the wine is poison.' He looked over his shoulder to the group at the cafe and with a conspiratorial wink dragged me to the wall beside the pool.
'I told you all those bastards are Turks, and so they are,' he said, 'wine-drinking, coffee-drinking Turks. They haven't brewed the right stuff here for over five thousand years. They knew how to do it then.'
I remembered what the bar-tender had told me about the pigswill in his chalet. 'Is that so?' I enquired.
He winked again, and then his slit eyes widened, and I noticed that they were naturally bulbous and protuberant, a discoloured muddy brown with the whites red-flecked. 'Know something?' he whispered hoarsely. 'The scholars have got it all wrong. It was beer the Cretans drank here in the mountains, brewed from spruce and ivy, long before wine. Wine was discovered centuries later by the God-damn. Greeks.'
He steadied himself, one hand on the wall, the other on my arm. Then he leant forward and was sick into the pool. I was very nearly sick myself.
'That's better,' he said, 'gets rid of the poison. Doesn't do to have poison in the system. Tell you what, we'll go back to the hotel and you shall come along and have a night-cap at our chalet. I've taken a fancy to you, Mr What's-your-Name. You've got the right ideas. Don't drink, don't smoke, and you paint pictures. What's your job?'
It was impossible to shake myself clear, and I was forced to let him tow me across the road. Luckily the group at the cafe had now dispersed, disappointed, no doubt, because we had not come to blows, and Mrs Stoll had climbed into the Mercedes and was sitting in the passenger seat in front.
'Don't take any notice of her,' he said. 'She's stone-deaf unless you bawl at her. Plenty of room at the back.'
'Thank you,' I said, 'I've got my own car on the quay.'
'Suit yourself,' he answered. 'Well, come on, tell me, Mr Artist, what's your job? An academician?'
I could have left it at that, but some pompous strain in me made me tell the truth, in the foolish hope that he would then consider me too dull to cultivate.
'I'm a teacher,' I said, 'in a boys' preparatory school.'
He stopped in his tracks, his wet mouth open wide in a delighted grin. 'Oh my God,' he shouted, 'that's rich, that's really rich. A God-damn tutor, a nurse to babes and sucklings. You're one of us, my buddy, you're one of us. And you've the nerve to tell me you've never brewed spruce and ivy!'
He was raving mad, of course, but at last this sudden burst of hilarity had made him free my arm, and he went on ahead of me to his car, shaking his head from side to side, his legs bearing his cumbersome body in a curious jog-trot, one-two… one-two… like a clumsy horse.
I watched him climb into the car beside his wife, and then I moved swiftly away to make for the safety of the quayside, but he had turned his car with surprising agility, and had caught up with me before I reached the corner of the street. He thrust his head out of the window, smiling still.
'Come and call on us, Mr Tutor, any time you like. You'll always find a welcome. Tell him so, Maud. Can't you see the fellow's shy?'
His brawling word of command echoed through the street. Strolling passers-by looked in our direction. The stiff, impassive face of Mrs Stoll peered over her husband's shoulder. She seemed quite unperturbed, as if nothing was wrong, as if driving in a foreign village beside a drunken husband was the most usual pastime in the world.
'Good evening,' she said in a voice without any expression. 'Pleased to meet you, Mr Tutor. Do call on us. Not after midnight. Chalet 38…'
Stoll waved his hand, and the car went roaring up the street to cover the few kilometres to the hotel, while I followed behind, telling myself that this was one invitation I should never accept if my life depended on it.
It would not be true to say the encounter cast a blight on my holiday and put me off the place. A half-truth, perhaps. I was angry and disgusted, but only with the Stolls. I awoke refreshed after a good night's sleep to another brilliant day, and nothing seems so bad in the morning. I had only the one problem, which was to avoid Stoll and his equally half-witted wife. They were out in their boat all day, so this was easy. By dining early I could escape them in the dining-room. They never walked about the grounds, and meeting them face to face in the garden was not likely. If I happened to be on my balcony when they returned from fishing in the evening, and he turned his field-glasses in my direction, I would promptly disappear inside my chalet. In any event, with luck, he might have forgotten my existence, or, if that was too much to hope for, the memory of our evening's conversation might have passed from his mind. The episode had been unpleasant, even, in a curious sense, alarming, but I was not going to let it spoil the days that remained to me.
The boat had left its landing-stage by the time I came on to my balcony to have breakfast, and I intended to carry out my plan of exploring the coast with my painting gear, and, once absorbed in my hobby, could forget all about them. And I would not pass on to the management poor Gordon's scribbled card. I guessed now what had happened. The poor devil, without realising where his conversation in the bar would lead him, had been intrigued by Stoll's smattering of mythology and nonsense about ancient Crete, and, as an archaeologist, had thought further conversation might prove fruitful. He had accepted an invitation to visit Chalet 38-the uncanny similarity of the words on the card and those spoken by Mrs Stoll still haunted me-though why he had chosen to swim across the bay instead of walking the slightly longer way by the rock path was a mystery. A touch of bravado, perhaps? Who knows? Once in Stoll's chalet he had been induced, poor victim, to drink some of the hell-brew offered by his host, which must have knocked all sense and judgement out of him, and when he took to the water once again, the carousal over, what followed was bound to happen. I only hoped he had been too far gone to panic, and sank instantly. Stoll had never come forward to give the facts, and that was that. Indeed, my theory of what had happened was based on intuition alone, coincidental scraps that appeared to fit, and prejudice. It was time to dismiss the whole thing from my mind and concentrate on the day ahead.
Or rather, days. My exploration along the coast westward, in the opposite direction from the harbour, proved even more successful than I had anticipated. I followed the winding road to the left of the hotel, and having climbed for several kilometres descended again from the hills to sea level, where the land on my right suddenly flattened out to what seemed to be a great stretch of dried marsh, sun-baked, putty-coloured, the dazzling blue sea affording a splendid contrast as it lapped the stretch of land on either side. Driving closer I saw that it was not marsh at all but salt flats, with narrow causeways running between them, the flats themselves contained by walls intersected by dykes to allow the sea-water to drain, leaving the salt behind. Here and there were the ruins of abandoned windmills, their rounded walls like castle keeps, and in a rough patch of ground a few hundred yards distant, and close to the sea, was a small church I could see the minute cross on the roof shining in the sun. Then the salt flats ended abruptly, and the land rose once more to form the long, narrow isthmus of Spinalongha beyond.
I bumped the Volkswagen down to the track leading to the flats. The place was quite deserted. This, I decided, after viewing the scene from every angle, would be my pitch for the next few days. The ruined church in the foreground, the abandoned windmills beyond, the salt-flats on the left, and blue water rippling to the shore of the isthmus on my right.
I set up my easel, planted my battered felt hat on my head, and forgot everything but the scene before me. Those three days on the salt-flats-for I repeated the expedition on successive days- were the high-spot of my holiday. Solitude and peace were absolute. I never saw a single soul. The occasional car wound its way along the coast road in the distance and then vanished. I broke off for sandwiches and lemonade, which I'd brought with me, and then, when the sun was hottest, rested by the ruined windmill. I returned to the hotel in the cool of the evening, had an early dinner, and then retired to my chalet to read until bedtime. A hermit at his prayers could not have wished for greater seclusion.
The fourth day, having completed two separate paintings from different angles, yet loath to leave my chosen territory, which had now become a personal stamping ground, I stacked my gear in the car and struck off on foot to the rising terrain of the isthmus, with the idea of choosing a new site for the following day. Height might give an added advantage. I toiled up the hill, fanning myself with my hat, for it was extremely hot, and was surprised when I reached the summit to find how narrow was the isthmus, no more than a long neck of land with the sea immediately below me. Not the calm water that washed the salt-flats I had left behind, but the curling crests of the outer gulf itself, whipped by a northerly wind that nearly blew my hat out of my hand. A genius might have caught those varying shades on canvas-turquoise blending into Aegean blue with wine-deep shadows beneath-but not an amateur like myself. Besides, I could hardly stand upright. Canvas and easel would have instantly blown away.
