Mortal Remains (11 page)

‘Yes. Good fits, and misfits,’ said he. He was warming towards George, whose company was proving an asset to the day. And so was Elsie’s: she was drawing Celia out so that the girl talked with animation, and now she suggested that Celia should visit the States on a teaching exchange for a year or two.

‘I’ll give you our address, and you can look us up,’ said Elsie. ‘Isn’t that right, George?’

‘What did you say, dear?’

Elsie repeated what she had just said, and Patrick walked on ahead of them. He crossed the paved area before the shops and stood on the quayside looking at the fishing boats moored in the harbour. Octopuses hung from the rigging, drying in the sun. Further along the quay men were mending nets.

As he watched the peaceful scene a dinghy with an outboard motor came slowly towards some steps leading down from the jetty beyond where the men were working; Patrick saw a female figure waiting there to be collected. The woman wore a black skirt and a white blouse, and carried a basket. The man in the boat helped her aboard, taking her basket and settling her with some care on the thwart amidships. They circled round below Patrick and he had a good look at them both. The man was Spiro’s companion from Crete, the same one whom he had seen on the Acropolis the night before; the woman was grey-haired, sunburned and lined, like any Greek woman of her age, but she did not look like a peasant; there was no air of poverty about her. The dinghy, cutting a great wake as it turned, put on speed and zoomed away from the shore. Further out, at anchor in the bay, was the
Psyche,
Patrick recognised the boat by her lines, but to confirm it, as he raised his binoculars, there was the bright blonde hair of Jill as she stood on the deck waiting to help the older woman climb the awkward steps and go aboard.

‘Where’s this beach you say is so nice, Celia?’ asked George, as they walked back to the
taverna
for an early lunch. ‘I was wondering if it would be an idea to get a boat to take us around there when we’ve eaten. We’ll all feel like a snooze, I guess, and maybe a swim.’

Patrick silently blessed him. He was making it all so easy.

‘We certainly can’t swim here,’ said Elsie, looking at the harbour. There were signs of garbage in the water, and the slight odour of primitive drainage inseparable from similar picturesque spots all over the globe.

‘It’s just around there,’ said Celia, pointing to where the land ran out into a small promontory to form the bay, making a natural harbour. ‘There won’t be anyone else there, I’m certain.’

‘Let’s do that,’ said Patrick, firmly.

‘You go fix lunch, then. I’ll grab us a boat for later,’ said George. He wandered off towards the fishermen, his expensive camera swinging from his shoulder. His clothes were typically American – the bright shirt, the narrow pale trousers – and he wore his hair cut very short, but his features, with the strongly marked brows and deepset dark eyes showed his origins. He looked more Greek each time they met, thought Patrick, and wondered what Elsie really felt about this sentimental pilgrimage.

‘You speak no Greek, Mrs Loukas?’ Patrick asked her, as the three of them sat down at a table beneath the straw roof that shaded the
taverna
while George talked to the fishermen.

‘Say, call me Elsie, do,’ she replied. ‘No, just a few words like
tparakalo.’
She pronounced it with a strong drawl.

‘I can ask for things in shops, or where something is, but I can’t understand the answers,’ Celia confessed. She had not thought of Joyce for the past hour.

‘You English are bad at languages, isn’t that so?’ said Elsie.

‘We have that reputation,’ said Patrick. ‘Don’t you think of yourself as English any more?’

‘Not after all this time in the States,’ replied Elsie. ‘I wouldn’t know my way around any more. And the language changes all the time.’

‘That’s true.’ Idiom did alter rapidly. ‘You don’t speak any other languages?’

‘Uh-huh.’ She shook her head.

Their beer, which they had successfully ordered without George’s linguistic aid, arrived, and he returned to say he had arranged for a boat to take them round the point in three- quarters of an hour.

‘We don’t want to sit over lunch too long,’ he said.

They ordered the local speciality, a concoction of prawns and other unidentifiable fishy bits in a cheese sauce. It was rich and good. Celia ate with gusto. Afterwards she had
baclava,
while the others settled for fresh peaches. They finished with coffee. George chose the strong Greek variety; the others were given a curious mixture, very sweet and only tepid, served in a glass.

‘Ugh, too sweet,’ said Elsie, and left hers.

Patrick and Celia, bonded by their philhellenism, drank theirs down with false expressions of pleasure. Then it was time to meet their boatman.

He was old and grizzled, his face and hands burnt almost black from the sun, and his vessel was a shallow-draughted old boat with an engine amidships. Her name was painted on the bow in Greek characters and Celia laboriously spelled out NAFSIKA – the
Nausicaa.

‘I thought she came from Corfu,’ said Celia.

‘Maybe Charon here did too, and got kind of stuck,’ said Elsie, eyeing their mariner dubiously. It was the first flash of wit Patrick had discerned in her; perhaps George’s love- affair with this country was hard for her to tolerate. She’d become American, put the past behind her, and might not enjoy wallowing in remembered emotion.

They clambered aboard, and as they set off, fumes from the old engine filling the air, George and the boatman jabbered away happily together. Their talk was punctuated with cries of
‘po, po, po,’
and excited gestures.

The
Psyche
was nowhere to be seen. She had gone round the point in the direction they were taking now soon after the elderly woman had climbed on board. There must be a lot of traffic between the islands, but it had not occurred to Patrick that Spiro would venture far from Crete. Why not, though? The
Psyche
was a sound, seaworthy vessel capable of travelling in any water.

The island, seen from the sea, looked very barren once the buildings round the harbour had disappeared. There were few trees and only sparse scrub on the grey, rocky slopes. The boatman addressed them all in the tone of a guide, and George, translating, said that there had been some volcanic eruption on the island a very long time ago destroying the thriving small community. Now some rich men dwelt on the further side, otherwise they had seen most of the population in the harbour.

‘The same eruption that engulfed Crete?’ asked Celia.

The boatman did not know.

‘Some archaeologists were working here before the war, he says,’ George relayed to them. ‘They had to stop when the war came.’

‘No one’s tried since?’

‘Nope.’

After some consultation the boatman took them in to a wide white beach with rocks on either side of it coming down to the water. Here there were a few wispy pine trees rising from the shoreline.

‘This is where you came the other day?’ Patrick asked Celia, and she nodded.

The boat grounded and they took off their shoes to wade the last few yards to the shore. Celia’s toes, already revealed in her sandals, were twisted, and she had a cruel bunion. Was there no end to her misfortunes? Patrick averted his eyes and took her arm in case she stumbled in the shallows; she must have been born disaster-prone.

The
Nausicaa
left them, after her captain had promised to return in time to take them back to catch the ferry.

‘I hope he won’t forget. I’d hate to be shipwrecked here,’ said Elsie.

George and Patrick had both pressed notes into the boatman’s grimy hand; he would not forget them. By this time they were all rather sleepy, and were glad to find a patch in the shade where they could rest. Elsie stripped off her dress and was revealed in a green bikini; for her age her figure was good, and very muscular; she had freckles on her back. Patrick who had brought
Phineas Finn
as well as his bathing things, spread out his towel and changed behind a rock. Then he settled down to read. With luck, the others would soon fall asleep; the heat and the meal had made him feel inert and he needed to opt out of conversation for a while.

Celia staked out her small encampment further along the beach, still in the shade. She walked a long way before finding a spot that suited her for disrobing; When she returned, she wore a brightly-flowered one-piece swim-suit which bulged where she did, distorting the pattern into grotesque designs. But why shouldn’t she sunbathe, like everyone else? It might improve her acne. Patrick hid from the dismal spectacle behind
Phineas Finn.

After some time they all fell asleep, but Patrick started awake almost immediately; he felt it decadent to doze during the day. He took off his glasses and walked quietly into the sea. It was warm and crystal clear, and he swam along parallel to the shore with a slow, strong stroke for quite a distance. Then he lay on his back and tried to imagine the scene on the day of Murcott’s accident. Much as today; but instead of the quartet deployed on the beach there would have been thirty or so people. It would have been noisier, for they would swim or paddle, he supposed. Jeremy would have been scurrying about among them like an anxious terrier, with Joyce no doubt close on his heels and Celia brooding in the distance. Murcott had been interested in the rock formation, someone had said; so he had walked off to investigate it.

A slight movement caught his attention and he looked round to see a swimming figure approaching. The vivid colours revealed as it broke the surface told him that it was Celia. She was a fine swimmer, travelling fast through the water without splashing, her ugly face immersed. Even without his glasses, Patrick could appreciate her power.

How gratifying. Everyone could do something well, if only they were able to discover what it was, and here was Celia’s talent shown.

‘What a good swimmer you are,’ he told her.

Overcome, she submerged briefly like a herbaceous whale, vast in her floral costume.

‘I grew up by the sea,’ she said. ‘Near Clacton.’

‘Where did the accident happen?’ he asked. ‘Far from the beach?’

‘Not very far. I can’t see without my glasses, but it’s a bit to the right from where we are now. Mr Murcott was interested when he saw the volcanic evidence – it’s easy to recognise here, isn’t it, even if you’re not a geologist? He wandered off.’

‘Could you show me where he went? I’m morbidly fascinated,’ Patrick said. ‘Or is it too far in this heat?’

‘Oh no. I’ll show you,’ said Celia, with some eagerness.

‘We’ll swim again afterwards,’ Patrick said. ‘Race you back now.’

She won, and on her own merits.

George and Elsie had disappeared when they walked up the beach. Their towels, indented by their bodies, lay crumpled on the sand. Patrick put on dry swimming trunks and a shirt, and slung his binoculars round his neck; Celia appeared from behind her rock wearing a cyclamen-pink towelling dress. Her hair hung limply round her head in sodden strands like a travesty of Ophelia. They walked off over the sand on to the dusty ground beyond and began to climb.

‘Who suggested the trip to Mikronisos. Can you remember?’ asked Patrick.

Celia pondered.

‘It was Mr Murcott,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, I’m sure it was. He’d heard about it somehow. It’s not an island you do hear mentioned much.’

‘No. Not like Delos, or Mykonos.’

‘Or Santorin, if you’re thinking about volcanoes,’ said Celia. ‘Mr Winterton didn’t want to come. He said it was uninteresting.’

‘He did join you, though?’

‘Yes, he came.’

‘What’s his job? Do you know?’

‘Mr Winterton’s? He’s retired, surely? Most of these people are.’

Patrick, accustomed to elderly dons who worked for ever, had forgotten this aspect of life in other professions.

They spent some time guessing what he might have done and decided that he was that vague thing, a civil servant.

‘Murcott was, presumably, a geologist?’

‘No, I think it was just a hobby,’ said Celia.

Jeremy had been unable to supply Patrick with any of this information; he strove to keep his mind on less earthly matters and did not look in people’s passports, even when they died by misadventure. Patrick, had it fallen to him to pack up the dead man’s possessions, would have pried inquisitively through them wanting to know all he could about the man.

‘I think he worked for a charity of some sort, raising funds,’ said Celia. ‘But I’m not sure.’

‘You liked him.’ It was a statement.

‘Yes,’ Celia sounded surprised. ‘I suppose I did. He always said good-morning, and so on.’

Was she accustomed to being ignored most of the time? Patrick found that he could enjoy her company if he was not forced to look at her. Oh, how much the wrapping of a parcel matters, he thought. If she lost two stone and got rid of her acne, Celia’s life would be transformed.

‘That’s where he fell.’ She pointed.

A sheer cliff rose up in front of them, the stratified rock plainly revealed in the bright sunshine.

‘Was he clambering up it? How unwise.’

‘He must have been,’ said Celia. ‘I didn’t see him climbing, but he was lying at the bottom. He had a stone in his hand – tightly clutched, it was – as if he’d grabbed at the rock to save himself.’

They walked over to the spot.

‘Jeremy said you were splendid, coping afterwards,’ said Patrick.

‘Did he?’ She blushed. ‘That was nice of him. But you have to, don’t you, when something happens?’

‘Some people turn away from disaster,’ he said, and added, ‘I wonder what the view’s like from the top. I’d like to look.’

‘Oh, don’t you try climbing up,’ Celia besought him.

‘I’m not going up that cliff, don’t worry,’ said Patrick. ‘There may be an easier route to the top.’ He scanned the hillside. Small bushes and tufts of greenery, now withered, sprouted from the rocks in places, and the slope beside the cliff looked less extreme. ‘I’ll look for the goat trail,’ he added.