An Inch of Time (6 page)

One thing improved immediately. In Switzerland I had been moved on by traffic police almost as soon as I stopped anywhere – it appeared the Swiss did not approve of parking – but I knew that Italians parked anywhere they liked any time they liked.

I pulled into a muddy lay-by, toasted country number three with a very large bottle of folksily labelled Swiss wheat beer and fell asleep as soon as I closed my eyes.

I
awoke to piercing rays of sunlight. Derringer lay asleep at the bottom of the bunk in a patch of
bona fide
Italian sunshine, exposing his golden belly fur to the warmth steaming through the window. For a long moment I just lay there, enjoying the unusual sensation of sunlight that I could feel as well as see, something I hadn't experienced since last autumn. Yet soon my stomach let me know what it thought of a supper of wheat beer on a load of nothing, and Derringer took a break from sunbathing to wind up his feed-me whine.

I had parked on quite a busy country road. While the traffic barrelled past the window, I broke my fast on excellent rye bread, Gruyère cheese and coffee and counted my euros. I had spent a hair-raising amount, most of it on fuel. How could one van drink that much juice? Answer: easily. It was ancient and all I seemed to have done so far was to grind up and down endless hills and mountains. I consulted my map and looked at the long shaft of Italy's boot and decided there was only one answer: live on sandwiches and stick to the motorway.

How much is that? – Pósso káni aftó? One kilo tomatoes – ena kiló domátes. Do you have any eggs? – Meepos échete avgá? One melon – éna pepóni. Two melons . . .

I'll spare you the tedium of that journey and try not to think of the sights I missed. I lived on oozing slices of sizzling takeaway pizza, bags of bread rolls and impossibly thin wafers of salami, and cursed the time I was wasting simply to avoid three hours of hyperventilation on a charter flight. For all I knew, Kyla Biggs had by now turned up and safely returned to her flat in Bath.

Unbelievably, it was early morning of the fourth day when I pulled Matilda's wobbly handbrake near my embarkation point in the harbour of Brindisi, her nose pointing at Greece on the other side of the Ionian Sea. A classic Mediterranean sunrise set the Adriatic ablaze, compensating me for the two-thousand-kilometre slog I had just completed.

Despite a mug of strong black coffee and the noise of the harbour all around me, I fell asleep, then woke in a panic. A quick check confirmed that it was high time for embarkation. The port was a lot busier now. Several car ferries had docked, their rusting iron jaws wide open. As I joined the queue to drive into the bowels of my ferry, the
Ikarus Palace,
my eye was drawn by a glint of sunlight on car metal to a blue Toyota some two hundred yards to my left. It was the last car to negotiate its way up the ramp of the
Ionian Sky
, a rival ferry of the Agoudinos Lines. It was impossible to make out the driver, though I could just guess at very fair or even white hair. Then, just as the big car disappeared, I glimpsed a flash of yellow at the back – the number plate was definitely British.

I told myself that I had probably spent too many days talking to the cat and that at any one time there had to be more than one blue Toyota with British plates driving around Europe. Yet if it was the same car, as the hair at the back of my neck seemed to think, then it was a rare coincidence, and I've never been a great fan of those. Should the Toyota's destination turn out to be also Corfu – the ferries continued on to the Greek mainland – then I was going to challenge the driver, but my best chance of doing that was to get there before him. Unfortunately, it was the
Ionian Sky
that left first. I stood on deck and watched as she cleared the breakwater, gaining a considerable head start. I silently urged on my captain, whoever he was, to pull his finger out, wherever that was. At last, with much vibration and a groan, the
Ikarus Palace
pulled itself away from the quay. By now the
Ionian Sky
had shrunk to the size of my thumb, ahead and to the north of us. There was nothing I could do about that, so went in search of lunch.

Considering the earliness of the season, the
Ikarus Palace
was carrying a surprising number of foot passengers, many of them encumbered by rucksacks. Most had had the foresight to buy food in Brindisi rather than fall hostage to the phantasmagorical prices charged in the, admittedly snazzy, self-service restaurant. I ended up with a less than imaginative cheese-and-tomato toasted sandwich and a bottle of water in order to save my finances.

I took both up on deck. The wind had picked up but there was hardly a cloud in the sky now, and I greedily drank in the sight of so much glittering blue sea, so different from the English Channel of four days ago. We appeared to be gaining on the
Ionian Sky
but were just that moment ourselves overtaken by a foot-passenger-only hydrofoil, sweeping past with an impressive bow-wave as it bounced its way east across the water. The spectacle provided enough distraction for me to have missed the fact that a man had joined me at the guard rail. ‘They'll get there in half the time. Twice as seasick, naturally,' he assured me, with more than a hint of a German accent. He was a tall, tanned forty-year-old with no-nonsense grey hair and a two-day salt-and-pepper stubble. His jacket was tightly zipped up against the wind. Around his neck he carried a large pair of Zeiss binoculars as well as a Nikon camera encased in rubber armour.

‘Not much chance of seasickness on a day like this.'

He seemed to weigh up this rash statement of mine before answering. ‘Perhaps not. Kerkyra?'

‘Pardon?'

‘Sorry, I mean Corfu. Kerkyra is what the Greeks call it. Are you going there or on to Igoumenitsa?' The fact that the names rolled so easily off his tongue probably meant this wasn't his first trip.

‘No, just Corfu.'

‘Your first visit?'

‘Yes. Never been to Greece, even.'

‘
Really
?' His tone suggested this was most unusual. ‘I watched you drive your motorhome aboard. It must be very old.'

‘Ancient.'

He seemed happy with this exchange and strolled away. I sipped my water and wandered around the deck myself. Some brave souls, desperate to squeeze every shade of possible suntan from their holiday, were lying half naked on deckchairs, despite the cool breeze. Others wandered about with that aimless how-to-kill-six-hours expression that doubtlessly I would soon wear myself.

It wasn't until several hours later, after much purposeless drifting across upper and lower decks and another sandwich, that I noticed a hazy line appear on the horizon – the Albanian coast – and somewhere in front of that haze, as yet indistinguishable, lay the island of Corfu. For a while now we had been sailing quite close to the
Ionian Sky
, still gaining on her. In the absence of anything else to do, I had fixed my eyes on her, wondering what earthly reason anyone could have for following me across most of Europe. It was then that Mr Zeiss once more joined me at the port-side guard-rail. ‘So, will you spend much time on Kerkyra? You are on holiday, yes?'

‘Erm, yes. I'm hoping to visit a friend who moved out here a few years ago.'

‘Hoping?'

‘I'm not sure she still lives at the address I have.' Why was I telling him this? Why didn't I just say that I came for a week's holiday? Boredom, probably.

‘A little adventure for you, then.'

I changed the subject. ‘Looks like we'll be overtaking the
Ionian Sky
any minute now.' We had nearly drawn level with the rival ferry.

‘No, we won't.' I gave him a look that invited him to elaborate. ‘Just a bit of Greek showmanship, to let everyone know we are the faster ship. But the
Ionian
always docks first.' He strolled off once more. True to his prediction, we fell behind again until the other ship was once more far ahead.

Corfu had lifted its dramatic outline clear of the haze. We were now following dead astern of the
Ionian Sky
, with the darkly wooded slopes of the island's mountains to starboard. Every inch of it appeared to be covered in vegetation, so different from the arid image of the archetypal Greek island I had held in my mind. We passed bays and beaches that looked inaccessible from the land, with villages clinging to the hillsides above them. And here too was something I had only ever read about and had assumed to be fiction: the smell of the land. Through the fierce sharpness of the sea's ozone drifted the moist, verdant smell of land, mixed with the aroma of wood and charcoal smoke. It conjured mysterious little yearnings in my soul for things I couldn't have put a name to. I became even more impatient to get off this windy boat and on to warm, dry land.

Soon we entered the narrow channel between the mainland and the east coast of the island and not long after that the capital, Kerkyra, came into view. The approach was dominated by a large and ancient fortification perched on a high rock. Below it lay a surprisingly small harbour with the usual collection of drive-through buildings, customs sheds, car parks and lines of waiting vehicles. The
Ionian Sky
had already docked and was disgorging its cargo, mainly cars, vans and a solitary motorcycle packed so high with luggage that only the helmeted head of the rider was visible among it. I looked for the Toyota but saw no sign of it. The
Ikarus Palace
prepared to dock. It was time to descend to the car deck and get ready to drive on to Greek soil. Or at least Greek concrete.

Mr Zeiss, who had been using his binoculars, came and stretched out a steady hand. I shook it. ‘What address do you have for your friend? Is it in town?' he asked.

‘Yes. Hang on.' I fumbled my notebook from my jacket and showed him the address.

‘I know it. It's in the Old Town. Do you see the broad street over there with the huge yellow car rental sign at the corner? Follow that until you get to a square with a little greenery in the centre and mad traffic all round. Take a left at the top corner and drive down Theotoki for a couple of hundred yards and park wherever you can. Somewhere on the left you'll find a large bookshop, Lykoudis. It's the second or third little street on the left after that.'

‘Thanks. You know the place well, then.'

‘Reasonably.' He paused, as if sizing me up. Below us, men were lashing thick ship's ropes to bollards on the quay and their shouts gave me my first real experience of the Greek language. It sounded nothing like it had on the tapes. ‘My name's Kladders, by the way.'

‘Honeysett,' I offered automatically.

‘Well, Mr Honeysett . . . I don't know who you are, and your story is none of my business . . . but I think you should know that you are being followed. Had you noticed?' He stretched out a hand and pointed to a gap between two long customs sheds at the edge of the fenced-in harbour area. On the strip of tarmac visible in the gap, I could make out a flash of blue. He unslung his binoculars and offered them to me. Through their startling magnification I could make out part of the blue Toyota. From the driver's window someone was returning the compliment by pointing a pair of binoculars in our direction. I couldn't make out a face in the deeply shaded interior of the car but thought I could see a spark of silver hair again. After a few seconds the binoculars were withdrawn and the window slid up. Seconds later the car moved off.

I handed back the bins. ‘Thanks. I had noticed the car before.'

‘Do you know who's following you?'

‘Nope.'

‘Or why?'

‘Not the foggiest,' I admitted.

‘In that case, take great care, Mr Honeysett.' He raised one eyebrow at me, shook his head and walked briskly off. I pondered this for a minute and was left with one question: how did
he
know I was being followed? If I saw him again, I'd ask, but there was no sign of him when I got to the car deck and I had no idea what kind of vehicle he drove.

Predictably, the van smelled of cat, but Derringer was out of sight.

T
here was no sign of the Toyota when I finally cleared customs and rolled out on to the busy coastal road. It was a dusty place. Lining the noisy road were empty cafes, restaurants and car rental places. Immediately outside the customs building, rows of taxis were competing with carriages drawn by straw-hatted little horses and porters with handcarts offering their services to foot passengers. I found the road Kladders had mentioned and followed it. This too was lined with modern concrete houses, mostly two or three storeys high, car and motorcycle rentals, booking offices and hardware stores, billboards and signposts. I had no time to look. The traffic was intense. This was the off-season? Lorries, vans, buses and coaches seemed hell-bent on eliminating the weaker opposition, such as cars, motorbikes, scooters, pedestrians and dogs. Soon the concrete horrors gave way to more elegant, older houses, until eventually I arrived at a bustling square. All the bustle was concentrated in the streets framing an island on which benches, statuary, flower beds and bits of lawn failed to attract many visitors this evening. Despite having learnt Mediterranean driving in Turkey and having just taken a refresher course in Italy, the Greek style of locomotion took some getting used to. Cars and motorbikes had a habit of coming at me from unusual angles and Matilda's tiny mirrors were no match for this chaos. Several times I had to break hard, which brought Derringer out in protest.

‘We're stopping in a minute – in fact, as soon as I can find somewhere to abandon this thing.' What I wanted most of all was to stop moving. I followed Kladders's description along a broad street lined on one side with trees and found a space to park under one of them. I turned off the engine and let go of the steering wheel. Three hours. Had I travelled by plane, a three-hour flight and a short taxi ride would have got me to exactly this point. Derringer's disgruntled mewing reminded me that, of course, I wouldn't have a cat to keep me company, and I also realized that I might never have spotted that someone was following me. I emptied the last can of Italian pet food into a cat bowl I had bought near Bologna and got out into the street. Naturally, since I had no idea what my shadow looked like, apart from the possibility of very light hair, there was little chance of spotting them once they got out of their car.