Mortal Remains (5 page)

Some embroidered carpets hanging outside a small shop caught his eye. The colours were soft and glowed in the lamplight. Jane would like one, but it would be bulky to take home. If only he’d got his own car.

He went into the shop, which bore the name
Aphrodite,
spelled out in Greek characters, over its doorway. Displayed within, besides more carpets, were jewellery and crochet- work. A girl of about seventeen sat by the counter crocheting some garment. Patrick’s
kalispera
achieved better results here, and she answered with a warm smile. Her eyes were huge in her sallow face, and she had short, curly dark hair.

‘You speak English?’ Patrick asked.

‘Yes. A little,’ answered the girl. Her crochet-hook never stopped moving.

Patrick saw a row of dresses, waistcoats and hand-knitted sweaters hanging at one side of the shop.

‘Do you make all these yourself?’ he asked, incredulously.

‘Yes. And my mother.’

In the back of the shop, Patrick now saw a grey-haired woman, knitting busily but watching him closely. He smiled at her and repeated his greeting. The woman smiled back and murmured some phrase Patrick did not understand; she bowed with a regal grace. Her face was lined and her body, in the usual black, was shapeless as she sat there, ceaselessly working. She might well be not much over forty, Patrick thought, but she looked about sixty. All winter she and the girl must knit and sew to stock their shop, he supposed. He would have to buy something.

He told the girl he wanted a present for his sister. She put her work down and came to help him. They looked through the crocheted garments. The waistcoats were rather nice. Patrick asked the girl to put one on so that he could see how it looked. She obeyed, and stood before him quite without coquetry, for her work to be appraised.

‘My sister is bigger than you,’ said Patrick.

The girl showed him one of a different pattern in a larger size. It looked all right to Patrick, and if Jane didn’t like it, she could give it away. He bought it; it was surprisingly cheap. Before wrapping it up the girl and her mother conferred together, measuring it and noting down details of the pattern. At Patrick’s interested query, the girl explained, ‘Now I make another the same.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Four days.’

As she tied up the parcel he enquired if her name was Aphrodite, like the shop, and she said no, she was called Sophia. He wished he could talk to her mother. Her face was calm as she knitted placidly on. He must tell Ursula Norris about this shop; she would like it. It lacked the sophistication of the more expensive establishments nearer the harbour.

Yannis’s mother, Ilena, must be like this woman, so patiently sitting here all day. But she would be older; Yannis was over thirty now.

He felt cheered by this encounter and walked back to the centre of the town with a lighter step. Many of the tables outside the
tavemas
and the
kafenia
were occupied now. The babble of voices was muted by the open air. The breeze had dropped and the sea was still. Patrick reached a
taverna
on the quay which he had noticed earlier, and found a table by the water’s edge where he could look at the boats moored below. He asked for mullet.

There was none. The boats had brought no mullet in today.

The waiter, apologetic, offered sardines and said they were very good.

Patrick kept calm. Greek sardines could hardly be identical with those at home found in tins. He agreed to try them, with
avrolemono
soup first, salad, and a bottle of Demestica.

‘You are English, sir?’ the waiter said.

‘Yes.’

The waiter looked pleased, and made a ceremony of setting the table and polishing the wine glass. Patrick understood the subtlety of this when he heard a couple at another table give their order in English and then begin talking German together.

His soup came, and a crisp roll. Why crisp rolls now and none at breakfast? Yet what did it matter. He looked around him; everyone seemed content, even the waiters, though some frowned deeply with concentration as they served the various dishes. The warm air was like a balm; for the first time for weeks Patrick’s nerves felt eased. Why fret? It achieved nothing. The tortoise often got as good results as any hare, with far less personal strain. He had laid his book on the table, but he did not open it.

The wine was light and pleasant. As he topped up his glass, someone sat down at the next table. It was the elderly American whom he had noticed earlier in the travel bureau and again with his wife outside the
kafenion.
He saw Patrick and nodded, somewhat curtly. Then his gaze fell on Patrick’s book.

‘Ah—English?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Uh-huh. I’m from New Jersey.’

The waiter came to take the American’s order, and Patrick was astonished to hear it given in Greek. Quite an exchange then took place, the waiter all smiles. When he had gone the man from New Jersey said, ‘My name’s George Loukas. My father was Greek. All my life I’ve promised myself that I’d come home and now I’ve done it. It’s a wonderful experience. A man doesn’t always realise his life’s ambition.’

Very rarely, Patrick thought.

‘I’ve just retired,’ George Loukas continued. ‘I’ve waited years for this trip. It was no good coming just on a three weeks’ vacation. We have to see everything. We’re going on to your London in the fall.’

‘You’re doing Europe, are you?’

‘Some. We’ve been to Paris, Rome and Venice,’ said Loukas.

Patrick wondered why he had spoken no Greek in the travel office that morning. Perhaps at such times it was better to stress one’s American aspect, to be recognised as a free spender.

‘My wife’s not well, that’s the pity of it,’ Loukas gloomed now. ‘She’s not been herself since we got to Crete last week. The food, I guess. She has to watch her diet.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Patrick politely.

His sardines came. They looked like whitebait and tasted very similar. They were excellent, and so was the salad, liberally garnished with cheese and olives.

‘Did your father come from Crete?’ Patrick asked Loukas.

‘He did, originally, but he went across to the mainland as a child. He grew up near Nauplia. I haven’t been there yet – that’s to come. Have you been to Nauplia?’

Patrick had not.

The American’s soup arrived. He too was having
avrole-mono.

‘Do you like Greek food?’ he asked.

‘Well—’ Patrick began, guardedly. ‘It varies,’ he said. ‘This fish is very good.’

‘They serve everything lukewarm at our hotel,’ confided Loukas. ‘Makes Elsie mad. Where are you staying?’

Patrick told him. He and his wife were staying at the Apollo, a hotel nearer the town. He said there were representatives from every nation staying there, a number of Swedes and Danes, in particular.

‘I guess their own countries are just so damned cold they need to soak up the sun,’ he said.

A boat was chugging gently into the harbour; the soft putter of its engine came drifting towards them across the water. It was a cabin cruiser; Patrick recognised it as the
Psyche,
the vessel he had noticed tied up near the quay-side that morning. As he watched, it nosed gently in and picked up the same mooring. Some minutes later, two dark young men and a blonde girl disembarked from it and walked off towards the town.

‘Kids have a great time these days,’ said Loukas. ‘That girl’s no Greek.’ He shook his head, but tolerantly. ‘Still, I guess if you have everything all at once you don’t always appreciate it.’ He looked across at Patrick, still munching tiny fish. ‘Of course, you’re a young man yet,’ he added. ‘You wouldn’t know.’

‘I’m not as young as all that,’ Patrick protested. Some of his pupils thought he verged on senility.

‘You remember the war, anyway.’

‘Certainly,’ said Patrick, with asperity. And afterwards he had done National Service, serving with the army in Germany and emerging with a good knowledge of the language that he had found useful many times since. ‘Were you in the army?’

‘No, sir. I’d flat feet, would you believe it? I went for the navy, but no joy. So I went into a factory and in the end, I got to own it. I made shoes.’

‘Success story,’ Patrick said. ‘And ironic. Which part of Crete did your father come from?’

‘Further west. It was a village that suffered a lot in the war,’ said Loukas. ‘Most of the men were shot. I’d hoped I might find some kin there.’

‘You’ve been to it?’

‘Yes. All my folks were in the cemetery.’

Two old men wearing the traditional baggy trousers and high brown boots walked past. Their hair was grizzled and their faces crinkled with lines.

‘Those two could tell you a few things, I imagine,’ said Patrick.

‘My wife’s first husband was killed in Crete early in the war,’ the other man confided. ‘She’s English. I guess it’s been too much for her, coming here. I thought she’d appreciate it – a kind of sentimental pilgrimage. I didn’t tell her I’d booked in here after Italy – kept it as a surprise. But she’s soft-hearted. She’ll be all right when we get to Athens. We’re off there on Thursday. Look us up at the Hilton if you’re in town.’

Patrick promised he would, and invited Loukas to call on him at St. Mark’s if he were ever in Oxford.

There was no
baclava.
Patrick made do with the ubiquitous cream caramel.

As he walked back to collect the Fiat he saw Inspector Manolakis drive away from the police station in his large, official car. The man certainly worked late.

Wednesday and Thursday

Crete

Early the next morning Patrick set off for Ai Saranda. As he left, he saw a group of people outside the hotel entrance waiting for the tourist buses that would collect them for their day’s excursions. They were hung about with cameras and string bags. New arrivals were shrimp pink or lobster red, according to their degree of exposure to the sun; a few were deeply bronzed. Apart from the group, looking elegant and pale, stood Ursula Norris.

Patrick greeted her and asked where she was going.

‘It’s Phaestos today,’ she said. ‘Knossos on Thursdays. The tour companies do certain trips on certain days.’

‘I may see you there,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m going to look up someone for a friend of mine near there.’

‘I’ll look out for you,’ said Ursula.

Further along the road, another group of tourists waited outside the Apollo hotel. Patrick saw George and Elsie among them. In Challika, he stopped at the travel agent’s office to see if the clerk had been able to discover the movements of the
Persephone.

An atmosphere of controlled panic prevailed here. Several people were trying to buy last-minute tickets for the day’s excursions and some refused to accept that there were no vacancies on certain tours. Others had different problems. All craved instant attention. Patrick decided to wait till the coaches had gone before adding to the confusion. He walked across the road and looked at the boats in the harbour, wondering if there was much illicit trading. Any strange craft would soon be noticed, he supposed. The
Psyche
was still at her mooring. One of the young men was on the deck, doing something to a length of rope, splicing it, perhaps. As he watched, the girl walked along the quay towards the boat. Her long, curly blonde hair was secured in a pony-tail; she wore brief cotton shorts, and her legs were tanned to a rich golden shade. Patrick moved nearer and saw her go lightly down the steps and aboard the boat. The boy looked up from what he was doing and spoke to her, but continued with his task.

‘Good morning,’ Patrick called down to them. ‘Lovely day.’

‘Yes,’ answered the girl. She shaded her eyes from the sun to inspect the speaker. All she could see was a bulky shape against the brilliant light.

‘Are you going out today?’

‘Yes. We’re taking some tourists round the islands.’

‘Oh, you hire your boat out, do you?’

‘Yes. By the day, or half-day. Whatever you like. It’s Spiro’s boat – this is Spiro,’ she introduced the young man. ‘I’m just helping for the season.’

She had a transatlantic accent.

‘What part of Canada do you come from?’ asked Patrick.

‘Well now – so you didn’t take me for an American,’ the girl said, laughing.

Patrick seldom made that mistake.

‘You don’t sound a bit American,’ he told her, truthfully, and went down the steps to see her more clearly. She was a sturdy girl, golden brown all over, it appeared, now that he saw her better. Very blue eyes grinned in a friendly way; her nose was sprinkled with freckles.

‘I’m from Montreal,’ she said. ‘I’m Jill McLeod.’

Patrick soon learned that she had been in Europe for six months, bumming around, as she put it. Since reaching Crete she had not wanted to move on. Patrick wondered what her parents imagined her to be doing. She certainly looked happy and healthy with her Greek young man, and was probably learning the language in the most intimate way.

‘I’d like to come out with you one day,’ he said.

‘That’d be great. You can always find us here about this time, or in the evening. We go to Zito’s most nights around nine,’ she said.

Spiro had not contributed to this conversation, though he had listened to them, smiling, while he worked on his rope. Perhaps his English was not fluent. Patrick said goodbye to them both and went back to the travel office. The bus for Phaestos was just leaving; he saw Ursula Norris gazing from one of the windows. They waved to one another with enthusiasm: two acquaintances amid a sea of strangers.

Patrick felt quite brisk as he stepped into the office, which was now miraculously cleared. The clerk remembered him at once, and produced a sheet of paper on which was written the itinerary of the
Persephone
throughout her current cruise. She was in the Black Sea, and was not due back in Greece until Monday of the next week, when she would call at Itea for Delphi. Then she was due to sail straight for Syracuse. She had not called at Heraklion for over a month.