He had been unable in all honesty to deny it. This was the trouble. He was Oliver Fox. In the kind of circles he moved in, everyone had heard of him even before they met him. Friends of friends—even complete strangers, sometimes—started laughing as soon as they were introduced, waiting for him to be Oliver Fox in front of them. He had tousled blond hair, and soft smiling eyes that fixed on yours, and no one ever had any idea what he was going to do next. Least of all himself. Until suddenly he’d found that something had come into his head, and there he was, doing it already. Whereupon they’d laugh again. Or scream and run for cover, or phone the police.
“Oh, no!” the people he’d met would tend to cry. “This time he’s really gone too far!”
In the baggage hall here, of course, surrounded by fat holidaymakers who had never heard of him, there was no one but himself to be Oliver Fox for. He felt as if he were like the aircraft he had been sitting on for the past five hours, suspended over the void by his own bootstraps, with nothing in his head but the long boring swoosh of nothingness.
So why was he like this? Why wasn’t he doing a job of work like a normal human being? Something where you helped people. On a run-down council estate somewhere. In the third world. There were tens of millions of people in the world out there who needed help. He was too old to go on the way he was. He would change. He would put himself humbly at their service. Train as a doctor, perhaps. Specialize. Become a neurologist. He had always wanted to know how his brain worked, why and how he did what he did. He wasn’t a fool, though—he knew how many years of study and hard work it would take. But he could still do it. He would do it. He would have applied for medical school this very moment, if only he could have found an application form.
Everyone would be astonished. “Oliver Fox?” they’d laugh. “A neurologist? We certainly weren’t expecting that! How absolutely typical!”
On and on the mournful bags processed. Oliver’s eye was caught by the sight of the man beside him, who had his phone in his hand and with his two thumbs was writing a text as long as a doctoral thesis. It reminded him to get his own phone out and switch it back on. Not that there would be any good news.
And no, there wasn’t. The first of the waiting messages was from A. A was Annuka, Annuka Vos, with whom he had borrowed the villa, and who should have been standing here beside him at the carousel if she had not flown into a rage at his coming home with a donkey he had bought off the donkey man in the park, or rather at his proposing to stable it in her flat, whereupon she had found herself abruptly unable to put up a moment longer with his being Oliver Fox, and he had been forced to leave, with nothing but the donkey and a handful of possessions, mostly his, in one of her rather elegant suitcases.
“U wont read this of course,” she wrote, “because u r deaf and blind to everyone except yrself, but…”
He didn’t read it, being deaf and blind at any rate to messages that started like that. He skipped down the list. The next four messages were also from A. Then came one from someone with only a phone number for a name. He couldn’t remember anyone with a name that ended in 0489, but 0489 could evidently remember him.
“I know I am dealing with a moral lunatic,” he (or, more probably, she) began.
But before he had had time to find out what 0489’s grievance was he saw his bag coming towards him. It was easy to spot, because he had had to borrow it from Annuka when he had moved out, and all her luggage had red leather address tags, like staff officers with red tabs on their collars. As he reached out to seize it he saw that the next message was from G. G was Georgie, of course, the woman he was meeting, A’s replacement for the week in the villa. “So sorry missed flight patrick trouble of course next flight is oh buggeration Ive just looked it up not until tomorrow.”
Of course. He could have guessed. The whole adventure had gone off the rails already, before it had even started. He lifted the bag off the carousel and touched her number. “Hi! This is Georgie,” said her number. But it was lying. It wasn’t Georgie—it was a few kilobytes of information stored on a server somewhere that were merely pretending to be her.
So he was going to spend the next twenty-four hours sitting on his own in some dreary villa, which would turn out to have cockroaches and no working sanitation. If, that is, the owners had remembered to arrange the taxi they had promised. Probably they hadn’t. And probably he hadn’t remembered to write down the address anywhere. So he wouldn’t be in a villa at all—he would be stuck here at the airport. Then Georgie would miss the flight again tomorrow, or be unable to get on it. Change her mind, give up, fail to arrive at all.
He should never have come. He should have started his medical studies. He felt a lump in his throat, as if he were eight years old and going back to school again. A whole day—two days—a week—a term—stretching in front of him with no company but the cockroaches and an invisible answering machine with only the same half-dozen words to say for itself.
And himself, the apparently inescapable Oliver Fox. It was funny. Everyone thought it was so wonderful, being Oliver Fox. Everyone but himself.
7
It was an example of the ever-renewed triumph of hope over probability, thought Nikki, trying to keep the skin round her mouth and eyes soft and amused. Whenever you were waiting for someone and you didn’t know exactly what they looked like, everyone seemed to be them. Fathers with small children. Grandfathers in ill-judged shorts. Women, even … Fat women … Fatter women still … Just for a moment, as each passenger emerged from the baggage hall and hesitated, not knowing where to go, Nikki tensed very slightly with the onset of charm. Then they would spot a familiar word—“Polkinghorne,” “Whispering Surf”—and they would raise an acknowledging finger and cease to have any possible resemblance to Dr. Norman Wilfred.
More potential Dr. Wilfreds at once took their place. She should have looked at the picture in his CV again before she came out. She tried to recall it. Nothing came to mind. He had looked, well, pretty much as she would have expected him to look.
She felt a little leap of the heart at the sight of one particular candidate, a rumpled young man with muddled, extraordinarily pale blond hair. His soft rueful eyes swept slowly over the waiting drivers and reps. He didn’t look at all as she would have expected him to look. My God, thought Nikki nevertheless, it is him!
Except that it obviously wasn’t.
Except that just possibly …
She went on watching him. The rueful gaze jumped unhurriedly from sign to sign, closer and closer.
For an instant she was eight years old again. If I think hard enough that it’s him, she thought, perhaps it will be.
* * *
“Carling…” “Pleather…” “Spoon…” Oliver looked carefully at the hopefully uplifted names, trying to make each in turn read “Fox.” None obliged. Just as he had feared. As soon as one thing went wrong so did everything else. He was on his own in the world. “Wertheimer…” “Begby…” “Budd…” All these people with solid and convincing names! With someone to meet them, with lives to live, with friends and lovers, with happy days ahead full of laughter at taverna tables. Why was he not Begby? Why was he not Budd? Even as he looked, “Begby” and Begby were shaking hands and laughing.
“Johanssen…” “Cholley…” “Dr. Norman Wilfred…”
He stopped. Dr. Norman Wilfred … Yes. That would have been a good name to have. There was something wholesome and down-to-earth about it that suggested a general practitioner in a country town. Someone with ruddy cheeks and a twinkle in his eye, beloved by his patients. If only he had been called Wilfred. With a name like that he, too, could have been a doctor already. He could have been leading Dr. Wilfred’s decent, useful life, and taking Dr. Wilfred’s well-earned summer holiday—could even now have found himself being met by whoever it was Dr. Wilfred was being met by.
He looked up a little to see who it was.
Oh, yes! he thought, as he took in the soft openness of her eyes, and couldn’t help
but smile.
* * *
Oh, no! thought Nikki, as Oliver’s soft melancholy smile rested on her. It is him!
And of course she smiled in her turn.
* * *
Good God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks I’m him!
And all at once he knew it was so. He was Dr. Norman Wilfred. He saw his life as Dr. Norman Wilfred stretching in front of him like the golden pathway into the rising sun. He had no choice but to walk along that pathway, towards the warmth, towards the light.
So he did, pulling his suitcase behind him.
* * *
She watched him approach. He was still smiling. She was still smiling herself, she realized.
“Dr. Wilfred?” she said.
“I cannot tell a lie,” said Oliver. No—said Dr. Wilfred.
* * *
She plainly wanted him to be Dr. Wilfred, he could see. She would probably be disappointed later, of course, when he turned out not to have been Dr. Wilfred after all. But later was later. The immediate priority was not to disappoint her now. In any case, there was some truth in what he had said. He was not good at telling lies, and he never did. Not if he could manage without.
She went on smiling, and the warmth of that smile made her almost as beautiful as he was going to tell her she was, as soon as a suitable opportunity occurred. She tucked her sign away on top of the clipboard she was carrying and shook his hand.
“I’m Nikki,” she said. “The name on all those e-mails.”
“Nikki,” he said. “Of course. Though I couldn’t have guessed from the name that you’d look like this.”
She managed to frown and took the handle of his suitcase. He could see, though, that her frown was a frown in the same way that he was Dr. Wilfred. He felt the familiar jolt of joyous excitement. Here we go again!
“Anyway,” she said, “welcome to Skios.”
8
Dr. Norman Wilfred touched the Send button of his phone and his intercontinental ballistic missile departed in the direction of Manitoba. For something composed with two thumbs in a strange airport it was a remarkably powerful piece of writing. There would be body parts scattered over a wide area of Canada. He could resume his visit to Skios with a calm mind.
Now, where had he got to…? Flight bag! Yes, still safely between his feet. So, suitcase …
The dark spate of luggage on the carousel, he discovered, had become a drought-stricken trickle, and, even as he looked, his one remaining fellow passenger claimed his bag and departed. Dr. Wilfred was left on his own in the baggage hall, like the last boy at school to be picked for the football team. A disintegrating cardboard box came wearily into view … a ten-foot-long camouflage canvas holdall … and yes, his suitcase with the familiar red leather tag. But even as Dr. Wilfred reached out to take it he saw that the suitcase itself wasn’t familiar at all. There was something subtly but unmistakably alien about it. Somebody else, evidently, had hit upon the idea of a red address tag. He opened the flap on the tag. Yes. Someone called Annuka Vos.
He let the suitcase go on its way. The cardboard box shuffled slowly back round the track, ashamed that no one wanted it … the ten-foot-long holdall … the alien suitcase … That seemingly endless spring of luggage behind the flaps had finally dried up.
Box again … holdall … alien suitcase … And suddenly all three of them became motionless, as if they had at last given up hope of ever finding owners. A great silence fell over the baggage hall.
The bastards had lost his suitcase. Of course. First you see your entire life’s work mocked by some nasty little nobody in Manitoba, and then the airline loses your bag.
The waiting glass of chilled white wine beneath the stars, the lightly tanned skin and the discreetly blond hair, had vanished as if they had never been.
Skios! He’d somehow always known it was going to be a disaster.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” said Nikki. “I had a great speech of welcome prepared, but somehow it all went out of my head.”
They were walking side by side to the car park through the beautiful heat of the night and the hot smells of subtropical flowers and herbs.
It wouldn’t last very long, this wonderful new life of his, realized Oliver. He would only need to say one wrong thing. How many bright paths he had seen opening in front of him before! How many times he had then suddenly found himself falling into the darkness! Sooner or later he would once again be talking himself out of his embarrassment. People thought he didn’t feel the embarrassment, but he did, he did! Did the climber not mind falling or the sailor drowning? Of course they minded! They dreaded it! That was the point—the risk! There was nothing that made you relish every moment of being alive so much as knowing that at the very next you might be dead. Or might somehow still, even as you fell, find some overhanging plant to grab, some passing piece of flotsam to cling on to. “I got a bit confused, etc., etc. Possibly by your being the most beautiful woman I have ever, etc., etc. I really thought for a moment that I actually was, etc., etc.” There was always some faint hope that it might work. It never had, so far as he could remember. But there was no logical reason why the future should always have to be like the past.
On the other hand, though—oh God!—she might suddenly realize that he was Oliver Fox! Had Oliver Fox’s reputation reached Greece yet?
And even if he got away with it, he had perhaps only one night before Georgie arrived. He was going to have to live this short new life of his with single-minded intensity.
Nikki unlocked a car with the body of a bus and the wheels of a giant excavator. She laughed.
“You don’t look at all the way I imagined!” she said.
The familiar first twinge of disequilibrium passed through Oliver as bracingly as a gulp of vodka.
“Why?” he said. “How did you imagine I looked?”
“Well … the way you do in your photograph. The one in your CV. But you’re much more … I don’t know…” She was going to say “more surprising,” “more handsome,” “more wonderful.” “Younger,” she said.
He thought about this. “Yes, well, that’s because I am,” he said. “Younger. Than I was then.”
She laughed, not understanding. He laughed himself. He couldn’t understand, either.
9
It was obvious what had happened. The owner of this single alien suitcase left on the carousel had taken Dr. Wilfred’s by mistake.
Yes, explained Dr. Wilfred to the third official he had been passed on to, his bag looked rather similar, it was also black with a red leather address tag, and no, he couldn’t precisely describe what the difference was, except that inside the tag on his suitcase it had his name, which was Wilfred. Dr. Norman Wilfred. W-I-L-F-R-E-D. Not “Annuka Vos,” which is what it said on this bag. There was also a flight label with his destination written on it.
Which was?
Which was … Yes—what? He hadn’t filled out the tag himself, it had been done by his personal assistant. It was the Something Center. Or the Something Institute. The Something Something. The Something Something for the Something of Something. He hadn’t thought he needed to have the address about his person, since he was being met. If he could just go through Customs and find the person who was meeting him … Yes…? But he wouldn’t be allowed back…?
It was ridiculous. He knew perfectly well what the place was called, or he had until all this business had started. Everyone in the entire civilized world knew! It was what people came to Skios for! He had come to give a lecture there! Look—here was the lecture! But, as he explained patiently to the man, he had had a very stressful day, and he had quite a number of other things to remember, and in the past few months he had been in quite a number of other Somethings for the Something of Something.
It was his personal assistant who had made all the arrangements. He was phoning her now, look. She would tell them at once.
There was no answer from Vicki. Unbelievable how she was never there when yo
u needed her. So did he perhaps have it written down? Of course he had it written down! It was on the label of the suitcase! It was also written down about fifteen times on all the documents they’d sent him! Where were the documents? He had explained this several times already: the documents were inside the suitcase.
But never mind what it said on or in his suitcase. Whatever it was, it wasn’t “Annuka Vos,” because Annuka Vos was not his name!
No, she hadn’t put her destination on it, so they couldn’t get in touch with her on Skios. And yes, she had put her home address in London, so they could write to her there, certainly, but it might take a while to get a reply, particularly since she was presumably not there in London but here on Skios.
And no, he was not getting excited. He was perfectly used to losing his luggage. It was an inherent part of the way of life that he seemed to have committed himself to. This is why he always carried the text of the lecture with him. Here—in his flight bag. He did his best to promote the international exchange of ideas. He spent half his life sitting on planes and the other half gazing down at the dim faces gazing up at him, knowing that most of them were unable to understand English, or were asleep with their eyes open, or were plotting hostile articles about him in obscure journals. For days on end he would be stuck in places where no reasonable person would ever want to go, in Manila or Minneapolis or Minsk, while his one clean shirt was in Manaus, or Manchester, or Murmansk. So he took the loss of his luggage very much in his stride.
On this occasion, however, his bag was probably not in Manaus or Murmansk. It was almost certainly still here on Skios, not more than a dozen or so miles away, since the island seemed to be only a dozen or so miles long. He supposed that all he had to do was to walk up and down the island calling out “Annuka Vos.”
Skios: A Novel Page 3