‘You shouldn’t, Bill,’ Lionel rebuked.
‘Why not? Eileen’s got breasts like Aphrodite,’ said Bill. ‘What’s it matter between friends?’
But Lionel was worried and fell silent. He was sure that Bill would display his holiday snaps around The Crescent when they returned; Eileen’s nakedness would be revealed to all their neighbours. What he did about June was his own affair; she was a pagan soul, and shameless; but Eileen was different.
She altered, however, after that episode, and in the evening suggested they should invite June and Bill to drinks on their patio before dinner. She made Lionel go with her to the small supermarket near the hotel and they bought beer, ouzo and cheese biscuits, although until now she had refused even to sample ouzo.
‘Aphrodite was the goddess of love, you know,’ Bill said, toasting her.
Eileen simpered. Yes, that was the word; and Lionel shuddered as he drank his beer – he liked to know where he was with his drinks – and proffered peanuts.
They all dined at the same time that night, and afterwards strolled on the shingly beach. June led Lionel down to the water’s edge and began throwing stones out to sea, shaking back her mane after each toss, dabbling her toes in the phosphorescence at the water’s edge, her sandals kicked off and abandoned, bare feet impervious to the pebbles. When they turned at last the other pair were nowhere to be seen.
‘Bill’s seducing Eileen,’ June said, giggling. ‘He fancies her something rotten, you know. He’ll be calling on Bacchus for help.’
‘You shouldn’t talk like that,’ Lionel reproved, ‘I know you’re only joking, but some people might think you meant it.’
‘Believe me, it’s true,’ said June. ‘Why shouldn’t they have some fun? And why shouldn’t we?’
Lionel knew about wife-swapping, of course; it had even been alleged to take place on the estate where The Crescent was situated; keys were flung into some central pool and general post was played. But such activities were not for him and Eileen and he was shocked.
‘What nonsense you talk,’ he said, and walked off along the beach. ‘Come on, June,’ he called.
He was anxious to return to his wife in case June’s incredible words should somehow prove to be true, but he did not want to leave her alone and it took him some time to persuade her. She was in a silly mood and clung to him, pressing her slim shape against him, hanging on to his arm. Her hair floated against his face and across his mouth; it smelled fragrantly of lemon shampoo. When at last they reached the bungalow block and he left her on her own verandah, she still clung to him and fastened her mouth to his; she was insatiable. Lionel hoped he had no grass stains on his trousers; they had moved off the hard stony beach into the shelter of a clump of hibiscus. He had to unwind her arms from around his neck and push her towards her own room. Where the light was on, no doubt attracting mosquitoes.
Eileen, more sensibly, had turned theirs off; he could hear her evenly breathing as, freshly showered, she lay beneath the sheet. He showered too; June’s scent was all over him.
He did not see the footprints until the next morning. Clear and sharp, in talcum powder, they led one way, from the Dawsons’ verandah on to his and Eileen’s, and they were made by his wife’s size six feet; June’s feet were several sizes smaller.
Lionel did not, at first, accept the message. He knew that June spread chaos wherever she went and no doubt talcum powder too: but Eileen didn’t. He brooded about the trail as they drove to Lindos after breakfast. Bill’s camera lay on the back seat of the car; what other exposures had he made?
They parked as near to the beach as they could, then trudged through the busy streets of the small town to the citadel. June toyed with the idea of riding a donkey but it cost money, and Eileen, who would have liked to avoid the climb, felt she could not be the only one to do so.
‘We’ll swim later,’ Bill said. The beach was already filling with exposed bodies beneath umbrellas. They’d have lunch, they decided, at one of the tavernas where vines shaded the tables.
The ascent was steep, past white-washed buildings and importunate shop-keepers, and, higher up, vendors of embroidered tablecloths and lace mats whose wares were spread at the side of the high, narrow path. Eileen stopped to admire some fine examples and was subjected to a tirade of sales patter in Greek and fragmented English.
‘Your work is as fine as that,’ Lionel declared loyally. His own lapse had to be erased, and so must all evidence of anything Eileen had done, which would not be easy since proof lay in Bill’s expensive camera. His mind closed on a vision of what might have passed between the pair while June kept him occupied; had the Dawsons colluded to lead him and Eileen astray or was June just seeking vengeance of her own? And what about Eileen herself? How to account for her actions? Of course, she was drunk on not only ouzo and wine but also the diet of myth and legend they had absorbed, and it was all his fault, for it was he who had wished to forsake safe St Mawes and seek the Aegean sun.
At the entrance to the site they paid their fee, took their tickets and began the final climb. June went first, her long slim legs, tanned brown now, scissoring their way. Eileen, panting a little in the heat, followed, and then Bill, who wore his camera slung round his neck. Lionel came last in the file of modern pilgrims.
‘Be careful,’ called Lionel, for the steps were steep and there was no barrier to protect you from the sheer drop at the side.
As he spoke, Bill unhooked his camera to fiddle with some adjustment of the lens. He was going to use it, snap poor Eileen’s fat rump as she lumbered upwards.
Lionel spoke to him sharply, distracting him, and the moment passed, but in that instant he made a plan and his chance to carry it out came when they descended. Bill had taken several exposures on the Acropolis; he had photographed the bay where allegedly St Paul had landed, and the town below. As they went down the path again, in the same order, Bill, as if to plan, was holding the camera in his hands. Lionel reached out to jerk it from his grasp; one twitch was all it would need to send the thing hurtling down to the rocks below, where it would smash and the film inside would be destroyed.
But Bill’s reactions were quick to protect his precious possession. Saving it, he stumbled, and his left hand shot out towards Eileen. She lost her balance straight away, gave one shrill cry and, in a second, had taken the fall Lionel had intended for the camera.
‘Oh, my God!’ Bill was the first to scramble down the rest of the stairs and make his way to the mewing heap that was Eileen as she lay, legs twisted beneath her, in the shadow of the citadel.
The shock was too much for her. She died of that, not her injuries.
After the funeral Bill gave Lionel the photographs he had taken of her that last night, a sheet draped round her like a chiton, Aphrodite garbed.
Was that all that had happened between them? Now Lionel would never know. He hoped that decency alone would prevent Bill from showing any of the other exposures round The Crescent, but in any case, as soon as it was possible, he sold the house and asked the bank to arrange a transfer.
He moved to Manchester, where two years later he married a widow he met on a cruise.
The Luck of the Draw
She’d been looking forward to it for weeks, ever since the letter arrived.
She’d bought the two raffle tickets, one for herself and one for Micky, from a woman who came to the door when she was staying with him. Ten pence each, they’d been, and now she’d won the first prize, a cruise to the Mediterranean. The ticket and other documents would follow, said the letter, and she must be in possession of a passport. No special inoculations or vaccinations were necessary, and cheques could be cashed on board.
She’d rung Micky at once to see if he’d also won a prize, but he hadn’t. He couldn’t have gone, anyway, he said; business was too demanding. Micky was her nephew who ran a used car business outside Glasgow and lived in a small grey bungalow overlooking the Clyde. His wife had departed some years ago, taking the children, a
nd this saddened Carmen for they were the only family she ever saw. Micky’s father, her elder brother, was dead, and her own sons had left long ago, one for Australia and the other for Singapore. She never heard from either, which was hard to accept after all she had done to bring them up alone. Things hadn’t been easy for widows then, not like it was for single mothers today when the best way to get your own place was to become pregnant and be housed by the council.
Micky didn’t seem to have any regrets. He was out a lot and had a series of women friends, some of whom Carmen had met. He took her out to dinner at least once during her annual visit, and last time they’d had lunch one Sunday at a grand granite hotel where he seemed to know most of the other clients. Carmen managed to make them laugh at the jokes she told; she’d always been the life and soul of the party.
‘What a character,’ she’d hear them say, and would smile. She liked attention.
It seemed that Micky was used to the high life, but for Carmen such occasions were treats to remember when she went back to the council flat in Southampton where she had lived for years.
She liked the sea. She’d spent all her life near it, so going on a cruise was certain to be a success, and it was free! She planned her wardrobe with care, for there would be smart dinners, all that: it would be like old times when she used to dress up to go to the palais.
That was where she met Tom, in a Paul Jones. They didn’t have such things these days; you grabbed whoever you fancied to dance with but then didn’t touch them at all which seemed to Carmen a funny way of going about things. Tom wasn’t her first, by any means, though he never knew that, but he was different because he wanted to marry her and in those days to be married was very important. It conferred status, meant you wouldn’t have been passed over if all the men got killed like they did last time, leaving so many girls on the shelf. Tom was so smart in his bell-bottoms and square rig. He was thin and fair, with blue eyes, and he was twenty-two when his ship was torpedoed on convoy duty in the Mediterranean.
Billy was born two weeks after she had heard that he was dead.
Things were tough then. Carmen was still living with her mother, and she soon got a factory job, working shifts, so that one of them was always there with the baby. When Billy was two she met Jock, who was Stuart’s father. They couldn’t get married because he had a wife in Aberdeen, or so he said.
That was the beginning of the black days. Her mother was killed, not by a bomb but by slipping on an icy road and being run over by a bus whose driver had no chance to stop. After that it was a struggle to keep the boys, but she’d done it, working nights in a club, and she’d always done a bit on the side. She’d been choosy, though, and over the years some of the men became regulars, real pals, bringing her presents from their trips and being fatherly to the boys before they were packed off to bed when it was time for business. She’d been soft enough to get really fond of one of them, Stavros, who called whenever his ship was in port. She’d woven a dream about him, imagining herself wafted to one of those Greek islands he’d told her about, where the sun always shone and the sea was blue and olives hung heavy on ancient trees.
He was married, of course. He showed her snaps of his wife and his sons, first two, then a third, then four. He was generous to her, though, and for nearly ten years looked nowhere else for the comforts of shore. She missed him when he stopped coming, and for a while worked as a maid in a hotel, living in. The boys had left home by then and Carmen saw no point in keeping a place on just for herself. But after she entertained one man friend too many in the hotel, she lost her job. For some years, she rented a room and found what work she could: bar-maiding, selling sweets in a cinema, helping out at a newsagent’s, picking up employment here and there, and also men.
Carmen’s real name was Doris Watkins, but she became Carmen when she started in the clubs. It suited her dark looks and she said that she came from Brazil and was the illegitimate daughter of a diplomat, though the truth was that her father had been a travelling salesman who had left her mother when Doris was five. Doris had adored him and she wept for him for years. It was only after her mother’s death that she discovered he had had several wives and had been sent to prison for bigamy. Since then, she had told her invented story so often that she had begun to believe it.
It was difficult, these days, to find company but occasionally, even now, there was someone she met in a pub who came home with her. Mostly, though, she had to be satisfied with having an occasional drink bought for her. She went to bingo because there were prizes, but too many of the players were women; she did like a man or two about the place. She’d enjoy telling her fellow bingo players about the cruise when she returned; some of them were quite spiteful in their remarks – jealous, of course, because she so often won – but now they’d really have something to gripe about.
Carmen had never before been further south than the Isle of Wight, but she admitted to no fears as she set off with a new suitcase, larger than the one she used for her trips to Scotland. She went by taxi to the station to catch her train for the port of embarkation and several neighbours watched her go. She waved triumphantly, then inserted her stout body into the comfortable seat. She used taxis when she returned from the pub a bit worse for wear, but otherwise, except during her visits to Micky, she never went in a car.
This was the life!
‘Of course I’ve travelled a lot,’ she told the driver, practising what she would say on board. Carmen’s method of compensating for her own inadequacies was to attack. She asked a man on the platform to lift her case into the train for her, and another to take it down when she reached her destination, and both instantly obeyed. A second taxi swept her to the dock and there a friendly man bore her luggage away as she joined a short queue at passport control, handing over her new passport. A smiling young woman directed her to a bus which took her out to the ship and Carmen stepped confidently up the gangway. She’d been aboard ships before, though usually clandestinely.
Her cabin was on a lower deck. It was very small, with two bunks and a tiny cubicle containing a shower and lavatory. There was no porthole. That was a pity; she would have liked to look at the sea. Carmen felt a cool breeze on her head: the air-conditioning. She picked the further bunk and began spreading her clothes about; there was plenty of room.
Then she set off to explore.
The ship seemed vast. She went along corridors and up and down companionways and eventually found an enormous lounge where tea was being served. Carmen would have liked a slug of something in hers, but there seemed no chance of that so she slurped it down as it was, and secured three slices of iced sponge cake, looking about at the other passengers who seemed to be mainly elderly couples. There was head after head of grey hair. Carmen’s was rinsed jet black, and her eyebrows were dyed. She’d never given up on her appearance.
When she went back to her cabin to change for dinner she received a shock, for her belongings had been moved to make space for others: an alien toothbrush was slotted into the bathroom holder and a sparse array of clothes shared the hanging space. The things that Carmen had left draped over the second bunk had been gathered together and deposited neatly on the one where her nightdress already lay.
Was she to share?
Such a thought had never occurred to Carmen. She picked up the telephone and asked for the Purser whose assistant, to whom she made known this fact, replied that yes, indeed, she was sharing with Mrs Ford and no other arrangement was possible.
Carmen shrugged. She was a sound sleeper; it would not worry her.
She had a shower, put on her black satin pants and gold lamé top – you must start as you mean to go on and she intended to create an impression straight off – and was sitting on her bunk buckling her high-heeled sandals when Frances Ford came in, blinked at the moist atmosphere for the cabin was full of steam, and smiled anxiously at Carmen.
‘I do hope you didn’t mind my moving some of your things,’ she said in a soft, nervous voice. She w
as a tall, thin woman with stringy brown hair and Carmen later learned that she came from Rye and was a widow with no children. She had a black poodle called Hetty whom it had been a wrench to deposit in kennels.
‘I didn’t reckon to be sharing,’ Carmen told her bluntly.
‘But it’s so expensive having a cabin to oneself,’ said Frances. ‘Of course, if you’ve paid for that, there must be some mistake.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Carmen. ‘I won the trip in a raffle and I just thought it meant a single cabin. Not to worry – Frances, was it, you said?’
‘That’s right.’ Frances wrinkled her nose at the damp air. ‘How thoughtful of you to get changed early so that we weren’t both wanting the bathroom at once,’ she said. ‘I wonder if the air-conditioning will cope with this steam?’
‘Give it an hour or two and it will,’ said Carmen, now busy applying petunia lipstick to her mouth.
‘Are you having first sitting dinner?’ asked Frances.
‘Yes.’ Carmen pouted, blotted her lips and gave them another wipe with the shiny lipstick.
‘Ah – I’m second. That will make things easier, won’t it?’ Frances peered at her companion through the opaque air.
‘If you say so,’ said Carmen and picked up her handbag. ‘I’ll see you, then,’ and she swung out of the cabin leaving Frances in possession. She was ready for a nip, and there would be company in the bar, if she could find one. There were at least three on board, according to the plan of the ship she’d received with her ticket.
Sipping a double gin, Carmen stoked up on Dutch courage to face the ordeal of dinner where she would be among strangers. Looking around, she noticed that everyone else was plainly attired, though most were tidy, the men wearing ties, the women in skirts and blouses or simple dresses. She’d expected to see dinner suits and long gowns. Ten minutes before the meal was due to start she moved towards the restaurant and found a queue had already formed leading down the stairs.
Pieces of Justice Page 18