She rejoined Julian. She slipped her arm around his back and kissed him affectionately. He played up to it, for the benefit of all.
Veronica put her glass on a Chinese table with the exaggerated movement of the extremely drunk, stepping back to admire her work as if she had arranged and placed a vase of flowers. She stood shimmering for a moment.
A space cleared, as if others sensed the change in atmosphere.
Her dress slashed to the waist and skewed over one shoulder to expose one small well-shaped breast, on heels so vertiginous she could only walk extremely slowly and deliberately, she seemed to take a long time to pitch and roll towards them on her set course.
Finally, she arrived in front of Julian. His eyes were on a level with her chest, ‘Ah, Veronica. I’d know those nipples anywhere.’
Veronica swung an arm, and cracked a slap against his cheek.
It rang out. The room fell silent.
Then she turned to retrace her steps, but tripped, breaking a heel of one shoe as she saved herself instinctively. In a parody of dignified retreat, Veronica limped the length of the room.
Julian rubbed his face.
‘What the hell was that for?’ he asked.
The party noise resumed immediately, louder and more excited than before.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the mood for this any more.’
He took her hand and led the way.
Elizabeth followed, quietly satisfied, but feeling shocked too – shocked at herself and what she had done, how easy it had been.
His clasp was warm and strong, pulling her down through the groves. The night air was a cool caress on her bare shoulders. They did not speak. She did not ask where they were going. The sea rubbed against the rocks below to their right. He was sure-footed and she followed. The path wound up and down. She barely noticed the walking. She was still astonished at her own initiative, and uncomfortable with the unkindness.
When he stopped, he pulled her to him. His mouth opened hers, soft and compelling. Her body responded.
Not far below them was the pool, black and bottomless before the copper path which led to the moon. She recognised the hut-like building pale above the glittering water.
Lights passed on a ship, silent and alluring, flying through the night.
The dark earth retained the day’s heat, baked into the ground. His warm hand was on her stomach. She brushed her cheek against his chest. Then he guided her to the grassy mound on the ground above the shrine.
She pulled off his shirt and tasted the familiar sweet saltiness of his skin. The sea where they had swum was still on them both. She felt a surge of euphoria as he pulled her dress up.
A dry twig snapped only a few yards away.
They froze, listening for more sounds. She giggled, then kissed him again, wanting him more than ever, feeling equal to him.
More cracking in the undergrowth made them both start.
‘It must be one of the fishermen,’ whispered Julian. ‘He’ll be going down with his trident and an oil lamp for an octopus.’
All was black and resinous where they lay.
The footsteps were irregular. Was that a voice, muttering low between breaths? Elizabeth held her own. Each crack of the ground cover was followed by a brush of the fine carpet of pine needles. The strange rhythm grew more insistent. The brush after the beat, like the sound of a slow-hand jazz drummer.
She could not help but giggle.
‘Can you see anything?’ she asked.
‘No.’
She began to kiss his neck lightly, expecting him to enjoy the incongruity. But he gently stopped her.
They waited, listening, still stretched out in the undergrowth.
The sound was the same: crack-shuffle, crack-shuffle.
It made her think of Veronica again, and the drunken attempted elegance of her one-heeled walk, and she smiled to herself. She would not mention it. She did not want to go on about it.
‘Fuck,’ said Julian. ‘It’s her again.’
The silver dress gleamed in the moonlight. Like a malevolent mermaid, Veronica sat on the rock. She was speaking to herself, in spurts and mumblings.
‘I thought that slap had an air of finality about it,’ said Elizabeth, trying to inject some grim humour. ‘Obviously I was wrong.’
‘I’m sick of this,’ he said.
Elizabeth shivered. ‘What are you doing?’
He stood up as if braced for a confrontation. ‘I’m going to talk to her.’
‘Shall I come too?’
‘You stay here. Probably make it worse if you said anything.’
He started down, then turned and motioned to her to keep out of sight.
Elizabeth thumped the ground in annoyance. The night was really being spoiled. She had a sudden visceral, primitive desire to lash out and hurt the other woman. It was so unlike her, that she was shocked again, this time by her own violent impulse.
These thoughts pinned her to the ground. From the back of her mind, a dread rose. Without being able to identify its source, she felt sucked down by fear.
Minutes passed. She could not hear what Adie was saying to Veronica, only the low murmur of conversation from beyond the shrine. Then louder voices, his then hers, harsh and shrill.
They would have to take her back, Elizabeth supposed. Back to the party, back to wherever she was staying. It was not how any of them would have chosen to end the evening.
Elizabeth stood up as quietly as she could and began to creep closer, wanting to hear what was being said. The monochrome of the pine wood, the cypress spears, the scrubby hillside seemed to close in on her. She was behind the shrine now, in the shadows.
Julian and Veronica must be sitting or standing below, on the turtleback rocks; she could not see them. She picked her way down. She heard a splash, followed by another.
Were they swimming together? Surely not. The dark sea was too powerful, too dangerous for someone in her state.
Elizabeth stumbled out on to the flatter rocks. She could see nothing in the water.
‘Julian?’ Then she called his name again, louder, across the inky pool.
Silence.
Then he broke the surface, gulping noisily for breath.
‘What’s going on?’ shouted Elizabeth.
Still no response.
‘Where’s Veronica?’
‘Gone!’ he gasped furiously.
‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘In the water.’
‘But – she can’t swim that drunk!’ Elizabeth scanned the swell. Was that a movement further out? ‘Veronica!’ she shouted. ‘Are you there?’
No answer.
Adie dived underwater again. He swam like a dolphin. He was strong. If the woman was down there, he would pull her up. He shot up again, scattering silver droplets.
‘What happened?’ Elizabeth asked uselessly. She had heard the twin splashes.
‘Stupid, stupid woman!’ he was shouting. ‘What was she thinking of?’
‘She can’t be far away. It hasn’t been long enough.’
He hit the water angrily with a flat palm, looking wildly all about.
‘She’s not there? Veronica!’ shouted Elizabeth.
‘What can you see from up there?’
‘Nothing . . . nothing!’
They shouted, louder and louder, across the sea. Nothing came back but the faint echo of their own voices.
‘What should we do now?’ asked Elizabeth, starting to tremble.
‘I don’t know . . .’
Elizabeth tried to be rational. ‘Are you sure she’s still in there – she didn’t climb out and you didn’t see her go? You might have been underwater, not heard anything—’
‘It’s possible . . . but if that was the case you would have seen something, heard something—’
‘I suppose . . .’
‘I’m going to get the boat,’ said Julian, hauling himself out of the water. ‘You run to Agni and – no, wait
. . .’
‘What? What should I do?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing you can do—’
‘But—!’
‘No. I want you to do what I tell you,’ Julian told her. ‘Go back to Kouloura. Go up to the tavernas at Agni and call yourself a taxi – better, take the water bus if it’s still running. Go home!’
‘But I can’t!’
‘Yes. You can. You must. Look, there’s no time to waste.’
‘And what are you—?’ she cried.
But he had already set off back up the path the way they had come. ‘I’m going to get the boat . . .!’ he shouted back.
‘Should I call someone for help?’
His words floated down to her.
‘I’ll do it!’
IV
AT KOULOURA SHE waited the next morning, watching the sulky water, the sunless currents. A wind beyond the headland ruffled the cypresses. The same rocks, the same trees and scrub moved silently above a grey sea. All had changed.
Julian stayed away. No news came. In a state of suspension, pleading a hangover, Elizabeth sat for hours in the garden. The hills across the strait turned a sullen face to the emptiness, brown turning to a menacing iris-mauve as the day wore on. That evening the colours were too vibrant for her tired eyes, the contrast too reckless.
And all the time, jarring her nerves, making her head ache, was the appalling doubt that everything was as normal as it seemed. Where was Julian, what had happened next? She should never have left. She was furious with herself for following his orders so meekly. If only she had insisted on going back with him. But he had been so decisive when she had had no idea what to do next. In the heat of the moment she had let him override her better judgement. Just like so many other times, whispered a sly voice in her head.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. What did she actually remember of the previous night? Did the two of them, Adie and she, really see Veronica on the rocks? Yes. The mermaid dress was so distinctive. Was Veronica sitting or standing? Sitting. Did she seem agitated or calm? Earlier she had been drunk and truculent. Did she argue with Julian when he went down to her? There were raised voices. Did she threaten to hurl herself off the rocks and he ignored her? Julian was not ignoring her. Did she go into the water? There was a splash, followed soon after by another. Was there a tussle and she slipped into the sea? It was impossible for Elizabeth to know. Did Veronica try to swim? Again, impossible to know.
Had Julian been in time to take the boat out and find her in the water?
Or was Veronica still missing?
The letter. If she was still missing, it would be her fault.
Elizabeth shivered. She should never have done such a stupid thing. Of all of them, Veronica might not have been the most unhappy, but she was quite possibly the one most out of control. Here was a woman, twice divorced and a heavy drinker, become child-like in her need, and unable to imagine the consequences of her actions.
She forced herself to breathe calmly.
Surely the most likely answer was that Veronica had crawled back to the party, dripping wet and crazed. A bed would have been found for her, and she would have spent the day suffering.
Elizabeth fervently hoped that was the case.
There was of course another possibility: that Adie, having found Veronica, had allowed her to persuade him to spend the night with her. Both salt and wound. But in the circumstances, Elizabeth began to think that might not be the worst outcome.
Still he did not appear, or even telephone. By early evening, Elizabeth was in such a state of agitation that she got ready as if she was due to meet him, allowing Clive and Mary to assume this was the case, and took the water bus to Agni. From there she walked up to the olive press. No one was there. Neither was he in any of the local tavernas. She walked over the headland and down into Kalami, even stopping to ask one man outside a boathouse if he had seen Adie that day. Darkness fell, but she did not find him.
Back at Kouloura much later, feeling shrunken and with uncomfortable intimations of guilt, she considered asking Clive for some telephone numbers of Adie’s friends on the island but stopped short of doing so. It seemed wrong to alert anyone else to whatever it was that had happened. This was between the two of them; she needed to talk to him without provoking questions.
Mary knew something was wrong. ‘You’re such a lovely girl,’ she said. ‘Don’t let yourself be hurt by him.’
Elizabeth spent a second sleepless night.
Early morning the next day, the news spread fast through the villages.
Mary, holding loaves of fresh bread from a shop in Kassiope, told her, ‘There’s been a drowning. The fishermen at the Forty Winds found a body.’
Elizabeth trembled, hardly able to breathe as she asked, ‘Who?’
‘They don’t know yet.’
‘Man . . . or woman?’
‘Woman.’
She had been washed up on a narrow beach of white stones. The body was encased in a gleaming skin of silvery scales. The fishermen thought they had found a sleeping mermaid, with her blue-white skin and matted tendrils of dark hair. On the Nereid’s face and upper arms were plum smudges of deep bruising.
He was there, this time, at the olive press. Her first instinct was to open her arms to him, grateful he was safe.
When I heard about the body – I thought it might have been you! You went off into the dark and then . . . nothing! she wanted to cry. But she did not. She knew not to even before he said anything.
In the doorway, Adie was unshaven and shuffling. For the first time, he seemed his age.
‘You’d better come in,’ he mumbled.
The room was in disarray. A piece of paper stuck up half-ripped from the roller of his old typewriter. The poems he had been working on were litter on the floor, torn, defaced and crumpled.
No mention was made of his avoidance of her. Elizabeth wanted to say that any guilt was irrational. They had not made Veronica follow them, had wanted no part of her silly games. But again she kept her thoughts to herself.
‘What happened?’
Adie lit a cigarette. The ashtray on the table was overflowing, the smell from old butts acrid. She pulled up a chair opposite him.
‘I sat down on the rock with her,’ he said. ‘I told her I would take her back to the party, take her home, whatever she wanted. But what she wanted was to sit on the damn rock and give me hell.’
‘What was she saying?’
‘She just wanted an argument.’
‘So you argued?’
He shrugged.
‘Why did she jump into the water?’
‘She wanted me to swim with her.’
It was only then that Elizabeth realised. ‘You’d brought her there before, hadn’t you?’
A reluctant nod.
So much for being special, thought Elizabeth. ‘So then what happened?’
‘I bloody well jumped in after her. She was so off her rocker she had no idea how dangerous it was!’
‘Were you still arguing?’
‘I’m sure I was arguing with her.’
‘They say she had bruise marks all up her arms,’ said Elizabeth. The picture was in her head all the time. The silvery body washed up on the beach.
‘I was trying to fish her out – she was struggling against me, the stupid, stupid woman. She was far too drunk to know what she was doing.’ A vein was bulging on his neck.
Elizabeth hesitated. It was only for a split second.
‘You don’t believe me!’ he shouted, turning on her.
His hand closed on her wrist, pulling her roughly in to him.
‘You’re hurting me! Of course I believe you. I was there, wasn’t I?’
He let her go. ‘Sorry.’
In an instant, he was so subdued she wondered if he had slipped back into the raw grief he had only recently overcome. His blue shirt was stiff and stank of stale salt water.
‘It was an accident,’ she said soothingly. ‘A terrible accident
that you did your best to prevent. I heard you splash into the water after her.’
He was tossing down glass after glass of foul retsina. It was on his breath as he spoke. She noticed his hands were trembling as he described how he ran back to Nissaki to get the boat. All night he had gone up and down the coast searching for her, torch in hand, outboard motor gunning. The night fishermen had joined him. No one had seen or heard anything.
‘So – the police? They know all this?’
‘They know.’
There was nothing more to be said. She reached out and put a hand on his broad shoulder.
Eyes deep blue, in the face that now seemed creased, he fixed her with an unreadable gaze. Seconds passed.
Her gaze dropped to the binoculars on the messy table. The strap had snapped and the rough ends were tied.
‘We had better not be seen together any more,’ he said.
She was aghast. ‘Why? We’ve done nothing wrong. Surely we just have to tell someone – the police – exactly what happened! That she followed us from the party and we know when and where she went into the water.’
He did not answer.
‘Julian?’
‘No.’
‘No? Why not?’
‘We can’t, that’s all.’
She stood astonished. ‘But . . . why?’
Elizabeth started to shake.
He stood up. ‘I’m leaving tonight. I’m going back to France.’
‘I don’t understand . . .’
He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans. ‘I can’t stick it here now.’
‘No . . .’ She looked away from him and saw for the first time the tatty suitcase open on the floor, filled with bundled swirls of cotton clothes.
‘It hasn’t been the best way to—’ He rubbed his sticky hair, embarrassed perhaps.
‘Will I see you again?’ she interrupted. But she would not, could not, say, Don’t go.
He shook his head. ‘Who knows?’
The temperature dropped. He was closed off to her. She had no way of bringing back the man she had known for the past two months. That was not the person standing in front of her, a shrunken man who would not meet her eyes. Her heart was pounding as she stepped back instinctively.
‘You want me to go then?’
Silence.
Songs of Blue and Gold Page 19