The Holiday (6 page)

‘But you could have something different with Thomas.’ Smiling she had said, ‘Perhaps if he were more persistent I might reconsider. But he seems to have resigned himself quite happily to what we have.’

‘Maybe he is frightened to press you any harder, that one more proposal will turn you against him.’

‘What a lot of thought you have given to this, Theo. But I’m afraid you will have to accept that Thomas and I have reached an impasse and are both happy to live with it.’

With such an upbringing, it was no surprise that Theo tended to surround himself with women. He felt most at ease when in their company. With the exception of a few close friends and one or two business associates, he seldom trusted men.

He attributed this wariness to his time at school in England. He had hated the boarding-school just outside London to which his parents had sent him, and it was many years before he truly forgave them for forcing him into the barbarism of the English public-school system. After the life he had lived so far, it had come as a profound culture shock. He was in no way effeminate, but the regime he was expected to follow at school, with its tough macho image, appalled him. Naturally he suffered a degree of bullying for being a foreigner, but he fought back by beating his tormentors on and off the playing-fields. He pursued the goals and accolades they coveted, and with such vigour and success that in the end they accepted him into their world. After all, it was better to have the enemy in your own pocket than in someone else’s.

It was during his adolescence that he lost his virginity. He was seventeen and was spending nearly all of his free time with the wife of the new classics master. He was dull man in his late thirties, with a pretty wife ten years his junior. Living in a small cottage within the school grounds, she was bored and lonely. To give her something to do, her husband had unwisely suggested that she help Theo perfect his English. Which she did, and a lot more besides.

She had been the only person he had missed when he left a year later. He had thought of returning to Athens, either to go to university there or to embark upon his national service, but with his parents still in London, he gave in to their wishes and stayed on in England. They wanted him to study in London, but he refused the university place he was offered there and went to Durham instead.

In Durham he experienced true bone-numbing coldness for the first time in his life. The freezing North Sea wind that came across the flat terrain cut through the layers of clothing with which he tried to protect himself as he cycled across town for a lecture. The rain was worse, icy cold, horizontal, and wetter than anything he had ever known; it slashed at his face, leaving him breathless and barely able to see the road in front of him. It was on such a raw, freezing cold day that he had met Mark.

He had heard of Mark St James already - his reputation, as they say, went well before him. He was a political activist intent on saving his generation, if not the world, from the evils of capitalism. His presence was advertised throughout college in the form of the posters he put up wherever he could, vilifying the leaders of the free world’s major industrial nations, proclaiming them to be no better than the devil’s disciples. When he wasn’t organising a protest march or a silent sit-in, he was braving the elements selling copies of whatever radical paper he was currently supporting.

It was 1976 when punk rock was bursting on to the scene and, with his hair spiked and dyed an aggressive peroxide blond, his skinny legs covered in black PVC bondage trousers, decorated with zips and chains, the rest of him blanketed in an oversized, hand-knitted sweater that would not have looked out of place in a dog basket, the infamous Mark St James was a distinctive sight as he stood in the market-place in front of the church, ignored by the busy Saturday morning shoppers.

Theo had watched him through the steamed-up window of the café where he was having a late breakfast of coffee and doughnuts, and had admired his fellow student for his dedication to the cause. He was about to order a second mug of coffee when he noticed that it was raining again. Shivering at the thought of yet more icy rain, he suddenly felt compelled to go and offer this foolish young man a hot drink.

‘Fuck off!’ was the snarled response.

‘Considering I am the first person to offer you anything other than a look of disparagement, don’t you think you are being just a little hasty?’

An expression of hostile disdain flickered across the gaunt face, which appeared underfed and pinched with cold. The sneering blue-eyed gaze then trailed over Theo’s clothes - cashmere coat and scarf, Italian leather gloves, black woollen trousers and shiny burgundy-coloured loafers.

‘You’re that flash Greek, aren’t you?’ His voice was low and husky, as though he was recovering from a bout of laryngitis.

Theo knew all too well that this was how he was labelled in some quarters, but hearing it uttered with such menacing contempt made him wince. ‘I am only offering you a drink, not an opportunity to enslave you with my misguided political views.’

The look thawed and with a curl of lips that were chapped and bruised with cold, he said, ‘Yeah, okay then. Who knows? I might be able to show a poncy fascist where he’s going wrong.’

For the next fifteen minutes Theo was attacked for everything he had or hadn’t done: global capitalism, world poverty, institutional power that was corrupt and killing those who weren’t already starving to death, and ultimately for being too stupid to understand the manifesto that this angry young nihilist claimed would save the world from itself. And as if that wasn’t enough, he was held personally responsible for the plight of the crumbling Acropolis in Athens. ‘You realise, don’t you,’ Mark said, leaning forward in his chair and pointing a surprisingly clean and slender finger at Theo’s face, ‘it’s the shit from all your cars that’s the problem? The Acropolis is two thousand four hundred years old, it’s survived God knows how many invasions, and you’re wrecking it with your stinking pollution. So figure this one out, pretty boy, what the hell are you going to do to stop it?’

‘Goodness, after such a display of sweet reason you mean I get a turn to speak? Well, I believe, and without my intervention, that help is at hand. UNESCO is sponsoring a rescue fund.’

‘Yeah, but will it be enough?’

‘Is anything we do enough?’

‘Better something than nothing.’

‘Which is why I offered you a cup of coffee. But now I must be on my way. I have an essay to write. It was good talking to you. Even if you are an arrogant, foul-mouthed, narrow-minded bore. Goodbye. Oh, and you should do something about that sore throat. Standing around in the cold will not do it any good. Trust me on that, if nothing else.’

They didn’t see one another again until the following week when Theo was enjoying a late breakfast once more and watching Mark trying to sell his ideology to uninterested passers-by. This time, though, it was Mark who made the approach. He caught sight of Theo through the café window and marched straight over, comically restricted by his ridiculous trousers. He threw open the door, letting in a tornado of cold air, and sat uninvited in the chair opposite Theo. ‘I object to being described as a narrow-minded bore,’ he said angrily, causing several middle-aged women at a nearby table to raise their eyebrows and clutch at their handbags.

‘But arrogant and foul-mouthed still stands, eh?’

‘At least I’m not screwing every woman in Durham.’

‘So who is?’

‘You are, you bourgeois, time-wasting little — ’

‘Oh, please, spare me another come-the-revolution tirade. Now I hate to correct you, but your information is not all it could be. There are still a few women who I have yet to get into bed. Coffee? Or would you prefer hot chocolate? I see your throat is no better.’

‘I’ll have tea. Ordinary tea - none of that bloody fancy stuff. And if it’s any of your sodding business I haven’t got a sore throat. This is my normal speaking voice.’

‘Then perhaps you would be kind enough to lower it so as not to disturb or intimidate the good ladies here.’ He turned his head and gave them his most charming smile, the one he had used while visiting his grandmother’s widowed friends.

When Theo had told Izzy last night that it was true about opposites attracting, he could not have described his friendship with Mark any better. There always had been, and always would be, a conflict of egos between them. They were two very strong characters, but because they were so different in nature, they amused and continually confounded each other. It was a real mystery to Theo, in these early days of their friendship, as to why an essentially shy, reserved person, who only wanted to be left alone, forced himself into a position of antagonism that made him such an obvious focus of attention.

Though they openly despised each other on those two initial encounters, they also secretly admired each other. Theo couldn’t help but be impressed by Mark’s convictions, and though it was a long time before he ever admitted it, Mark was envious of Theo’s track record with girls.

‘I can’t believe they fall for that smooth-bugger routine,’ he said one evening, many months later, when they were sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room and eating a curry he had just cooked in the kitchen he shared with twelve other students.

‘An air of sophistication is what they like,’ Theo had answered, casting a critical eye over Mark’s untidy room. The walls were papered with posters of the Sex Pistols, Che Guevara and the Jam; the single bed was covered with unwashed clothes; a small bookcase was filled to capacity with psychology textbooks, and the desk was hidden beneath a tide of files and papers. ‘Of course, the money helps,’ he added, ‘that and my astonishingly good looks.’

‘And you think
I’m
an arrogant bastard!’

‘Ah, but my arrogance is not based on immature angst and confused anger, as yours is. Mine comes from confidence.’

Now Theo poured himself some more orange juice from the iced jug on the table and stared at the lovely view. Just as yesterday, the sea was as smooth as glass and a hazy early-morning mist hung languidly over the horizon. It was unusually calm, this narrow strait of water between Corfu and Albania. Normally it was a wind-surfer’s paradise, especially in the afternoon when the breeze really whipped up. Sometimes the water became dangerously rough and the tourists who innocently hired boats in the morning, expecting a pleasant day of cove-hopping, got rather more than they had bargained for. One saw them all the time, low-powered motor boats struggling against strong waves, the men pretending they had it all under control, and the women slipping on their life-jackets and worrying whether they would see home again.

He shifted his gaze to look along the hillside towards Villa Petros. There was no sign of movement on the terrace or the veranda, and he guessed that its occupants were still asleep. He pictured Max and Laura lying together, Max with one arm placed protectively around his wife’s pale, freckled shoulders, and Laura, her auburn hair fanned slightly across the pillow. They were a couple made for each other, perfectly in tune with the other’s needs, and still perfectly in love after so many years.

A twinge of envy crept up on him. Not ugly, covetous envy for another man’s wife, but a gentle twisting yearning that one day somebody would love him with the constancy with which Laura must always have loved Max.

He pushed the thought away.

It was futile to think along those lines. He could never expect somebody to love him with the intensity he craved, not when it seemed unlikely that he would be capable of offering the same in return. His track record, of which Mark had once been envious, proved that he simply wasn’t cut out for long-term monogamous commitment. And almost certainly it was too late for him to change the habit of a lifetime.

His thoughts turned to Izzy. It had been pure idle amusement on his part to tease Laura that he could help her friend to enjoy her holiday, and it had touched him to see her concern. He would never do anything to upset or annoy Laura. Though that first glimpse of Izzy last night had made him wonder: there was no denying that he had felt the irresistible pull an attractive woman always exerted on him. It was the freshness of her face that had appealed. There was no artifice to her. No elaborate hairstyle. No ostentatious jewellery. No makeup. He couldn’t even recall if she was wearing any perfume. But she had moved with a beguiling grace that made her unconsciously lovely. She was without pretension, and from her sombre grey eyes, which were both gentle and enquiring, he had guessed that a lot was going on inside her head, and not all of it happy.

She was very different from the women he usually felt attracted to. In fact, she was the complete opposite.

Just as he and Mark had once been. And still were, in many respects: resisting polarities, but with a very real synergy between them, was what Mark said of them.

He leaned back in his seat, stretched his arms over his head, and smiled at the coincidence. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said aloud. ‘We shall just have to wait and see what the Fates have in store for us.’

 

Mark didn’t like coincidences. As far as he was concerned he had experienced too many of them just recently, and none had been good.

But the woman in the seat beside him was not of the same opinion. She was rather drunk and seemed to think that because he was bound for the same holiday destination as she and her husband, some high priestess of fate was at work.

He put her at somewhere in her mid-fifties, and decided she was undergoing a serious identity crisis, kidding herself that she was still in her twenties. She was wearing a pair of Christian Dior sunglasses, a tight cream lace dress, and with a head of scuzzy showbiz blonde hair, she was a real middle-aged designer dolly-babe. She was brittle thin, too, and he had the feeling that if he accidentally knocked her he’d set off an avalanche of body parts. Her lipstick had partially rubbed off and she was left with an outline of lip-liner: it gave her a clown-like drawn-on smile.