Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (7 page)

"There goes mum's chance of not getting bitten," Doug said.

"I don't think she was going to tell us," Sandra said. "And I don't even notice it's there any more."

Perhaps she'd forgotten how a twinge had wakened her on the cruise, where she'd fingered her neck as the boat came abreast of the cave. As Ray peered at the mark—the dimness left him unsure whether it had faded—William said "Jonquil got bitten too."

"Where?" Natalie said. "Let me see."

The bite on her forearm was very like Sandra's but redder. "Is that on the vein?" Natalie cried. "Why didn't you ask for some ointment?"

"I'm afraid someone needs to be more open with us," Julian said.

"I forgot about it," Jonquil told her mother. "That's how much it hurts."

Natalie was looking not just unconvinced but rejected when Tim said "I've got one as well."

"There's another secretive teen for you," Doug said as Tim displayed his upturned arm. "Any more casualties? Just mum and the young ones, then."

"I haven't got one," William protested.

"Well, don't invite it," Pris said. "Not that I'm saying anyone else did."

Ray didn't know why he should feel that her words were loitering in the dark beyond the streetlamps, but they seemed to hover in the air until Sandra said "So long as we've an adventure tomorrow I think I'm off to bed."

Jonquil nodded and then Tim did, so that Ray could have fancied they were miming slumber. "You said I could stay up late on holiday," William objected to his parents.

"You already have, William," Natalie said. "Really quite late. You can't mind going to bed when your big sister is."

Ray thought the boy was about to disagree, though he couldn't see why William should, until Julian waved before beckoning Daphne over. How much was being left unsaid around the table? As Julian took out his phone and brought up the calculator Ray saw Pris put a quick finger to her lips, hushing Doug in advance, and felt as if a clutch of unaddressed subjects had gathered in the sultry windless dark. Then Daphne brought the bill along with glasses of liqueur, and he lost whatever thoughts he might have been close to grasping. That was how his mind worked now, or rather didn't work. That was growing old.

"I had my dream again last night."

"Which one was that, Sandra?" Pris said.

"It was dark." As though she had to find her words in it Sandra added "It was the darkest place I've ever seen."

Ray didn't know why he felt prompted to grope for a joke. "You could see that, anyway."

"There was some kind of light far away."

"Well then," Ray said with more relief than he could have explained, "it wasn't really dark."

"I don't think I saw it, just knew it was there. I felt—"

They were in the Superber supermarket, where Tim and Jonquil were trying to find hats wide enough to suit them. While they'd each brought one to the island, perhaps this was the latest fashion or, Ray thought, envy of Sandra's broad Mexican headgear. As a frown found more wrinkles on her brow Sandra said "I felt as if it would take me all my life to reach it."

Ray was searching for a safe response when Tim said "I had a dream like that last night as well."

"Must be in the blood," Doug said. "What's your version, Tim?"

"I was in this huge place with no light and I didn't want to see. Something sounded..." Tim might have been suppressing a word before he said "Huge."

Jonquil tugged her latest hat down as if she wouldn't mind hiding beneath the brim. "That's like my dream."

"All right, Jonquil, no need to compete," Julian said. "Or least make sure the competition's worthwhile."

As Ray saw Pris and Doug refrain from taking this as an insult to their son, Jonquil said "I'm just telling them. I was in a dark place too, and there was something living in it that was that big."

Ray wasn't sure if Tim was reluctant to ask "What was, Jonk?"

"I only heard it. Maybe William made me. It sounded like he said the knock he heard did."

"Soggy," William was delighted to contribute.

"Kindly don't bring William into it."

"Yes, don't start giving him your dreams," Natalie said. "Have you finished shopping?"

"I just want to get some more water."

"I will too," said Tim.

"Then three of us are thirsty," Sandra said. "Anybody else? I'll buy."

As Ray took three plastic bottles to the desk the moustached old woman in black stared past him. "Never dream dark."

"Jonquil, will you take William to find the bus stop," Julian said. "I'll pay for your hat and you can settle with me later."

When Jonquil closed her hand around his the boy seemed about to demur, presumably feeling too old to be led. As soon as the two of them had left the shop, Julian rounded on the shopkeeper. "Pardon me, what were you saying?"

"Never dream dark." Ignoring Julian, she stared at Tim. "You bring it here," she said.

"I don't think anyone can do that just by dreaming," Pris said.

This time she responded, but in Greek. "Did anybody understand that?" Natalie said, more a protest than a question.

"Something like—" Pris tapped her forehead with a fingertip, which put Ray in mind of touching an onscreen icon to summon information. "People who want the sunset," she suggested, "invite the dark."

The old woman gave that a single vigorous nod. "Friends of dark."

Ray was trying to decide whether this was agreement or a correction when Julian said "Speaking of nonsense, may we ask you all to keep it away from William."

"What sort of thing would that be, Jules?"

"Bad dreams. Unpleasant legends. You've already had him imagining knocks in the night with that tale of yours, Douglas."

Before Ray could take responsibility Tim said "My dream didn't feel exactly bad."

"I think it's time to move on," Julian said at once.

As he and the Thorntons left the supermarket they heard a bus approaching. Ray took Sandra's hand as they jogged after long-legged Tim, subsiding to a trot when they reached a bend in the road. Tim was already with Jonquil and William by the bus at the stop, and dabbing at his forehead while he sucked on a bottle of water. The first few rows of seats were occupied by local folk, and as the Thornton party made their way along the aisle several women in black gave them a sign of the cross, pointing with the finger. "Thank you," Sandra said more than once, an example Tim and Jonquil followed.

Nobody boarded the bus at Sunset Beach. When it passed a loiterer in a shady side road blinking at the sunlight, the women in black covered their eyes with a hand. "Is that another tradition?" Natalie murmured.

"Looks as if it's religious," Pris said.

"Maybe they aren't supposed to look at sinners," Doug said, "which could mean anyone at Sunset Beach."

Ray thought this might be so, since they left their eyes uncovered when the bus reached the next village, where a good many people were to be seen. After that the road wound between fields not too far from the sea and past the occasional lonely bus shelter, until Doug craned forward and then poked the bellpush on the neatest metal pole. "We're here," he said.

He might have been telling the driver, who seemed in no hurry to brake. As Doug led the procession up the aisle the bus slowed, halting with an exhausted gasp some yards past a rudimentary stone shelter. The doors stayed shut as the driver turned to him. "Where you want?"

"We're off to the beach."

The man's eyebrows, outposts of his shaggy black moustache, seemed to darken his eyes. "Sunset it better."

"You're saying we should see it there?" Pris said.

The driver's eyebrows hunched lower. "Where you came from."

"We'll be back there for the sunset," Doug said.

The driver might have been shrugging as he released the doors, which parted with a sigh that could almost have denoted resignation. All the women in black made the sign again while the party left the bus. "Well, we're nothing if not blessed," Sandra said as Ray took her hand to help her down.

The doors thumped shut and the bus rumbled away, disgorging an oily grey cloud. Julian planted his hands on his hips and watched the bus vanish around a bend before he said "You're sure this is the right place, Douglas."

"A bit late to ask if it's not, don't you think?" As Natalie met this with her incredulous face—Ray remembered how often they'd performed such a routine when they were Tim's and Jonquil's age—Doug added "It's the only stop with a shrine by it, and I found it on the map."

The roadside shrine might have been marking or guarding the start of the path that led across a grassy field. It was the kind of memorial Ray and Sandra had often seen in Greece, a small glass-fronted wooden hutch standing on four stilts. Whoever it commemorated, their curled-up photograph had fallen on its face beside the extinguished stub of a candle in a tin holder. A grim-lipped icon of St Titus stood above the photograph, flourishing a lance. "What's he doing?" William said.

"It's a way of remembering where someone died, Will."

Natalie gave Doug a censorious look. "It's showing respect, William."

"Yes, but what's the man doing? Why is he waving his spear?"

This brought Sandra and the teenagers out of the bus shelter. Was the icon lenticular? Certainly the shaft of the lance appeared to be somehow unstable. Doug stooped close and then straightened up not much less than hastily. "Something's alive in there, Will."

The lance was split, Ray saw. A white mass bulged out of it like stuffing from a damaged toy. The mass was a cocoon from which dozens of tiny pale spiders were swarming. Natalie clutched William's shoulders to move him aside and leaned her hands on the frame of the window, only to recoil with a cry. Spiders were streaming through a crack beneath the pane and down the left front leg of the shrine. "Stay well away, William," she urged. "They could be anywhere."

"It's just life, Will." Pris said to reassure him. "It grows anywhere it can.

Tim crouched lower at the shrine than his father had and nudged Jonquil. "Being a saint didn't do him much good."

"That's no excuse for not behaving properly," Julian said.

"Nobody isn't that I can see," Doug said and turned to the overgrown path.

A hot breeze came to meet them all. It raided through the parched brown calf-high grass beside the narrow path like a flight of creatures lying low, and Ray saw Natalie pretend not to notice. A few solitary trees shrilling with cicadas punctuated the track. William struggled through the grass to overtake Doug and ran to the first tree, but as he looked for the insects the incessant sound dodged to the next one. "You won't see them, William," Sandra called, "unless they want you to."

When he dashed to the second tree it tell silent while the noise recommenced at the first one. The game seemed to frustrate him as much as it amused him, and he clenched his fists as he sprinted to the third tree. "Don't go too far ahead, William," Natalie shouted.

Though her voice was dwarfed by the huge blue sky, it appeared to halt the boy. Ray thought he'd found a cicada on the tree until they reached it. While William was gazing at the scaly trunk, there was no insect, just an image someone had carved. "It's him again," William said.

It was indeed St Titus, so crudely outlined that only the upthrust lance made him unmistakable. Ray glanced back at Sandra, but she and the teenagers were lingering under the last tree. How could he have been so thoughtless that he'd gone ahead? "Are you all right?" Pris called.

"They're just keeping me company," Sandra said and advanced along the path.

Everyone apart from William waited for the stragglers. As he reached the next tree, displacing the screech of cicadas, the boy shouted "He's here as well."

Ray let Sandra and the teenagers go ahead, since they seemed eager to reach the tree. "He's poking something," William announced.

"William," Natalie said in case his observation called for a rebuke.

Once Ray was close enough he saw another carving. This one was cruder still and possibly unfinished, since the opponent the figure had pierced with his lance was too shapeless to identify. Had there been carvings on the trees nearest the road? William was already dashing to the next one, silencing its stridulation. "I've found him," he cried.

"Don't go any further, William," his father called. "You're nearly at the cliff."

In fact the edge was several hundred yards beyond the tree, on which another image had been hacked out of the wood. The foe skewered by the lance looked as unsure of its own shape as a cloud, and the saint wasn't much clearer. William hopped from foot to impatient foot while he waited for someone to head for the cliff, and followed Doug so closely that he might have been tempted to slip past him. Doug caught hold of his hand as they left the path, and leaned over the edge of the cliff. "Here's your beach, mum," he called, "and your cave."

Ray took a step along the path and glanced back. "No need to wait for us," Sandra said more sharply than he thought was called for. "We're coming."

Doug waved to her and the teenagers under the tree. "Plenty of shade down there."

"I thought we were here for the sun," Julian said and strode towards the slope down to the beach. "Come along, William."

Ray found Natalie waiting for him at the end of the path. "Don't think too badly of Julian, will you?" she murmured while nobody else could hear. "He needs a holiday if any of us do. They've cut back at the company and he's doing two people's jobs. Tell mum when you're alone, could you?"

In that moment he was close to telling Natalie a great deal. Then she hurried to catch up with her husband and son, and Ray watched Sandra and her young companions advance along the path. He felt he'd overlooked something, but try as he might he couldn't bring it to mind. Was this yet another unhappy symptom of age? He gave up when Sandra reached him, and took her hand to usher her to the beach. As long as they were on the wide gentle slope he was able to imagine he could keep her safe.

***

"I think he's finished, William," Jonquil said. "What are you going to call him?"