Mortal Remains (10 page)

Pale in the moonlight, the columns of the Parthenon took on a new dimension; voices were hushed; figures looked spectral. It was easy to imagine the presence of Plato or of Sophocles.

Patrick found that the wretched Celia, sensing sympathy, something she must rarely attract, had attached herself to him.

‘I shouldn’t have said that, back at the hotel,’ she mumbled.

‘It’s all right. No one else heard you,’ he said. ‘Mind you don’t fall.’ He took her elbow as she seemed about to stumble over a lump of marble right in front of her. ‘Are you colleagues, you and—I’m afraid I didn’t catch your friend’s name?’

‘Joyce Barlow. Yes. We met at college,’ said Celia. ‘We always go on holiday together.’ She stared at the boulder- strewn ground. ‘It happens every year.’

What could he say to comfort her? Her life would always be like this.

‘Forget it now,’ he said. ‘Look around you. You’ll come to Athens again, I’m sure, but perhaps not when the moon is full.’

The miserable, spotty girl took a crumpled handkerchief out of her handbag and blew her nose. Then she made an effort to appreciate the scene.

‘It’s very fine,’ she said.

Patrick felt a sudden wish for the company of Ursula Norris, who had found irony at Phaestos. Now here was he, on the Acropolis of Athens in the moonlight, with a plain, fat, pimpled girl who seemed to have lesbian leanings. It was difficult to laugh at such things alone.

He managed gradually to manoeuvre Celia towards the others, intending to offload her if he could.

‘Oh Joyce, there you are, where have you been?’ cried Celia bossily when she saw the other girl. ‘Come and look at the eastern pediment.’

She’d never learn, poor creature, Patrick thought. Friendship was not enough for her; she must possess. And she seemed bent on masochism. He turned his back on them all and wandered away towards the Belvedere, where he stood gazing out across the lights of the city at Lykabettos, rising like a jewel above its floodlit diadem; it looked entrancing. He had been to its summit in daylight, never at night. He stood in silence; the air, cool now, brushed his face; there was always a breeze up here. Was he imagining that he could smell the scent of thyme from the hills? Could there be another place in the world as mysteriously compelling as this city of the old and new? If so, he had never been there, nor wished to find one.

He turned reluctantly away; he must join the others. People moved about slowly; it was impossible to recognise anyone from a distance. An American voice rang out, close by, discussing allergies. ‘My kid can’t tolerate talcum,’ he heard incongruously.

Patrick walked towards the great temple. Figures passed in and out among its columns and climbed up and down its steps. Two men wandered along together, talking. As Patrick passed them the moonlight revealed their faces. One, thick-set and middle-aged, was the man he had seen earlier in his hotel with Arthur Winterton; the second was the young man with a moustache who had been with Jill and Spiro aboard the
Psyche.

Celia and Joyce were not talking at breakfast. Joyce had spoken her mind after Celia had received a telephone call from Patrick at eight o’clock.

‘You should go to the funeral, Celia. We all ought to be there. It’s a matter of respect.’

‘I’d never met Dermott Murcott two weeks ago, and nor had you. He won’t notice,’ said Celia flatly.

She hoped Joyce was jealous. A man, and a proper one, twice the size of weedy Jeremy, had invited her out for the day. Patrick Grant wanted her to go with him to Mikronisos. No delusions about his reason for this filled Celia’s mind; the motive was practical, she knew, and thought it was because he had formed a good opinion of her intellect.

‘Everyone else will be there,’ Joyce went drearily on.

‘Then I won’t be missed,’ said Celia.

‘It’s not fair to Jeremy. He needs support.’

‘Oh well, of course, if you’re thinking of him and not Dermott Murcott —’

‘It’s all the same thing,’ said Joyce.

On this note they went in to breakfast and had been sitting there in silence for ten minutes when Jeremy arrived. No one else had yet appeared.

‘Oh Jeremy, come and sit down,’ said Joyce, brightening visibly. She patted the seat beside her.

‘I’m terribly late,’ said Jeremy, who was usually the first at the table.

Patrick had returned to the hotel with him the previous night. They had said goodnight to the rest of his flock, and even Joyce and Celia had drifted off to bed, though not without a few wistful backward glances as the two men retreated into the bar. They had had several drinks together at Patrick’s expense and Jeremy had overslept by half an hour as a result; an unprecedented event.

‘What time do we leave?’ asked Joyce. ‘The funeral’s at ten-thirty isn’t it?’

‘Yes. A quarter to ten will be plenty of time. You’ll have to get taxis – it’s too far to walk and there’s no direct bus from here.’ Jeremy’s worries, which had temporarily receded, loomed again. ‘Mr Hodgson will collect everyone together downstairs. I’m going on ahead.’

‘Of course you must. I’ll come with you, shall I?’ offered Joyce.

‘Oh, it’s very kind of you, Joyce, but no, thank you,’ said Jeremy, aghast at the very idea. He must have a chance to compose himself. ‘You’d help much more by keeping an eye on Mrs Dawson. I’m anxious about her already, and if it gets hot, she’ll feel faint. Perhaps when the service in the chapel is over you could persuade some of them not to follow to the grave. It isn’t necessary, and it’s a long walk through the cemetery. There are seats about the place. They could wait in the shade.’

Joyce did not care for this girl-guide role, but she was willing to accept any crumb Jeremy might cast in her direction.

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ she said. ‘I’ll do my best. Celia’s not coming, though. Your friend Dr Grant is taking her out for the day.’

‘What?’ Even Jeremy gaped at this disclosure.

‘He’s fetching her at a quarter to nine and they’re off to Mikronisos on the boat,’ said Joyce. ‘I thought you’d be surprised. She should be coming to the funeral.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter about the funeral,’ said Jeremy, rallying. ‘There’ll be quite enough people there as it is. I wish some of the others would stay away.’ What could Patrick be thinking of? ‘How nice for you, Celia,’ he added, lamely.

Patrick must have some deep reason. He had pumped him, Jeremy now recalled, about the whole group over their drinks the night before, asking what he knew about each of them and whose idea it had been to go to Mikronisos in the first place. Jeremy could not remember.

‘There’s no need for you to be at the funeral, Celia,’ he assured her again. ‘You were splendid after the accident.’

For she had been: she it was who had approached the body, pronounced it dead, fetched help, and comforted the shocked companions; and she had shown much good sense during the following troubled hours.

Celia perked up at this praise, and Joyce looked sulky.

‘Well, at least we won’t have to put up with your moods all day,’ she muttered, too quietly for Jeremy to hear.

Celia did not reply. She got up and left the dining-room. Already her dress, strained across her heavy bosom, was stained with sweat under her armpits.

Patrick arrived five minutes early, but she was ready. He beamed upon her. He was making use of her, true, but he meant to give her an enjoyable day if he could. His heart sank slightly at her appearance, but he was accustomed to finding the sound kernels of unattractive nuts, and there was something to be said for a condition of utter safety from emotional or erotic risk. Their taxi took them swiftly to the Piraeus and past the liner dock to where the island ferries were berthed. Both had brought bathing things, and Patrick carried binoculars. There was quite a crowd pushing aboard their boat: old ladies in black; young men in short-sleeved, open-necked shirts; girls in bright dresses; a dog on a lead held by a middle-aged woman with a small boy; a crate of squawking chickens; men with bicycles. Patrick, guided by the hotel porter, had bought first-class tickets, and they went up to the top deck to watch the embarkation. The boat had moved from the quay and was thudding on towards, open water when a voice hailed Patrick.

‘Why, hullo there! So we meet again!’

George and Elsie Loukas, she with her head tied up in a green silk scarf and wearing dark glasses, were at the rail.

It was apparent that George and Elsie were delighted to meet Patrick again. They greeted Celia with warmth, and related what they had done since leaving Crete; they had eaten some good meals, been to Sounion, and looked up some distant cousins of George’s.

‘Elsie felt a little out of things, I guess, not speaking Greek,’ George said. ‘My cousins don’t speak any English.’

The Loukases were visiting Mikronisos because Elsie’s first husband had been there before the war and said it was an interesting place.

‘She’s still a bit edgy,’ George confided to Patrick while the two woman were discussing education in the States. ‘I’d planned this part of our trip to be as meaningful for her as for me. I know she thinks about that first husband of hers even yet. I’m not jealous – why should I be? He’s dead and I’m not. Maybe I thought if she saw the country where he died and some of the spots that had impressed him in his lifetime it would – oh, I don’t know, kind of lay his ghost.’ He looked a little sheepish as he said this, but he was not Greek for nothing; he saw no need to deny emotion. ‘We’ve got no kids, you see,’ he added. ‘Elsie had one, with her first husband. It died. So it must be on account of me.’

Patrick thought that this was not necessarily true, but he felt unable to reply. However, George was continuing.

‘We’d thought of going to Hydra – the tourist run, it is that trip – but we can go there some other time. If we get back to New Jersey without seeing this island she might regret it later. Say,’ he lowered his voice, ‘what are you doing with that girl?’

Were they really so incongruous a pair? Patrick decided not to tease George but to answer with the truth.

‘She’s had a row with her friend and needs to get away,’ he said. ‘And I want her to show me the island. She’s been there before.’ He told George about Dermott Murcott’s accident.

‘You’re a morbid sort of guy, aren’t you?’ George said. ‘Going to look at the scene of the crime.’

‘It was an accident,’ Patrick said.

George was looking at him, shrewdly.

‘It was?’

‘Oh yes. No doubt of it. How could it be anything else?’ said Patrick blandly. ‘He slipped.’

They reached Mikronisos at last, having left most of their passengers at a larger island on the way. The few houses and shops on the waterfront shone in the brilliant sunlight as the ship nosed in to the jetty. All were freshly painted, most of them white, but some were pink or blue; the mellow tiled roofs glowed in contrast. There was a small
kafenion
and a
taverna
which advertised sea-food. The Loukases, Celia and Patrick were all thirsty, so before exploring they found a table in the shade and ordered drinks. George took charge of the proceedings.

‘I wonder if the people who live here were all born on the island?’ Patrick enquired, with an innocent air as the waiter wiped their table down.

George at once asked the waiter, who replied volubly. He was young, with an alert expression and smiling brown eyes. How odd of Celia to prefer the limp Joyce to young men like this one, thought Patrick; but then the waiter had scarcely glanced at her. She had scant choice if no male showed any interest in her.

‘He says the families here have mostly lived on the island for generations. There used to be a lot of sponge divers here, but that’s died out now from Mikronisos. Synthetic sponges, you know, stealing the market, and it’s a dangerous way of getting a living. The young people all want to go to Athens to get better paid work and the girls to find husbands,’ said George. He spoke to the boy again and then continued, ‘there are a few villas on the far side of the island. They belong to rich business-men from Athens who come in their private yachts. One man has been conducting a survey of the hinterland and plans to build a hotel if he can get permission.’

‘Oh, where?
Pou einai?’
Patrick could manage that one.

The boy grinned and gestured as he answered.

‘Over the hill there. Seems there’s a fine beach around the coast a little way,’ said George.

‘Near where the accident was a few days ago?’ asked Patrick.

George put the question and the boy nodded. He went away to fetch their drinks, and Patrick wondered whether to get George to ask directly for Ilena and Yannis. He decided to leave it for the moment; the day lay ahead of them.

They pottered along the water-front and into the few shops. Elsie seemed to have taken a fancy to Celia; they exclaimed together over the woven bags and embroideries. There were women in charge of all the shops, and most of them were elderly; was one of them Ilena?

A jeweller’s shop attracted them, and they spent some time in its dim interior. The work was intricate, and seemed to Patrick to be ridiculously cheap. There were delicate gold earrings like those Ursula Norris had worn. Celia admired a bracelet made of fine mesh with inserts in a Greek key pattern, and Patrick bought it for her. She protested, blushing an ugly shade of crimson under her sunburn.

‘A reminder of Greece, and of what I hope will be a happy day,’ he said. ‘Please accept it.’

She gave in, with a mumbled, somewhat graceless phrase of thanks.

‘You want to be careful,’ warned George as they emerged into the sunlight, Celia twisting the bracelet round her sturdy wrist. ‘You’ll give her ideas.’

‘There’s no risk of that,’ said Patrick. He wondered if any man, other than her father, had given Celia a gift in her life.

‘I suppose you meet all sorts of people at Oxford University,’ said George.

He must visualise the university as a campus apart, as so many Americans did, Patrick thought.