"Anyway, I just hope he is successful, that's all," she said, implying that success might compensate him for other disappointments.
But even while she made this progress towards him she was assailed yet again by her sense of wrongness. It was a feeling she had on stage sometimes, when a scene was not playing: that events were happening singly and in wooden succession; that the line of dialogue was too thin, too straight. Now, she thought. Fishing in her shoulder bag, she produced an olive-wood box and handed it to him across the table. He took it because it was offered but did not at once recognise it as a gift, and to her amusement she detected a moment of anxiety, even suspicion in his face, as if some unexpected factor threatened to upset his plans.
"You're supposed to open it," she explained.
"But what is it?" Clowning for her, he gently shook it, then put it to his ear. "Shall I order a bucket of water?" he asked. Sighing as if no good would come of it, he lifted the lid and contemplated the twists of tissue paper nestling inside. "Charlie. What is this? I am completely confused. I insist you take them straight back to wherever you found them."
"Go on. Unwrap one."
He held up a hand; she watched it hover as if over her own body, then descend on the first package, which was the big pink shell she had saved from the beach on the day he left the island. Solemnly he laid it on the table and took out the next offering, a carved Greek donkey made in Taiwan, bought from the souvenir shop, with "Joseph" hand-painted by herself on the rump. Holding it in both hands, he turned it over and over while he studied it.
"It's a boy," she said. But she could not shift the earnestness of his expression. "And that's me sulking," she explained as he lifted out the framed colour photograph taken on Robert's Polaroid of Charlie in rear view, wearing her straw hat and kaftan. "I had a rage on and wouldn't pose. I thought you'd appreciate it."
His gratitude had a note of sober afterthought that chilled her. Thank you but no, he seemed to be saying; thank you but another time. Not Pauly, not Lucy, and not you either. She hesitated, then said it--kindly and gently, straight into his face. "Jose, we don't have to go on with this, you know. I can still hoof it to the plane, if that's what you'd prefer. I just didn't want you to--
"To what?"
"I didn't want to hold you to a rash promise. That's all."
"It was not rash. It was most seriously meant."
Now it was his turn. He produced a wad of travel brochures. Unbidden, she moved round and sat beside him, her left arm thrown carelessly over his shoulder so that they could study them together. His shoulder was as hard as a cliff and about as intimate, but she left her arm there. Delphi, Jose: gosh, super. Her hair was against his cheek. She had washed it for him last night. Olympus: terrific. Meteora: never heard of it. Their foreheads were touching. Thessalonika: wow. The hotels they would stay at, all planned, all booked. She kissed his cheekbone, just beside the eye, a casual peck bestowed upon a passing target. He smiled and gave her hand an avuncular squeeze, till she almost ceased to wonder what it was in him, or in her, that gave him the right to take her over without a fight, without even a surrender; or where the recognition came from--the "Charlie, yes, hullo"--that had turned their first meeting into a reunion of old friends and this one into a conference about their honeymoon.
Forget it, she thought. "You never wear a red blazer, do you, Jose?" she asked before she had even considered the question. "Wine-coloured, brass buttons, a breath of the twenties about the cut?"
His head slowly lifted, he turned and returned her stare. "Is that a joke?"
"No. It's a straight question."
"A red blazer? But why on earth should I? Do you want me to support your football team or something?"
"You'd look good in one. That's all." He was still waiting for her explanation. "It's just the way I see people sometimes," she said, beginning to fight her way out. "Theatrically. In my mind. You don't know actresses, do you? I put make-up on people--beards--all sorts of things. You'd be amazed. I dress them up too. Plus-fours. Uniform. All in my imagination. It's habit."
"Do you want me to grow a beard for you, you mean?"
"If I do, I'll let you know."
He smiled, she smiled back--another meeting across the footlights--his gaze released her and she took herself off to the ladies' room, raging at her own face in the mirror while she tried to work him out. No wonder he's got bloody bullet-holes, she thought. Women did it.
They had eaten, they had talked with the earnestness of strangers, he had paid the bill from a crocodile-skin wallet that must have cost half the national debt of whatever country owned him.
"Are you getting me on expenses, Jose?" she asked as she watched him fold and pocket the receipt.
The question went unanswered, for suddenly, thank God, his familiar administrative genius had taken charge and they were frightfully short of time.
"Please look out for an exhausted green Opel with dented wings and a ten-year-old driver," he told her as he hurried her down a cramped kitchen passage, her luggage across his arms.
"Right-ho," she said.
It was waiting at the side entrance, dented wings as he had promised. The driver took her luggage from him and put it in the boot, fast. He was freckled and blond and healthy-looking with a big, buckwheat grin, and yes, he looked if not ten then fifteen at most. The hot night was shedding its habitual slow rain.
"Charlie, meet Dimitri," said Joseph as he ushered her into the back seat. "His mother has given him permission to stay up late tonight. Dimitri, kindly take us to the second-best place in the world." He had slipped in beside her. The car started immediately, and with it his facetious tour-guide monologue. "So, Charlie, here we have the home of modern Greek democracy, Constitution Square; note the many democrats enjoying their outdoor freedom in the restaurants. Now on the left you see the Olympieion and Hadrian's Gate. I must warn you, however, before you get ideas, that it is a different Hadrian from the one who built your famous wall. The Athens version is a more fanciful man, don't you agree? More artistic, I would say."
"Oh, much," she said.
Come alive, she told herself angrily. Snap out of it. It's a free ride, it's a new gorgeous man, it's Ancient Greece and it's called fun They were slowing down. She glimpsed ruins to her right, but the high bushes hid them again. They reached a roundabout, rolled slowly up a paved hill, and stopped. Springing out, Joseph opened her door for her, grasped her hand, and led her swiftly, almost conspiratorially, to a narrow stone stairway between overhanging trees.
"We speak only in whispers, and even then in the most elaborate code," he warned her in a stage murmur, and she said something equally meaningless in reply.
His grasp was like a charge of electricity. Her fingers seemed to burn at his touch. They were following a wood path, now paved, now dry earth, but climbing all the time. The moon had vanished and it was very dark, but Joseph darted ahead of her unerringly, as if it were by daylight. Once they crossed a stone staircase, once a much wider path, but the easier ways were not for him. The trees broke, and to her right she saw the city lights already far below her. To her left, still high above, a kind of mountain crag stood black against the orange skyline. She heard footsteps behind her and laughter, but it was just a couple of kids having a joke.
"You don't mind the walk?" he asked, without relaxing his speed.
"Enormously," she replied.
A Joseph pause.
"You want me to carry you?"
"Yes."
"Unfortunately, I have pulled a muscle in my back."