The Girl Below (26 page)

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Because I’m not sure if it happened, or if I imagined it.” I thought of showing him the scab on my hand, but without the shoe that put it there, it didn’t seem proof of anything. “And it wasn’t the wardrobe this time.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it won’t bother you in Greece.” He laughed. “I don’t think ghosts can swim the channel.”

I wanted him to be right but was afraid that he wasn’t. “What if I’m the ghost?” I said. “Or I take it with me wherever I go?”

We’d reached the food cabinet, where I lost Caleb’s attention to a hundred plastic sandwiches and pastries in dinky cardboard boxes. “Can I get whatever I like?” he said.

“Go crazy.”

Fifteen minutes later, midchannel, the hovercraft buzz was at its most deafening, and Caleb sat beside me looking green. He got up suddenly and lurched toward the aisle, clutching his stomach. I got up to follow him, but Harold reached out to stop me. “He doesn’t need you to hold his hand,” he said.

It was the first time he’d spoken to me since we’d boarded the hovercraft.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said.

Harold gave me a challenging look. “Are you sure about that?”

“Whatever you think happened the other night,” I said, “you’re wrong. Caleb was just trying to help me sleep, that’s all.”

Harold said nothing, but I suddenly remembered his carnal cure for insomnia, and realized I’d only made things worse.

“I’m going to get another coffee,” I said, and decided not to mention it again.

We arrived in Calais as disheveled as if we’d been traveling for weeks. Back on dry land, after emptying his guts at sea, Caleb was ravenous again, and tucked into a stale
pain au chocolat,
while Harold stood on the concourse and smoked. Already the journey was starting to feel like punishment.

At Charles de Gaulle Airport, Caleb rode up and down the conveyor belts of the central dome, waving at us and pulling faces until, at the end of one trip, he decided simply to vanish. With less than half an hour to go before we had to board our plane, Harold dispatched me and my schoolgirl French to find him. I wandered the concourse, bewildered by foreign signage and shoving hordes, until I too was lost. The airport was hideously chaotic, overrun with thin, jabbering women and fat, smoking men, and an intimidating array of security guards and military police with guns. I wanted, very much, to lock myself in the toilet.

In the end, it was Caleb who found me and not the other way round. I was buying bottled water at a kiosk when he punched me on the arm and said, “
Salut!
” then tried to blow a smoke ring in my face. He seemed perfectly at home, another
louche garçon
with a Gauloise packet hanging from his shirt pocket.

“Where were you?” I said. “We’re going to miss the plane.”

“
Je suis un
flâneur,
” he said, with a pretentious flourish.

“
Oui,
and
je suis un rock star
.”

We caught the plane, but only just, and Harold was furious about it for as long as it took him to pass out with a deep snore on the seat between us. Within seconds, Caleb was tapping me on the arm, asking me to order an extra glass of wine for Harold so he could drink it. When I refused to, he turned up the volume on his headphones and turned his back on me, the model of a sulking teenager. It was silly to even analyze it, but telling him off, and the casual way he’d rebuffed me, made me feel like I was his mother, and I wished that I hadn’t said no.

Hours and hours later, we were in the back of a hot, cramped bus from Athens to the port of Kymi when I first noticed that Harold had been crying. Only then did it dawn on me that his cantankerous mood probably had nothing to do with Caleb or myself. We were on our way to Skyros because his mother was dying, and I of all people should have had a little empathy.

Our hotel was a fleapit in an industrial quarter by the port, half the letters missing from its neon sign. In the dim lobby, Harold went to the reception desk to check in, while Caleb and I sat on our bags in the cracked marble foyer, yawning our heads off.

After what seemed like forever, Harold came toward us looking glum. “They didn’t get our reservation,” he said. “They’ve one room vacant, a double, and the best they can do is a trundle bed.”

“Fuck that,” said Caleb. “I’m not sleeping on a trolley.”

“There aren’t many hotels here,” said Harold, wearily. “But the girl at reception said she’d ring round to see if anything’s available.”

The thought of more travel was torture. “I’ll sleep on the cot,” I offered. “It’s sort of the only arrangement that works.”

Harold nodded. “Caleb and I will have to share.”

“No fucking way,” said Caleb.

In the small, ovenlike room, we put down our bags and turned on the ceiling fan. It scudded to life and wafted hot, stale air over our faces.

Caleb flopped on the double bed. “I’m hungry.”

We all were, in the inexplicable way jet lag stimulates the appetite, and set out along a strip of kebab joints and all-night bars, grateful to abandon the hotel. It was well past midnight by the time we sat on the curb munching souvlaki, but a gang of olive-skinned urchins was still up and playing in the street, terrorizing a scrawny orange cat and her litter of emaciated kittens. The day had been a hot one, and the stench of baked rubbish was intense but not unpleasant, just all part of the new and vivid sensory imprint of Greece.

For the first time in weeks, I felt energized and awake, but I was out of sync with our itinerary. Our ferry left at seven the next morning, and before long, we were back in the oven, trying to sleep. The beds had lumpy horsehair mattresses over squeaking springs and made a cacophony as we took turns to get up and use the bathroom. Caleb wore pajamas and tried to build a protective wall of pillows down the center of the bed he was sharing with Harold, who came out of the bathroom bare chested, wearing a towel fashioned as a skirt. He climbed in next to Caleb, and fumbled under the sheets before dropping the towel to the floor.

Caleb sat bolt upright. “You’re not going commando, are you?”

“Y-fronts. I don’t like to feel restricted when I sleep.”

Caleb wriggled closer to the wall, while overhead the ceiling fan flapped as though it were trying to take off. The tepid breeze that reached my face smelled of unwashed travelers, with a top note of garlic
tzatziki
and lamb. Harold fell asleep almost immediately, his snoring a low, steady rumble, but hemmed in next to him, Caleb pitched and moaned. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I feel like a rotisserie chicken.”

“It’s your pajamas,” I said. “They’re too restricting.”

“Shut up.”

Exhaustion had caught up with me, but there wasn’t enough oxygen to go round the room, and each time I reached the edge of consciousness, a mosquito screamed in my ear, and I swiped at it pointlessly in the dark. An hour passed before Caleb kicked the wall in total frustration. “I don’t see why we all have to go. Granny hates it when we make a fuss over her.”

“I don’t think we’re going for Peggy’s sake,” I said. “Your mum wants the family to be together.”

“Even Harold?”

“Shhhh,” I said, pointing to the bed. “Peggy’s his mother too.”

A loud squeak came from the mattress springs as Caleb catapulted himself out of bed and tugged off his pajama top. Briefly, his bare silhouette appeared in front of the neon hotel sign, his bony shoulders bent over like a spoon.

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping.”

Even though he was asleep, I didn’t want to be left alone with Harold. “Wait for me.”

We headed out in no particular direction but soon found ourselves at the port, drifting alongside a fleet of decrepit fishing boats and freighters, and set off aimlessly along a jetty that pointed out to sea. On one side of the jetty the water was smooth, oily, but on the other it slapped up against the rocks in angry waves. Caleb and I had been walking along the jetty for half an hour or so when it seemed to narrow, and the sea became rough on both sides. The concrete under our feet was wet in places, and once or twice a wave washed clean over it.

I looked over my shoulder to see how far we’d come. Expecting to see the port behind us, I was shocked to discover nothing there at all. Everything, all the freighter hulls and fishing boats, had been washed away, and the only thing left was the sea. On the horizon was a dim orange glow, the faint promise of dawn. I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me, and, a little more slowly, I traced the line of the jetty as it arced away from us. But still, nothing was there except ocean.

“Caleb, stop,” I said, feeling panicky. “Turn around.”

“What is it?”

“Behind us. The port isn’t there.”

He scanned the horizon in the direction my finger pointed, then turned right around until he was facing out to sea. “It’s that way,” he said, as if I was a complete moron.

“What do you mean?”

“We turned around about ten minutes ago and started to walk back.”

“What?”

For a few minutes I watched him continue to walk in the wrong direction, away from the port, and was too stunned to say anything. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to wait for me, I trotted after him. “Caleb, you’re going the wrong way. You’re heading out to sea.”

He looked over his shoulder at me and frowned. “No, I’m not.”

He waited this time while I examined the horizon in both directions, looking for some kind of landmark. But there was nothing. I was completely lost.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” he said.

His stride was confident as we set off in the direction he indicated, but my legs had become jellylike, uncooperative, and I struggled to keep up. For another five minutes we walked in silence, then a chugging noise that had been in the background grew louder behind us and I turned to see a lantern bobbing in the air, some fifty meters offshore.

“What’s that?” I said, peering at the ghostly vision.

“Have you totally lost your mind?”

I looked again at the bobbing light, and saw that it was bolted to the top of a pole, that behind it was rigging and a white cabin. It was a fishing boat, heading back to port, and as it pulled alongside, a couple of fishermen who’d been pouring fish guts over the stern waved at us.

“
Kalimera!
” yelled Caleb, and one of the fishermen called back, “
Kalimera!
” and held up a still-flapping fish.

“That means good morning,” said Caleb, turning to me. “Come on, race you there!”

I tried to run but could manage only to trot, and as we neared the wharf the sky began to lighten and I saw, with relief, that we were back on the docks where we had started. Circled by screeching cats and gulls, the fishermen had already started unloading their catch, and the salty smell of fresh seafood wafted over to us.

Caleb bounded toward the boat and started negotiating with the fishermen in a flurry of pidgin Greek. While he did so, the first sun of the morning burst over the horizon, dipping everyone, including Caleb, in soft, golden light. Despite having had no sleep, Caleb’s hair, cheekbones, eyes, and lips were at their pristine best. In three years’ time those features would be testosterone coarsened, ravaged with stubble, but that morning he was caught in the last instant of perfection before boyhood ends, and staring at him gave me a pain in my chest.

I hadn’t noticed that one of the fishermen—so tan he looked like a sandal—was nodding in my direction and saying something to Caleb that was making him shake with laughter. He handed Caleb a fish wrapped in newspaper and slapped him on the shoulder. When he trotted back, Caleb was still chuckling. “Guess what he wanted to know?”

I looked at the giant fish. “If you had a refrigerator?”

“No.” Caleb grinned. “He asked if we were on honeymoon!”

“Who?”

“You and me, dick.”

“And what did you say?”

“That you were my mother!”

His insult hurt, and I was too tired to hide it. “I’m not that old.”

“I know you’re not,” said Caleb, giving me a friendly biff on the arm. “And that’s why I told him you were my sister.”

Daylight arrived quickly, and with it, heat. There hadn’t been time to shower the night before, and I was desperate for one now. As we retraced our steps along the port, the surrounding streets clattered to life. Roller doors flipped up to reveal hidden shops, and awnings unraveled over café tables that had been stored away for the night. Searching the sun-glazed streets for a familiar landmark, I realized for the second time that day that I was utterly lost.

“Do you have any idea how to get back?” I asked Caleb, who had stopped at a kiosk to buy sweets for breakfast.

“I was following you,” he said, shoving a square of lurid pink bubble gum in his mouth.

After clumsy negotiations, Caleb got directions to a Hotel Triton, which we thought was the name of our accommodation. We’d found the port easily enough that morning, but the route back was convoluted and seemed to take longer than the way there. We cantered the last few streets, and as we piled into the Triton’s lobby streams of sweat ran down the groove of my back. Harold stood at the desk grilling the night concierge—“How could you
not
have seen them leave?”—and barely keeping it together.

“Here we are!” said Caleb, heroically.

Harold whipped around and glared at him. “The ferry leaves in twenty minutes—I’m not even going to ask where you two have been.”

“Fishing,” said Caleb, and held up his prize.

“Not now,” I said, and shooed him toward the stairs.

In a state of panic, we stuffed clothes into suitcases, and hurriedly checked under the bed for stray socks and underpants. Clothes sprouting from his half-zipped backpack, Caleb called out to me, “I don’t care if we miss the ferry. This hotel’s fucked, and Harold’s a cock.”

Running for the ferry, we retraced our steps for the third time. Caleb jogged with the fish under one arm and tried to keep abreast of Harold, who was surprisingly nimble, while the best I could manage was a lopsided scuttle, held back by fatigue and wayward suitcase wheels. When I had dropped too far back behind the others, I picked up the suitcase, and the plastic handle burned painfully into my hand.