five
The boat was two hours late arriving in Piraeus, and if Joseph had not already pocketed her air ticket Charlie might well have stood him up then and there. Though again she mightn't, for under her scatty exterior she was cursed with a dependability of character that was often wasted on the company she kept. For one thing, she'd had too much time to think, and though she had by now convinced herself that the spectral observer of Nottingham, York, and East London was either a different man or no man at all, there was still an unsettling voice inside her that would not be talked down. For another thing, declaring her plans to the family had not been half as easy as Joseph had made out it was going to be. Lucy had wept and pressed money on her--"My last five hundred drachs, Chas, all for you." Willy and Pauly, drunk, had gone down on their knees on the dockside before an estimated audience of thousands--"Chas, Chas,how can you do this to us?"--and to escape, she'd had to fight her way though a grinning throng, then run the length of the road with the strap of her shoulder bag broken, her guitar flapping under her other arm, and foolish tears of remorse flooding her face. She was saved by, of all people, the flaxen hippy boy from Mykonos, who must have crossed on the boat with them, though she hadn't seen him. Passing by in a taxi, he scooped her up and dumped her fifty yards from her destination. He was Swedish and his name was Raoul, he said. His father was in Athens on a business trip; Raoul hoped to hit him for some bread. She was a little surprised to find him quite so lucid, and he never mentioned Jesus once.
The Diogenes restaurant had a blue awning. A cardboard chef beckoned her in.
Sorry, Jose, wrong time, wrong place. Sorry, Jose, it was a great fantasy but the holiday's over and Chas is for the smoke, so I'll just take back that ticket and blow.
Or perhaps she would choose the easier way and say she'd been offered a part.
Feeling a slut in her worn jeans and scuffed boots, she banged her way between the pavement tables until she came to the interior door. Anyway, he'll be gone, she told herself--who waits two hours for a lay these days?--ticket with the concierge next door. Maybe that will teach me to go chasing mid-European beach bums through Athens by night, she thought. To compound her problems, Lucy had last night pressed on her some more of her wretched pills, which had first lit her up like a light-bulb and afterwards dropped her down a dark hole from which she was still trying to emerge. Charlie didn't use those things as a rule, but dangling between two lovers, as she had begun to think of it, had made her vulnerable.
She was about to enter the restaurant when two Greek men burst out laughing at her broken shoulder bag. She strode over to them and cursed them in a fury, calling them sexist pigs. Trembling, she shoved the door with her foot and stepped inside. The air turned cool, the babble of the pavement stopped, she was standing in a twilit, panelled restaurant, and there in his own bit of darkness sat Saint Joseph of the Island, creep and well-known author of all her guilt and disorder, with a Greek coffee at his elbow and a paperback book open in front of him.
Just don't touch me, she warned him in her mind, as he came towards her. Just don't take one finger of me for granted. I'm tired and famished, I'm liable to bite, and I've given up sex for the next two hundred years.
But the most he took of her was her guitar and her broken shoulder bag. And the most he gave her was a swift, practical handshake from the other side of the Atlantic. So that all she could think of to say was "You're wearing a silk shirt." Which he was, a cream one with gold cuff-links big as bottle tops. "Christ, Jose, look at you!" she exclaimed as she took in the rest of his hardware. "Gold bracelet, gold watch--I can't even turn my back and you find yourself a rich protectress!" All of which spilled out of her in a part-hysterical, part-aggressive tone, with the instinctive aim, perhaps, of making him feel as uncomfortable about his appearance as she felt about her own. So what do I expect him to be wearing? she asked herself in a fury--his monk's bloody bathing pants and his water-bottle?
But Joseph let it all go past him anyway.
"Charlie. Hullo. The boat was late. Poor you. Never mind. You are here." That at least was Joseph--no triumph, no surprise, just a grave Biblical greeting and a nod of command to the waiter. "A wash first or a whisky? The ladies' room is over there."
"Whisky," she said, and slumped into a chair opposite him.
It was a good place, she knew it immediately. The kind of place the Greeks keep for themselves.
"Oh, and before I forget--" he was reaching behind him.
Forget what? she thought, head in hands, staring at him. Come on, Jose. You never forgot anything in your life. From under the bench Joseph had spirited a woollen Greek bag, a very lurid one, which he presented to her with an ostentatious avoidance of ceremony.
"Since we are stepping into the world together, here is your escape kit. Inside, you will find your air ticket from Thessalonika to London, still reversible if you wish; also the means for you to shop, run away, or simply change your mind. Was it difficult getting away from your friends? I am sure it was. One hates to deceive people, but most of all the people one cares for."
He spoke as if he knew all about deception. Practised it every day with regret.
"No parachute," she complained, peering into the bag. "Thanks, Jose." She said it a second time. "That's stylish.
Thanks a lot." But she had the feeling of not believing herself any more. Must be Lucy's pills, she thought. Steamer-lag.
"So what about a lobster? In Mykonos you said lobster was your favourite food. Was that true? The chef is keeping one for you and he will kill it instantly at your command. Why not?"
Her chin still resting in her palm, Charlie let her humour get the better of her. With a weary smile, she raised her other fist and gave a Caesar's thumbs-down, commanding that the lobster die.
"Tell them I want it done with minimum force," she said. Then she took hold of one of his hands and squeezed it in both of hers in order to apologise for her glooms. He smiled and left his hand with her to play with. It was a beautiful hand, with slim, hard fingers and very strong muscles.
"And the wine you like," said Joseph. "Boutaris, white and cold. Isn't that what you used to say?"
Yes, she thought, watching his hand make its solitary journey back across the table. That is what I used to say. Ten years ago when we met on that quaint little Greek island.
"And after dinner, as your personal Mephistopheles, I shall take you up a high hill and show you the second-best place in the world. You agree? A mystery tour?"
"I want the best," she said, drinking her Scotch.
"And I never award first prizes," he replied placidly.
Get me out of here! she thought. Sack the writer! Get a new script. She tried a party gambit straight out of Rickmansworth.
"So what did you get up to these last days, Jose? Apart from pining for me, naturally."
He did not quite answer. Instead, he asked her about her own waiting, about the journey, and the gang. He smiled when she told him about the providential lift in the taxi from the hippy boy who didn't mention Jesus; he wanted to know whether she had news of Alastair and was politely disappointed to hear that she had not. "Oh, he never writes," she said, with a careless laugh. He asked her what film part she thought he might be offered; she guessed a spaghetti Western and he found this funny: it was not an expression he had heard before, and insisted on having it explained to him. By the time she had finished her Scotch, she began to feel she might be attractive to him after all. Talking to him of Al, she was impressed to hear herself making room for a new man in her life.