The Holiday (33 page)

Sally took up the reins of the conversation — it was now one party girl to another. But Dolly-Babe looked unsure when she learned that it was to be a fancy-dress do. ‘I don’t see my Bob going for that somehow,’ she said doubtfully. ‘It’s as much as he can do to put on a shirt and tie to go out for dinner. He never likes any fuss.’

‘It’s nothing too over the top,’ Francesca said. ‘You don’t have to make your costume too elaborate, just enough to hint at your character. For instance, if your husband wanted to come as Atlas, all he’d have to do was draw a map of the world on a balloon and stick it to his shoulder.’

The idea of her husband wearing nothing more complicated than a balloon attached to his shoulder seemed to allay Dolly-Babe’s fears. ‘But what about me? I know diddley-squat about Greek myths. What do you think I should go as?’

With the tumble of dyed blonde hair perched on top of her head, Francesca wanted to say that Medusa would be an easy option, but she felt that Dolly-Babe might not think that funny. Sally told her about Medea. Murdered children and all.

‘Gawd help us! Isn’t there someone more, well, you know, nice and attractive? A bit more glamorous — like me?’

‘We could lend you a book if you want,’ Sally offered. Then, seeing a pile of magazines on the table between them, she said, ‘Are you into the psychic world, Mrs Fitzgerald?’

‘Call me Liberty-Raquel, darlin’, and, yes, I am. Are you?’

‘Kind of.’

This was news to Francesca. She helped herself to one of the magazines and flicked through it. ‘Psychic Perception — All Your Financial Problems Solved’, was the title of one of its main articles.

‘So have you had any really weird experiences?’ asked Sally. ‘You know, like you knew what somebody was about to do or say? I get that a lot.’

Yes, thought Francesca, like you know exactly what I’m thinking of you right now and what I’ll say to you later. But if she had thought her friend was teasing Dolly-Babe, she soon discovered she was wrong. Sally was in earnest. This was a whole new side to her friend that Francesca had not known existed. Amused, she continued flicking through the pages of the magazine. There was a big feature on ‘Spiritual Astrology for a Better Sex Life’, followed by a piece on ‘The Truth Behind Spontaneous Human Combustion’. There was even a piece about casting love spells to push your potential partner in the right direction. Love, sex and money seemed to be the chief concerns of the magazine. So, no different from any other coffee-table glossy, you could say. Except that there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on money. An extraordinary number of clairvoyants, psychics, mediums and tarot readers were all willing to chat to you on the phone via your credit card.

‘I went to a fortune-teller once,’ she heard Sally say. ‘It was a gang of us from school. We just did it for a laugh. But this woman who read my hand, she knew all about me. She knew things I’d never told anyone.’

‘Ria’s the same,’ Dolly-Babe said, draining her glass and refilling it. She offered them the bottle, but they both refused. ‘Ria’s my personal psychic medium, and you know what? She told me I’d be going to a party while I was here.’

‘She did?’

‘Yes. She read the cards for me and the Eight of Cups was there.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It signifies an expansion of social horizons. And I’ll tell you something else. Ria says that your neighbour Mr St James is a part of my stay here. Ria says that he’s going to play an integral part in my life. I just wish I knew what it was. It’s so nerve-racking waiting to see what it’s all about.’

 

Francesca felt as if she had escaped from the Land People Forgot when she and Sally finally got away. She said as much as they retraced their steps down to the beach, then on towards Villa Anna to see Theo.

‘I don’t know why you have such a closed mind to the psychic world,’ Sally said huffily. ‘It seems perfectly reasonable to me.’

‘Well, coming from the girl who was unhinged enough to make a pass at my father, I’ll take that with a handful of salt. I can’t believe you’re buying into all that rubbish.’

‘It’s the new rock and roll, didn’t you know?’

‘More like the new cash ’n’ carry. I was checking out the classifieds in that magazine while you were chatting to Dolly-Babe, and it was page after page of “Most Credit Cards” accepted. It’s a colossal con. It’s for people too dumb to figure out that it’s all a case of
que sera, sera.’
Then, seeing that she wasn’t getting anywhere, she said, ‘Did you see the expression on her face when I told her who her precious Mr St James was?’

‘Sure did. Talk about the penny dropping.’

Both she and Sally had assumed that although Dolly-Babe did not know who Theo was, she knew who Mark was, so when they had made some reference to him being here to work on his latest book, she had shrieked, ‘Well, Gawd bless us! You know, I kept thinking he was familiar, but for the life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it.’ It turned out that her husband had been taking one of Mark’s novels to bed with him each night and a black and white photograph of the author had stared at her across their bed. Francesca thought this spoke volumes about a woman who had just been claiming to be intuitive and perceptive.

 

After their long, sweaty uphill climb, there was no one in at Villa Anna so they left the party invitation on a table on the terrace, weighting it down with a stone, and decided to go for a swim. They had had enough of playing Postman Pat. The remaining invitations could wait.

Mark was giving himself a rare break from his strict writing routine and was spending the day in Corfu Town with Theo.

They had come into town for the memorial service to Theo’s grandmother, Anna Vlamakis. She had been dead for eighteen years, but tradition was that on each anniversary of her death a special service of remembrance was held. Mark thought it a much more positive and substantial way to think of one’s departed relations than leaving an occasional bunch of flowers on a grave in a windswept cemetery.

Here, courtesy of the Greek Orthodox Church, the friends and relatives who had gathered to remember Anna Vlamakis had now moved on from the spiritual words of comfort to what had been her favourite restaurant in the Listón, to celebrate her memory in gregarious Greek fashion.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s Mark had met the old lady several times on trips to Corfu, and had liked her immensely, despite the appalling way in which she indulged her only grandson. He had never been to Greece before he had met Theo, and when their unlikely friendship had developed, Theo had invited him to spend part of the 1978 summer vacation in Athens and Corfu.

Mark had been torn between the plans he had already made and the idea of actually allowing himself some fun. He had planned to stay on in Durham and work his way through the summer, serving behind the bar of a pub, and in his free time advance his grandiose theories that would one day save the world from itself. Going home to his parents, like his fellow students, and working for the family firm had not been a consideration. However, after a short tussle with his conscience, he threw some clothes into a rucksack and justified the trip by telling himself that travel broadened the mind. There was even a chance that he might get some writing done. In those days anger and the injustices of the world fuelled his work. His prose was then an outpouring of vitriolic loathing for the oppressors of the state. In other words, it was all hot air. But at the time, and in his youth, and in his hunger to make a difference to the world, it had been important to him. He was moderately successful at getting into print and had several articles published, mostly in a variety of home-spun rags that had a penchant for protest politics and the round-them-up-and-shoot-them genre of journalism. These were the people he hung out with, political activists whose main aim was to create a classless society.

So, not surprisingly, he kept his holiday plans to himself that particular summer when he flew off to Athens with a man who represented everything he opposed: wealth, privilege, and a set of handmade leather luggage that was as ostentatious as it was offensive to somebody who, in those days, was a zealous vegetarian and didn’t even wear leather shoes.

Theo’s parents, Christiana and Thanos Vlamakis, now living in Athens, had greeted him in their luxurious apartment overlooking the busy harbour with the same warmth and sincerity they had extended towards him in Durham. They were as effusive as they were hospitable and frequently embarrassed him by introducing him to their friends and neighbours as the man who had saved Theo’s life, embellishing the tale with more drama each time they told it. ‘Make them stop,’ he had pleaded with Theo. ‘I can’t stand it. Any more of it and I swear I’ll turn back the clock and kill you myself!’

But Theo had laughed and told him to make the most of his hero status. ‘Is it my fault that they have put you on a pedestal?’

‘Cut the crap, Theo, and tell your parents to do the same.’

‘Don’t be so self-absorbed. Be generous enough to let them enjoy themselves at your expense.’

And the old maxim that a good story never goes away was perfectly true, for even now over lunch, Christiana was telling the myth once more to some elderly relatives who had flown in from Thessaloniki. Though she was talking in Greek, Mark could understand what she was saying by her body language and the way she kept smiling at him. He shot Theo a look that meant ‘Distract her’, but Theo merely smiled and carried on talking to a larger-than-life man on his right, who had the most extraordinarily shaggy eyebrows. He was the priest who had just conducted the service and, in his flowing black robes, complemented by a fuzzy white beard with nicotine stains around his mouth and a hearty, full-throated laugh, his presence gave the proceedings an air of robust jollity. There was no po-faced piety about him as he held out his wine-glass to be replenished and took a lip-smacking slurp.

Sitting on Mark’s left was a quiet ghost of a man. He looked about a hundred and ten, and so frail that a gust of wind might blow him away. He was in a wheelchair pushed close to the table and was dressed in a suit that must once have fitted him properly. The same was true of his shirt; above a buttoned collar, a tightly knotted tie drooped mockingly at his neck, exposing loose, translucent flesh. Resting on his lap, like a curled-up cat, was an ancient Panama, poignantly shabby and knocked about. Its owner was Thomas Zika and Mark had met him on his first visit to Corfu when he and Theo had been staying with Anna. It was widely known within the family that Thomas Zika had been very much in love with Theo’s grandmother and Mark had always thought it a great waste that in the autumn of their lives the pair had never married.

The skin on the old man’s head was parched and taut across his skull and only a few wispy strands of white hair remained. His features, made delicate by the passing of time, were set in a face so pale and waxen it looked as if the sun might shine straight through it. His eyes were dim and watery, and uncomfortably red-rimmed, with just a few lashes. Poking out through gaping cuffs, trembling vein-streaked hands were trying to grip a knife and fork; no matter how hard he tried, the medallions of turbot kept slipping away from him.

Mark returned his attention to his plate. He had only taken a few mouthfuls when he felt a light touch on his elbow. ‘I wonder, young man, if you would be so kind as to help me.’ The voice, hushed and tremulous, was barely audible; Mark had to strain to catch it. ‘I should hate to die of starvation,’ Thomas Zika continued. ‘At my age it would seem so very undignified.’

Mark smiled at him and discreetly took his cutlery.

‘You have changed a great deal since I saw you last,’ said Thomas Zika, when Mark had completed his task.

‘With respect, Mr Zika, it’s a long time since we last met. It must be more than twenty years.’

‘Can it really be as long as that?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

‘But you are happier now?’

The gaze from the watery, bloodshot eyes was as perceptive as the question. ‘I like to think so,’ Mark replied.

‘The years have been good to you?’

‘Some good, some not so good.’

The old man nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘We always learn most from the bad times, the years of being in the wilderness. Would you agree?’

Mark smiled to himself. It was as if he was back in the rehab clinic with Bones.

‘You find what I have said amusing?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s just that you reminded me of someone.’

‘Ah, a wise old counsellor? Or perhaps a stupid old man, who should have learned by now to mind his own business?’

‘You were right the first time.’

‘Excellent. That is eminently better than the latter.’

After a long pause, Thomas Zika said, ‘Would it be asking very much of you to help me further? It seems that my hands are determined to disobey my every command today. If you would harpoon the pieces, I think I could manage to steer them on a homeward course.’

It was a relief for Mark to help him, and unexpectedly he pictured himself doing the same for his father one day.

Time was when he couldn’t have been in the same room as his father without wanting to strike him down. That was when he had used him as a focus for all the anger he had within him. His mother and two older brothers had come in for their share too, but irrationally it was his father he had most wanted to hurt. And, as a teenager, it had been so easy to rile him: the cutting sarcasm, the cruel home truth, the biting irony, and the withering contempt. Relentlessly he would goad his father, seeing him as nothing more than a moving target that was no match for his superior intellect. But the harder he pushed, the more his father withdrew. He kept up the pressure, just waiting for the day when his father would lose control. But it never came.

It was power he had wanted. Power over his father and his family. He craved it as much as he later craved drugs and alcohol. He was obstinate and ruthlessly antagonistic. An unlovable son who taunted his parents into sending him away to school — ‘Go on, then, if you dare, prove how little you care.’ And when at last they had reached the end of their tether and sent him away, he claimed a victory over them, awarding himself the moral high ground, asserting that he had been right all along. He was the most disruptive and obnoxiously offensive son any family could have been cursed with.