An Inch of Time

by Peter Helton

  Reluctantly, he took the card off me and angled it against the light from his desk lamp, then nodded. ‘Is from my cousin. You see? Two little scratches under the picture of the car. Is his mark so I know is him.’ He tapped the side of his nose. I presumed this had to do with family and commission and not being quite grown-up yet. ‘Still, no pass-a-port . . . You will excuse me, please.’ He speed-dialled on his mobile and soon bellowed into it. He talked and talked, listened and listened, perhaps reminiscing about their school days or warming up an old family feud – it was hard to tell. His smile, when he hung up, was unconvincing, but apparently the Dimitris connection had swung it for me. He made another bellowing phone call, took a wodge of money off me and told me to wait for the car to be delivered. What eventually arrived outside wasn’t the expected Citroën Something, more the Citroën Something Else. It wasn’t lime green, either – more the colour of a tomato you know will taste disappointing even before you bite into it – and it was squarely a last-century model. Which had arrived here through a mud-choked time tunnel. I opened my mouth to point this out, but the man pulled his shoulders up to his ears, laid his head on one side and said quietly: ‘No pass-a-port . . .’ It was raining as heavily as ever and the thought of a fuggy bus full of sakoola-clutching Greeks quickly won me around.

  This was more or less the French equivalent of the rusty Fiesta, with the addition of a screeching fan belt, so I soon felt at home again as I splashed the thing out of town and into the hills. It was still raining when I got to Neo Makriá and beeped my horn outside Dimitris’s cafe. He stayed in the shelter of his door. We exchanged thumbs-up signs. Then he went inside, presumably to roll on the floor laughing.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘You live in England; you ought to be used to changeable weather,’ Morva said.

  ‘Yes, but this is extreme,’ I insisted. ‘Yesterday you couldn’t see five yards for the rain.’

  ‘Listen, once the weather makes up its mind and summer starts, you might not see a cloud for months. After a few weeks you forget about the sky – it’s blue and that’s it. You forget about clothes, too; you wear as little as you think you can get away with, no matter what time of the day.’

  ‘It’s the strength of the sun that’s so amazing,’ said Annis who smelled strongly of coconuts this morning, her freckled skin glistening with factor fifty. ‘There were three inches of water in this yard last night; now look at it.’ She stomped one foot down on the dry, hard-baked ground in the courtyard where we were standing with our tiny china cups of Greek coffee. ‘The mud has set like concrete.’

  Morva nodded sagely. ‘Which is just as well or the whole island would have slithered into the sea a long time ago. Listen: isn’t that a wonderful sound?’

  I angled my head in the direction towards which she had tilted hers. ‘What sound? I can’t hear it with Charlie’s sawing and humming going on.’ Charlie hummed continuously while working. Nothing you’d recognize.

  ‘That is the wonderful sound. At last this enterprise is moving again. There’s hope.’ She called across the yard to where a half-naked Charlie was working on what was to be the communal shower. ‘Do you want some more coffee, Charlie?’

  ‘I’m fine, honest!’ he called back without looking up. So far the construction consisted of a latticed floor and four uprights and no water supply, but last night, after shaking the last drops of red wine from a bottle, he’d announced he now knew how to solve the ablution crisis.

  ‘Leave him be. You know what they say about watched kettles. Same goes for builders. Where are your students?’

  ‘Out there, painting away. Rob’s still by the churchyard, Helen is doing a study of a crumbling wall of one of the houses, and Sophie hasn’t reappeared yet. I’ll go and chat to them in a minute. Best go and gear up for it.’ To walk anywhere outside the house and yard, Morva donned tightly laced boots over bandaged ankles and carried a rustic walking stick.

  Annis held her pale freckled arm against mine where I had acquired the hint of a tan. ‘I’ll never catch up standing here. What’s this private beach like someone mentioned last night? I think it’s time I stuck myself in the sun for a bit.’

  ‘Bad for you.’

  ‘Factor squillionzilliontrillion. And it matches the price.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what it’s like. I’ve never made it down there. The one time I tried, someone rolled a car down the hill at Morva. No one thinks it’s really worth the climb. The climb back up, that is.’

  ‘Excellent, let’s check it out, then.’

  Kitted out for the beach – towel, drinks, sun lotion, book – we set out. ‘Where’s the path?’ Annis asked.

  ‘Right below that.’ I pointed at Morva’s crumpled Fiesta, still leaning against the tree on the edge of the track.

  Annis gave it a speculative shove with one sandalled foot, then peered down the steep drop towards the glittering sea. ‘I know it’s been here a while, but perhaps we should try to pull it away before we go down there. Now we’ve got a working car. Is there a tow rope anywhere?’

  There was one in Matilda. I backed the Citroën down the track, attached the rope to both cars, slowly took up the slack.

  ‘OK, go!’ Annis called from a safe distance.

  It was at that moment, when I increased the pressure on the accelerator, that I realized what would happen. The Fiesta would come away from the tree that was holding it up, slip sideways and so put its full weight on the rope while hanging off the cliff face. Then it would pull me backwards over the edge into free fall towards the sea. Anyone with half a brain would have stopped there; I put my foot down. The tow rope strained, the engine strained, its wheels spun on the gravelly track, but the Citroën didn’t move an inch. Fortunately, neither did the Fiesta. ‘That’s not going anywhere until we get a tractor up here,’ I announced, somewhat relieved.

  Tow rope put away and Citroën once more parked near Matilda, I gave the Fiesta a reassuring pat on the way down the track. The switchback footpath down the cliff widened and narrowed, sometimes disappeared altogether where a series of rocky outcrops forced us to scramble down backwards, holding on to tufts of grass and the occasional myrtle bush. Yet a few minutes was all it took before we dropped on to the beach below.

  The minute bay consisted of a narrow sickle of coarse sand that turned first to shingle, then rock at the edges. Laid side by side, sardine-style, one might have fitted two dozen determined sunbathers on it. Just offshore, a series of large rocks calmed the waves before they reached the sand. The cove gave the impression of a very sheltered place, yet the tide marks well above head-height showed that the waves broke over the entire beach in rough winter weather.

  ‘I think it’s perfect,’ Annis announced. ‘Who needs leccy and plumbing when you’ve got a private beach?’ She looked up. You couldn’t see the crashed car from here. ‘Told you we wouldn’t need our cozzies.’

  The sun may have been unusually hot for the time of year, but the water kept to a breathtakingly seasonal temperature. I was in and out in three minutes, enough to remind myself that the sea takes a long time to warm up in spring. I stood shivering on the sand, towelling myself, but Annis went on mermaiding it between the rocks and casting aspersions on my manhood (as opposed to mousehood).

  ‘It’s lovely. You don’t feel the cold after a while!’

  ‘That’s because you’ve gone numb!’

  ‘Come back in here, you wimp!’

  ‘In a little while!’ I promised. ‘Like August.’

  Another five minutes and she was back on the beach, getting herself towelled down by the wimp while her teeth chattered. ‘It’s g–g–g–g–great out there, c–c–c–can’t wait to do it again. In a w–w–wetsuit, perhaps.’

  We huddled together and soon warmed up in the sunshine. Another ten minutes and we were baking as the heat radiated from the rocks. I applied a fresh layer of factor fifty all over Annis’s fair skin. Thoroughly. But however careful you are, you always end up with sandy bits, which m
eans you have to get back into the sea, then towel yourself dry, reapply lotion, get sandy bits . . . the endless, insane cycle of life on the beach.

  Eventually, Annis settled down with a swollen bathtub copy of Harlot’s Ghost, while I failed to get enthusiastic about The Naked and the Dead, which I decided was a bad choice for the beach. After a while I gave up on it, put on my jeans and shoes and took a ‘walk’ to the edges of the cove. The left side was pretty disappointing, offering me a collection of worn plastic bottles, bits of tarry wood, the leg of a toy doll and cigarette ends. I scrambled over the rocks at the end to try to peer around the corner but nearly ended up in the drink and gave up on it.

  The other side proved more interesting. The first thing I found was a small dead starfish. Next to it, the sharp corner of an angular plastic object showed above the sand. I pulled and wriggled it until the wet sand gave it up.

  ‘Ha, look what I found!’ I called to Annis.

  She didn’t. ‘What?’

  ‘A Monkees CD. Still sealed in cellophane. Aren’t I the lucky one!’

  ‘Beachcombing has its ups and downs. Keep looking till you find something to play it on. On second thoughts – don’t bother.’

  ‘You can’t beachcomb to order, you know,’ I complained. As I stood there, I heard a tiny noise above. Looking up, I saw a couple of marble-sized stones come bouncing down the cliff. I ducked instinctively, but they fell nowhere near me. Erosion . . . I went to explore the other end of the cove. It didn’t take long and yielded no more treasure.

  Another dribble of small stones landed near us on the sand. Annis picked one up. ‘I suppose half of the stone down here falls from up there. The trick is not to be down here when it happens. Did you bring anything to eat with you?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Bum. Neither did I.’ We’d obviously reached a stomach-growling consensus since we were both putting on our clothes and packing our gear.

  ‘What time is it?’ Annis said, checking her watch. ‘Bit too late for going into town for lunch. We’ll go find something to eat at Morva’s, but tonight I’ll take you for dinner in my favourite Corfu restaurant. If it’s still there.’

  Gravity is still a mysterious, largely unexplained force. The one thing we do know about it is that it usually makes going up harder than going down. Climbing downhill, we hadn’t paid much attention to how heavy rain followed by hot sunshine had produced cracks in the footpath and loosened stones. Now it was sending dribbles of stone and dried mud down towards the beach. As we got closer to the top, the presence of the crashed Fiesta began to loom above us. It looked somehow more precarious from down here than it had from up there. Now, out of breath and not liking heights at the best of times, scrambling around below the rusting hulk, I imagined I could hear gravity making it creak. When at last we had pushed and pulled each other up and over the top of the cliff, I stood panting with my hands on my knees. ‘Well, I’m glad we got that out of our system.’

  Annis glugged water down her throat, then agreed. ‘Yes, I don’t think we need to do that again.’

  At Morva’s place, the beautiful sounds had stopped for siesta. We had missed lunch and there was no one to be seen. Charlie’s tools lay about the nearly finished shower cubicle; the table in the courtyard had not yet been cleared. Derringer sat by the well, watching the chickens; a fat black hen pecked at crumbs under the table with one eye on the cat. It was quiet, the chirping of the crickets so ubiquitous and incessant as to be practically inaudible until you thought about it – then it turned into the insane sound of Mediterranean summer.

  ‘Welcome to the Marie Celeste.’ I picked up half a slice of bread left on the table and gave it a speculative nibble. It had already gone stale in the heat; I rubbed it into crumbs for the hen under the table.

  ‘It sure can get quiet here when it wants to. Let’s find something to eat and then I wouldn’t mind a bit of siesta myself.’

  ‘I suppose everyone’s asleep. We’ll tiptoe into the kitchen. I’ll scramble some of those fabulous eggs these hens lay every day. There’s usually plenty of those.’

  We walked quietly through the sitting room and the adjoining little studio. The kitchen door was closed. I had never seen it closed before. I hesitated with my hand on the latch, feeling suddenly uneasy.

  ‘What?’ Annis asked. ‘Please don’t say “It’s too quiet”.’

  ‘All right, I won’t,’ I said, hand on the latch.

  ‘They’re all asleep.’

  ‘I’m sure they are. It is siesta time.’

  ‘Exactly. Can you smell something odd?’

  By now we were whispering. ‘Not me. Silence doesn’t have a smell.’

  ‘Then why not open the door?’

  I sprung the latch and slowly pushed open the door. The kitchen was empty. Despite the heat, both of the small windows were closed. I stepped inside. ‘Close the door so we can stop whispering.’

  She did. ‘I’ll make some coffee; sure Morva won’t mind.’ Annis stepped towards the cooker.

  I looked round for something to eat. Under the table next to the half-barrel lay a hen, on its side, one eye staring up at me, unseeing. It looked very dead. I bent down towards it and got a noseful of it. I whirled round and closed my hand over Annis’s as she was about to strike a match.

  ‘Don’t! You’ll blow us sky high.’

  ‘How so?’

  I pointed to our feet. ‘Gas. Bottled gas. The room’s full of it, but it’s heavier than air, settles on the ground. We’re shin-deep in it. It doesn’t mix with air, see? But light a match and whoosh, bye-bye Jordan and Honeysett.’

  I reached across and turned the valve on the gas bottle. The rubber hose connecting it to the cooker had dropped off; the jubilee clip that normally held it in place was slack.

  ‘I can get the odd whiff of it now – how creepy. Now what?’

  ‘Hold the flambé. Open doors and windows and it’ll disappear in a while.’ After a few minutes of draught and both of us waving tea towels around, the gas had dispersed. The gas bottle was completely empty.

  ‘Was this an accident?’ Annis wanted to know. ‘Or was it deliberate sabotage? Meant to blow up the house.’

  ‘Don’t know. It wouldn’t have blown the house up; at least, I don’t think so. It would definitely have frazzled us to a cinder, though, had you lit that match. Or had Charlie walked in here with a fag dangling from his lips. And blown the windows out. But, then, I’m no expert on gas explosions.’

  ‘What is your area of expertise? Remind me, hon.’

  ‘Weirdness. And this place is weird. It’s a weird house in an odd place full of odd people and weird stuff happens all the time.’

  ‘That’s your expert analysis, is it?’

  ‘Yes. A bunch of mild eccentrics playing at being painters in a place where they’re not wanted. I was going to say something like “idle foreigners being watched enviously by the hard-working locals”, but no one down in that village ever seems to do any work at all. There’s something weird about that, too. They don’t look particularly frugal to me, so they’ll have to have an alternative income.’ I connected the spare bottle, making sure the jubilee clip was securely fastened this time, and lit the gas under a heavy frying pan. ‘Is that bread over there still edible? Then cut us some slices.’ I cracked a few eggs into a bowl, whisked them lightly with some seasoning, crumbled in some feta cheese and slid the lot into an oiled pan over medium heat. A shower of the ubiquitous wild oregano from a bunch hanging up near the stove speckled the egg mixture darkly. In the absence of a grill, I heated up a pan lid over the other gas ring and covered the pan with it until the frittata had set. We ate outside, watched by Derringer with a speculative eye. He was slowly growing fat from being spoilt by everyone and sleeping twenty hours a day in luxurious warmth. ‘Don’t get used to this,’ I warned him. ‘It’s back to Blighty soon.’

  We took our own siesta in our room and both fell asleep to the endless rasping rhythm of the cicadas in the g
roves behind the house. We woke late to the rasping rhythm of Charlie’s saw and for a while luxuriated in listening to him work in the yard, then drifted off again. When we finally woke up, it was to the sound of excited voices outside. We scrambled into our clothes and tumbled through the door just as Helen exclaimed loudly, ‘Oh my god, it’s warm!’

  Everyone was in the yard, surrounding the shower cubicle. All except Helen who was standing inside it in a black one-piece bathing suit, laughing, under what looked convincingly like a working shower.

  Charlie’s pride as he demonstrated and explained was evident but well earned. The set-up was extremely low-tech. I approved. Morva was ecstatic. The cubicle itself consisted of nothing more than a phonebox-sized wooden construction with a slatted floor and sloping roof. The shower head looked suspiciously like the rose from an old zinc watering can connected to a bit of pipe with a simple on/off valve. It was fed from a green garden hose. The water came from a four-gallon tin thirty yards away uphill, which in turn was fed from the cistern behind the ruin further along. The water travelled via several lengths of hosepipe, on to which dozens of empty wine bottles, their bottoms knocked out, had been threaded. Exposed to the sun they absorbed and focused sunlight on to the pipe, heating the water inside to an astonishing temperature. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been quite enough bottles for the entire length, resulting in an invigorating hot/cool/hot/cool effect, ending in a bracingly cold finale if your ablutions lasted for more than two minutes. On a sunny day it would take less than an hour to heat up.

  ‘And I’ve had one or two ideas for when it gets cold in winter. It would simply mean extending your stovepipe . . .’ Morva followed Charlie inside in rapturous admiration.

  The rest of the afternoon was taken up with everyone taking turns at ninety seconds of bliss: showering, waiting, showering. Sophie returned late afternoon, looking as if she had indeed visited the twenty-first century, with its power showers, washing machines, electric irons and, I noticed, hairdressers. She admired the shower and hung around as Charlie began work on the room next to ours.