The Sexopaths (5 page)

‘Camille.  Shh!’

‘But you and mummy said there
were gypsies!’

‘Not here at the hotel –
that was at the boats.’

‘That lady’s hair looks like a
gypsy’s.’

He flinches again, and puts a
silencing finger to his lips.  Inwardly he curses Monique.  To add
spice to their trip, she had arranged the final leg of their journey by
hydrofoil from Piraeus.  On being discharged from their taxi in the busy
street outside the port, Adam had been concerned to keep Camille clear of
Athens’ perilously swerving traffic.  Then seeing that she’d spotted a
swaying quartet of swarthy alcoholics arrayed upon a kerbside bench, he’d
barked:

‘Camille – quick! 
They’re gypsies. Stay close to me!’

There were three men, leering at
Monique, enlivened by such a titillating highlight, and a gap-toothed woman
who’d fixed Camille’s small blonde form with a vacant stare. 
Terror-struck, she’d leapt like a grasshopper to his side, and might have been
conjoined as they trundled their smart cabin-bags past the unwelcome welcoming
committee.  One of the men remarked in Greek and the others cackled
lewdly.  Camille, determined never to take her eyes off them, entered the
gates of the port with her head facing almost backwards.  At first Adam
had congratulated himself on the success of their ploy – prior to the
trip, concerned over Camille’s propensity to explore, Monique had recounted the
true story of the British toddler who’d vanished on a holiday in Greece, and
that some said he’d been ‘adopted’ by gypsies.  What with other even
higher profile disappearances since, they shared the collective paranoia of
most parents of their generation; indeed Monique would spend what seemed like
hours on news and gossip websites, and appeared perpetually pained by the
prospect of becoming similar prey.  Camille, in her own way, had become
gripped by the notion of gypsies, and over and again had insisted they repeat
the tale, and tell her what the gypsies did with stolen children.  Now she
sidles up to him and asks in a more circumspect tone:

‘They were real gypsies at the
boats, weren’t they?’

‘I think so.’

‘Daddy –
do
gypsies
steal children?’

‘Bad ones might.’

‘Why do they steal them?’

‘To sell them.’

‘Why do they want to sell them?’

‘To get money.’

‘Who do they sell them to?’

‘To other bad people.’

‘What do the bad people do to the
children?’

‘Make them do nasty work.’

‘What else?’

‘Keep them prisoner.’

‘What else?’

‘Give them scraps to eat.’

‘What else?’

‘Shout at them.’

‘Why don’t the gypsies sell their
own children?’

‘They want to keep them.’

‘What else do gypsies do?’

‘They have fierce dogs.’

‘Why do they have fierce dogs?’

‘To scare people away from their
caravans.’

‘Is that where they hide the
children?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What else do gypsies do?’

‘I think that’s about it.’

‘What about hedgehogs?’

‘Oh yeah, they cook hedgehogs in
clay and eat them.’

‘And the prickles all come off
first?’

‘That’s right.’

‘
Is
that fat lady a
gypsy?’

‘Camille, shall we go in the
pool?’

‘Okay.’

Reluctantly he rises and leads
her back to the shallow-end, encouraging her to take a jump into his
arms.  To his relief she is soon distracted by the other kids, who are
drowning what appears to be a locust.  Small friends reunited, Adam
paddles surreptitiously back to his berth, to haul himself out beside his
lounger.  Hastily he dries his hands, rearranges his towel and squats on
the sunbed.  He opens Xara’s message.  True to form, she’s provided
few lines for him to read between:
‘Client mtg Tue 10pm. X.’
 
Nevertheless, it conjures a surge of excitement, a warm wave that ripples
through the centre line of his body, quickening his vital signs.

He sinks back on the bed and
closes his eyes against the overhead glare.  A brief lysergic flashback
flickers across the inadequate screen of his eyelids.  He fumbles blindly
for his sunglasses and sends them clattering across the tiles and under the
adjoining sunbed.  The female occupier – Camille’s putative, amply
proportioned gypsy – stirs and fishes them with a grunt from between a
pair of sandals.  As, carefully, she hands over the glasses he notices the
gaze beneath her own dark but not quite impenetrable lenses sweep across the
swollen skin-tight Lycra of his black trunks.  He wrestles his instincts
to turn over (and so acknowledge his complicity), but instead says thanks, and
settles back, his thoughts jumping like a jam-jar of grasshoppers from his
childhood.  Ten p.m.  Now she wants it at night.  What does that
mean?  A single woman, perhaps.  Not an easy time to explain an
absence from home.  Or her partner’s away for the night.  Or she
could be the one in town on business.  Isn’t that when most males would
indulge?

But ten p.m. Tuesday?  How
shall he explain his own absence?  (He notes he’s not questioning his
attendance.)  They travel home on Tuesday – he should be there in
good time, but typically they’d stay in after a trip away, fatigued by queues
and queasy from serial snacking, maybe get a takeaway, open a bottle of wine,
have an early night, a ‘nice night’.  He could say he’d arranged
beforehand to meet a colleague for a quick catch-up at the pub – the
timings would make sense – but Monique would expect him to put her first,
as invariably he would.  And sod’s law, if he went to ‘meet’ someone
– the nominated person would no doubt phone their house that very same
night.  It had even happened once before, and he’d surely played his joker
at that particular game.  What a fool he’d have looked if he’d begun to
relay some non-existent sending of regards.  He shudders a little at the
memory – if Monique had had any inkling of suspicion, and had wanted to trap
him, he would have walked right into it.

***

‘So I gather your beautiful
daughter thinks I’m a gypsy lady.’

Adam cringes, ducking for cover
into his wine, as if to buy a moment to gather his wits.  So she was awake
all along.  If she heard
gypsy
she heard
fat
.  But he
takes comfort in her untroubled tone and generous description of Camille.

‘Sorry about that – she’s a
bit obsessed with gypsies right now.’

She gives a little
self-deprecating laugh.  ‘Oh, don’t worry I took it as a compliment, being
Irish.’ 

But probably not being
overweight, thinks Adam.  He looks around, as if to check if anybody is
listening-in, as though he’s going to make a point he doesn’t want
overheard.  It’s the delegates-and-partners dinner, a noisy, lively affair
being held in the alfresco section of the hotel restaurant, near the
pool.  The seating plan, to his irritation designed by someone with a mind
selectively to divide and mix couples, has placed him between the sister of the
Irish representative (his erstwhile poolside neighbour), and the somewhat
taciturn French-speaking wife of the Belgian representative.  Apart from
distancing him from Monique, these are hardly the ‘useful international
contacts’ he has in mind boasting about when he gets back to work.  Across
from him are two surly chain-smoking Germans, apparently a married couple who
seem to have somehow bucked the system (maybe the smoking?) and – just
about within conversing range – some relief in the form of the
ever-chirpy Andalucian, Ignacio.  Monique is away at the far end of the
long trestle table, on the same side as Adam, opposite the quietly regal French
President of the organisation, beside whom is Secretary Simone, glistening, and
opposite her and beside Monique the Vice-President, an immaculately dressed,
tall, urbane and slightly effeminate Dutchman.  These characters, and
others whose names, roles and nationalities he’s already largely forgotten,
Monique had variously pointed out and introduced to him during the extended
pre-dinner drinks session, when – on top of a bottle they’d had delivered
to their room – they both imbibed more champagne than was probably
wise.   Now, he at least, washed up it seems between several of the
less engaging characters in the party, wishes again for the clock to spin and
their family mini-break in Mykonos proper to commence, the pair of them free of
interference and he unburdened of his growing unease about having to share
Monique with what he senses is a growing band of male admirers.  Still, he
figures there’s no alternative but to make the best of it.  He empties his
wine glass and delivers his statement to the Irishwoman.

‘We told her that gypsies had
stolen a child in Greece – you know, that little boy, going back a bit
now?  Trouble is, she can’t get it out of her head – the gypsies
more than the incident.  It was to keep her from wandering… but I’m
beginning to regret it.’

‘Oh – you did the right
thing.  Can’t be too careful these days.  She’s so cute – quite
a little lady.  Spirited, I think is the word.  Independently
minded.’

‘You know, for an awful moment I
actually thought I’d lost her this afternoon.’  Surprised by his
unforeseen candour, Adam enjoys a surge of relief; he hasn’t related this story
to Monique; clearly it’s been leaning guiltily upon the door of his
subconscious, like a schoolboy reluctant to face the Head.  ‘I took her
down into the town to see the pelicans and get some lunch – I thought we
were trying to choose a pair of sandals for her in one of those little
boutiques – next thing she’d disappeared into thin air.’

Adam’s thoughts drift back to
events earlier in the day…

***

Poolside, time drags, with only
the discomfiting prospect of the communal buffet lunch: he – comic in
beach fatigues, inconsequential chaperone to Camille, conveniently invisible as
marital partner to Monique; they – coolly attired peacocks strutting
about her.  So he opts out, offers an expedition to Camille; defection the
better part of valour; the bittersweet taste of rebellion on his lips. 
They flip-flop down the sun-dried concrete hill to Mykonos town.  Camille
likes it; she helps to occupy his mind with her cannonade of questions. 
They head roughly seawards between untidily fenced private properties and
emerge on a quiet walkway branching onto a little abandoned jetty; below
languishes a rusting moped, long-marooned, half buried in a narrow strand of
stony sand, fused to the boulders, steel reverting to ore.  Camille is in
heaven: she spends the best part of an hour diligently carrying rocks from the
tiny beach and dropping them one by one with a satisfying kerplunk into the
clear deep waters beneath, dancing and dodging each time a rogue wave slaps the
pier-end and explodes into a zillion droplets, suspended at their zenith for a
split second in freeze-frame, before falling with deceptive velocity to shower
her gleefully shrieking form.  Eventually, the beach substantially
depleted, he manages to coax her away with the promise of a treat; they pick
their way past the iconic distempered windmills, ocean-facing giants sporting
badly coiffeured thatched Beatle-cuts; they navigate the slippery wave-splashed
walkways of Little Venice; they round the point into the harbour and settle at
a taverna for a snack, drinks and ices.  Avidly observant, Camille
inquires if each passer-by is a gypsy; until to Adam’s relief her attention is
diverted by the ponderously plodding arrival of a pair of Great White pelicans,
immense yellow-gulleted latter-day dodos armed with bills that simply demand
your lunch, and no argument.  Camille, is only too happy to oblige,
overjoyed as unfinished meze disappears into the two avian dustbins.

As supplies dwindle to naught,
the pelicans eye her implacably through cold reptilian eyes, as if wondering
whether they could eat her, before moving on to bully better-endowed
diners.  So he and Camille set about returning to the hotel via the town’s
paved maze of narrow crowded streets, worn smooth by generations of visitors, a
constant tide lapping against whitewashed walls showcasing banisters and balconies
gaily painted in primary colours, picture postcards printed large.  Adam
soon feels he’s losing his bearings; whichever way they turn the flow seems to
push against them; Camille however is bewitched by the bright wares of the
bazaar, her monologue a stream of wants as each new stimulus presents itself
for purchase.  Adam wishes Monique were with them, she’d love showing
Camille around the bijou boutiques.  The thought of her momentarily
disconcerts him, but also highlights the success of this little excursion:
being with Camille has taken his mind off his wife.

He tries to rationalise. 
She must find herself at the magnetic centre of male gravity many days of the
year.  It’s just that he’s not usually there to notice.  He should
shrug it off – but he knows deep inside he’s not looking forward to
getting back to the hotel.  He pictures Monique’s group having drinks at
the poolside bar, an in-crowd from which he’s excluded, protected by an
invisible bubble of decorum that he can’t puncture unless invited.  But Camille
acknowledges no such protocol – she’ll just go flying in, a mini Exocet
homing upon her mother’s womb.  At least he can follow in her slipstream.

‘Camille – let’s buy mummy
a present.’

They choose some earrings, and of
course a necklace for Camille – immediately she’s desperate to take home
these trophies, but Adam has the further Monique-pleasing idea of obtaining a
pair of sandals for Camille (he recalls overhearing mother explaining to
daughter that she’d grown out of this summer’s edition when they packed). 
He senses it’s a gesture that will reinforce their fragile family corral. 
He visualises Monique leaning across to hug him while the others look on,
benevolent smiles sweetly icing envy.  So they enter a likely looking
store – he’s been keeping a firm grip on Camille as they’ve squeezed
through the crowds of fellow window-shoppers, but now inside he relaxes ands
let her browse around while he focuses on the task in hand.  Quite
quickly, he settles upon an intricately decorated leather sandal that he
locates on a low shelf.  He stands upright and turns to query the size
with the assistant, only to discover no trace of Camille.  The tiny shop
is empty.  Surely there had been a couple of other customers… but can he
remember?  He turns, sandal in hand, and strides out into the street,
expecting to see Camille looking at the window display.  But… no. 
There are people, still – a blur of people – strolling, meandering,
engrossed in their own little worlds, slow motion compared to the swell of
thoughts that surge into his brain on a flood tide of panic.  In neither
direction is there sight of a little girl being led away, nor any commotion
that might distract these contented consumers.  Surely Camille would have
cried out – like they’d trained her to do – if someone had tried to
take her?