An Inch of Time (24 page)

Another dribble of small stones landed near us on the sand. Annis picked one up. ‘I suppose half of the stone down here falls from up there. The trick is not to be down here when it happens. Did you bring anything to eat with you?'

‘Not a thing.'

‘Bum. Neither did I.' We'd obviously reached a stomach-growling consensus since we were both putting on our clothes and packing our gear.

‘What time is it?' Annis said, checking her watch. ‘Bit too late for going into town for lunch. We'll go find something to eat at Morva's, but tonight I'll take you for dinner in my favourite Corfu restaurant. If it's still there.'

Gravity is still a mysterious, largely unexplained force. The one thing we do know about it is that it usually makes going up harder than going down. Climbing downhill, we hadn't paid much attention to how heavy rain followed by hot sunshine had produced cracks in the footpath and loosened stones. Now it was sending dribbles of stone and dried mud down towards the beach. As we got closer to the top, the presence of the crashed Fiesta began to loom above us. It looked somehow more precarious from down here than it had from up there. Now, out of breath and not liking heights at the best of times, scrambling around below the rusting hulk, I imagined I could hear gravity making it creak. When at last we had pushed and pulled each other up and over the top of the cliff, I stood panting with my hands on my knees. ‘Well, I'm glad we got that out of our system.'

Annis glugged water down her throat, then agreed. ‘Yes, I don't think we need to do that again.'

At Morva's place, the beautiful sounds had stopped for siesta. We had missed lunch and there was no one to be seen. Charlie's tools lay about the nearly finished shower cubicle; the table in the courtyard had not yet been cleared. Derringer sat by the well, watching the chickens; a fat black hen pecked at crumbs under the table with one eye on the cat. It was quiet, the chirping of the crickets so ubiquitous and incessant as to be practically inaudible until you thought about it – then it turned into the insane sound of Mediterranean summer.

‘Welcome to the
Marie Celeste
.' I picked up half a slice of bread left on the table and gave it a speculative nibble. It had already gone stale in the heat; I rubbed it into crumbs for the hen under the table.

‘It sure can get quiet here when it wants to. Let's find something to eat and then I wouldn't mind a bit of siesta myself.'

‘I suppose everyone's asleep. We'll tiptoe into the kitchen. I'll scramble some of those fabulous eggs these hens lay every day. There's usually plenty of those.'

We walked quietly through the sitting room and the adjoining little studio. The kitchen door was closed. I had never seen it closed before. I hesitated with my hand on the latch, feeling suddenly uneasy.

‘What?' Annis asked. ‘Please don't say “It's too quiet”.'

‘All right, I won't,' I said, hand on the latch.

‘They're all asleep.'

‘I'm sure they are. It
is
siesta time.'

‘Exactly. Can you smell something odd?'

By now we were whispering. ‘Not me. Silence doesn't have a smell.'

‘Then why not open the door?'

I sprung the latch and slowly pushed open the door. The kitchen was empty. Despite the heat, both of the small windows were closed. I stepped inside. ‘Close the door so we can stop whispering.'

She did. ‘I'll make some coffee; sure Morva won't mind.' Annis stepped towards the cooker.

I looked round for something to eat. Under the table next to the half-barrel lay a hen, on its side, one eye staring up at me, unseeing. It looked very dead. I bent down towards it and got a noseful of it. I whirled round and closed my hand over Annis's as she was about to strike a match.

‘Don't! You'll blow us sky high.'

‘How so?'

I pointed to our feet. ‘Gas. Bottled gas. The room's full of it, but it's heavier than air, settles on the ground. We're shin-deep in it. It doesn't mix with air, see? But light a match and whoosh, bye-bye Jordan and Honeysett.'

I reached across and turned the valve on the gas bottle. The rubber hose connecting it to the cooker had dropped off; the jubilee clip that normally held it in place was slack.

‘I can get the odd whiff of it now – how creepy. Now what?'

‘Hold the flambé. Open doors and windows and it'll disappear in a while.' After a few minutes of draught and both of us waving tea towels around, the gas had dispersed. The gas bottle was completely empty.

‘Was this an accident?' Annis wanted to know. ‘Or was it deliberate sabotage? Meant to blow up the house.'

‘Don't know. It wouldn't have blown the house up; at least, I don't think so. It would definitely have frazzled us to a cinder, though, had you lit that match. Or had Charlie walked in here with a fag dangling from his lips. And blown the windows out. But, then, I'm no expert on gas explosions.'

‘What is your area of expertise? Remind me, hon.'

‘
Weirdness
. And this place is weird. It's a weird house in an odd place full of odd people and weird stuff happens all the time.'

‘That's your expert analysis, is it?'

‘Yes. A bunch of mild eccentrics playing at being painters in a place where they're not wanted. I was going to say something like “idle foreigners being watched enviously by the hard-working locals”,
but no one down in that village ever seems to do any work at all. There's something weird about that, too. They don't look particularly frugal to me, so they'll have to have an alternative income.' I connected the spare bottle, making sure the jubilee clip was securely fastened this time, and lit the gas under a heavy frying pan. ‘Is that bread over there still edible? Then cut us some slices.' I cracked a few eggs into a bowl, whisked them lightly with some seasoning, crumbled in some feta cheese and slid the lot into an oiled pan over medium heat. A shower of the ubiquitous wild oregano from a bunch hanging up near the stove speckled the egg mixture darkly. In the absence of a grill, I heated up a pan lid over the other gas ring and covered the pan with it until the frittata had set. We ate outside, watched by Derringer with a speculative eye. He was slowly growing fat from being spoilt by everyone and sleeping twenty hours a day in luxurious warmth. ‘Don't get used to this,' I warned him. ‘It's back to Blighty soon.'

We took our own siesta in our room and both fell asleep to the endless rasping rhythm of the cicadas in the groves behind the house. We woke late to the rasping rhythm of Charlie's saw and for a while luxuriated in listening to him work in the yard, then drifted off again. When we finally woke up, it was to the sound of excited voices outside. We scrambled into our clothes and tumbled through the door just as Helen exclaimed loudly, ‘Oh my god,
it's
warm
!'

Everyone was in the yard, surrounding the shower cubicle. All except Helen who was standing inside it in a black one-piece bathing suit, laughing, under what looked convincingly like a working shower.

Charlie's pride as he demonstrated and explained was evident but well earned. The set-up was extremely low-tech. I approved. Morva was ecstatic. The cubicle itself consisted of nothing more than a phonebox-sized wooden construction with a slatted floor and sloping roof. The shower head looked suspiciously like the rose from an old zinc watering can connected to a bit of pipe with a simple on/off valve. It was fed from a green garden hose. The water came from a four-gallon tin thirty yards away uphill, which in turn was fed from the cistern behind the ruin further along. The water travelled via several lengths of hosepipe, on to which dozens of empty wine bottles, their bottoms knocked out, had been threaded. Exposed to the sun they absorbed and focused sunlight on to the pipe, heating the water inside to an astonishing temperature. Unfortunately, there hadn't been quite enough bottles for the entire length, resulting in an invigorating hot/cool/hot/cool effect, ending in a bracingly cold finale if your ablutions lasted for more than two minutes. On a sunny day it would take less than an hour to heat up.

‘And I've had one or two ideas for when it gets cold in winter. It would simply mean extending your stovepipe . . .' Morva followed Charlie inside in rapturous admiration.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with everyone taking turns at ninety seconds of bliss: showering, waiting, showering. Sophie returned late afternoon, looking as if she had indeed visited the twenty-first century, with its power showers, washing machines, electric irons and, I noticed, hairdressers. She admired the shower and hung around as Charlie began work on the room next to ours.

‘I can't believe you rented this death trap – it's terrible.'

‘It's a bit ancient.'

‘It was crap when it was new.'

‘The steering's a bit vague, but I'm getting used to it.' I demonstrated by skilfully wallowing all over the road when a pothole came up. I hit it with a back wheel on the rebound.

‘I hope you realize that the number plates don't match.'

‘Match what?'

‘Each other. I noticed it earlier.'

‘It's the next best thing to having James-Bond-style revolving number plates. Should keep the police guessing, anyway.'

‘Start the police wondering, more like.'

We were driving towards Corfu Town, wearing our best clobber, trying not to look as if we had travelled all the way from the eighteenth century. ‘Is it posh, then? Your restaurant?' I asked. I worried, since even my best efforts at dressing up had produced only rumpled results.

‘No, not posh. Posh is boring. Just civilized. The view is brilliant, too.'

‘It's not in town, then?'

‘Lord, no. Just north of it.' She unfolded the map, ran a finger over it, flicked her nail at it. ‘Turn left at the next junction.'

I turned left at the next junction and drove.

And drove.

‘It's further away than I remembered it,' she admitted as she measured out distances on the map.

I pulled into a petrol station at the edge of a large village. They still had service at the pumps, a reminder of a more civilized age and something I hadn't experienced for years. ‘
Yemáto,
parakaló
– fill her up, please,' I told the man suavely (cassette two). Annis was impressed. (Less impressed when it turned out I didn't have the money to pay for the
yemáto
.) While the man was still feeding the tank, Gloves shot by in her blue Toyota. Our tiny Citroën was partially hidden behind a sagging old van that had pulled in beside us, so she probably didn't see us. ‘Looks like changing vehicles hasn't made much difference,' I observed.

Annis consulted the map. ‘Next time we see her we'll grab her, but right now I'm not in the mood. Tonight I want to eat under the stars. We'll go by a different route. Turn back the way we came, then left at the first opportunity.'

It appeared to work since we didn't see the Toyota again and Annis's map reading eventually dropped us via a tortured little track into exactly the right place, the road above Barbati beach. Villas, restaurants and cafes punctured the densely verdant slope between the road and the long curve of the bay. We left the car by the side of the road and walked back a few hundred yards to Annis's chosen restaurant, the Lord Byron. It occupied several terraces above the road and commanded five-star touristic views across the bay. It was fairly busy for the time of year. We managed to grab a table on the lowest terrace and sighed in unison as we drank in the view.

‘Worth the drive?' Annis asked.

‘Even if they only have bacon butties left.'

It was picture-postcard stuff. Beyond the bay, lights began to twinkle as darkness fell and the first stars appeared in the east. The Lord Byron's menu managed to match the view without being distractingly brilliant; it was simple Corfiot fare. It arrived in its own good time, allowing me to sample the beer and Annis, my designated driver for the evening, to slurp a few colourful fruit-juice cocktails. Just as Annis was assessing the doneness of her lamb and I was about to break into the enormous cube of
pastitsio
on my plate, I was distracted by the arrival of a new guest. Skipping lightly up the stairs, without his Zeiss binoculars, was the man I had met on the ferry from Brindisi. As he walked past our table, I raised a hand in greeting, but his eyes travelled over me without betraying recognition and by the time I'd remembered his name he had skipped further up the stairs.

‘Kladders. Got it!'

‘Kladders got what?' asked a mystified Annis.

‘The chap who just walked by. I met him on the boat from Brindisi. He'd clocked that Gloves was following me before I did. He seemed to know the island extremely well, too. I think I'll go and pick his brain.' I put down my fork.

‘After you have finished your food in a leisurely and companionable manner. Unless you want to walk home,' she said sweetly.

‘Naturally,' I agreed and picked up my fork.

Annis reminisced at length about the last time she'd been on the island.

‘You make it sound as though it was all a long, long time ago.'

She paused, fork poised in mid-air, ready to skewer her next thought. ‘Do I? It was, in a way. That was before college. Before painting, before Tim. And you, of course,' she added quickly in answer to something I did with my eyebrows. ‘A different era. Years don't come into it, really; it's a bit like having a baby. Nine months, give or take, and you live in a totally different world and you'd better like it because there's no way back.'

‘You've given it some thought, then.'

‘My mother never lets me forget what a sacrifice having me has been, how I'm single-handedly responsible for her having missed out, career, opportunities, best years of her life, etcetera, etcetera.'