An Inch of Time (18 page)

I turned around towards Helen's voice. What I thought was that she had a remarkable figure for a woman her age. She was wearing leather sandals, a straw hat and perfume as she stepped out of the dark doorway of the centre house. She walked up and stood beside me while I turned what attention I had left to the pad on the easel. ‘It's . . . erm . . . yes, erm . . . not at all bad.'

Helen stood very close. ‘Am I embarrassing you?'

‘You're certainly doing your best.'

‘And you're being terribly English about it, pretending not to notice that I'm naked.'

‘Good Lord, so you are.'

‘It's so bloody hot today, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone: cool down and get a seamless tan. Though I'm sure I don't know what for.' She stepped past me to where her clothes lay folded across a bare arm of the vine and, after tossing me her straw hat, pulled her loose floral dress over her head. ‘There, you're quite safe now.' She took up her place beside me at the easel again. ‘More or less. Well?'

‘I think you're overdoing the drawing a little. It's OK for a pencil sketch, but as a preliminary for a watercolour it's too much, too detailed. Keep it light and to a minimum.'

‘Good advice, I'm sure, but I'm more interested in who is trying to frighten us away from this place. That runaway car was no accident. And the fire certainly wasn't. And I'm beginning to think the snake in my bed may not have found its own way there, either.'

‘I've no idea. It's bound to be people from the village.'

‘But why? What's up here? It's just ruins, and Morva does own her house. It's not as if she's a squatter – she has every right to be here.'

‘True. It could all just be one xenophobic villager having decided to try to drive her out, perhaps fearing an invasion of foreigners in her wake.'

‘That would be us, then. A handful of painting students hardly constitutes an invasion. And it would benefit the village – people spend money there. Or would if the place was friendlier. There certainly aren't any other foreigners around here, and apart from one birdwatcher I've not seen a single tourist in that village.'

‘No, neither have I. Every other village is fighting for every last tourist euro, but in Ano Makriá they couldn't care less.'

‘Perhaps they've seen how tourism can destroy traditional village life and decided against it. After all, that's what we're doing here, isn't it? Escaping from the tourism on the rest of the island. Whatever, they're a queer bunch down there. I'm starving. Isn't it time for one of Margarita's surprise suppers?' Helen stuffed her paintbox, watercolour pad and underwear into her little rucksack. ‘Be a dear and carry my easel for me . . .'

S
tick my nose in and see where it isn't wanted. That's always been my operating system when all the obvious avenues lead nowhere. Sooner or later it will get someone rattled and the sound of their rattle might tell us something. That it's time to run, for instance.

Loitering, preferably near a source of good food or at least coffee, is not the speediest or most efficient way to collect information, but it's certainly the least odious part of detective work and it's very me.

Dimitris's cafe, shaded by vines and overlooking most of the village square in Neo Makriá, was where I thought I'd start. The three old boys were there, or three others looking remarkably like them. With their backs against the peeling pink plaster of the wall, they took hours over tiny cups of coffee and practised synchronized smoking while watching the world. I turned the tables on them by installing myself in a shady spot where I in turn could keep an eye on them as well as all that went on in the square.

It was slow work. It would have helped if I had felt pleasantly relaxed and drowsy from the heat, but Dimitris's cups of Greek coffee, diminutive or not, kept my mind hyper-alert and ready to pounce on the smallest event. Had there been one.

Mid-morning. The old boys commented in mumbled Greek on anyone passing or crossing the square, like a sleepy team of secret service veterans on autopilot. For a while nothing at all happened. This was followed by a long period of very little happening quite slowly. People moved things from A to B. A young girl in a bright yellow dress yanked an unenthusiastic goat on a rope past the cafe. Women carried circular roasting trays of meat and vegetables to the baker's oven at the end of the square, from where they would collect them done to a turn later in the day. The barefoot village idiot made the rounds, begging for coins, and was skilfully avoided by the young and loudly chided by the old. He avoided the small groups of young men who were sitting astride shiny scooters, smoking and chatting, and those drinking in the shadowy
ouzeria
opposite the grill. Earlier, I had ambled across to the kiosk and chosen a dozen postcards from those on offer. All were slightly faded from the sun and none showed views of Ano Makriá. Writing these in super-slow motion with a leaky biro had given me a legitimate excuse for hanging around, but eventually I ran out of inane things to scribble. Another single customer arrived, a man in his fifties with narrow, fashionable glasses. He ordered coffee and lit a cigarette. His arrival meant that Dimitris, who spent long stretches of time standing in his own doorway scratching at mosquito bites, had sold his seventh Greek coffee in two hours, leaving him plenty of time to worry about his finances, I imagined.

I had shown several people, including Dimitris, the black-and-white photo of Kyla Biggs with no result. Now, scraping together my few words of Greek, I accosted the newcomer with it. He studied me for a moment with a deep frown before taking the print and scrutinizing it. ‘You looking for this woman?'

‘Oh good, you speak English.'

‘A little.' He returned his attention to the picture, sliding his glasses towards the tip of his nose. ‘Why you look for this woman?'

‘She's a friend. We got separated. I thought she might have come through here.'

‘Separated. Mm. I think maybe I see before here but I am not sure. Is OK I show my wife? She is better with remembering. One minute only. You sit.'

While he walked off, I allowed myself a tiny amount of hope. It was the first time anyone had even thought he'd seen the woman. I stuck the stamps I had bought at the kiosk on the postcards and looked around for a postbox but couldn't see one. I finished my coffee and sipped some water. I smoked another Karelia. I drummed my fingers on the table. I smoked another cigarette. Then I went inside to find Dimitris who was rearranging saucers on a shelf. ‘That man with the glasses . . .'

‘Yes?' He looked past me through the door.

‘He walked off with the picture of Kyla that I showed you earlier.'

‘Yes? Why you give him?'

‘He said he'd go and show his wife, but that was fifteen minutes ago. Where does he live?'

‘I don't know where he live. Not this village.'

‘Damn. Who was he?'

‘I don't know, Chris. I never seen him before.'

I followed him outside where he looked up and down the street, then barked a question at the old boys who merely raised their chins and eyebrows a fraction.

‘No one know,' Dimitris translated and cleared the man's coffee cup and water glass away. ‘You talk with lot of people you don't know – maybe will bring trouble. If girl was here, I would know. I said “no”, so is end of story, OK? No more asking people.
They don't like
.' His eyes refused to meet mine. ‘Is good advice, Chris.' He swiped the postcards from my hand. ‘I give these to postman when he comes tomorrow.' He marched off inside where he flung the postcards on to a small pile of other mail to be collected.

For a moment I considered asking him to give them back – I'd been pretty rude about his village on some of them and thought he might be offended if he read them, but since my handwriting has always been inscrutable, even to myself, I didn't bother.

Instead, I went for a walk in the general direction Fashion Specs had taken with Kyla's picture, turning into the first paved alley by the corner which gently sloped away. It was narrow and shaded, undulating between houses shuttered against the heat. I ignored even narrower alleys leading off, not having a good memory for turnings. I found small shady courtyards, dogs that slunk away as I approached, for which I was grateful, and eventually came to the last house and the end of the crazy paving, of which I was equally glad. Here and there I had heard the odd voice behind closed shutters and barred courtyards, but I had seen no one. So there was nobody to ask for permission as I squeezed along a runnel between the last houses into the groves of olive trees beyond. I had seen many olive plantations around the Med, but the trees in Corfu seemed much larger and older than most. Here was terrace after terrace of ancient-looking trees, some so old their boughs had been propped up with stout pieces of timber to stop them from snapping under their own weight. I passed several specimens that were hollow at the base yet thriving further up, and some of these had been partially filled with concrete to prevent them from collapsing. I walked gratefully in their shade until I was no longer sure of which direction the village lay, so dense and large was the plantation. When I found a rutted dirt road, I followed the hard-baked mud of the tyre tracks, telling myself that they had to lead somewhere eventually.

Naturally, I had hoped the track might join a road or lead back towards the village, but it landed me against a broad aluminium gate set between concrete posts. Eight-foot-high chain-link fencing stretched away through the groves to either side. Above the gate, a large sign told me where I was: Thalassa Organic Olive Oil Co-operative. I pushed the gate – it was locked. There was no bell or intercom, so it didn't look as if they were hoping to attract passing trade. On the other side of the gate, the track continued and curved away into a hollow from where I could just make out the roofs of a few buildings. The faint smell of food cooked over charcoal made me turn away with a rumbling stomach. Nothing but coffee in there; time for lunch soon, surely. I retraced my steps along the rutted track, but I hadn't gone far when I heard engine noise behind me. From inside the co-operative two cars approached the gate. It was being opened now by a spiky-haired man in jeans and tee shirt and a single-barrel shotgun slung over his shoulder. The first car was a black BMW convertible with the top down, with three occupants I hadn't seen before. I recognized the second car with mixed feelings: it was the dusty Italian Mercedes that had stopped so that a man in mirror shades could give me petrol and advice. Something about sticking to lying on the beach. Everyone on this island seemed to volunteer advice I had no intention of taking.

As the leading car drove up to me, the driver, a pale young man in a short-sleeved white shirt, stretched out a hairy arm as though wanting to scoop me up, talking rapid-fire Greek at me. He made impatient get-away-from-here gestures towards the village, and when he didn't get an answer, he suddenly stopped and switched languages. ‘
Yermanos?
English?'

‘English,' I confirmed.

‘This no for tourist. Is private. Go away.
That
way.' He gestured impatiently again. ‘Holiday
that
way.'

I apologized. ‘I went for a walk and got myself lost. Which is the quickest way to the road?'

He threw up his hands. ‘No road, is no road, is private! Back to village
that
way.' He pointed behind me, away from the drivable track.

‘OK, thank you. Sorry if I trespassed.'

‘OK, go, quick now.'

Through all of this his passengers had sat without seemingly taking any notice of me. The man in the back was a dark-haired, bored-looking man in his forties. The front-seat passenger, somewhere in his sixties and grumpy with it, had remained motionless apart from tiny movements of his arm as he checked his wristwatch several times. I walked away quickly as I had been told, feeling distinctly unwanted, and soon the cars moved off. The deeply tinted windows of the Italian Mercedes had prevented me from seeing whoever was driving or being driven in it. The man at the gate stared after me for a while, then turned away and soon disappeared from view.

When the cars had vanished too, I checked all around. I could see nobody, so I stopped. Just in case I was still being watched, I pretended to have a stone in my shoe. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, I took my time taking off my shoe, shaking it, peering inside it. I could still see the gate and the fence that ran away into the distance on either side. It was something about the way that man had checked his watch and his driver had insisted I go quickly that made me want to hang around. Funny that. It was very quiet now, apart from hissing cicadas and the distant crowing of a cockerel. I tied my shoelaces, walked on a few paces, then stopped again. There was a faint drone in the air now. It was difficult to make out where it was coming from, but it was getting louder. For the benefit of hypothetical onlookers, I struggled with my plastic lighter to get a cigarette going. Now I could clearly make out the whine and rhythmic beat of a helicopter engine and blades, and soon I glimpsed the crop-duster at work above the treetops beyond the fence, gliding first left, then further away on a reciprocating course. I lit my cigarette and puffed back to the village.

Dimitris's cafe was closed. It was siesta time and all sensible folk were dozing indoors or lying around on hammocks in shady courtyards, sipping cool drinks. The ubiquitous tourist business was eroding such practices in many places, but here, away from the demands of foreigners, the village had fallen ghostly silent. Who was I to argue with thousands of years of local custom? A short bike ride up and round the hill and twenty minutes later I was lying on the bed in my room at Morva's place. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Too many Greek coffees.