Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (19 page)

"We say it was the best, William," Natalie said.

"Did you and daddy think it was as well?"

Ray didn't think the boy meant this as a joke, but Julian seemed to suspect he did. To forestall any rebuke Ray said "Now you know why they call it Sunset Beach."

The family was seated at a table in a beach taverna near the Sunny View. The sky at the horizon had turned crimson almost half an hour ago, tinting the giant umbrellas along the coast a florid red. Now the sky above the sunken sun was turning dull, as if the vital colour was draining into the night that loomed over it. Traces lingered on the waves, which seemed bent on bearing them to Sunset Beach. Ray saw the resort was living up to the name; its beach had started growing crowded as soon as the sun touched the horizon. "What does our beach mean?" William said.

"Everybody's holiday together," Natalie said and seemed unable to take her eyes off him.

"I meant what it's called, mummy."

"That's a cue for the translators," Julian said. "Preferably just one."

"We know what it means," Pris told him. "Teleftaiafos means Last Light, Will."

For once Ray wished Doug had disagreed with Pris. He squeezed Sandra's hand, only to fear that he'd drawn too much attention to Doug's words. Natalie and Doug and their partners looked away as if the gesture conveyed more than they could deal with, but while the cousins seemed embarrassed William ignored it. "There's the lady again," he said. Julian fixed him with his gaze. "Which lady? What are you saying now?"

"The lady who brought my cross."

As Ray located the vendor distributing trinkets from her capacious shoulder-bag he wasn't certain whether he'd seen Tim relax. Some of the diners made it plain that they found her unwelcome, but at least she wasn't homeless, as Ray had decided the person he'd glimpsed in the monastery must have been. When her tour of the taverna brought her over William told her "I put the cross by my bed at night."

She passed her fingertips back and forth in front of her lips, which left Ray wondering if this indicated muteness or an ability to read what people said. When she reached in her bag he assumed she was offering trinkets again, but she only produced a book, which she planted next to Ray's plate and then shoved towards him. "For me?" Ray said and took out his wad of Greek cash. "How much?"

She waved it away so vigorously that the flame in the lantern on the table fluttered, and then she put her hands together to indicate the book. Ray couldn't see why she would be praying, but perhaps the gesture conveyed gratitude for how much he'd paid for William's cross. She watched him put away the money, and looked ready to watch him read. "Thank you very much for that," he said and turned the book to face him.

The large thin paperback had an aerial view of a group of islands on the cover, an image so generic that it could have been found online. Much of it was obscured by blocky lettering—HISTORY OF GREECE ISLANDS and the author's name, Iannis Antonaides. The book had been published some years ago in Kefalonia—self-published, to judge by the prose. Ray felt all the more touched that the woman had presented it to him, but when he made to thank her again he found that she was several tables away. "Could I have a look?" Doug said.

He leafed through the paperback, lingering over photographs and then at the start of a chapter. "You won't like this, Jules."

"The writing, you mean?" Ray said. "Most of us couldn't write a line in Greek, never mind an entire book."

"Not the writing." Doug glanced at William and held the open book towards Ray. "This part," he said.

Julian leaned across the table to frown at the book. All the bulbs on wires entwined like vines around the trellis overhead were lit now, and light glaring from the glossy page erased the title of the chapter. Ray had to take hold of the book to see that the page was headed
Vampire of Vasilema
. As he realised that he'd inadvertently turned the open pages towards the youngest member of the family, Jonquil said "Can you say a bug, William?"

"A bug," William said with a giggle of anticipation.

"Keep saying it."

"A bug a bug a bug," William said and giggled louder.

"Say it very fast."

"Please do nothing of the kind, William," Julian said. "Jonquil, everybody else can see exactly what you're trying to do. Kindly stop at once."

"I think she was trying to distract him for you," Sandra said.

"If that's genuinely the case I apologise." As Jonquil made to respond he said "All the same, I'd prefer you to find a more acceptable method."

"I wish sometimes you'd give her more of a chance," Sandra said. "Natalie, don't you?"

"I've told him so."

"Well, now I am. Will you do it for me, Julian?" Ray was dismayed by the resemblance to a promise at a deathbed, and sensed that others heard it too.

"Where it's appropriate," Julian said, and turned to Ray at once. "Perhaps you could keep your book to yourself while we're all together."

Ray felt as if he'd taken a rebuke on Jonquil's behalf, and Doug's wink at him made him feel all the more conspiratorial. "I'll corrupt myself when you're done, dad," Doug said.

"No need for that," Natalie said more like her husband than herself.

"It's perfectly all right," Julian said. "I can take a joke. Now do you suppose we can close it?"

Doug pegged his lips together with a finger and thumb, rousing Julian's frown. 
"The book," he said.

As Doug shut the paperback Ray glimpsed a photograph of the monastery they'd visited. "Thank you," Julian said as he might have to an obedient child.

"Thank you very mutts," William said.

"Why are you speaking like that, William?" Natalie demanded.

The boy looked abashed by the failure of his joke. 
"That's how the waiter talks."

"It isn't nice to imitate people. You wouldn't like it done to you."

"The people in the church did."

"Which people?" Sandra said sharply enough to be expressing Ray's unease as well. "How were they imitating you?"

"The people that the man chased out. They weren't copying me, gran. I mean they all looked the same."

"I expect that means they're a family."

"Not just their faces." The boy shook his head for emphasis if not in frustration. "Like they were smiling," he insisted, "but it wasn't a smile."

"I saw nothing like that, William."

Ray felt anxious to support Julian. "Remember there were all the candles, William. I don't think any of us could see those people very well."

"I did. They were looking at grandma and Jonquil and Tim."

"Well," Sandra said, "someone must think I belong with the younger set."

"Of course you do. With all of us, and so does Ray," Pris said, only to appear to wonder if she'd said too much.

The teenagers had taken Sandra's hands, reaching across the remains of the meal, and Ray couldn't help being put in mind of a séance if not a secret sign. Julian cleared his throat to say "Shall we call for the bill?"

He beckoned to their waiter and mimed scribbling on his hand as if he'd had a thought he wanted to record. Once they had the reckoning and the contributions were gathered on the tray Julian added a gratuity. "Gosh, is that ten per cent?" Pris said—"They don't tip like that in Greece.

"Then perhaps we should set an example."

Natalie was urging William away, and Ray saw why when the waiter called "Thank you very mutts."

Tim and Jonquil weren't alone in visibly suppressing mirth, but William looked more than serious. "See, mummy, that is what he said."

"It's what he meant that counts, Will," Doug said. "Sometimes you have to look behind the words."

Just now this didn't sound like good advice—at least, Ray hoped the boy would leave quite a lot that he'd recently heard unexamined. Beyond the light from the taverna the way across the beach was unlit, and the sand felt as if the darkness were dragging at Ray's feet. As he trudged into the village, up an alley that eventually left the sand behind, he saw a bunch of elongated limbs reach down from a streetlamp at the end. It was only the magnified shadow of a spider flexing all its legs at the centre of its web, but he was glad when it stopped appearing to grope for Sandra and Jonquil and Tim.

***

"Do you mind if I read for a while?"

"Of course I don't, but you won't mind if I go to bed, will you? Then I shouldn't be so likely to nod off on the boat tomorrow."

"I'm only outside if you need me."

"And you know where I'll be."

"Just call if you need me for anything at all."

By now it was clear to them both that they were prolonging their moments together. As Ray kissed her eyes, the way he often used to before he and Sandra settled down to sleep, he felt how wrinkled the lids had grown. Weren't her wrinkles and his own a sketchy record of their lives together? "Rest well," he said and wished he weren't reminded of another version of the phrase.

Sandra switched on the balcony light for him and slid the window shut once he'd stepped out of the room. He would have liked her to leave the curtains open, but the light wouldn't help her to sleep. Did he really have to read the book right now? He wasn't even sure that he wanted to know why he felt he did. Perhaps he could glance through just the chapter that discussed the monastery. He sat by the outer wall, beyond which the waves were as slow and regular as sleeping breaths, and leafed through the book until he found the photograph.

It wasn't by any means recent. This was made plain by the car, presumably belonging to the photographer, that was parked at the end of the road between the trees. Ray guessed that the image was at least as old as himself. Why hadn't Iannis Antonaides taken a photograph of his own or chosen a more recent one? Perhaps the image was meant to illustrate a point, because it did. In the photograph the monastery was no less black than it was now, and the empty windows hinted at the deeper darkness underground, but the blackness grew paler as it spread down the ridge, and the lowest stretch of rock was no more than grey. All the nearest trees—indeed, all the trees in the photograph—were green.

So it hadn't been a fire that had destroyed them. Whatever had reduced them to their present state had come from the ridge, which was bare of vegetation in the photograph. Could it have become overgrown in the intervening years and then caught fire? Ray would have liked to show someone the picture, but Sandra had turned out the light in their room, and nobody was audible below. Straining to hear seemed to summon the night closer and transform the sound of the sea into rather too large and insistent a succession of breaths, perhaps because he'd realised that the photograph was meant to illustrate the chapter that began over the page,
Vampire of Vasilema.

There came many years ago to the monastery of Agios Titus on the island of Vasilema a traveller from where nobody can tell...

It would be a legend, obviously. Certainly the prose was meant to sound like one. Ray thought Sandra might be amused and even touched by the author's bid to match style to content in a language not his own, and no doubt the legend would appeal to Doug and Pris—to the teenagers as well. The only one who absolutely mustn't see was William, who might mistake it for the truth.

There came many years ago to the monastery of Agios Titus on the island of Vasilema a traveller from where nobody can tell. He gave his name Proskynitis, means pilgrim. In all Greece a monastery must take in the pilgrim and those who seek shelter. The monks of Agios Titus offered hospitality for but a single night...

Perhaps the tale had a moral—that you shouldn't offer only token succour to those in need. It might almost be suitable for William, though Ray would rather the boy read books for fun and in general enjoyed himself without quite so much intervention by his parents—and then Ray saw how the sentence ended.

The monks of Agios Titus offered hospitality for but a single night, and the night Proskynitis brought them never saw the dawn.

He was said to tell the abbot he was wandering in search of solitude where to contemplate eternal things. He vowed that on his death he would will riches to his benefactor who gave him what he sought. Some monks said that the monastery was not built to acquire fortune, but Proskynitis assured them that his riches would not be of the world but of eternity. They had put aside worldly matters, but their Vanity was spiritual. So thus he won them to his cause. He became an inmate of the monastery; taking less sustenance than any monk while he fasted as a help to meditation. As well he counselled his brethren against distractions of the world and urged the dark upon them as the most true path to seeing the eternal...

Ray felt as if the dark was being wished on him as well. The waves on the beach might have been carrying it inland to gather below him, and he could have imagined that it was massing at his side, in the unlit room. He ought to go back to Sandra, but did the book explain why the monastery had gone underground? Perhaps once he knew that, he would be more able to sleep.

His example won him acceptance to the order, taking the name Brother Skiá, means shadow. He prevailed upon his brethren to help him build a cell deep in the rock, where no distraction of light could reach. Here he followed his ambition to embrace eternity, which is embrace the dark. Why could he not do this in real solitude, far from any man? He was said to have once, but eternity needs life to feed upon or it is only lifeless dark. He that learns secrets of the dark is caught in its embrace. If it brings unending life it fills its vessel with its hunger...

Ray wasn't sure how much of this he understood or cared to grasp. It didn't seem much like an aid to sleep. He wasn't far from blaming it for an impression that had begun to trouble him—a sense that more than waves were active on the beach. Of course only waves kept suggesting a lithe shape crouched almost on all fours and darting progressively closer to the Sunny View. When he peered at the beach he saw nothing restless apart from the water.