The Girl Below (29 page)

Out the salt-smeared window, a jagged coastline dotted with white cubes and brooding fir trees loomed ominously close. “Come on,” I said. “We don’t want to be late again.”

Even though we raced back to Harold, he’d already lined up all our suitcases, ready to disembark, and was pulling at the newspaper around Caleb’s fish.

“Don’t touch that, it’s for Mum,” said Caleb.

Harold screwed up his nose and grimaced. “Lucky her.”

Passengers surged toward the exits, jamming corridors and doorways with children and bags, and we were swept along in the crush, too tired to resist. For almost a minute I was squashed up against Caleb, my nose in his hair, his buttocks pressed to my groin. Better than the other way round, I thought, and blushed at what I’d been thinking. Another surge set the crowd moving again, and I was shoved into an old man, all thoughts of any kind put out by his sour armpits and garlic breath.

For a moment I lost sight of Caleb and then he reappeared up ahead of me, leaning over the railing, searching for his mother in a sea of bobbing heads. Harold was on the gangway, struggling with his and Peggy’s suitcases, and I felt guilty that I hadn’t helped him. I spotted Pippa among the crowds on the wharf and made my way toward her. The others got to her first, while I was still on the gangway, which swayed from the combined weight of so many bodies. Caleb turned to look for me and tapped his mother on the shoulder and pointed in my direction. I waved, but Pippa didn’t wave back, or even smile, and I dropped my hand, already paranoid.

When I finally reached them, Caleb had just presented Pippa with the fish, which she held aloft, as though it were a trophy, before treating her son to a long bout of hair ruffling and kisses. “That’s enough, Mum,” he said, pushing her off.

Harold stepped forward to embrace his sister, and she stepped to one side to avoid him. “Hello, Harold,” she said, suddenly brittle. “Mummy can’t wait to see you.” She turned to me. “Suki, you look like death. You’ll fit right in with the crowd at the villa.” Her voice was strained, and she talked in a rush. “I’m afraid we can’t hang about. I’ve left Peggy alone with Elena and she’s probably knocked her out with her bells and smells by now.” She laughed fakely at her little joke and touched me briefly on the shoulder. “It’s a bit of a hike to the house, but if we’re lucky we might be able to hire a donkey.”

There was no donkey, just a backbreaking, thigh-burning climb up the steepest hill in Skyros with the midday sun drilling a hole in my skull. Pippa set the pace, trotting up ahead with Caleb and his bantamweight rucksack, while behind them, Harold and I dragged and shoved our suitcases as well as Peggy’s up the knotty, cobbled street. By the time we arrived at a low wooden door set into a white plaster wall, I had begun to wonder if perhaps this was all part of an elaborate punishment. The door opened onto a courtyard paved with pebbles, with rooms that looked invitingly dark and cool off it on three sides. On the fourth side a low, whitewashed wall dropped away to a magnificent expanse of azure sea and sky, creating the illusion that it might be possible to dive off the wall and straight into the ocean. A fig tree grew in the corner of the courtyard, and I thought I was seeing things when a sort of troll hobbled out from under it and made a beeline for Caleb. It flung its arms around him and pinched his cheeks and clucked and cooed a string of Greek at him.

“This is Elena—Ari’s mother,” Pippa said, adding more quietly, “she doesn’t understand English, but I wouldn’t worry about that because she doesn’t seem to understand Greek either.” She patted her ears, which I took to mean the old woman was deaf, and excused herself to go and check on Peggy.

Elena put her knobbly hand around my waist and said, “New Zealand.
Kalimera!
”

“Thank you,” I said. “Your villa is lovely.”

Her face folded into a gummy smile and she quickly released me and whisked Caleb off toward one of the cool, dimly lit rooms. He had his arm around her too, and she fit snugly under his shoulder, the flag of her black head scarf peeping out over the top.

Seconds later Pippa reappeared, and Harold said, “It’s good to see you. You look great—so tan and healthy, not like us.”

We looked like refugees after three days in the back of a lorry, but I didn’t think Pippa looked much better. “I can’t think why,” she said, brushing off Harold’s compliment. “I’ve hardly been outside since we got here.”

“And how is Mother?” he said.

“Not good,” said Pippa. “She’s asleep at the moment, but we can pop in to see her if you like.”

Peggy had been set up in a small, airy room that overlooked the flat roofs of the village slopes. We stood in the doorway so as not to disturb her. She was asleep in a modern hospital bed, the sort that cantilevered in the middle, and Pippa whispered that they’d had to drag the sodding thing up the hill on the back of a donkey cart. The room smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant, and Pippa gestured to a small white tube that trailed out of Peggy’s arm and hooked onto a receptacle by the bed. “It’s a morphine pump,” she said. “Most of the time it knocks her out, but occasionally Lazarus rises from the bed and starts barking instructions.”

Harold smiled. “That sounds like my mother.”

“She wanted to see you the second you got here,” said Pippa. “You should probably give her a kiss.”

Rather stiffly, Harold moved to the bed and pecked Peggy’s forehead once.

“She’s dying,” said Pippa. “It isn’t contagious.”

Harold bristled, but I saw why he’d held himself back, and was shocked by it too. Instead of the tan she’d hoped for, Peggy’s skin had lost all pigment, and peeled off her body in chalky layers. Her hair had thinned out too, what was left standing up from her head in downy, newborn tufts. She was really only a collection of bones, except for her abdomen, which was horribly distended.

Pippa saw me staring at the protrusion. “It’s fluid,” she said. “An edema. It means her organs are failing.”

We shuffled back out to the courtyard, more sober than when we had left it, only to be baked alive by the midday sun. Under my clothing, my unwashed skin was starting to itch. “Would anyone mind if I took a shower?” I said.

“Of course not,” said Pippa. “I’ll show you to your digs. It’s a bit of a squash I’m afraid, but we’ll all just have to rub along.” She still held the parcel of fish, and tentatively started to unwrap it until the smell overpowered her. “Where did he get this?”

“I don’t know,” said Harold, before I could answer. “Suki and Caleb absconded this morning—we nearly missed the ferry—and that
thing
was their excuse.”

Pippa looked at us both blankly and smiled. “Well, Elena will know what to do with it.” She disappeared into a room I assumed was the kitchen, and came out carrying two glasses of water. “We boil our drinking water here,” she said, handing one to each of us. “I wouldn’t advise drinking from the tap—just to be on the safe side.” She led us into a long, narrow room next to the kitchen, where shuttered windows cast a weak gray light. The floor was pebbled, like the courtyard, but most of it was covered with faded red and blue woven mats. Around the room were platforms at varying levels, and these were crowded with patterned cushions and textiles, discolored from age or too much sun. At the far end stood a shrine festooned with candles and effigies, the centerpiece of which was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary holding a midget Jesus nailed to a cross. Both icons were plastic and wore lurid halos made from fairy lights, switched off at that time of day.

“This is where you’ll be sleeping,” said Pippa, pulling open a striped curtain with a spindly ladder behind it. At the top of the ladder was a platform and a thin, rolled-up mattress. “Elena sleeps over there.” She pointed to a mass of pink lace and quilting directly underneath Jesus and Mary. “She’s terribly sweet, but snores like a walrus, so I hope you’re far enough away. There wasn’t anywhere else to put you, I’m afraid.”

“Am I sleeping in this room too?” said Harold, looking around at the other platforms.

“No,” said Pippa. “This is the girls’ dorm, and you’re bunking with Caleb.”

“Great,” said Harold. “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Left alone in the crypt, I lifted my suitcase onto the platform and climbed up after it. The space was about six feet wide, with no railing and a drop of about the same distance. With the curtain shut it was almost private, but also strangely coffinlike, and I was acutely aware of Jesus and Mary just over yonder, watching, praying, leaking their plastic tears. Above my mattress, nailed to the wall, was a wooden bleeding heart, its paint rubbing off in places.

I was considering where on the platform to stow my suitcase when the sounds of an argument, heavily muffled, filtered through the wall. The baritone voice I recognized as Harold’s, and after a time I heard Pippa yelling too. Most of what they were saying was indecipherable, but at the peak of the crossfire I heard Caleb’s name spat out in the same sentence as my own, by Harold.

Consequently, I arrived at supper that evening in a state of high apprehension. Whatever Pippa and Harold had been arguing about, I was sure would come out. But I was also starving, and allowed myself to be distracted by a feast of stuffed peppers, tomato salad, oven-baked bread, and rich, bubbling moussaka. Elena might have been doubled over with osteoporosis, but she was no slouch in the kitchen. Even Caleb’s fish, grilled to a crisp, looked good enough to actually eat. Though once it was on my plate, my stomach disagreed.

“Is something wrong with your meal?” asked Pippa, pointing to it.

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s the fish, Mum, it’s rotten,” said Caleb, spitting out a mouthful.

“Nonsense, darling, we don’t let good food go to waste in this house.” Pippa looked at her husband. “Do we, Ari?”

At the sound of his name, Ari looked up, but he had missed Pippa’s question. Since arriving in Greece, he had been even less present than he had been in London.

“Tell them we don’t waste good food,” repeated Pippa.

Ari looked down at the untouched fish on his plate. “It’s revolting, Pip, and the last thing we need on top of everything else is food poisoning.”

“On top of my mother dying, you mean?” said Pippa.

Ari didn’t reply, but Caleb banged his fist on the table. “Mum, I told you it doesn’t matter about the stupid fish!”

Pippa turned to her son, blinking furiously. “Darling, it was awfully thoughtful of you to buy it for me. I just don’t know if I can eat it.” She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, looking at Ari. “As for you . . . ” she said, starting to cry and covering her mouth with a napkin before heading in the direction of her room.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that, Pip,” Ari said to her retreating figure.

The rest of us were quiet after she left, except for Elena, who continued to chew and slurp as though nothing had happened. When she had mopped her plate clean with a piece of bread, she smacked her chops in delight and squeezed Caleb’s hand, saying something in Greek I couldn’t understand.

“You’re welcome, Grandma,” replied Caleb, with an imitation smile. “At least someone enjoyed the fish,” he said to us.

Immediately after supper, Caleb took off to his friend Yanni’s house, and Ari said we probably wouldn’t see him from now on. “They’ve been best friends since before they could walk; he practically lives over there.”

“Why didn’t he want to come if his best friend lives here?” I asked.

“He was testing us,” said Ari. “Seeing if we would bend to his will.”

I told myself that not seeing so much of Caleb would be a good thing, though inwardly I had lurched with dismay. When the meal ended, I excused myself and went to the sarcophagus to try and sleep. I was half strung out with exhaustion, but Elena had been into the room since the afternoon to light a few candles, turn on the halos, and generally fill the place with a toxic cloud of frankincense and myrrh. Out of desperation, I tried covering my head with a pillow, but couldn’t breathe at all, and I was still wide awake when Pippa came in later and called out to me. By the time I’d put on a T-shirt and pulled back the curtain, she was already halfway up the ladder.

“Golly,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to climb up here after a few drinks.” She was rueful about the scene at dinner, and ashamed that I’d had to witness the hostility between her and Harold. “I can control myself at first, but the tension builds up so quickly—then, when he comes out with one of his ludicrous allegations, I just go ballistic at him.”

“That’s family,” I said, too afraid to ask what he’d accused anyone of. “They know how to push your buttons.”

“Yes, but he’s also a stirrer,” she said. “He says things just to get a reaction.”

She trusted me too much. “Pippa,” I began. “I know you think I’m a good influence on Caleb but—”

“Oh you are,” she said. “He’s already changed. That thing with the fish was so sweet, so considerate. He hasn’t done anything like that for years.” She climbed onto the sleeping platform and made herself comfortable. “Only it made me feel terrible.”

“Because you had to eat it?” My comment barely registered, and I noticed that Pippa was distracted, struggling over the right words. “Have I done something wrong?” I said.

“I wanted to tell you before we left, and it’s been on my mind ever since we got here,” she said, finally.

“I can explain—” I began, but was cut off.

“I was very young,” said Pippa. “And I thought it was all just harmless fun—we all did back then.” She looked down at her lap and rubbed at an imaginary mark on her shorts. “We even called it bonking, like sex was just some kind of party game.”

She paused to gauge my reaction, while I tried to keep up with the change of direction the conversation was taking. Was she about to confess to sleeping with my father in the bathroom that night at the party? “It’s okay,” I said. “I really don’t want to know.”

“I had that job in the florist’s on Portobello Road,” she continued, ignoring me. “I worked there all through school and afterward, when I was at the poly. At first he used to come in himself to buy small bouquets, nothing flash, but after a while he started to ring up from Frankfurt or wherever he was working and would ask for the flowers to be delivered.”