Wish You Were Here (15 page)

I'd been wondering on and off all day why she hadn't turned up when it had been she who had made the initial contact. My more cynical side presumed that it was all part of some elaborate joke but my more optimistic side was willing her to have been run over. I guessed that the truth would be somewhere in the middle.

A white Mercedes with a taxi sign on the roof came by after a ten-minute wait and we jumped in the rear seats and asked the driver – a grim-faced local in his late fifties – to take us to Mohos. He did a sort of comedy double-take. As he pulled away from the pavement he checked several times that Mohos was definitely our destination and even tried to put us off making the journey. ‘No nightlife in Mohos,' he said brusquely. Once we'd reassured him that we weren't expecting dancing girls and wild parties from a village in the hills he just shrugged and turned on his car radio.

Because there were so many revellers on the streets we had to drive through the strip at a snail's pace on our way to the motorway. I wondered briefly whether the taxi driver had taken this route deliberately as if tempting us to stay where we belonged. If so, the implied message of our detour was: ‘This is what you'll be missing out on tonight: tall girls, short girls, fat girls, thin girls, girls with dark hair, girls with light hair, girls with short skirts, girls with long skirts . . . in fact every kind of girl you can think of.' And I'll admit for a moment there I was tempted to yell out, ‘Stop the car. You've made your point and it's a good one.' I didn't, of course, even though I was well aware a night out in the hills would inevitably mean one fewer opportunity for me to meet someone. Sighing inwardly, I kept my mouth shut until we'd left the deafening music and neon haze of Malia long behind and replaced it with the comforting xenon glare of motorway streetlights and the gentle purr of Goodyear radial on bone-dry tarmac.

Slowly negotiating a long narrow residential street, the taxi finally emerged into a small village square. Though I tended not to have much of an opinion on matters aesthetic when it came to village squares, even I appreciated that this one was indeed pretty. Everything about it from the trees glinting with decorative fairy lights to the quaint old church was picture postcard perfect. In fact, had the girl-in-the-cowboy-hat and I ever made it to a second date, this would've been the perfect place to take her.

As Tom dug around in his pockets for money to pay our taxi driver, he attempted to engage him in some Greek banter culled from the ‘useful phrases' section of his
Rough Guide
. To say that the taxi driver wasn't interested would be something of an understatement. In fact he seemed to be bordering on the outskirts of outrage, as though the very act of Tom attempting to speak Greek was somehow permanently soiling his mother tongue.

Still somewhat stunned by his naked contempt for us, we headed first to a small gift shop across the road from the taverna, because it seemed as though it might have the fewest people in it who hated us. We had become aware that we were the only non-locals in the square and the row of elderly men sitting on a bench outside a butcher's shop blatantly watching our every move as though we were the evening's entertainment did little to make us feel less self-conscious.

The gift shop was filled with standard tourist items: Greek lace, a million different kinds of olive oil, little dolls in ‘traditional' Greek clothing, the lot. As we walked around, Tom voiced his concern that the tendrils of commercialism had extended so deeply into the countryside that there was a real danger of losing any sense of authentic Crete. I didn't want to argue with Tom because it was hard enough arguing with Andy all the time, but I was sure that his idea of simple peasant people, living simple peasant lives, untainted by the modern world hadn't existed anywhere other than in the heads of tourists searching out the ‘real' Crete for some time.

Still closely observed by the old men on the bench we left the shop and headed over to the church. There appeared to be some sort of service going on so we didn't go in, but as we turned to leave an old lady standing in the vestibule at the back spotted us and nudged her friends: as one they all turned and stared at us for an uncomfortably long time.

Bemused by the interest we seemed to be creating we finally made our way to the taverna and sat down at one of the many outdoor tables. Much to our great relief, within seconds of sitting down a friendly middle-aged man came over and took our order. Still keen to try out his phrasebook Greek, Tom relayed our choices from the menu as best he could. And although he struggled greatly with a whole gamut of unfamiliar words and phrases, our waiter seemed to be genuinely pleased that Tom was making the effort.

The food and drinks arrived quickly and were a definite improvement on anything we had eaten so far. There were spinach and feta pies, meatballs, stuffed vine leaves and a few dishes that we couldn't match to the menu but tasted great anyway. Just as we ordered a second round of beers to wash down the remains of the meal, a couple of guys carrying acoustic guitars emerged from inside the taverna and began playing a batch of songs that some of the locals spread across the other tables seemed to know well. Within a few moments virtually all the customers were clapping and singing in unison.

‘Charlie?' whispered Tom in my ear as we finally overcame our natural reserve and joined in with the clapping to a particularly upbeat song. ‘If I tell you something, I need you to promise that you won't make a big deal out of it, okay?'

‘Of course,' I replied, still clapping. ‘It'll be a small deal all the way. What's on your mind?'

Tom stopped clapping and I did likewise. ‘You know earlier today you asked me if I was okay?' I nodded. ‘Well the truth is I'm not.'

‘What do you mean?' I replied.

‘I mean I've had something on my mind for a while that I haven't told a single soul about and it's sort of driving me mad.'

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘It's like this,' he began. ‘The day we fly back home I've got to make a phone call.'

‘What kind of phone call?'

‘It's nothing really it's just . . .' his voice faltered. ‘. . . It's just I'm supposed to call my doctors' surgery to get some test results.'

‘Test results?' I said a little too quickly. ‘For what?'

‘I really don't know how to say it,' said Tom fixing his eyes on the guitar players in front of us. ‘I really don't. I haven't even dared to say the word aloud even when I'm on my own.'

‘This is me you're talking to,' I replied. ‘You know you can tell me anything.'

‘Cancer,' said Tom quietly as the song came to a close. ‘I've got to phone my doctor to see if I've got cancer.'

Through the dimness of the darkened bedroom I could just about make out the shape of a figure at the bathroom door. I squinted at my watch. It was just after seven in the morning. The good news from my perspective was that for once during this holiday I wasn't the first person awake. The bad news was that had I not been woken up, I'm sure I would have slept on for hours. Realising that I was unlikely to get back to sleep any time soon I climbed out of bed and, without saying a word, slipped on my shorts, opened my suitcase and pulled out my ‘Death To The Pixies' T-shirt.

‘Morning, mate,' said Andy, emerging from the bathroom wearing shorts and a T-shirt. His hair was wet and he was frantically rubbing it dry with a towel.

‘You woke me up,' I replied cheerlessly.

Andy fixed me with a hard stare. ‘I've just had a shower. Since when was that a crime?'

‘Since you started stealing my towel to do it,' I said snatching the damp towel from Andy's hands. ‘What are you doing up so early anyway? I didn't expect to see you until tonight. That's how it goes doesn't it? Every twenty-four hours you check in with us just to make sure we're still alive.'

‘I'm back because Nina and I agreed that we're both knackered,' said Andy, side-stepping my early morning fractiousness. ‘And my plan – if it's actually any of your business – was to have a shower and then sleep until late in the afternoon but if you want me to go back to Nina's I can do that just as easily.'

‘Well if you really want to go,' I replied. ‘Be my guest.'

There was a long silence. Andy stared at me as though trying to work something out. All of a sudden his face suggested he'd found the answer and he whispered knowingly, ‘I get it.' He looked pointedly over at the kitchen door. ‘This isn't about me at all is it? It's about you having to spend all this quality time with Hans Christian Andersen, visiting villages, hiking up hills and talking about Jesus.' He paused and laughed. ‘This is great. You're finally as sick of it as—'

‘Just leave it, Andy,' I threatened cautiously. ‘Today is most certainly not the day for you to be saying all this.'

‘Really? And why would that be? Tom's never been my biggest fan and I'm certainly not his so what's the point in pretending anything else? If you ask me he's a—'

‘Look,' I interrupted, ‘I've asked you once and now I mean it, drop it.' I stepped towards Andy and pushed him in the chest as if to punctuate the point.

‘Tell me you didn't just do that,' said Andy as his face flushed with anger.

‘I did it,' I replied, even though I could feel that the situation was beginning to get out of control, ‘and do you know what? I'll do it again if you carry on talking about Tom like that.'

‘Is that right?' said Andy squaring right up to me as though he might actually throw a punch in my direction. ‘Yeah,' I replied firmly, ‘that's right.'

I'd never stood up to Andy like this before. I don't suppose I'd ever needed to. And I could see in his eyes that even though he was used to getting his own way, he actually wanted to back down as much as I did. Unfortunately I wasn't sure Andy actually knew how to back down so the only way it was going to happen was if I did it first.

‘Look,' I began. ‘I shouldn't have pushed you like that, Okay? I'm just a little weirded out that's all.'

‘Weirded out by what?'

‘By Tom,' I replied. ‘Last night he told me that he thinks he might have cancer.'

Andy's face fell in shock. The tension between us immediately evaporated. The confrontation was finally over.

‘Cancer?' said Andy barely able to get the words out. ‘How can Tom have cancer?'

Walking over to the patio doors I opened them up and gestured for Andy to follow me on to the balcony. There I sucked in a deep breath of air and held it in my lungs and looked around me. It was odd being outdoors this early in the day. The morning air seemed fresher. The sun, though bright, had yet to reach its usual intensity. All the loungers beside the pool were empty. Everything familiar seemed as though it had been turned on its head.

‘Listen,' I began, as I closed the patio doors behind Andy, ‘I'm not sure that I'm supposed to tell you about what Tom said. He didn't say one way or the other. I suppose given how you've been on at him all holiday he didn't think the occasion for a heart-to-heart would come up somehow.'

‘I know, I know,' said Andy shamefacedly, ‘I have been a bit of an arsehole. But that's not the point is it? The point is how can Tom have cancer? He looks fine to me.' Andy sat down on one of the plastic chairs while I took the other and I told him the whole story, the same way Tom had told me.

One morning about a month earlier Tom had been to the toilet before breakfast and noticed afterwards that the water in the bowl had a slightly pinkish tinge to it. He ignored it for a few days, hoping it would sort itself out, but it didn't; it got worse and gradually became pinker by the day until one day he saw spirals of red. He made an appointment to see his doctor that same morning, without telling his wife and she immediately referred him to a specialist at his local hospital. The doctor checked him over and informed him that they'd have to run a whole batch of tests to rule out the worst-case scenario – cancer of the bladder.

‘So they don't know for sure what he's got?' asked Andy.

‘No,' I replied. ‘But I don't know whether you know this, but cancer of the bladder is what Tom's dad died of . . . and he was only fifty-two.'

Neither of us spoke for a few moments.

‘When do his results come back?'

‘The morning we land back at Gatwick.'

Andy thought for a moment. ‘That's why he agreed to come on the holiday with us, isn't it?'

I nodded. ‘He told me he thought he'd be better off being distracted by the two of us than moping around at home waiting for the results.'

Andy stood up and went back inside the bedroom, re appearing with his cigarettes and a lighter. He lit a cigarette and handed it to me, then lit one for himself. As the balcony briefly filled with a pale blue haze of smoke we sat looking out at the misty horizon in front of us.

‘My nan died of cancer,' said Andy quietly. ‘It was in her liver. Saddest fucking day of my life.'

‘You lived with her, didn't you?'

‘From about seven, when my dad left and my mum lost the plot, to when I left to go to college. Honestly, Charlie, my whole life she was such a strong woman – a real tower of strength – nothing ever fazed her. Not raising my brother and me. Not working two jobs. Not my granddad dying. She took everything in her stride. She used to bang on about God all the time and about how he would look after her because he always had done in the past. But he didn't. As she gradually got sicker she was like a different person. She wasn't my gran any more. She was a frail old lady. I'd never thought of my nan like that – as being an old lady. But the first time I saw her in hospital after her first round of treatment that's what she was.