An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  ‘Can you make money from the olive trees?’

  ‘One day, perhaps. The trees have been neglected and become unproductive. It would mean an awful lot of work and I don’t know enough about it. There’s an olive oil cooperative just down the road. I went down there one day to ask about what I could do with my trees and they wouldn’t even let me past the gate – not interested.’

  ‘And you run classes from here?’ Talk about making your life difficult.

  ‘That’s the idea. I know what you’re thinking, but it is quite idyllic here, you have to admit. If you’re any kind of painter. I only have three students at the moment – you’ll meet them in a minute; they’re out sketching up there. Only two are staying here all the time. But I’ll be starting to run proper residential courses in a couple of months. Or would be if I could get that –’ she pointed at a single storey wing of the farmhouse that formed one side of the courtyard – ‘turned into acceptable accommodation. Only the second lot of builders have now run out on me without explanation. At least the last lot didn’t rip me off. Just never came back, simply disappeared – got an easier job elsewhere, no doubt. My problem is I’d got the bookings and taken deposits off people. If I have to cancel and refund the money, I’ll be in trouble. The three students I have now are all that stands between me and bankruptcy really. And here they come. That’s the beautiful Helen, always the first to arrive.’

  I could hear a female voice coming closer, singing a lazy da-di-da version of a Beatles song. ‘So, what do you teach them?’

  ‘Drawing and painting, oils and watercolour. Landscape, flowers, trees, goats, chickens, each other – you’ll never run out of subjects.’

  ‘And you put them up here?’

  ‘Two of them stay here. Helen and Rob. There’s three bedrooms in the house. Sophie actually lives on the island and goes home some nights but often falls asleep on the sofa. Especially when she’s had a few. So most nights, really. And all of them get all their meals. Hi, Helen.’

  The woman entering the courtyard pulled a straw hat from her head and fanned her face with it. ‘It’s getting quite hot up there now at midday.’

  Morva rose. ‘Helen, meet Chris, an old friend of mine from art school days. Just arrived out of the blue.’

  Helen scrutinized me over the rim of her sunglasses. ‘Another painter, I hope?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I assured her.

  ‘What can I get you to cool you down, Helen?’

  ‘Red wine spritzer?’

  ‘Coming up. For you, Chris?’

  ‘I’ll have the same if I may. D’you want a hand?’

  ‘Oh no, you stay and get acquainted.’

  Helen dispensed with her sunglasses. Her cool grey eyes narrowed. ‘Have you come to join our select band of hopeless daubers?’

  ‘Not quite. I came to see Morva, really. We first met at art college.’

  ‘Are you a professional painter, then?’

  ‘For my sins.’

  ‘You lucky man. I never made it to art college myself.’

  ‘It’s not obligatory. I’m not even sure it’s the best way to learn.’

  ‘Really?’ Her eyes widened and she leant forward. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Helen started quizzing me with such energetic inquisitiveness that it was a relief when the other two students turned into the courtyard and more introductions interrupted the interrogation.

  Rob was a wiry man in his sixties. His straw hat displayed a pattern of painterly fingerprints that gave clues to his preferred palette and to the fact that he worked in oils. As he dropped his hat on to the table, he revealed a near bald pate where a few strands of hair were cruelly made to do the work of many. Rob appeared to move at a set speed that never varied, whether walking, talking, sitting down or lifting a glass, as though he had left the handbrake on.

  The third student who sat down at the table provided a sharp contrast. Sophie gave the impression of surplus energy stored just below the surface of her evenly tanned skin. She was at least twenty years younger than Rob. Despite the fact they had been chatting amicably as they arrived, she didn’t sit next to him. Instead, she chose a chair near the end of the long table, a little apart from all of us, creating space around herself.

  They were two days into their painting course and full of chatter about art. Morva came and went with carafes of wine, pitchers of water and bottles of beer. The lunch prepared by Margarita arrived meze style on small dishes: stuffed vine leaves, a bean salad, small spicy meatballs, fresh crusty bread, olives, pickled chillies and feta cheese. Picking at all this was no barrier to conversation, and before long I had been dragged into a good-natured argument about oil paints versus watercolours in landscape painting, where I found myself unexpectedly on the side of the watercolourists. I mean, who wants to lug half a stone of oil paints across the scenery? Morva, as the host, wisely kept out of the fray. Several times during lunch I found her eyes resting thoughtfully on me, as though she had never seen me before or was trying to remember just who I was.

  Siesta was well observed in Ano Makriá, much helped by the wine. Helen and Rob withdrew to their respective rooms upstairs in the main house, while Sophie let herself fall on to one of the sofas in the main room downstairs, though the three large bottles of beer she had guzzled over lunch had no visible affect on her. Margarita got busy clearing our mess away.

  ‘I’ll take my siesta in the van,’ I said to Morva, though I didn’t feel in the least bit drowsy.

  ‘You can’t; it’ll be like an oven in there. No need to, either. The first lot of builders finished one room in the annex, or as near as. It’s spartan, but it’s got a bed in it. I’ll show you.’

  The room she showed me was small with whitewashed walls, a blue wooden door leading straight on to the courtyard and a small window opposite that looked into the shade of the olive grove behind. One bed, a small table and a straight-backed chair with a cane seat were the only furnishings, giving it a monastic air Van Gogh would have approved of. This was the only completed room of five in the long, low building that for centuries had done service as anything from goat shed to storage room and became much more dilapidated further along.

  ‘It’s perfect.’

  ‘I’m aiming for quintessential Greek island dream. A chest, lamp and a rug and we’re there.’

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’

  ‘Please do. I’ll bring you an oil lamp later.’ She fixed me with the same kind of look she had given me during lunch, except that close up it was more unnerving.

  ‘I don’t think I need a siesta,’ I admitted.

  ‘OK, let’s walk for a bit. And then you can tell me what the hell you’re really doing here.’

  SIX

  ‘Did you really drive that thing all the way down here? I’m surprised you made it.’ Morva sniffed suspiciously at Matilda’s interior.

  ‘So am I, tell you the truth. Here, that’s the woman I’m looking for.’ I had dug out the photograph of Kyla Biggs for her.

  ‘Yes, I do remember that; it was only a few weeks back. It was in the paper. But I’m afraid that really does happen all the time. It’s a very seductive place, this. Usually it’s kids on their gap year or someone who suddenly decides to make a fresh start without leaving a forwarding address.’

  ‘Not usually people with a well-paid job and property in England. I have a feeling that if Kyla Biggs wanted to move to Corfu, she’d do it properly.’

  ‘Most likely. Though there’s always the possibility of mental breakdown,’ Morva said, looking back towards the house and catching her lower lip between her teeth.

  As we walked back along the goat track into the empty village, a few cicadas started up, unseen in the long grass. ‘Is that your car back there?’

  ‘Yes, the poor little thing. The moped with the holy medals is Margarita’s. The little motorbike, what’s left of it, belongs to Sophie. She rides it everywhere, flat out, without a helmet. Probably with her eyes closed.’

&
nbsp; We were walking now on what had once been a well-used cart track traversing the village. Most of the houses had a generous amount of land around them, except near the church where several low buildings huddled together as though leaning against each other for support. There were few sounds beyond the rasp of the cicadas and the gentle breeze from the direction of the nearby sea.

  ‘Are you still living with that girl? Alice?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘Annis. Yes, she’s still there, miraculously, painting away as we speak, no doubt. Which reminds me, I’ll have to call her and tell her I’ve arrived. She didn’t think I’d make it. Bet me a fiver I’d never make Dover, in fact. My mobile won’t work here. I don’t suppose you’ve got a phone?’

  ‘There’s no mobile coverage around here and I can only dream of a phone line. Or anything else, for that matter. There’s a kiosk with a phone in Neo Makriá but even that doesn’t always work. Not for me, anyway.’

  ‘Would it be so difficult to have a phone line laid?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you? First they made some positive noises, then I was told categorically no. Same with electricity and water. First I was told yes, then they dragged their feet, then I was told it was out of the question.’

  ‘You’ve got no electricity at all?’

  A slow resigned shake of the head. ‘Not as much as two milliamps’ worth. I can’t afford the solar panels and I definitely can’t afford a generator. I might one day. No, you’ve landed smack in the eighteenth century.’

  We walked on. ‘This is your eighteenth-century realm, then.’ I still found it hard to believe that anyone, but especially a woman on her own, had looked at this spooky hamlet full of rustling ghosts and thought Hey, this is the place where I want to live.

  ‘You think I was mad to buy the house, admit it.’

  ‘I thought Mill House back in Somerset was a bit out of the way, but this is in a different league. It makes me think of Prospero and his cell.’

  ‘That’s a thought. I could do with a spirit like Ariel. Do you want the job?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m a water sign. I think what you really need is a Caliban or two to finish your building work.’

  ‘Yeah, that too.’ She hugged herself as though suddenly feeling cold. ‘I’m not very clued up on Shakespeare, Chris. Remind me, how does it all pan out in The Tempest?’

  ‘Happily ever after.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘So what happened to all the people who used to live here?’

  ‘A lot of them emigrated but some of them moved further round the mountain to what is now Neo Makriá, new Makriá. You must have come through it to get here.’

  ‘And do they ever come up here?’

  ‘Not really. Not in daylight they don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean? They come up at night?’

  She screwed up her face into a mask of doubt. ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I never actually see anybody, not really. Not that I go out looking – I’m not completely mad. It stopped more or less in the winter but it started up again this spring. I sometimes hear things at night.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Like people walking around the place in the dark. Trying to be quiet. Once or twice I thought I saw a light – you know, like torchlight – even right in the courtyard. When I opened the window, it was gone. Could be children from Neo Makriá, but apparently they’re all too scared of ghosts and spirits to come this way. Even the grown-ups are all superstitious here. But it could be a dare for the kids, I suppose. Anyway, it’s nearly an hour’s walk out here from the village.’

  ‘Could they be from a different village?’

  ‘They would have to come through Neo Makriá. This is a dead end unless you’re a mountain goat or come by sea and scramble up the cliff. Ah, look, there’s Rob’s easel.’

  ‘Where?’ My eyes were too busy trying to make sense of the overgrown jumble of crumbling houses and sheds to have noticed it standing in the shade of a twisted olive tree that was leaning heavily on a low, crumbling wall. Next to the easel stood a large plastic art box, and on an upturned wooden crate rested his palette. We walked around to inspect the work in progress. Rob’s painting was of the ruined house we had just passed, methodically rendered in flat, passionless dabs of oil paint.

  I probably made some inappropriate sound because Morva felt moved to defend the painting. ‘Rob’s not that bad, really, it’s just that it’s all so . . . oh, OK, it’s bad. I’m not sure where to begin with him. But he enjoys it, that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. It’s a painting holiday, and in his case, well, the emphasis should perhaps be on holiday. Chris, that’s very naughty of you.’

  I had flipped open Rob’s big art box and pulled open the hinged tiers of drawers. ‘I’m a painter and a detective, so what do you expect? Aren’t you fascinated by how other painters arrange their stuff? I think it’s very revealing.’ In Rob’s case, it conformed to my first impression of him. Everything was neatly laid out. Apart from his tubes of paints and brushes, there were compartments full of pencils, erasers, a viewing frame and small bottles of solvents, as well as miscellaneous items – a clip-on torch, candle stubs, canvas clips and drawing pins and a pair of oil-stained leather gloves. I carefully closed the box again. I felt I knew Rob a lot better now.

  ‘The other two put their easels up near the old olive press, if you want to inspect their—’

  That’s when we heard the scream and both froze for a second, Morva with her arm still pointing. A woman’s voice. The scream wasn’t repeated.

  ‘That came from the house,’ she called, already running.

  I ran after her. ‘Whose voice was that?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell.’

  The vegetation and rubble didn’t make an ideal sprinting track, but Morva skipped through it like a mountain goat. I followed closely in her tracks and even so cracked my ankle twice on rocks hidden in the grass. As we tore into the yard, we could hear agitated voices from inside the house, all female.

  We found Sophie, Helen and Margarita at the foot of the stairs, all talking at once, Margarita in a full flood of Greek with enough hand gestures for the three of them. Helen, wearing only snow-white bra and knickers, looked palest.

  ‘Who . . . screamed?’ I asked, out of breath.

  ‘Me,’ said Helen, raising a hand as though in class. ‘So would you if you found a snake sharing your bed.’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ I admitted. ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Up there,’ said Helen and Sophie in unison and pointing unnecessarily at the only up there was: the narrow wooden stairs.

  ‘Where’s Rob?’ Morva wanted to know.

  ‘He must be out,’ Sophie said, ‘unless he’s one hell of a deep sleeper.’

  Morva called loudly for him without result. ‘Well, someone will have to go and deal with it,’ she said, not moving. I looked at her. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I can’t do snakes. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I’m not going up there until that snake’s gone,’ agreed Sophie.

  ‘Me neither,’ vowed Helen.

  Margarita disappeared towards the kitchen, muttering to herself.

  ‘You go,’ Morva decided, giving me an encouraging push. ‘I really, really can’t do snakes, Chris,’ she added firmly. ‘Spiders and lizards, yes. Not snakes.’

  Great. I climbed the stairs full of doubt. Could I do snakes? And since when? I turned round at the top and looked back. Three women looked up at me, making my-hero faces. ‘What did it look like?’ I asked, stalling.

  ‘Like a snake. You’ll recognize it when you see it,’ Helen promised. ‘My room’s the second along.’

  The door was open. There was a bed sheet and clothing strewn on the floor and a couple of pill containers and a glass, unbroken, swept off the bedside table in a panic. What did I know about sn
akes? Not a lot. They didn’t jump – I was grateful for that; I never liked things that jumped. Snakes don’t jump. They strike. I couldn’t hear any slithering or hissing, which was nice. What else did I know? Snakes curled up neatly in folds of bed sheet just by the pillow and went to sleep. I knew that because that’s what this one had done. It had stripes all along its body and was probably forty or fifty inches long. Now what? In my limited experience of legless reptiles, gleaned long ago in Turkey and from a more comfortable distance, snakes, when startled, slithered off to hide somewhere. This was fine outside, but just what I was trying to avoid in here, since I’d end up chasing it all over the house. While wishing for a net or at least a pair of leather gloves, I slowly crept up on it, sending up little prayers to whatever Greek Orthodox saint was in charge of creaking floorboards. When I reached the bed, the floorboard under my left foot creaked. I held my breath. No reaction. I had seen crazy wildlife people on telly handle poisonous snakes and saying how lovely they were; only just now I thought this one looked rather uncuddly. Well, it was no use standing there until the thing woke up. I’d just have to be quick. I’d simply grab it behind the head and get a firm grip. On the count of three: one . . . two . . . three . . .