naomi’s pent-up frustration began to reveal itself, but she held it in check.
“I had the strangest day,” she began.
She had slept in the salon that night. For four days she had combed through the house looking for signs of violence and derangement, smoothing them all out until the villa was as perfectly organized as it had been during their long absences in the winter. The worst part was the master bedroom. She had to remake the bed, go on her hands and knees and search the floors for stray earrings, and, as it happened, Jimmie’s mobile. It had ended up on the floor under the bed. Imagine that. She had taken out the battery and put the phone in the rubbish. Then she had gone through their bathroom and removed the toiletries they used every day. Everything had to disappear. Everything had disappeared. She was thorough about these things, “a real lawyer when I want to be.” The villa was now restored to order. But still she couldn’t sleep well in it. That morning she got up early and went shopping in the town. She took a donkey to haul the bags back to the house, and at midday she made a fish stew and drank half a bottle of wine. It didn’t even make her tipsy.
Nevertheless she took a nap in the salon. She was roused from that sleep by the doorbell ringing, the first time since the event that anyone had come to the house.
She composed herself, checked her face in a mirror, and went quietly to the door and peered through the hole. It was someone she didn’t recognize. She waited and thought it over, then decided not to answer. The man on the far side of the door rang a second time and eventually gave up and walked away.
An hour passed and she ventured onto the terrace and looked down the narrow stepped path that led up to Belle Air. It must have been one of Jimmie’s drinking pals, but she couldn’t think who. Sooner or later she would have to face them and give them her story to explain Jimmie’s absence. She would have to perfect her lying. Sometime later the doorbell rang again and this time it was someone else—the American her father and Phaine called the Ancient Beatnik. She braced herself and opened. She didn’t know the man’s name, but he had been in the house before as their guest, and so she feared him less.
He uttered a little “Ah!” as she opened the door and peered up at her through blue-tinted specs. The conversation was brief. He had come up to remind Jimmie that he was expected at the annual arts festival ceremony on the mountaintop the following week. The Codringtons attended every year, but since Jimmie had not been around for a few days the Ancient Beatnik had thought to come up and remind him.
“Is he here now?”
“They left Hydra, I’m sorry to say. I think they drove somewhere for a few days.”
“That’s weird, man. Are they coming back soon?”
She said she didn’t know, she rarely consulted with them about these things. Did they have his number? Of course they did. He looked confused for a moment, then thought it over and gave her what she supposed was a beatnik smile. She offered a few extra thoughts: maybe they had gone to see Phaine’s family in Athens? Or maybe they had gone to the Mani. Jimmie l
oved the Mani.
With these ruminations she got rid of him. She went back to the terrace and watched him totter down the path, steadying himself with outstretched hands against the walls. That might have been the end of it for the day, but two hours later the first old man reappeared at the door and this time he rang the bell more insistently. Once again, she considered not opening. But somehow the visit of the Ancient Beatnik had changed the odds and this time she felt compelled to do so. It was a dapper-scruffy English gent by the looks of him, in sunglasses and wearing a ridiculous foulard with a wilted pocket square with a pattern of rose and yellow butterflies.
The linen suit, in the way of linen suits in the heat, had gone a little to hell. Despite the dandy touches, the man looked like he had spent the night in a comfortable dumpster. He took off his shades as soon as the door opened and his eyes were the pale oysters of old men on the slide, and the freckles on his forehead looked as if they had appeared within the last few hours at first contact with a Greek sun. He looked mildly surprised to see her. But she was pretty sure that she had never seen him before, either in Greece or elsewhere. Nevertheless, he didn’t greet her with any sense of unfamiliarity. On the contrary, he shook her hand and said, in a voice from another age, “You must be Naomi!”
As soon as her name was mentioned, so casually and yet so irrevocably, she was obliged to open the door wider and suggest—by body language alone—that he come inside.
“My name’s Rockhold. I’m a good friend of your father’s.”
“I’m afraid they’re not here right now. But would you like to come in? I can make some tea.”
“I’d be delighted to. Nothing better than a spot of tea when it’s hot.”
She could see that he was perspiring. He had refused to dress down for the heat, which was a charming and anachronistic mistake. She also now saw that he held a straw panama in one hand—he had removed it before she had opened the door. As he stepped into the hall’s cool there was a look of relief on his face. He left the panama on one of the coat hooks by the door and they went into the salon. Rockhold looked it over as if for the first time. He admitted at once, in effect, that he had never been to Hydra before.
“My father didn’t invite you?”
“No, I’m not the inviting kind. People hesitate before inviting me.”
He smiled broadly, as if this statement made perfect sense, and sat down, clearly a little tired by the long climb up the Hydriot steps.
“I’ll make some tea,” Naomi said, and she went to the kitchen.
Her hands were shaking. Yet he was mild enough. Just maybe not the friend she had assumed him to be: something else.
She came back with the tray and set it on the glass coffee table. As she did so, he said, without fuss, “I see your table here has a nasty crack. Someone drop something on the glass?”
She hadn’t even noticed it. But there it was, a spidery crack at the table’s corner. She tried to smile.
“Yes, the maid broke it last week. She drops things.”
“Does she, now? That’s not much of a maid, then, is it?”
“She’s wonderful otherwise.”
“I believe her name is Carissa?”
She was pouring for him, but her hand froze and she had to steady it and continue pouring.
“That’s right. That seems like a funny thing to know, Mr. Rockhold.”
“You can call me Samuel. Your father and I are old friends. In fact, we were in the army together. Perhaps he didn’t mention it. One rarely mentions the men one was in the army with.” The eyes were suddenly merry and all-forgiving.
“Not to me, Mr. Rockhold.”
“Well, your father likes to keep a few of us back, as it were. Cards up one’s sleeve and so forth. There’d be no need to mention poor old Samuel to one’s daughter. Old acquaintance half forgot and all that.”
And yet, she thought, you’re here and indeed right in front of me. A stranger with a glass eye. She had noticed it about him as soon as he had sat down. It was like a marble, its blue not quite matching the live one.
“Where were you stationed with my father, Mr. Rockhold?”
“Gibraltar. Days of our life. Thought they’d never end, as the song goes.”
“Jimmie says he had a miserable time there.”
“Well, you know how it is. Can’t have everything your own way, can you? No one ever has it all their own way. Jimmie was a bad fit for the old discipline part.”
“But now you’re in Hydra.”
“So it seems.”
“Are you just passing by?”
“Well, now we’ve come to it, haven’t we?”
He put a hand on each knee and she saw that the sweat on his face had finally dried. She looked down at the previously unnoticed crack in the glass top of the table and cursed herself for having missed it. It was a sign that not everything was as it appeared. Because it was not in Jimmie’s character to let a cracked table go unnoticed for more than twenty-four hours. The visitor said that he was, if one could put it this way, a confidant of Jimmie, rather than merely a friend, and that—since she had asked—he was here on a bit of business for the Codringtons.
“But, my dear,” he said, “you haven’t told me where they are. It’s rather unfortunate if I’ve missed them.”
“They left for the mainland last week. I’m afraid they didn’t tell me where they were going—they never do. They up and leave on a whim all the time. I think my stepmother feels a little claustrophobic on the island.”
“So they might have gone to Athens for a few days?”
“It’s possible. They haven’t called yet—but we’re not always on the best terms anyway. It’s not usual for them to call me.”
“How vexing. For both of us!”
“It’s not vexing, Mr. Rockhold. It’s always been like this. We don’t have the ideal father–daughter relationship, I’m afraid.”
“So I gathered.”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
Rockhold waved a hand. “Not at all. The sun is shining, is it not?”
“Where are you staying?”
“At a very nice hotel in town. I’m quite happy there. A young man recommended it to me and so far it hasn’t disappointed. I’m used to improvising, you know. Maybe, if you are free, we might have dinner sometime. What do you say?”
Suddenly trapped by an affable invitation, she stammered that she would be glad to. Before she could come up with an excuse he had locked her into the following night at the Sunset.
“Unless something comes up,” she tried desperately.
“Do things often come up on Hydra? By the way,” he went on, “you should get that table fixed. It might break completely the next time you put something down on it.”
The tea finished, they stood and Rockhold went back into the hall and put on his straw hat. A thermometer hung on the wall there and the mercury showed a temperature of 72, and that was in the cool part of the house. She let him out and they were pleasant to each other, though her heart was beating wildly with resentment and fear. Who was he and why was he there? He stepped out into the hurtful sunlight and winced, but with a certain amount of humor.
“Furnace, isn’t it?” He laughed.
“You should eat at the Bratseras,” she said. “The food is really quite good.”
“Is it? Funnily enough, that’s where I’m staying.”
“If my father calls, I’ll let you know.”
“You do that, my dear Naomi. I’ll be anxious otherwise.”
“He won’t call, though.”
Rockhold looked at her from under the hat’s brim, and his eyes were cool and unassuming. “You never know with him. He’s an unpredictable creature of the deep.”
—
Sam was about to tell Naomi that this was almost certainly the man she and Toby had seen in the port that morning, but she held back and thought better of it. Naomi would start asking questions about Toby, and she wanted to keep him out of it. But
they were both thinking the same thing. Something had gone wrong and the thing they had feared had come to pass. I need to get out of this as soon as possible, Sam thought to herself. For in any case how did I get into this in the first place? I’m such a skatofatsa idiot. But she knew it was too late. Naomi gave her a reassuring smile and said, “It’ll be all right. I’ll play along with him.”
“What does he want?”
“No way of knowing. But he’s not just a friend. He’s something more.”
Sam pursed her lips and her fury was contained behind them. She said, “I knew an investigator would get involved.”
“If that’s what he is.”
“Of course it’s what he is. What about the Greek police?”
“If he’s an investigator,” Naomi said slowly, “I have a feeling he’ll keep the Greek police at bay for a while.”
“You hope.”
“He came and he’ll go,” Naomi said. “I’ll handle him if that’s what he is.”
“You’ll handle him?”
“He’s a canny old codger, that’s all. He was with my father in the army. He’s harmless. Just nosing around.”
Beautiful Animals Page 14
