Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (23 page)

"We can say you were the reason we knew it was there. I assume you'll have heard we made our own way to it and what Mr Thornton and I found in the cave."

"Oh." Jamie seemed uncertain how the exclamation ought to sound. "That was you," he said.

"I should have thought you'd know that," When Jamie met this with a silence Ray would have called sulky if not adolescent, Julian said "What else have you heard?"

"I can't make out what you want to know."

"What happened to the man we found. Your client Mr Ditton."

"I knew who you meant." Ray was afraid Julian had antagonised Jamie beyond answering until he said "The poor guy drowned."

"There's more to it than that," Ray objected. "He wasn't even your age. I'm no swimmer, but I take it he was. How did he come to be drowned?"

"Some kind of attack." As though someone had misinterpreted him Jamie said "I'm not saying he was attacked. He had one in the water."

"At his age?" Natalie said. "Did he have a history of them?" Ray could have thought he saw Jamie consider the notion before glancing around and lowering his voice. "I believe it may have been some kind of drug he took. I don't mean medication."

"What leads you to believe that?" Julian said.

"What else is it going to be?" When nobody supplied the answer Jamie said "Who else except the police?"

"I can't see how drugs explain the state he was in." With a grimace that quivered his chubby cheeks Jamie muttered "It'll be the fish."

"Fish," Natalie said.

"Them and crabs and everything." Jamie waved his hands as if an unpleasant object had stuck to them. "If a body's in the sea it attracts them," he said, "and then, well, you two know what then."

Ray couldn't have said why he felt a trick had been played, and perhaps not the first one. He was trying to grasp the impression when Julian said "Will you give us your word that his condition wasn't infectious?"

Jamie's mouth appeared to be deliberating its shape. "My word."

"That still means something to some of us. Your word of honour."

"I'll swear on my grandmother's grave if you like. She brought me up a lot more than my mother did." Since this went some way towards impressing Julian, Jamie said "I'm swearing he couldn't infect anyone, because I know it's true."

"Well," Julian said to Natalie, "that improves the holiday, I think."

As she nodded Doug called "Here's lunch."

"Fish," Natalie remembered, and Ray saw a thought assail her. Then her eyes cleared, and she shook her head as though to evict the idea. "I 
need to stop being so ridiculous," she said. "How many fish are there in the sea? If I say anything else to spoil the holiday, dad, you tell me."

"You haven't spoiled a thing, and I'm sure your mother doesn't think so."

"Everything's hunky now, is it?" Jamie said without lingering for a response. "Have a splendiferous rest of your stay."

As Ray followed Julian and Natalie into the taverna Sandra said "What was all that about?"

Despite frowning at William, Julian seemed to feel bound to answer. "Ditton," he said. "No disease involved."

"I expect that's a relief."

Ray saw it ought to be and couldn't understand why he should demur. He was additionally troubled by feeling that Jamie's farewell had been as overstated as the welcome to Aegean Taste. He mustn't let his doubts show in case Natalie thought he was hesitating over the food. In fact the grilled fish was delicious, and he was heartened to see Sandra making a meal of hers along with digging into one of the communal bowls of Greek salad. He was poking his fork between the ribs of his fish to extract the last morsels before he consigned the skeleton to a plate heaped with bones and dead-eyed heads when he noticed someone striding along the beach.

Not just his robes made the man look out of place. The closer he approached, the darker his face seemed to grow. It was framed, not to say obscured, by hair as black as his cylindrical hat and his vestments—a fierce beard joined to a thick moustache and to sideboards that led to the pelt on his scalp. His boots kicked up sand that glittered on his trouser cuffs and the hem of his priestly costume. Ray thought the priest was clicking his teeth in case the glares he sent the occupants of sunbeds weren't sufficiently censorious, and then he saw that the sound came from a string of beads that dangled from the man's right hand. The priest continued thumbing them along the string while he stalked past the taverna, and the judgemental head swung towards the diners. As his glare found Sandra and the teenagers he raised his hand to click the beads at them. "Go back," he said.

His voice was unexpectedly thin and shrill. Before anybody could respond he strode onwards. Sandra and the cousins blinked at one another like sleepers not quite wakened, and seemed content to stay bemused by the incident until Ray stood up, almost flooring his chair. "Don't make a fuss," Sandra pleaded. "It doesn't matter."

"I'll see if it does," Ray said and tramped onto the beach.

He wasn't about to waste any breath in shouting after the man. The soft sand was enough of a hindrance, and his legs were aching by the time he managed to catch up with the priest and, thanks to an effort that left him breathless, overtake him. "Wait there," he gasped. "What did you, say to my, wife and our, grandchildren? What do you, mean by it?"

The priest had halted. Otherwise Ray would have been unable to keep up with him, let alone speak. He glared at Ray, and then his gaze softened, which Ray found no more appealing. It made him feel pitied, especially when the priest shook his head without speaking. "What exactly were you telling them to do?" Ray said, having recaptured his breath. "I know you understand me. You speak English."

How much like Julian did he sound? Just now he didn't care. The priest's gaze had grown softer still, but not in any reassuring sense. Compared to the expression he'd turned on the users of the sunbeds it looked enfeebled, and Ray was trying to define it more precisely when the priest said "Go back."

"You're saying that to them or you're saying it to me?" Ray's skull had begun to throb with frustration. "Go back where?" he begged.

The priest had already turned away, and now he recommenced his patrol of the beach. Ray might have followed him if he could have thought of more to ask, but he'd been thrown not just by the man's words but by his voice. This time it had been as deep as he would have expected a Greek priest's to sound. As he watched the man stride away he didn't know whether he was reminded of a thwarted child kicking up sand or somebody trying to uncover a burial. His thoughts in disarray, he trudged back to the taverna. "Did you get any sense from the fellow?" Julian said.

"I couldn't really make him out."

"I expect he thought we weren't as bad as everybody else," Doug said, "because we're only dining."

"That'll be it," Pris said. "We can still be saved."

Ray felt this was no more helpful than her laugh, but what else could he have said about the priest? Once Julian worked out the bill Doug left a bigger tip than Julian had at the previous meal, and Ray told himself the contest was harmless enough. Back on the beach he felt as though the priest had left him with a secret he couldn't define to himself, which might have involved the pallid overcast somehow if not the hundreds of people around him. However large that made it seem, he couldn't let it distract him from Sandra, however much it kept trying. It didn't even stay behind when at last they left the beach.

The sight of the Happy Snappy shop at the end of the lane was unexpectedly welcome. At least it gave Ray something to point out to the family, and he was about to speak when he saw that the first shot of the girl in a bikini had been replaced by a crimson sunset over the beach. "Where's the other photograph?" he blurted.

The proprietor was counting notes into a drawer of the till. Ray had to wait for him to look up, and then he seemed not to have heard the question. "The other photograph," Ray said and pointed at the wall.

The man rubbed his scalp as if he wanted to erase the grey that had invaded it. "No other."

"Yes, of you and that girl up there, only years ago."

"Too old. No use now," the man said as though he meant himself.

"You seemed to think it was before." When this gained no response Ray said "Could I just show it to my family?"

"No use," the man said and stared at Ray so hard his eyes grew blank. "Gone."

Ray felt exhausted and defeated. As he gestured everyone out of the shop Sandra murmured "What was all that about?"

"It was just a trick," Ray said, not knowing if he meant the photograph. Until he was thwarted he hadn't realised how much he wanted to show it to the family. It left him with a sense that he needed to confront at least the adults with something else, though he didn't know what or why. The impression felt like a shadow he couldn't shake off as he followed them to the bus stop.

A knock at the door of the apartment wakened Ray. "It's only me," Natalie called.

He was still sufficiently asleep to wonder who else it might have been and whether she felt bound to reassure him. Had something almost roused him earlier? He seemed to recall having heard a cry, unless that had been a dream. He was trying to grasp the impression when Natalie knocked louder. "Mum, dad? Are you awake?"

"I am," Ray said, and at once he violently was, having realised that Sandra had failed to respond. She was lying face up, and the quilt over her breasts didn't stir. Her right arm lay upturned on the quilt, and her limp hand appeared to be reaching out, away from him. Was the mark on her arm redder than it had been? He leaned across her to finger it, but there was no blood. Her face winced, tugging at the corner of her mouth, and she mumbled "Are you here again?"

"I'm always here," he protested, feeling not far from rebuffed. "It's Ray."

"Oh, Ray." Her eyes struggled open and found him. "I must have been very asleep," she said. "I thought you were someone else."

Ray had never been jealous in all their years of marriage, but now he felt he was for asking "Who?"

"I don't know." She clearly thought Ray was being as unreasonable as he felt. "I never see him," she said.

His mind was clamouring with questions, but they would have to wait, "Natalie's outside. I'd better see what she wants."

He limped quickly though not straight to the door and poked his head around it to find Natalie drumming on her pursed lips with a finger, the way she had before she'd even started school. "Sorry if I got you out of bed," she told him.

"We don't want to waste the day." As he saw her remember how little time might be left to her mother he hastened to ask "What's brought you up here?"

"We were wondering if you'd mind another trip on the road train. William would like one."

"Then I'm sure I would," Sandra called.

"It's a guided tour. Doug and Pris are in favour. The only thing is it leaves in an hour."

"I'm on my way," Sandra declared and shut herself in the bathroom. "Take the bread out of the fridge, Ray," she called.

He might have liked her not to be in quite such a hurry. He found a plate for yesterday's bread and then stood in front of the closed door. "What do you mean, you never see him?"

"I don't think I meant anything very much."

"Then can you tell me however much you did?"

"It was only a dream, Ray."

"You said never. You must have had it more than once."

"Just a couple of times, I think."

"Are you going to tell me what you dream?"

"Don't be upset, will you? We can't choose what we dream. It's only what the night sets free." She might have been awaiting some response from him before she said "Somebody came to me in the dark and gave me a kiss, that was all."

As Ray told himself that she wasn't responsible for the dream she opened the door and gazed into bis eyes. Perhaps she was saddened by what she saw, because she took both of his hands. "I dreamed," she said, "he gave me some more life."

Ray wasn't sure what point there was to asking "How?"

"It was just my feeling in the dream. You know what it must be really, don't you? How our holiday with everyone has made me feel."

He couldn't argue with that, and yet when she withdrew into the bathroom he felt as though he'd left the issue uninvestigated. There was something else he'd neglected to examine, but he had time now. He pulled the drawer out of the bedside table and set it on the bed.

More than a day didn't seem to have done the remains of the book much good. He'd put them in the drawer for fear of waking Sandra, but in the morning he'd slipped a folded towel under them in case that helped. He couldn't tell whether it had. Most of the scraps of paper had stuck together in several wads, and as he set about peeling them apart he found that print had seeped through, blurring words. Many of the fragments had to be smoothed out as well, and the first of these was all that remained of the contents page, from which he saw that the only chapter concerned with Vasilema was the one he'd partly read.

As he separated the fragments he saw that they dealt with other islands: Crete, Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Kos... Hadn't he rescued anything about Vasilema? Yes, here was a jagged section of the first page of that chapter, which only made him anxious to find more. He'd coaxed almost all the damp wads apart, and his fingernail felt clogged with sodden pulp, by the time he identified another relevant fragment. It was torn from corner to corner, but an intact sentence caught his eye.

They feed so Skiá feeds.

He was trying to imagine how the sentences above it might have been completed when Sandra came out of the bathroom. "You haven't time for that now, Ray," she said. "We don't want to disappoint William."

As Ray returned the scraps of paper to the drawer he saw they'd left faint stains on the quilt, as if an ill-defined shape had been lying next to him. By the time he left the bathroom Sandra had arranged breakfast on the balcony—coffee, bread, salt, olive oil. He'd grown almost used to her wearing her hat and sunglasses in the shade. He was more concerned that she ate, and was heartened by her appetite. She was finishing the last crusty hunk of bread when Julian called "Five minutes, everyone."