by Simon Brett
The terrified sounds from behind Conchita’s gag redoubled in intensity. Time perhaps, Mrs Pargeter thought, for a tactical lie. If she could only calm the girl and keep her cheerful for a couple of minutes, it would all be over. The smoke in that enclosed place would probably asphyxiate them before they felt the real force of the flames.
“It’s all right, love,” she reassured, with no basis of truth whatsoever. “Larry had warned Yianni we were coming up here. He’s waiting nearby. He’ll save us.”
This did something to steady Conchita, though of course it didn’t comfort Mrs Pargeter much. Nor did the flames racing towards the hut, grotesquely parodying the warmth and brightness by which package tours to Corfu are sold.
Well, it’s been a good life, she concluded, with a little nod of thanks towards the late Mr Pargeter for making it so.
Then she had a thought.
Pagan, ridiculous, yes, but she wasn’t in a position to take too long in assessing the pros and cons of any course of action.
She’d tried prayer. All that had brought her had been release from Sergeant Karaskakis and his replacement by Spiro. Out of the frying pan, all too literally into the fire.
But then maybe her prayers had been misaddressed. When in Rome and all that… Got to abide by local customs, after all, haven’t you?
And it couldn’t do any harm.
“St Spiridon!” Mrs Pargeter loudly supplicated. “Please save our lives!”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Forty-One
Now of course the wind could have been about to change at that moment, anyway. Winds do change all the time for no particular reason – it’s regarded as part and parcel of the job, if you happen to be born a wind – and they are particularly prone to variation near the sea shore.
But the speed with which those flames, at one moment about to swallow up the wooden hut, had in the next changed their minds and retreated, leaving only skeletal vestiges of smouldering brush in their wake, did seem more than coincidental.
Mrs Pargeter was not by nature superstitious, but thereafter she always felt a particular affection for the memory of St Spiridon and, in subsequent moments of extremity, was more than once heard to invoke his name.
The recession of the flames, which consumed lustily everything they found in their path to the point of the headland, coincided with the return to consciousness of Larry Lambeth. After a few minutes of reorientation, he released the two women from their bonds.
As they were easing their stiffened limbs, they heard approaching shouts and saw a crowd hurrying up from the village. Arming themselves with branches of brushwood, the men of Agios Nikitas attacked the fire’s last pockets of resistance.
And soon they heard drawing near the drone of the first fire-fighting aeroplane.
By romantic serendipity, it was Yianni who first entered the hut to check if anything was alight in there. And a romantic novelist might have observed, from the enthusiasm with which she threw herself into his arms, that the only flame therein was the one that burned in Conchita’s heart.
It was only when the last sparks of the real fire were being extinguished that the bodies were found.
Sergeant Karaskakis, fleeing from the flames, had stumbled over the cliff edge and broken his neck on the rocks below.
Spiro, by contrast, had stood his ground and the flames had consumed him so thoroughly that he could only be identified by a process of elimination.
St Spiridon had not only answered Mrs Pargeter’s prayer, but had also, with a godlike facility for killing two birds with one stone, contrived at the same time to fulfil the prophecy of the older Spiro Karaskakis.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Forty-Two
It was the last evening of the fortnight’s package. Last visits had been paid to favourite beaches. The minimarket had been raided for souvenirs – sponges, ceramic drink mats, ‘No Problem’ T-shirts, lighters with outlines of Corfu on them, pencils topped by white-skirted soldiers, and a good few ouzo bottles in the shape of classical Greek columns. A few people had even bought retsina, under the mistaken impression that it would taste the same when they got it home.
And now everyone had homed in on their favourite taverna for that last celebratory meal. Before the end of the evening a good few would have pushed the boat out by ordering what the menu inaccurately called lobster ‘because, after all, it’s our last night’, others would have made the unwise decision to give the old Greek brandy a bashing ‘because, after all, it’s our last night’, while yet more would have made rash promises to taverna-owners and waiters that they ‘really would be back next year’.
And the taverna-owners and waiters of Agios Nikitas would have nodded and smiled farewell with those assurances of undying friendship which they would accord impartially to every departing visitor of the summer, before they retired to Agralias to spend the winter moaning about the decline in the tourist trade.
Though she had been well looked after at the Hotel Nausica, it did not occur to Mrs Pargeter to spend her last evening anywhere other than Spiro’s taverna. Or rather Yianni’s taverna, as it now was.
The young man had come to the inheritance by an easier route than his predecessor, but already showed signs of a new maturity in handling its responsibilities. With the help of his aunt Theodosia, who was taking the first faltering steps back to normal life, he promised to be a good businessman.
Already he had demonstrated a steelier side of his nature by cutting off a long-standing credit account. If Georgio wanted to continue drinking ouzo all day, from now on he was going to have to pay for it.
Georgio, soon realising that he didn’t actually have any money, had turned to Ginnie and been astonished to have his appeals turned down. The worm had finally turned and she walked out on him, announcing that at the end of the season she would return permanently to England. Georgio felt confident that he could probably woo her back, but somehow never got round to doing anything about it.
After a couple of days without the means to buy drink, he readily succumbed to Yianni’s offer of a job in the kitchen, where he was destined to spend the rest of his life washing up and dreaming of ever more impracticable ways of making money.
That last evening Conchita had been sitting with Mrs Pargeter, but had just gone inside the taverna. That’s where she’d spent most of the evenings of the last week, sitting at the bar with a drink under the benign gaze of old Spiro, and trying to get some attention from an increasingly preoccupied Yianni.
Mrs Pargeter looked around at the crowd under the awning.
Linda from South Woodham Ferrers was regretting her decision to see whether Craig liked moussaka, as she picked oily slivers of aubergine off the white tasselled ‘Corfu Sport’ T-shirt she’d bought that afternoon. Keith from South Woodham Ferrers was poring over the menu with his calculator, trying to estimate the bill for that evening’s meal and come up with an overall total for what the holiday had cost them. He really wouldn’t mind getting back to the office now. Been feeling that for most of the last week, actually. Great to get away, of course, but a fortnight was a long time.
At another table the Secretary with Short Bleached Hair and the Secretary with Long Bleached Hair, now both more or less uniformly brown, were sitting with two squaddies they’d picked up the night before in a disco in Dassia and invited for the evening. The boys had hitched a lift to Agios Nikitas, but there was no way they’d be able to get back that night. Which of course meant that they’d have to come back to the villa. Which meant they’d try and get into bed with the girls. Which wasn’t a problem in itself. But for the fact that both girls fancied the tall Yorkshire one with the butterfly tattooed on his shoulder, and neither fancied the short Welsh one with the snake tattooed up his right leg. They watched each other warily, trying to cover every move.
At another table Mr Safari Suit was setting some new arrivals at their ease. “Been very hot today, hasn’t it? Cor! Phew!”
The ne
w arrivals decided it really was time they got their bill. Mr Safari Suit comforted himself by arranging Mrs Safari Suit artistically against the taverna wall for the ‘and this was on our last evening’ shot.
Mrs Pargeter decided it really hadn’t been a bad fortnight. Not sure that she’d choose to go on a package holiday again, though.
She let out a little shudder as she contemplated the next day’s arrangements – the steamy queueing at Corfu Airport, the inevitable delay in the departure lounge, the plastic food in the crowded plane. No, next time, she decided, she’d let Hamish Ramon Henriques make her holiday arrangements. His attitude to the business of travel was comfortingly close to that of the late Mr Pargeter.
She saw Conchita coming out of the taverna towards her, and felt a momentary pang for Joyce’s death. Conchita would be travelling back tomorrow by scheduled flight, but her enjoyment of that comfort might be inhibited by the knowledge that her mother’s coffin was accompanying her.
The suicide verdict, incidentally, had been ratified, which was fine by Mrs Pargeter. She didn’t care whether official records were right or wrong, so long as she herself knew that justice had been done.
“Yianni busy?” she asked, as Conchita sat down.
“So what else is new?”
“Sorry you’ll be saying goodbye to him tomorrow?”
“I’ll survive.”
“Think you’ll be back to see him again soon?”
Conchita laughed and shook her head. “No way. Beautiful he may be, but he’s as conventional as hell. Deeply shocked when I suggested he should go to bed with me.”
Mrs Pargeter, not for the first time, contemplated the cultural differences between the Corfiots and the tourists who provided their pitta bread and butter. Must put quite a strain on the men, she imagined, being surrounded all day by half-naked tourists and then going back to the rigid peasant morality of their homes.
“No,” Conchita was saying, “only way I could come back here to Yianni would be if I married him.” A shiver passed through her. “Just imagine it. No, most of the men I know in London may be bastards, but at least they sometimes let me be myself.”
Suddenly Mrs Pargeter stopped feeling sorry for Conchita. The girl kept meeting bastards because she wanted to meet bastards and she’d go on doing it all her life. What was more, she’d see to it that she gave them at least as much hell as they gave her.
“Hello, Mrs P. Conchita.”
Larry Lambeth had bustled up to join them. He waved to a waiter for more drinks, sat down and handed a brown envelope across to Mrs Pargeter.
“Here it is.”
No one had been able to find her passport after Sergeant Karaskakis’ death. She had said maybe she should get on to the British Consul to organise a replacement, but Larry Lambeth wouldn’t hear of it. “Take for ever, that would. You leave it with me. Fact is, I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” he’d said, and winked.
She pulled out the passport and studied it. “It looks terrific.”
He smiled with quiet pride. “Quite pleased with it myself. A first for me, actually, you know.”
“Oh, really?”
“First time I’ve ever had to do one for someone’s real identity.”
“Ah,” said Mrs Pargeter.
She was about to ask where he’d got the original passport which he had so skilfully doctored, but stopped herself in time.
She recognised yet another of those situations when it wasn’t necessary for her to know all the details. The late Mr Pargeter had trained her frightfully well.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 4712a0bb-d980-4474-ad65-43a0e5a4fa1c
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 31.5.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.53, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Simon Brett
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