by Tobias Roote
MERCURY’S SECRET
by
TOBIAS ROOTE
Copyright © 2013 Tobias Roote - Author. All Rights Reserved.
Thanks to SelfPubBookCovers.com/Eric for the contribution to the design of the cover
CHAPTER 1
The very idea of writing internet articles about anything from new software for language students to comparisons in security programs, jarred completely with the relaxed tourist lifestyle I maintained. Both these aspects were a far cry from my previous incarnation, but I wasn’t complaining; nobody was getting killed and I wasn’t being hunted.
So long as I stayed far away from my past, I would be safe. That was the agreement I had with my previous employer. It was an arrangement that was keeping me alive. Despite all this I still looked over my shoulder, you never completely trusted anyone again, ever. Occasionally, you would get dragged back in, usually when you least expected. When that happened, the gloves generally came off.
***
The sun beat down as I languished on the hot sand. Half interested in the idea of a swim, I was undecided whether to snorkel, or just cool myself in the chilled water.
The storm season had passed and taken with it the sea's constant pressure to throw pebbles high up the beach. The waves depositing fine sandy grains as smooth gentle dunes that would soon be covered with towels, parasols and sunbeds.
As I flipped onto my back and stretched, the muscles that had suffered nerve damage from old wounds began to ease for the first time in months. My body, once sleek and well-toned, still carried the leftovers of last summer’s tan. Exercise had kept the middle age spread at bay, but the battle was beginning to show.
Finally, standing up and taking in the view of the bay as the afternoon sun dropped slowly towards the cliff tops, I walked into the sea until deep enough to immerse myself into its chill waters. Then swam until the sun’s heat had been thoroughly chased from my body.
When I returned to the hot sand I felt completely relaxed and cooled, ready for another evenings hard work on my computer.
An hour later, dry and dressed in t-shirt and shorts, slipping my backpack over my shoulders, I made my way up the beach back towards civilisation and my transport home.
The powder blue flared motorcycle, cooled in the shade of the newly planted palm tree, burst into a muted roar as I pressed the starter and holding the clutch in, slipped the bike into first gear.
The traffic, non-existent this early in the season meant I had the road and the view to myself. I sat for a few minutes taking a look around me and considered the quiet emptiness which would, in a matter of days, be just a dim memory as the tourists arrival filled up the space.
The winter had been long and hard. The seasonal tidy-up for the tourists had been frantic and as jets landed at the Island’s only airport, disgorging their contents of pale, sun-seeking tourists, the Tavernas began laying out their wares.
Summer job adverts festooned windows and noticeboards as beach-based businesses prepared to fill the welcome teams needed to attract and cope with the coming influx. Early arrivals always included seasonal job seekers.
Taking one last look at the sea and with a final adjustment to my shades, I released the clutch and rode off up the deserted street.
Ten minutes of quiet cruising along the potholed lanes that represented a dangerous challenge to life and limb took me to the turn-off for the farm track.
Many a car had lost its wheel and a fair few bikers had gained their first gravel rash along these roads. It was not a place to speed, or look at the splendid views instead of watching the road.
Jigging the bike up the track was not for the faint hearted either. I had chosen the location purely because it was difficult to approach. The track led up the hill into olive groves a good six hundred metres before swinging a hard left onto a concrete drive.
Another forty metres on bought me to my hideaway, a single storey dwelling that had at some time been a guest lodge to the larger house, situated a further two hundred yards up the track, but sharing the land and view.
I parked the bike under the orange tree where it would be sheltered from the fine African desert sand which, at this time of year, coated everything. It got carried in on the nightly winds high above and deposited in the heavy dew.
My landlords, John and Abbey Crouch, were green-fingered smallholders who grew everything from wild garlic to crops of aubergines and potatoes. It was a requirement that any tenant had to eat their own weight in vegetables every week. I tried hard, but Abbey was always ahead of me and there were baskets of green vegetables, fruit and fresh eggs outside my door every day.
I picked up today’s bagging's, some late Jaffa oranges and green vegetables along with six eggs, and pressing the latch on my door that I never locked, pushed my way in.
Mercury was inside waiting for me. He wasn’t the happiest dog at the moment having been confined indoors while the poison bait worked its way through the local rat population. He was a little too keen to taste his kills rather than just bite and drop as I had trained him to do. Still, as a wiry little mongrel he had his moments and he still managed to get plenty of exercise when we were out together.
I checked he had water and made my way to the fridge to put the new vegetables in with the existing produce. I needed some salad munching house guests, I was getting overrun.
The fridge door magnet had a new message clamped to it, it was from Abbey.
Dan, Dinner for 7pm bring Mercury, new house guest - so best behaviour, A
Wonderful, if its another one of those natural science boffins from the UK I won't be happy, I thought.
The idea of dealing with guests wasn’t on my list of favourite pastimes. I generally hated to be around people and avoided them as much as possible. John and Abbey were refreshingly exempt.
I had known them a few years. They were much like me and kept to themselves, only surfacing to put their excess produce in front of local customers. It was how we had met, at one of their unofficial stalls stacked high with vegetables and eggs. I was my usual rude self and Abbey had laughed at me delightedly, making me grin at her unexpected reaction. I took to her immediately.
That, plus John standing admiring my bike one day outside a supermarket, meant we had several opportunities to talk and, more or less, hit it off.
I moved in a couple of months later when they decided they needed a sitting tenant for their guest bungalow to keep the possible immigrant population from ransacking it.
I got charged a peppercorn rent in return for providing regular patrols around the property when they were either busy in the fields, or working hard in the sheds.
It was perfect work for my restless body which spent most of its day working its brain to death and best of all, Mercury loved it. He rarely missed an opportunity to hunt and we managed to keep most of the four legged rodents at bay.
The only time I had problems with him was when the Pine Marten came calling. The resultant excitement and demonic activity chasing both the spore and the occasional animal was just too exhausting to watch. The Marten, which was way too fast for Mercury, was also a good rat killer so we suffered it although Mercury objected to the competition.
I looked at my watch, I had a couple of hours to kill before cleaning up for dinner.
Grabbing Mercury we headed for the woods. He wouldn’t head for any poison bait whilst with me, and I could keep him away from those locations anyway.
We were soon hiking hard up the now drying mud tracks that were deeply rutted from the tractors and Utes that had been climbing up here throughout the winter collecting the olive harvest. The ground would be like that now until next winter’s rains softened it again and new ruts formed over old ones.
Mercury raced
along by my side, then running a hundred feet ahead, then galloping another hundred feet behind, quartering the ground and picking up smells, deciding which were old, or not of interest before cutting a new path between the trees.
He never barked unless he had a cat tree’d which was quite often as there were quite a few wild ones on the Island. He had only once caught up with one and still bore the scar across his nose to remind him of the futility and pain of cornering wild creatures.
He now had a healthy respect for close quarter cat fighting and tended to satisfy himself with giving them a good chase into a tree and leaving them to stew.
By the time we reached the summit of the steep hill, the sun was beginning to go down and I could see across to the other side and beyond to further valleys that made up much of the Island.
The wood smoke from the many fires being burned before the hot season closed them down, created a wispy hanging fog effect that as the day gave up its colour, turned everything into ghostly shades of grey and charcoal.
I looked up, a clear sky, a cool evening, another hot day tomorrow, for sure.
We proceeded back down the track, Mercury calmer now that he had exhausted his territorial urges and ascertained he was still master of his hill. He was calmly trotting by my side, tongue lolling out the side as he cooled from his exuberant endeavours.
I promised myself I would take him with me tomorrow as he hadn’t been out for a week. He could do with a change of scene and I had a few errands to run where he could glean more than a little affection from old friends who felt he had a raw deal living with me.
I wasn’t the type of dog owner that they fully approved of because Mercury wasn’t mollycoddled or treated like a substitute child, or grandchild. Seeing as I rescued him from a wheelie bin in mid summer, he and I both knew that we had a good deal going.
He was a working dog so I worked him hard, his reward was more training and more hard work. He loved it. His intelligence and quickness worked for him. We often worked as a team, but I could and did, send him out on his own and he would do exactly as he had been trained to do without supervision. The dog had good instincts.
Coming down towards the cottage, as I had come to call my home, I heard the sound of a small car struggling its way up the drive straining its engine against the torturous incline.
By the time I got down to the track where it switched to John and Abbey’s, I had missed it and all I could see were the tail lights as the driver braked for the last bend.
That would be our dinner guest I would guess. I looked at my watch, time to go clean up.
CHAPTER 2
I’m not one for being fashionably late, so I arrived on the dot of seven and let myself in through the kitchen flyscreen.
It clacked behind me and Mercury scooted at the sound. He had the temerity to look at me accusingly as if I had let it happen on purpose. I bent down and jostled his head and was instantly forgiven.
I saw Abbey at the other end of the kitchen, her fine mussed grey hair piled atop her head as she busied herself preparing vegetables to go with what I could smell was beautifully roasting goat.
Abbey was a terrific hostess, her meals were perfections of culinary enjoyment. She made food for you to really eat and I never starved around her kitchen.
“Hi Abb’s, you’re cooking all that stuff up for me and its not even Sunday?”
She chuckled as she turned sideways towards the direction of my voice while still cutting carrots. I could see roasted pumpkin and marrow in the food warmer. I knew there would be roast potatoes and parsnips in with the meat. It looked like a bumper spread tonight.
“There’s a beer in the fridge, or John’s been down and picked up some of your favourite wine. Its over there on the worktop,” she nodded towards the centre aisle.
“Take the bottle in with you, and those glasses are for the table, although you can have one now if you want, dinner won’t be long, by the way.”
I reached her as she finished talking and kissed her lightly on the head, Abbey’s not one for gestures of affection, but I did it anyway and knew she appreciated it despite her protestations. I left her side and picked up four glasses by their stems and the bottles of red and white, and walked off into the lounge.
The table was set for four, the high backed wooden chairs, that John had made himself, looking grand against the backdrop of the lounge which had no ceiling but went all the way to the roof of the building. As a testament to a love of carpentry the eaves were proudly naked and lightly stained to bring out the colour of the grain, strong and vibrant, as olive wood tends to be.
A gangway around the periphery provided a walk space to the IT station in the far corner, where John loved to sit in the evening and look down upon his world.
The gangway was also the only access to the rooms that fed off it on the first floor. Many of which were still little more than concrete and block-work, or ‘work in progress’ as John would say.
As I placed the glasses at each of the place settings, I heard a movement behind me and thinking it was John, I rattled off.
“We’ve got a tablecloth tonight, does this mean I can’t eat with my fingers and am not allowed to guzzle my wine?”
I knew when I said it that I really should have turned around first. So, when the amused tones of a young female voice replied, I knew I was screwed. She was laughing.
“Well, you could use your fingers, I have sat at many a table where its normal to do so. However, guzzling wine is accepted all over the world, so please don’t feel constrained on my behalf.”
I turned around to see the source of the laughter and was rewarded with the sight of a beautiful young woman roughly half my age. She sported well tanned features and long dark hair halfway down her back which was riddled with blonde streaks.
She came up to me smiling mischievously, her brown eyes glittered, her bearing confident and as graceful as a lioness, her tight T-shirt and jeans highlighting the youthfulness of her figure. Twenty five and no children yet, were my immediate thoughts as I took in what was obviously the 'dinner guest’.
I recovered instantly and remembered my manners, just in time.
“Sorry, you must be John and Abbey’s dinner guest, I’m Dan.” I put my hand out and as she clasped mine I noticed it was cool, dry and firm, and although small in my big hand, it oozed confidence as it met me on equal terms.
I sense these things and judge people on contact and body language. This girl was poised and carried herself with a physical fitness that indicated she worked out, a lot.
“Alice,” she introduced herself, smiling, “and I’m not a guest so to speak, I’m John’s youngest daughter.”
“Ah! Yes, of course! I heard you were touring the world and making it your home. Are you back for a visit?” I stood assessing her in light of the new information. Her photos really didn’t do her justice.
As I looked into her eyes I detected a hidden hardness in response to my question as if a deep nerve had been touched. It was gone in a flash, as if it had never been there. Her smile never wavered. I hadn’t missed the sudden hard flint in her eyes though.
“No, I’m home now, or at least on my way back to England. This is just a stopover for a few months to catchup with stuff and to rest up with some good home cooking and TLC.
Abbey is a good friend and both her and Dad ground me. So its like a half-way house before trying to make a fresh start back at work in England.”
Alice looked great to me, she didn’t look like she needed any grounding at all, my immediate impression was she would manage whatever situation she found herself in. So, I said so.
“You don’t need any grounding in my opinion, you could eat the job market alive with your worldly experience and you must be streets ahead of your generation with all the travelling you have done.”
“I would let you have you a job tomorrow if I had one to give!” I gushed like a teenager with a crush.
Damn! Where did that come from? I thought, embarras
sed at my immaturity.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “All this and you have only known me for thirty seconds?” she laughed.
I saw a chance to recover and responded quickly in a matter of fact way.
“Actually Alice, John talks about you all the time, I have seen your old photos, and I get regular updates on where you are, and what you are doing. So, yes! Thirty seconds plus two years of being kept in the loop works fine for me.” I smiled and was pleased to see her blush slightly at this.
It was then I realised I’m still holding her hand. Well, actually no, she’s holding mine. I look down and she lets go, her fingers trailing teasingly along mine as she did so. I look back up to see her still grinning at me, totally unabashed.
“Well, if that’s the case, Dan, I should warn you that Dad has written pages to me about you.” She retaliated to the old photos jibe, the fire back in her eyes and glinting like diamonds.
“Your arrival here was a godsend to him and Abbey, they were going insane without someone to mother, and the goats were about to be named before you moved in and you know what that would have meant!” she eyed me knowingly. Damned if she isn’t a real mischief maker, I thought.
“YES! NO DINNER!” the loud announcement came from the kitchen door as John walked through beaming his face off and carrying heavy plates of meat and vegetables.
Still laughing, we scurried to the kitchen to help get everything together on the table.
By the time we sat down, we were all old friends.
We tucked into the goat which was Abbey's favourite and also her ‘Pièce de résistance’, her culinary masterpiece.
The accompanying roasted vegetables were also each perfectly cooked and presented. For a smallholders wife, she cooked up a storm. I could get fat on her meals if I let her feed me as often as she wanted to.
I watched as John, clearly ecstatic to see Alice, dominated her attention all the way through dinner. Alice often looked at me as if hoping I would step in, but I knew John was too happy to have her home at that moment to share her with anyone else, except perhaps Abbey who was also letting him take over, albeit briefly.
