"So what do we read, for Christ's sake? That's all I'm asking. What do we trade in? I can ask, can't I?" His agreeable silence only provoked her further. He was simply too senior for her gibes. "Are you a bookseller? What's your bag?"
He took his time. He could do that. His periods of prolonged consideration were already known in the family as Joseph's Three Minute Warnings.
"Bag?" he repeated with puzzled emphasis."Bag? Charlie, I am most things, perhaps, but I am not a burglar!"
Shouting down their laughter, Charlie appealed desperately to the others: "He can't just sit there in a vacuum and trade, you pinheads. What does he do? What's his racket?" She flopped back in her chair. "Christ," she said. "Morons." And gave up, looking spent and fifty, which she could achieve at the drop of a hat.
"Don't you really think it's all too boring to discuss, actually?" Joseph asked, perfectly pleasantly, when still no one came to her aid. "I would say money and work are the two things one comes to Mykonos to escape, actually, wouldn't you, Charlie?"
"Actually,I'd say it was like talking to a bloody Cheshire cat," Charlie retorted rudely.
Suddenly something came apart in her completely. She stood up, uttered a hissed exclamation, and, mustering the extra force required to drive away uncertainty, smashed her fist onto the table. It was the same table they had been sitting at when Joseph miraculously produced Al's passport. The plastic cloth slipped and an empty bottle of lemonade, their wasp-trap, flew straight into Pauly's lap. She began with a stream of obscenities, which embarrassed them because in Joseph's company they tended to drop the language; she accused him of being some kind of closet weirdo, draping himself around the beach and playing power games with chicks half his age. She wanted to say gumshoeing round Nottingham and York and London as well, but time had made her doubt her ground, and she was terrified of their ridicule, so she held it back. How much he understood of that first salvo they were not sure. Her voice was choked and furious and she was using her down-market accent. If they saw anything at all going on in Joseph's face, it was only a studious examination of Charlie.
"So what is it you want to know exactly, Charlie?" he enquired after his usual thoughtful pause.
"You've got a name for a start, haven't you?"
"You gave me one, Joseph."
"What's your real name?"
A dismayed silence had settled over the entire restaurant, and even those who loved Charlie absolutely, such as Willy and Pauly, felt their loyalty towards her strained.
"Richthoven," he replied finally, as if selecting from a considerable choice. "Like the flyer but with a ‘v.' Richthoven," he repeated roundly, as if warming to the notion. "Does that make me a different person suddenly? If I'm the kind of wicked fellow you think I am, why should you believe me anyway?"
"What Richthoven? What's your Christian name?"
Another pause before he made up his mind.
"Peter. But I prefer Joseph. Where do I live? Vienna. But I travel. You want my address? I give it to you. Unfortunately you will not find me in the phone book."
"So you're Austrian."
"Charlie. Please. Let us say I am a mongrel of mixed European and Oriental origins. Would that satisfy you?"
By this time the gang was coming out on Joseph's side with a series of embarrassed murmurs: "Charlie, for Christ's sake--come on,Chas,you're not in Trafalgar Square now--Chas,honest."
But Charlie had nowhere to go but forward. Flinging an arm across the table, she snapped her fingers very loud under Joseph's nose. One snap, then a second, so that by now every waiter, every customer in the taverna had turned to watch the fun.
"Passport, please! Come on, cross my frontier. You dug up Al's for him, now let's see yours. Date of birth, colour of eyes, nationality. Give!"
First he looked down at her outstretched fingers, which at that angle had an ugly obtrusiveness. Then up at her flushed face as if to reassure himself of her intention. Finally he smiled, and to Charlie his smile was like a light, unhurried dance upon the surface of a deep secret, taunting her with its assumptions and omissions.
"I'm sorry, Charlie, I fear that we mongrels have a rooted objection--I would say a historical one--to having our identity defined by pieces of paper. Surely as a progressive person you would share my sentiment?"
He took her hand in one of his and, having carefully folded up her fingers with the other, returned it to her side.
Charlie and Joseph began their tour of Greece the following week. Like other successful proposals, it was one that in a strict sense was never made. Cutting herself off from the gang completely, she had taken to walking into town early while it was still cool and frittering away the day in two or three tavernas, drinking Greek coffee and learning her lines from As You Like It, which she was to take to the West of England that autumn. Aware of being stared at, she glanced up and there was Joseph straight opposite her across the street, coming out of the pension, where she had discovered he was living: Richthoven, Peter, room 18, alone. It was the sheerest coincidence, she told herself afterwards, that she had chosen to sit in this taverna at the very hour when he would be leaving for the beach. Catching sight of her, he came and sat beside her.
"Go away," she said.
With a smile, he ordered himself a coffee. "I fear that now and then your friends become a somewhat rich diet," he confessed. "One is driven to seek the anonymity of the crowds."
"I'll say one is," said Charlie.
He looked to see what she was reading, and the next thing she knew they were discussing the part of Rosalind, practically scene by scene; except that Joseph was doing both sides of the talking. "She is so many people under one hat, I would say. Watching her unfold throughout the play, one has the impression of a person occupied by a whole regiment of conflicting characters. She is good, she is wise, she is forfeit somehow, she sees too much, she has even a sense of social duty. I would say that you were well cast for this part, Charlie."
She couldn't help herself. "Ever been to Nottingham, Jose?" she demanded, staring straight at him and not troubling to smile.
"Nottingham? I fear not. Should I have been? Is Nottingham a place of particular merit? Why do you ask?"
Her lips were getting pins and needles. "It's just I was acting there last month. I hoped you might have seen me."
"But how awfully interesting. What should I have seen you in? What was the show?"
"Saint Joan. Shaw's Saint Joan. I was Joan."
"But that's one of my favourite plays. I am sure that not a year passes without my rereading the Introduction to Saint Joan. Will you be playing it again? Perhaps I shall get another chance?"
"We played at York too," she said, her eyes still intently fixed upon his own.
"Really? So you took it on tour. How nice."
"Yes, isn't it? Is York a place you've been to on your travels?"
"Alas, I have never been farther north than Hampstead, London. But I am told that York is very beautiful."
"Oh, it's great. Specially the Minster."
She went on staring at him as long as she dared, the face in the front row of the stalls. She searched his dark eyes and the taut skin round them for the smallest tremor of complicity or laughter, but nothing yielded, nothing confessed.