This Rough Magic (11 page)

‘You are coming in, aren’t you?’

‘Sure thing. Now I’m down here, nothing will stop me from wallowing in the shallow bit, even if I do look like a mother elephant expecting twins. That’s a smashing swimsuit, Lucy, where’d you get it?’

‘Marks and Spencer’s.’

‘Good heavens.’

‘Well, I didn’t marry a rich man,’ I said cheerfully, pulling up the shoulder-straps.

‘And a fat lot of good it does me in my condition.’ She looked sadly down at her figure, sighed, and dropped her smart beach coat down beside the hold-all containing all the sun-lotions, magazines, Elizabeth Arden cosmetics and other paraphernalia without which she would never dream of committing herself to the beach. ‘It isn’t fair. Just look at me, and these things come from Fabiani.’

‘You poor thing,’ I said derisively. ‘Will they go in the water? And for Pete’s sake, are you going to bathe with that Koh-i-noor thing on?’

‘Heavens,
no
!’ She slipped the enormous marquise diamond off her finger, dropped it into the plastic bag that held her cosmetics, and zipped the bag shut. ‘Well, let’s go in. I only hope your friend doesn’t mistake me for the dolphin, and let fly. Much the same general shape, wouldn’t you say?’

‘You’ll be all right. He doesn’t wear yellow.’

‘Seriously, there
isn’t
anyone watching, is there, Lucy? I’d just as soon not have an audience.’

‘If you keep near inshore they can’t see you anyway, unless they come to the front of the terrace. I’ll go and look.’

The water in the shade of the pines was a deep, deep green, lighting to a dazzling pale blue where a bar of sand ran out into the bay. I walked out along this, thigh-deep, until I was about fifty yards from the shore,
then turned and looked up towards the terrace of the Castello. There was no one visible, so I waved to Phyllida to follow me in. As we swam and splashed, I kept an eye open to seaward for the dolphin, but, though I thought once that I could see a gleaming wheel turning a long way out, the creature did not approach the bay. After a time we waded back to the beach, where we lay sunning ourselves and talking idly, until Phyl’s remarks, which had been getting briefer and briefer, and more and more sleepy, ceased altogether.

I left her sleeping, and went back into the water.

Though I had kept a wary eye on the woods and the terrace every time I bathed, I had never seen anyone since the first day, so it was with a slight feeling of surprise that I now saw someone sitting there, at the table under the stone-pine. Grey hair. Sir Julian Gale. He lifted a hand to me, and I waved back, feeling absurdly pleased that he should have bothered. He turned away immediately, his head bent over a book. I caught the flutter of its pages.

There was no one with him on the terrace, but as I turned to let myself down into the deep water beyond the bar, something else caught my eye.

In one of the upper windows, which stood open, something had flashed. And behind the flash I saw movement, as whoever stood watching there lifted the binoculars again to focus them on the bay …

There is something particularly infuriating about being watched in this way. I should have dearly loved to return rudeness for rudeness by pulling a very nasty
face straight at the Castello windows, but Sir Julian might have seen it, and thought it was meant for him, so I merely splashed back to the sand-bar, where I stood up, and, without another glance, stalked expressively (Drama School exercise; Outraged Bather driven from water) towards the rocks at the southern edge of the bay. I would finish my swim from the rocks beyond the point, out of range of the Castello.

I hadn’t reckoned on its being quite so difficult to stalk with dignity through three feet of water. By the time I reached the end of the sand-bar and the deep pool near the rocks, I was furiously angry with Max Gale, and wishing I had gone straight out on to the beach. But I was damned if I would be driven back now. I plunged across the deep water, and was soon scrambling out under the pines.

A path ran through the tumble of rocks at the cliff’s foot, leading, I supposed, to Godfrey Manning’s villa, but its surface looked stony, so I stayed on the rocks below. These, scoured white by the sea and seamed with rock pools, stretched out from the cliff in stacks and ridges, with their roots in the calm, creaming water.

I began to pick my way along between the pools. The rocks were hot, and smooth to the feet. There were crevices filled with flowering bushes, running right down to the water’s edge where the green swell lifted and sank, and here and there a jut of the living cliff thrust out into the water, with the path above it, and bushes at its rim hanging right out over the sea.

At the point I paused. Here the rocks were more
broken, as if the tide was driven hard that way when there was a wind, and under the cliff was a pile of broken rock and sea-wrack, some of which looked fresh enough to have come up in last night’s squall. Further round, beyond the next curve of the cliff, I could see where a cove or inlet ran in, deep and narrow and surrounded by thick trees which stretched right up the slopes of the cliff; there were pines and oaks and hollies, and among them the limes of which Sir Julian had spoken. Through the boughs of a young thicket at the cliff’s foot I caught a glimpse of red tiling which must be the roof of Godfrey’s boat-house.

There was nobody about. I decided to finish my bathe in the deep water off the point and then return by the path.

I made my way carefully through the piled rocks and the sea-wrack. Here and there a shallow pool barred the way, and I paddled across with caution, wondering uneasily about sea-urchins, which in these waters (I had read) can drive poisonous spines into your feet.
Like hedgehogs, which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my foot-fall
… Poor Caliban. Was Julian Gale right, I wondered? I had read
The Tempest
late into the night, following up the fascinating game he had suggested, and I had even had a few ideas myself, things I must ask him when I went to the Castello again … If I ever went to the Castello again … But of course I would have to return the Shakespeare … If I could find out from Miranda or Adoni or someone when Max Gale was likely to be out …

I had come to the edge of a deep inlet, a miniature
cove running back through the rocks. This would be as good a place as any. I paused, peering down into it, to see what the bottom was like.

The water was the colour of Imperial jade. Tiny, shrimp-like creatures scudded here and there among the olive and scarlet bladders, and shoals of small fish darted and nibbled. The shadows cast by the sun looked blue-black, and were alive with the movements of crabs which shuffled through the brown weed that clothed the bottom. The weed itself moved all the time, faintly and continuously, like rags in the swell. A cuttlefish bone showed white and bare.
Of his bones are coral made. These are pearls
…

The body was lying half in, half out, of the largest patch of shadow. The sun, shining straight into my eyes, had hidden it till now, the hump of flesh and clothes not holding any kind of human shape, just a lump of rags rolled over and over by the swell and dumped there, jammed somehow under an overhang at the base of the pool.

Even now, with the sun directly in my eyes, I could hardly be sure. Sick and shaken, I hesitated: but of course I would have to look. I sank to my knees at the edge of the pool, and shaded my eyes to peer downwards …

The rags moved in the faint swell like weed. Surely it was only weed …? But then I saw the head, the face, a shape blurred and bleached under dark hair. Some sea-creatures had already been at it. The tiny fish flicked to and fro, busily, in the green water.

Spiro
, I thought,
Spiro
… And his mother would
have to see this. Surely it would be better to say nothing, to let the tide carry it away again; let the busy sea-creatures purge and clean it to its sea-change, like the cuttlefish bone showing white beside the dark hair …?

Then reason threw its ice-water on my confusion. She would have to be told. It would be more cruel not to tell her. And there was no tide here. Without another storm, the thing could be held down here for days, for anyone to find.

Some freak current thrust a tentacle of movement through the pool. The water swayed, and the dead man moved his head. With the movement, I knew him. It wasn’t specifically the face that I recognised; that would have been impossible: but somehow everything came together in the same moment to enforce recognition – the shape of face and head, the colours, better seen now, of the sodden lumps of rag that had been navy trousers and sweater and light grey jacket …

It wasn’t Spiro, after all; not, that is, unless it had been Spiro in the woods last night, still alive, and making his way up towards the Castello.

There could be no doubt about it, no possible doubt. This was the man I had seen last night in the clearing. I found that I was sitting back on my heels, slumped to one side, with a hand out to the hot face of a boulder beside me. It was one thing to find a dead man; but to recognise him, and to know where he had been shortly before he had met his death …

I had my eyes shut, as tightly as the fingers that gripped the hot stone. The sunlight boiled and fizzed
against the closed lids. I bit my lips, and breathed slowly and hard, and concentrated on not being sick. Phyllida: the thought was as bracing as sal volatile: Phyllida mustn’t see this, or even be allowed to suspect the horror that lay just round the point from her. I must steady myself decently, then go back to Phyllida, and somehow persuade her to leave the beach soon. Then get quietly to the telephone, and get in touch with the police.

I opened my eyes, with a silly hope that somehow I had been wrong, and there was no dead man there in the water. But he still lay in his splash of inky shadow, grotesque and faintly moving and familiar. I got to my feet, held myself steady by the boulder for another full minute, then, without looking back, made my way through the tumble of rock towards the thicket that edged the cliff path. It was only when I had reached the bushes, and was wondering if I could pull myself up the eight feet or so to the path, that some sound, vaguely heard a few moments ago, and now repeated, made me pause and glance to my left, towards the boat-house. Someone had slammed a door. Something appeared to be wrong with the catch, because I heard, clearly now, an exclamation of irritation, and the slam was repeated. This time the door shut firmly, and a moment later I heard footsteps, and Godfrey Manning came briskly into view along the path.

I wasn’t sure if he was coming my way, or if the path branched off above the trees somewhere for the Villa Rotha. I opened my mouth to call him, hoping that this wouldn’t also bring Phyllida, but at the same moment
Godfrey glanced up and saw me below him on the rocks. He lifted a hand in greeting, but before he could call out I put a finger to my lips, then beckoned urgently.

Not surprisingly, he looked startled, but his expression deepened sharply into concern as he approached and paused on the path above me.

‘Lucy? Is something wrong? Are you feeling ill? The sun?’ Then his voice changed. ‘It’s not that damned lunatic again with the rifle?’

I shook my head. Infuriatingly, after I had so far controlled myself, I found I couldn’t speak. I pointed.

He glanced over towards the pool, but at that distance nothing was visible. Then he swung himself lightly down through the bushes to where I stood, and his arm went round me, gently.

‘You’d better sit down … There. Better? All right, don’t try to talk any more. Something scared you, over there in the big pool? Relax a minute now; I’ll go and take a look, but don’t you move. Just sit there quietly, and don’t worry. I won’t be long.’

I sat with my hands jammed tightly together between my knees, and watched my feet. I heard Godfrey’s steps, quick and confident, cross the rocks towards the pool. Then there was silence, prolonged. The sea murmured, and some cliff-building swallows twittered shrilly as they cut in and out above the path.

I looked up. He was standing stock-still where I had stood, staring down. He was in profile to me, and I could see that he looked considerably shaken. It was only then that it occurred to me that he, too, must in
the first moment of shock have expected it to be Spiro. If I had been capable of reasoned thought or speech, I should have known this, and spared him.

I cleared my throat. ‘It’s not … Spiro, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know who it is?’

I thought he hesitated, then he nodded. ‘His name’s Yanni Zoulas.’

‘Oh? You
do
know him?’ Somehow this shook me, too, though it was reasonable to assume that the man had been drowned locally. ‘Is he from near here, then?’

‘Yes, from the village.’

‘What – what do you suppose happened?’

‘God knows. Some accident at sea, that’s obvious. He was a fisherman, and usually went out alone … You must have seen his boat; it was always plying to and fro along this bit of shore – the rather pretty blue boat, with the dark brown sail. But in last night’s sea … I wouldn’t have thought …’

His voice trailed away as he stared frowningly down at the pool. Then he turned and made his way back across the rock to where I sat.

‘Two in a week?’ I said. It came out as a query, asked quite as if Godfrey could supply the answer. I hadn’t meant even to say it aloud, and could have bitten my tongue with vexation as soon as it was out.

‘Two in a week?’ He spoke so blankly that it was evident my meaning hadn’t registered. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘I’m sorry. It was stupid of me. I was thinking aloud. I shouldn’t have reminded you. It’s just one of those ghastly coincidences.’

‘Normally,’ he said, ‘I’d have said I didn’t believe in coincidence. In fact, if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes what happened to Spiro, I’d certainly be starting to wonder what was going on around here.’ He paused, and his eyes went back to the pool. ‘As it is, all that has happened is that two young men from the same district have died this week by drowning, and in a community that lives largely by the sea, that’s hardly surprising. Only …’ He stopped.