Mark raised the knife. ‘So move out of the way, okay? I’m leaving now. You can just let me go, and we’ll never see each other again.’
‘I can’t let you do that.’
‘Listen, I look at your wife’s insides every night on my computer, in her mouth, up her legs. She’s all soft and pink and ready. You want to go home to that, don’t you?’ He flicked out with the knife. It was a weak movement, without conviction. ‘You’re not going to make a move, are you?’
David felt nothing. He watched the movements of the knife, as Mark talked on, working himself up, trying to pry him from his position in the doorway.
‘You’re really going to take me on? Just walk away, mate, you don’t need it. I’ll cut you, I swear, I’ll cut you.’
‘You take photographs. This isn’t New York. You’re not a gang member. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing with that knife. You’re standing in a small public library in Wootton Bassett.’
Mark flashed forward, lifted the knife to David’s face, laid it against his left cheek. The coldness of the blade was astonishing; it was all David could do not to flinch. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me this is an overdue library book?’
David reached up, grabbed Mark’s hand as he started to put pressure onto the knife, felt a cut opening under his eye, and then twisted Mark’s wrist with all his strength. The snap of the bone was audible. It was easy to keep twisting until the point of the knife touched Mark’s throat.
Through the skin, through the fibrous muscle, to the larynx, slipping past the cartilage of the jaw.
Mark hissed on it, a sound like the releasing of steam, and David let go of the knife and took him by the upper arms to steer him into the swivel chair.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Let it go. It’s time to let it go.’ He took off his coat and wrapped it around Mark’s neck, knife and all, tying the sleeves tight in a double knot. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s the way we were made. Better to be dead.’
He realised he was speaking a deep truth, the deepest, as he patted Mark’s hand and tried to soothe the pleading in his eyes. If a man had no choice but to cause pain, then it was better to be dead, undeniably. Why did Mark have to fight this, try to speak, make faces of agony and fear? David couldn’t bear it any longer. He pinched shut the nose and mouth, and sang over and over, ‘Go to sleep, go to sleep,’ until the desperate eyes finally rolled over, and the story was done.
David pulled the material of his coat over Mark’s face. He walked to the office door and clung to the frame as he called for Sam.
She came, with Geoff running after her, his face shining with excitement. ‘What happened?’ he said.
‘I killed him. Call the police.’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Sam touched his face, traced the path of the blood with one finger, as soft and cool as a raindrop.
‘I’ve got a plaster,’ said Geoff, and pulled a small first aid box from his coat pocket. David found himself laughing, and Sam had to tell him to stop so that she could apply the plaster underneath his eye. Once she was done, she kissed his cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
There was no reply to that. Had he done it for her? He supposed he must have: for her, and Marianne, and for all women everywhere.
‘Call the police,’ he told her.
‘I am the police. Let me deal with this. I’m not going to let you go to prison over that bastard, do you understand? You need rest. A good night’s sleep. Geoff, give me a hand.’
Sam held one arm, and Geoff held the other, and David let them lead him from the library, through the car park, back to the passenger seat of her Mini.
‘Stay here.’ She kissed his lips, like Friday night wine at the end of a long week. She kissed his forehead, and he felt absolved, anointed. Her mouth, her words, her touch – it was enough to send him into sleep without guilt.
He didn’t remember the drive home, or being put to bed. When he woke, it was bright outside. A cold, crisp winter sun penetrated the curtains, and Sam was beside him, naked, her mouth open, her legs splayed in sleep.
And downstairs, on the doormat, waiting for him, was a package from Skein Island.
PART FIVE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sit at the tiny kitchen table. The salad I prepared sits in a large glass bowl: sliced tomatoes, cubes of feta, a local type of ham. It’s looking limp already. Salad is wrong in this weather, late February, and the white archways and tiled floors of the apartment are too cold to bear. I’ve been here for three hours and I haven’t managed to take off my coat yet. It’s sunset, and warmer outside – warmer than Britain, anyway. But I can’t bring myself to sit out on the veranda, with the mountains rising up behind me like a threat.
Both Heathrow and Heraklion airports were a mess of cancelled flights and missing staff. So many men aren’t turning up for work. They have more important things to do, more spectacular stories to be part of. Moira’s power seems to be bursting out, maybe as a reaction against her years of confinement. It’s changing the world.
At least the car rental agent was a woman. She checked my details and gave me the keys with a quiet efficiency, and I tried not to stare at the love bite on her neck, enormous, like a mark of ownership. She has become a man’s property.
At Heathrow, before my flight was called, I sat in the departures lounge and watched people hurrying between the gates, fear on their faces. A male member of staff in a blue uniform, topped with a perfectly tied cravat, walked up and remonstrated with me about the dangers of travelling. He was so earnest, almost evangelical.
At first I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought he was selling sunscreen when he told me I shouldn’t be without protection. I said, ‘But it’s not even that hot out in Crete right now,’ and he looked so confused. That was when I realised he meant I shouldn’t be travelling without a man to protect me.
The apartment is in a complex, all the balconies facing the same way, overlooking a bright blue swimming pool with a dolphin represented in green mosaic at the bottom. The kitchen and the living room is one room, the fridge next to the sofa that doubles as a bed. I can see the pool through the French windows. The loungers are all stacked at the far end, the top ones in each stack covered by tarpaulin, pulled tight with ropes. The semicircular bar shows signs of use – the wooden stools are still out, and one beach umbrella is propped up against the back wall – but it is not open now. Everything seems deserted. I let myself into the apartment with the key, under the mat, just as the emailed instructions advised when I booked the place. I’ve yet to see another person in this complex.
The feeling of being alone is overwhelming.
How ridiculous it is to feel so scared, when, after all, this is just another island. How different is it from Skein Island? In fact, many more thousands of people live here than on Skein Island, and there are safety nets in place here, to catch you if danger pushes you over the edge.
But that is what I’m scared of. The people, the safety nets. The men who think they’ll be helping me, and the men who’ll want to hurt me. Moira’s influence will be so strong here, and I have yet to think of what I’m going to say to her. What story can I possibly tell her that will hold her attention?
There’s a knock at the door. I freeze.
‘Marianne?’
David’s voice, it’s David’s voice, and the feeling that everything is going to be okay is overwhelming. I stand up too quickly, and knock over the chair. It clatters to the tiled floor.
I run to the door and throw it open. He’s there, looking tall and straight and just like a man I used to know, like stepping back in time; yes, he’s still my husband. Somehow he’s taken us back to the first years of our marriage when there was nothing but the delight of being his wife.
‘Marianne,’ says David, and it undoes me. I go to him, feel him put his arms around me, and I forget everything, everyone else. Whatever happens will happen, but I have David again, just for a few hours, and I
don’t know how I ever managed without him, the smell of him, the strength of him. He fortifies me. But it also terrifies me – he shouldn’t be here, so close to Moira, in danger from her presence.
‘No, you need to go. It’s not safe—’
‘I’m fine,’ he says, ‘I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ve been close to her before, remember?’
Of course I remember. In the basement, he rescued me, and he touched Moira when he pulled my mother free of her. And yet he’s okay. For now.
I need him to kiss me.
I lift my face to his and claim him, keep on kissing him, until he belongs to me again. At some point during the process he moves me backwards, shuts the door, shuffles me to the sofa and cradles me on his lap. He touches me, takes off my clothes, so I take off his, and we sit together, naked, not passionate so much as still and whole in the dusk, overlooking the dolphin mosaic in the deep blue pool.
We make love. He says, ‘Like this?’ as he strokes me, very gently, and I sit astride him, lower myself on to him, rock back and forth and take pleasure in him. The dusk turns to dark, and the room is shadowed when we disentangle ourselves and pull apart, just enough to let the world start moving again. Questions are coming, with difficult answers. But not just yet. Not yet.
He takes my hands and leads me to the kitchen, then pours himself some water from the bottle next to the sink. The salad looks even worse off than before.
‘Were you going to eat that?’ he says.
‘It was all I bought at the minimart.’
‘Is it wrong to go for pizza instead?’ ‘I could eat pizza.’ Like a normal holiday. The thought of it makes me smile. It’s perfection.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ he says. He puts down the glass and pulls me back into his arms.
‘Terrible.’
‘It’s not even that cold outside.’
‘I know.’
‘Arnie’s here.’
‘What?’ I pull back, look into David’s face. There is a cut just under one eye, drawing attention to the lines of his cheekbones. I see guilt in his gaze, and determination.
‘Rebecca wrote and told me what you’ve been planning. She asked me to come and talk to you. Reason with you not to do this alone. She and Inger are worried about you. So I came; I had to come and find you, and Arnie said he had to come too.’
‘Arnie was worried about me too?’ The idea of it is incongruous with the mental image I have of my father in The Cornerhouse, flirting with the barmaid, drinking until it’s easy to slump in the corner and dream of a different life.
David caresses the back of my neck. We are still naked, and it’s wrong for this conversation. How quickly it’s become serious. And the big questions are here already, knocking on the door. I move away from him, back to my clothes, and start to dress.
‘Arnie sees the future.’
Of course. All men are heroes, villains, sages or sidekicks. Arnie is a wise man, even though I’ve been trying to make him the villain in my personal story. ‘So what did he see?’
‘He saw us all in the cave. You, me, him and Geoff.’
‘Who the hell is Geoff?’
‘He helped me out.’
‘He’s your sidekick.’ So David the Hero has a team. But who have they been playing against? As David puts on his jeans and shirt I think about the cut under his eye, and suddenly I see that he has diverged from me, led his own story into new and disturbing directions. ‘Did Arnie and Geoff help you find the man who attacked me? Is that it?’
David nods.
‘And did you…’
‘I’ve dealt with him.’
Shouldn’t I feel freed by this information? Instead I’m horrified at what has happened, what I set in motion. ‘How? What… What did you…?’
He moves to the open window, turns his back to me, and says, ‘He asked if you could forgive him, at the end. He said he was sorry.’
‘He was sorry?’
‘The police took him away. For a different crime. Another attack. No need for you to testify. It’s done with. You asked me to deal with it, and I did.’
I go to him, press myself against his back, and feel the tension in his shoulders, his legs. ‘Thank you.’
‘Does that help?’
‘Does it?’ I do the only thing I can. I lie. ‘Yes, that helps. Like you say, it’s done with. You dealt with it.’
There never will be a time when it will be done with. No matter what happens to my attacker, no matter what happens to me. It will be inside my head forever, and I will circle it, like a moth around a bulb, forever getting too close to it, forever getting scorched by that memory. Sometimes I think it would be better to be dead, but I go on, just the same.
Yet more cowardice on my part. I don’t deserve David. I’m beginning to think that I never did.
He turns, and hugs me so tight, as if forgiving the untruths we have just told each other. ‘Arnie and Geoff are sharing an apartment on the other side of the complex. Let’s go and get them and plan our next move over pizza.’
‘There is no next move. I’m going to a cave tomorrow, up in the mountains. On my own. You’re going home. It’s the only way I can do this.’
‘We’ll see,’ he says, in a tone I recognise, and I realise this will have to be a negotiation. When a hero walks into a story, he doesn’t do as he’s told.
* * *
An Irish bar that claims to serve the best pint of Guinness on Crete is still open, one in a row of seafront eateries that have shut for the season, and it serves two types of pizza: margherita or Irish sausage. Only Geoff plumped for the sausage option. The waiter brought out discs of undercooked dough with scattered blobs of cheese and tomato on the surface. The Irish sausage pizza is huge and floppy, with a peculiarly yellow cheese, upon which the diced sausage floats. Geoff cuts off strips of pizza, folds them up, and pops them into his mouth as if sampling a delicacy. It’s ridiculous to still care about food at a time like this, but I find I do. I can’t help it. That’s part of being human, perhaps: caring about what you smell, taste, see and hear even when you might be dead tomorrow. Because you might be dead tomorrow.
We are sitting outside, between two space heaters that are doing a fine job of keeping the night’s chill away, around a rough, circular wooden table positioned for a view over the pebbly beach and the rippling sea. It makes a shushing sound, only audible when there’s a pause between pop songs coming from the interior of the empty bar. So far we have concentrated on eating, but I have to take control of the situation and turn their attention back to what I’ve come here to do. Without their interference.
‘Here’s what we know,’ I say, hoping I sound like a general addressing the troops in a key moment of a hard-fought war. ‘The Ideon Andron is a cave on Mount Ida, only ten minutes’ drive away. It’s a tourist attraction now, so it’s fairly easy to get to.’ I think of the video footage I watched on YouTube. Holidaymakers stood around the large mouth of the cave in summer heat, waving at the camera, sunglasses reflecting back, and then the scene panned away over to the sea while a Demis Roussos song swelled up to monstrous proportions. ‘There are four chambers, and the… person I’m looking for is in the last one. She’s very dangerous to men, but she won’t hurt me. So I’ll go in alone, retrieve the statue that belongs back on Skein Island, and then call for you to come and take it away, okay?’
‘I thought we were hunting a monster,’ says Geoff, mournfully, like a child being told the trip to Disneyland is off. I remember him from the library. He would come in every month or so and take out an adventure novel – Wilbur Smith or Clive Cussler – and often he’d bring them back late and have to pay a fine. All I really know about him is that he’s a slow reader. Now I find I like him and pity him in equal measure.
‘Who told you that?’ I ask him.
He points at David. ‘I told them what I knew,’ he says.
‘A goddess,’ says Arnie. ‘Fate.’ It’s the first time he’s spoken since his pizza arrived. It lies unt
ouched before him, as does his beer. Pale and with a permanent frown, he looks familiarly hungover. I wonder if he drank too much on the plane.
‘They’ve played the cubes too.’ David shrugs.
Of course. They’ve all had their own visions of Moira, caused by the water containing her essence. No wonder Geoff looks enthusiastic about going to meet her. He probably thinks he’s going to find some fantasy female with flowing hair and bouncy breasts – a Greek pin-up girl. ‘She will kill you if you get too close. Or you’ll kill each other.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ says David. ‘We’ll take you to the cave, we’ll wait outside. When you shout for us, we’ll come in. We get it.’
But I don’t believe him. I don’t feel in control of them. They have their own agenda; I can read it on their faces.
‘We all need to be there,’ says Arnie. ‘This won’t work unless we’re there. David, go and order me a – an ouzo, is it? Whatever they drink around here.’
‘You’re sure?’
Arnie nods. As soon as David has left the table, he looks at Geoff. ‘Push off for a minute, lad, all right?’ Geoff gets up, uncomplaining, and slopes off in the direction of the sea.
I’m alone with my father for the first time in months. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘It’s like this. This is David’s fight, not yours. It’s not a woman’s place to take on Fate. You know that.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘The only way this is going to work is if you let David take her on. He touched her, on the island, didn’t he? And somehow he survived. It’s made him too powerful. Like in the big stories of old. Like Ulysses, and Theseus, and all that.’
‘Even those heroes couldn’t beat Fate.’
‘But you think you can?’ He slumps back in his chair, and puts one hand on his forehead. ‘Don’t argue with me, Marianne. I’ve seen it.’
And that, in his eyes, should be the end of the argument. He’s a wise man. Born that way. He has a natural advantage over me, over all women.
Skein Island Page 18
