“Or no one says anything,” said Mrs. Chuck Friendly, “but people just think someone’s a genius, or whatever, and they don’t even know why they ever thought so in the first place!”
“We’re all such fools!” said Morton Rinkleman.
“How do you know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.
“How do you know you’re Harold Fossett?” said Morton Rinkleman.
“Hey, how do I know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.
“Who, indeed, am I?” said a distinguished Indian guest whose name and job description nobody had grasped, and got no answer.
“Are any of us, in fact, anybody?” said somebody.
They all sipped their coffee and green tea, and looked at one another with new interest and respect, delighted with the idea that they might none of them be who they said they were, their delight rooted in their absolute confidence that they were.
“OK,” said Mr. Erlunder. “I’m not Mr. Erlunder! I’m Mrs. Erlunder!”
“That makes two of us,” said Mrs. Erlunder. “Unless I’m you.”
“I’m George Washington,” said Russell Pond. “I cannot tell a lie.”
“I’m a freshwater crayfish,” said Alf Persson, the Swedish theologian.
“I’m a sunspot,” said Suki Brox.
“I’m Professor Norbert Ditmuss,” said Professor Norbert Ditmuss.
“And Wellesley Luft is Wellesley Luft,” said Nikki, before Professor Ditmuss could expand on this. “And Wellesley Luft is waiting to interview Dr. Wilfred for the Journal of Science Management.”
Dr. Wilfred got to his feet and inclined his head. Some of the others also got to their feet, and everyone else got to his or her feet and applauded, apart from the curmudgeonly K. D. Clopper, who still thought it was all bunkum, and Wilson Westerman, who was worrying about what Frankfurt had been doing since he last looked at his phone.
“He’s actually not arriving for ages yet,” murmured Nikki as she maneuvered Dr. Wilfred away from various people who rather pressingly wanted to continue the conversation.
“You were saving me from Professor Ditmuss again?” said Dr. Wilfred.
“Just in case you really aren’t Dr. Wilfred,” said Nikki.
He felt a sense of triumph. He had climbed the most exposed pitch yet and survived. If he could do that he could do anything. Except that there wasn’t anything left to do. Apart from the lecture. His sense of triumph began to fade.
“I’ll send Mr. Luft up to your room, shall I? You might want to have that little siesta of yours first while I’m fetching him.”
“You’re going to be holding up your sign again? Just make sure he is Mr. Luft, though, and not somebody else. One somebody else is quite enough.”
She stopped and looked round, then gave him a very swift kiss.
“Quite enough for me,” she said. “Anyway, you’ll know if it’s not him. He’s an old friend of yours. He’s interviewed you three or four times before.”
“Has he?” said Dr. Wilfred. The dark depths below him reached tinglingly up into his knees again. “So let’s see if he thinks I’m Dr. Wilfred.”
27
“But you’re not Oliver Fox,” said Georgie finally, after the shimmering hot silence of the afternoon had gone on and on. “You’re Wilfred somebody.”
She was on the lounger again, with the towel in place around her middle, but now she had turned onto her back. She evidently felt that after all this time she knew him well enough. He, likewise, felt that after all this time he knew her well enough to take an occasional look, particularly since she seemed to have her eyes closed behind her dark glasses, though her two breasts, sprawled softly outwards, had still not seized his imagination as strongly as those two small and now concealed moles.
“Take a good long look, if you’re going to,” she said. “You’ll do something to your neck, twitching back and forth like that. Why did you tell the taxi driver you were Oliver Fox?”
“I didn’t tell the taxi driver I was Oliver Fox,” said Wilfred.
“Well, someone did. He told me he’d driven you here. Oliver Fox. He said you were waiting for me.”
Wilfred tried to remember exactly how the conversation had gone. Phoksoliva … Euphoksoliva … Yes, of course.
“It was him,” he said. “The taxi driver. He told me.”
“The taxi driver told you were Oliver Fox? What, and you believed him? And you’re a famous scientist, are you, Wilfred? What else have taxi drivers told you?”
* * *
The afternoon went hotly on and on. A small cloud was created out of empty air, moved slowly across the sky, and dissolved again, exhausted, before it got anywhere.
“What I don’t understand,” said Wilfred—no, Dr. Wilfred, he was Dr. Wilfred—“is that this pal of yours is supposed to be coming in a taxi. He’s not renting a car? How are you proposing to get around?”
“What, to art galleries? Famous cathedrals and so on?” She laughed. Little soft trembles ran through her breasts, like almost imperceptible waves in a calm summer sea. “I don’t suppose he was thinking of getting around very much.”
No, of course not, thought Dr. Wilfred. Art galleries and famous cathedrals were probably not what either of them had at the forefront of their minds.
“Haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wilfred?” she said. “No? What—just a wife? Or no wife, even?”
He was not going to get drawn into a discussion of his own domestic arrangements. In any case, what he was thinking about was the still unmade bed in the villa. They would get out of it sometimes, he thought. To sunbathe, perhaps. Take a dip in the pool. What else? Nothing. Back to bed again. Yes, why should we need a car? Or rather they. Why would they need a car?
“Food, though,” he said. “Meals. Groceries. You weren’t planning to live on a loaf of frozen bread and a packet of frozen peas all week?”
“I don’t know what the arrangements are. I suppose Oliver’s thought of something.”
There was a silence while they both thought about the possible contents of Oliver’s thinking.
“Or probably not, actually,” she said. “I don’t think he thinks. Not that sort of thinking. Just something comes into his head and—woof!—he does it.”
Woof, he does it. Of course. Woof, they both do it. Dr. Wilfred suddenly found this feckless pair and their brainless pleasures profoundly distasteful.
“No business of mine, of course,” he said, “but what about this other friend of yours?”
“Patrick? He’s in Turkey.”
“He’s in Turkey. Oh. So as soon as Patrick turns his back you’re off with this one, are you?”
“What do you mean? It’s not like it’s, you know, a regular arrangement! I’ve only met him once! For about five minutes!”
You heard this kind of thing about young people these days, thought Oliver, thought Wilfred, thought Dr. Wilfred, but you never really believed it until you actually came face to face with one of them.
“Only met him once?” he said. “For five minutes? Oh, that’s all right, then.”
“Well, you’ve got to be spontaneous, haven’t you? You’ve got to go along with things. Anyway, we’ve sent each other lots of texts.”
Lots of texts. Of course. Plus sliced bread and frozen peas. Or rather, now, no sliced bread and no frozen peas.
Then back to bed.
* * *
There was another small cloud overhead … He closed his eyes. When he opened them there was no cloud.
“Now I come to think about it,” said Georgie, “I see why he hasn’t shown up yet. It’s just like you said—there’s a perfectly logical explanation. It’s because he hasn’t bothered to listen to his messages. He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m arriving this evening.”
The two moles, the sliced bread, and the unmade-up bed all vanished from Dr. Wilfred’s head as he took in the implications of this. “You mean … he may not come until this evening? But that’s when my lecture
is! I need the taxi before then! I need the taxi now!”
“You’ll just have to relax and have a day off. I shouldn’t worry. They’ll think of something else to do. People often don’t turn up for things.”
He saw the faces in the hall. Distinguished faces, important faces—people who had flown from Athens and even farther afield for the Fred Toppler Lecture. He heard the eager anticipatory hum die away as someone stepped up to the lectern to introduce him. Not to introduce him, though. To explain that for reasons beyond their control … Or that Dr. Norman Wilfred was unfortunately indisposed … Or quite frankly that no one knew where he was. He had simply failed to show up.
And where he would be was here, toasting sliced bread with some entirely irresponsible young woman who didn’t seem to think it mattered whether people honored their professional obligations or whether they simply sloped off and jumped into bed with people they’d only known for five minutes. Not that she would be jumping into bed with him, of course, because at that moment she would be jumping into bed with someone else, and what he himself would be jumping into, if anything, would be the taxi that had brought the man she actually was jumping into bed with; and he would be on his way to run into the lecture hall, even more embarrassingly than if he had never shown up at all, just as everyone left.
“Though of course,” said Georgie, “now I’m thinking, Why hasn’t he bothered to listen to his messages? And I know why—because he had to hang around for half an hour with nothing to do, and he went into a bar, and he saw some woman, and he brushed the hair out of his eyes and gave her his ridiculous grin, and now he won’t be coming this evening, or tomorrow, or all the rest of the week.”
Dr. Wilfred thought about this. He might not be running into the lecture hall just as everyone left. He might still be here. For the rest of the week.
“So you’re in charge now, Wilfred,” said Georgie. “Food, yes. Eating. You’d better start thinking how we’re going to find something.”
He already was. He was looking at himself in the days ahead, roaming the hillsides. Bargaining with peasants for bread. Stealing fruit off trees. Strangling stray pheasants. Milking the wandering goats. He had an old song running through his head that he hadn’t heard since he was a boy: “If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy…”
“It’s probably only for a few days,” said Georgie. “Sooner or later someone’s going to notice you’re missing. Your wife or someone. Send out a search party.”
Sooner or later, yes. In the meantime, though …
Already the disappointed owners of all those respectfully upturned faces had vanished from his head as if they had never been. So had the lecture, and his professional obligations and reputation. They had all been pushed into oblivion by the two moles. And the three condoms in the right-hand inside pocket of his jacket.
And the words of the song. “If you were the only girl in the world,” they murmured to him, over and over again, as if they had taken on a life of their own, “and I was the only boy…”
28
A fire bell was ringing. Oliver, instantly alarmed, looked out of the porthole of the theater where he was just about to perform his juggling act and saw smoke and flames pouring out of the starboard outer engine. He struggled to sit up, terrified.
Late-afternoon sunshine was coming through unfamiliar curtains. He was in a bedroom of some sort, not a theater or an airplane. But the fire bell was still ringing. Except that it wasn’t a fire bell—it was the phone beside his bed. He scrambled the receiver up to his ear and managed to make a sound like “Hello.”
“It’s me,” said a woman’s voice. “Nikki.”
There was something familiar about both the voice and the name, but he couldn’t quite place them. “Um?” he said.
“That is Dr. Wilfred?” said the voice.
“Wrong number,” he mumbled, and went back to sleep.
* * *
When the phone rang again the woman was laughing.
“So that isn’t Dr. Wilfred?” she said.
It was her laughter that at last woke him up and returned him to recognizable normality.
“Nikki!” he said. “Nikki? Nikki…”
“Oh, so it is Dr. Wilfred?”
“I was asleep.”
“You certainly were. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Never mind. You obviously needed it. Not enough sleep last night, perhaps. Anyway, we’ve got here. He’s just dropping his bag in his room and freshening up. Then he’s on his way.”
“Who is?”
“Wellesley Luft! Your old friend!”
And now he was even more awake. I can do it, he thought at once. I can talk anyone into anything. Even my old friend Wellesley Luft into recognizing me as Dr. Wilfred. Bring him on.
As he put the foundation’s phone down he saw his own lying beside it, neglected and forgotten, where he had put it when he arrived the previous evening. He turned it on. He had texts, he had voice messages. He opened the texts. There were five new ones from Annuka. He skipped quickly up through the little windows. She seemed to be softening somewhat. She was forgiving him for having allowed her to throw him out.
He turned to the voice messages. The most recent was from Georgie. Yes, he should listen to it again, as he had promised himself earlier today, so he could truthfully tell her tomorrow that when she had said she was arriving tomorrow he had quite reasonably supposed that it had been not yesterday’s tomorrow she meant but today’s. Which would give him another night in hand.
He tapped the screen. But what sprang into his ear was not the message about arriving tomorrow—it was incomprehensible uncontrolled hysteria. Her voice was scarcely recognizable. “Oliver! Where are you?” it screamed at him. He snatched the phone away from his ear in surprise, but he could hear her raving on even at arm’s length. He turned the phone off. He thought he might sit this one out.
He had committed a solecism of some sort, obviously. Failed to phone when he had promised, or forgotten her birthday. But what he had promised was not to phone while she was with—what was he called?—Patrick. And her birthday? When they’d only ever met for five minutes?
He had a pee and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he sat down and concentrated his mind on being Dr. Wilfred, on being so overwhelmingly, so immanently Dr. Wilfred that he and Dr. Wilfred’s old friend would immediately recognize each other as such.
* * *
Georgie lay there on the lounger all afternoon in the shade of the beach umbrella, perhaps asleep, apparently entirely content to do nothing. Dr. Wilfred, though, grew more awake as the hours went by. He lay on his lounger, his head turned away from the source of his trouble, unable to move. He felt light-headed and nauseated, as though he had a temperature. He hadn’t had these symptoms for this particular reason for twenty years or more. A feverish shudder went through him, so sharp that his teeth rattled.
All he could think about were the two moles. The two moles and the three condoms. She the only girl in the world, he the only boy … The question was what he was going to do about it. How they were ever going to get out of this situation, where she was lying on one lounger and he was lying on the other. He had to do something. He had to make some kind of move, or they would remain here for ever. The more he thought about it, though, the less he could see what it should be.
* * *
Dr. Wilfred, thought Oliver, thought Dr. Wilfred, as he waited for his old friend. I’m Dr. Wilfred. Born wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred was born. Went to school wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred went to school. Am, in a word, two words, Dr. Wilfred.
His concentration was disturbed, though, because he kept remembering that note of hysteria in Georgie’s voice. An unsettling thought somehow thought itself. Maybe Georgie’s outrage had reached such a pitch that she had by one means or another discovered where he was. Maybe she was even now pursuing him here. Impossible, of course. Wasn’t it? There was
no way in which she could have followed his sudden private sideways leap into the persona of Dr. Wilfred. Dr. Wilfred, Dr. Wilfred … In any case, she was still waiting for a plane in Turkey. Wasn’t she?
He picked up the phone and touched the screen. “Oliver! Where are you?” she screamed again, but this time he kept the phone within screaming distance of his ear. “He was in bed! He was pretending to be you! He hasn’t done something to you, has he? Tied you up? Murdered you?”
And then silence.
He gazed at the phone in astonishment. He had quite often found it difficult to understand what women were complaining to him about, but never had any complaint been as totally incomprehensible as this one. Who was this man who was in bed, and who had done, or might have done, all these things? Patrick, presumably. But why should Patrick have pretended to be him? How could Patrick have pretended to be him, when he didn’t know him, since he’d taken care to get out of his chair in that bar, and out of his life, before Patrick had returned from his smoke? And how could Patrick have tied him up and murdered him when he was in Turkey and he himself, whether he was Dr. Wilfred or whether he wasn’t, was in Greece?
There was an earlier unplayed message from Georgie.
“Oliver,” said the voice, this time not in a scream but in a desperate whisper, “will you please answer your phone! I’m locked in the bathroom! He’s hammering on the door! I thought it was you! He nearly raped me! I don’t know how to phone the police in this country! Oliver! Please help me! I’m all on my own! In the bathroom!”
And then, again, silence.
He jumped to his feet, overwhelmed by alarm and anguish. He must do something, and do it at once! But what? He ran to the door, but couldn’t think where to go. He ran back, picked up the phone, and tried to call her back. “This number is not available,” it said.
So, she was trapped in a bathroom. By a potential rapist. Somewhere in Turkey. Phone the police, obviously. Phone which police, where? Which part of Turkey had she said she was going to be in? Or—yes—the British embassy! Look up Istanbul. No, Istanbul wasn’t the capital of Turkey. What was the capital of Turkey? He’d forgotten the name of the capital of Turkey!
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