you want proper nightclubs, you have to go along the coast to Ipsos or Dassia.”
“Oh, right, we’ll try that Saturday,” said the Secretary with Long Bleached Hair to the Secretary with Short Bleached Hair.
Having fielded this flurry of questions, Ginnie turned to the coach driver and said something in fluent Greek. He laughed, though whether at the expense of his passengers or not was hard to tell.
“God, I hope we get there soon,” muttered Joyce, as the coach lurched off the main road on to a pitted, stony track. “I’m desperate for a pee.”
“Won’t be long now,” said Mrs Pargeter, in her comforting, slightly Cockney voice.
“And for a drink,” said Joyce. Her small face was tight with anxiety beneath its spray of blonded hair.
The desperation for a drink sounded greater than that for a pee. Mrs Pargeter had a moment of worry. She knew that anything offering temporary oblivion was seductive in the first bleak shock of widowhood, but her friend did seem to be giving in too readily to the temptations of alcohol. Joyce had kept going with gin and tonics through the long wait at Gatwick and taken everything she had been offered on the plane.
And then there had been that strange business with the package… Before they went through to the departure lounge, Joyce had suddenly asked Mrs Pargeter if she had room in her flightbag to carry something for her. “Not that it’s too heavy or anything, Melita, just don’t want to be over the limit if I’m stopped by Customs.”
The package that had been handed over, and that still resided in the flightbag under Mrs Pargeter’s seat, had been stoutly wrapped in cardboard and brown paper, but the way its contents shifted left no doubt that it contained a bottle. The need to take her own supplies into a country where alcohol was as readily available as Greece suggested that maybe Joyce did have a bit of a ‘drinking problem’.
But her caution about the Customs had not been misplaced. The grimly-moustached officer at Corfu Airport had singled out the fifty-five-year-old Joyce, along with a couple of more obvious student targets, and insisted on her opening suitcases and flightbag. Despite a detailed search, he found nothing that he shouldn’t and the suspect was allowed to go on her way.
It did seem strange, though… And now Mrs Pargeter thought about the incident, she realised that the Customs officer had not found any other bottles in her friend’s luggage. So why had the package been given to her? What had Joyce meant about the danger of being ‘over the limit’? That was even stranger.
Mrs Pargeter was interrupted by Ginnie’s voice before she had time to ask Joyce for an explanation. “Right, everyone, as we turn the corner here, we’ll be able to see over to Albania. Nobody quite knows what goes on in there, so a word of advice… if any of you are renting out boats during your stay, don’t go too close to their side, OK?”
The passengers turned to look out over the void of sea to the distant lights. A large brightly-illuminated vessel moved slowly up the centre of the channel. The atmosphere in the coach changed. Now they were so close to their destination, excitement rekindled for the first time since that distant half-hour at Gatwick before they had heard about the flight delay.
“And down the bottom of the hill there you can see the village.”
They rounded the last corner. Light spilled from the seafront tavernas and villas on to the glassy arc of a little bay. Reflected bulbs winked back from the water to the strings of real bulbs above them. At their moorings bobbed motorboats, four carbon-copy yachts from a flotilla, and sturdy fishing boats with large lamps on the bows to attract their night-time catch. Some of the older fishing vessels had eyes painted either side of their prows, luck-bringers designed to outstare the Evil Eye, a phenomenon which still had its believers on Corfu.
The road ran between the buildings and the sea. Wooden piers thrust out into the water opposite the taverna entrances. At one a stout blue caique was moored.
The coach scrunched to a halt outside a large rectangular stone building over the front of which a striped canvas awning was stretched. Beneath this, tanned holiday-makers in T-shirts and shorts sat over drinks and food, paying no more than desultory attention to the new arrivals. The sound of recorded bouzouki music, together with a smell of burning charcoal and herbs, wafted in through the coach’s windows.
“At last,” said Ginnie. “Welcome to Agios Nikitas.”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Package ?
Three
“I really am desperate now. Must find the Ladies. You get a table, won’t you, Melita?”
“Yes,” Mrs Pargeter called after Joyce’s retreating back, before picking up her flightbag and moving at a more sedate pace out of the coach. She saw Joyce hurry into the stone building, only to re-emerge a few seconds later, redirected round the side where a painted notice with an arrow read ‘Toilets’. It seemed that language wasn’t going to be a problem in Agios Nikitas.
This impression was endorsed by the greeting of the tall man who rose from a roadside table to greet the coach party. “Welcome to Spiro’s,” he said expansively. “Here we will give you good time. Good drink and food to relax you after your journey. Ask Spiro what you want – anything – no problem.”
He was olive-skinned, in his fifties, but well-preserved, with muscular shoulders. Despite his bonhomie, a latent melancholy lurked in eyes that gleamed like black cherries under bushy eyebrows. The hair on his head was dusted with grey, but it still grew black in the ‘V’ of chest exposed by his open white shirt. He wore waiter’s uniform black trousers and shoes, but carried an air of undisputed authority. He snapped fingers at the younger waiters to have the newcomers distributed to tables and drinks orders taken. From the doorway to the taverna he orchestrated the distribution of this first round, and within moments everyone had been served with glasses and bottles sweating from the fridge.
The orders had varied. Half-litres of lager, bottles of Greek white wine, Cokes, a fizzy orange for Craig from South Woodham Ferrers, a few traditionalists’ gin and tonics, a couple of more daring ouzos. Mrs Pargeter, safely ensconced at a table for two with her flightbag stowed beneath the seat, did not know where Joyce had reached in her alcoholic cycle, but was in no doubt about what she herself wanted to drink. The Pargeters had developed an enthusiastic appetite for retsina on Crete, where they had spent three months after one of the late Mr Pargeter’s more spectacular business coups. An all too rare sustained period of conjugal togetherness, Mrs Pargeter recollected fondly.
By the time Joyce returned from the Ladies, the coach had departed with Ginnie aboard to supervise the disposition of luggage and tired tourists, and Spiro had disappeared inside the building to supervise food orders. Joyce looked flushed and anxious, and had certainly been gone a long time. Mrs Pargeter hoped that her friend wasn’t ill. There was something disturbingly jumpy in her manner, but maybe it was no more than continuing reaction to her bereavement.
“Loos are spotless,” Joyce announced as she sat down.
“Oh, good. You all right, love?”
The concern was waved aside. “Yes, yes. Have you ordered me a drink?”
“Wasn’t sure what you wanted. Try some of this?” Mrs Pargeter proffered the retsina bottle.
Joyce sniffed the contents and grimaced. “No, thank you.” She looked round and was immediately rewarded by the approach of a young waiter, carrying paper cloths and a metal holder for oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and toothpicks. “Could you get me a drink, please?”
“Yes, please.” Deftly he lifted the retsina bottle and glasses, slipped the paper cloth under them on to the polythene-covered table top and snapped its corners secure under elastic cords. “What you like, please?”
“An ouzo.”
“An ouzo, of course, please. No problem.”
“Thank you. Can I ask what your name is?”
“Name, please? I am Yianni, please.”
He flashed an even-toothed smile and whisked away, his improbably slim hips gliding easily between the tables.
“Hm, how do you get one like that?” Joyce asked wistfully.
“I hadn’t thought of you as on the look-out for a toyboy,” said Mrs Pargeter.
“Chance’d be a fine thing. No, first time in my life that I’d be free to have a toyboy, and now I’m
