'Peter Collins,' I said. 'How do you do, Mr.-er?-'
'Karpethes,' he answered. 'Nichos Karpethes. And this is my wife,
Adrienne.' Neither one of them had made the effort to extend their hands, but that didn't dismay me. Only the fact that they were married dismayed me. He must be very, very rich, this Nichos Karpethes.
'I'm delighted you invited me over,' I said, forcing a smile, 'but I see that I was mistaken. You see, I thought I heard you speaking English, and I-'
'Thought we were English?' she finished it for me. 'A natural error. Originally I am Armenian, Nichos is Greek, of course. We do not speak each other's tongue, but we do both speak English. Are you staying here, Mr. Collins?'
'Er, yes-for one more day and night. Then-' I shrugged and put on a sad look, '-back to England, I'm afraid.'
'Afraid?' the old boy whispered. 'There is something to fear in a return to your homeland?'
'Just an expression,' I answered. 'I meant, I'm afraid that my holiday is coming to an end.'
He smiled. It was a strange, wistful sort of smile, wrinkling his face up like a little walnut. 'But your friends will be glad to see you again. Your loved ones-?'
I shook my head. 'Only a handful of friends-none of them really close-and no loved ones. I'm a loner, Mr. Karpethes.'
'A loner?' His eyes glowed deep in their sockets and his hands began to tremble where they gripped the table's rim. 'Mr. Collins, you don't-'
'We understand,' she cut him off. 'For although we are together, we too, in our way, are loners. Money has made Nichos lonely, you see? Also, he is not a well man, and time is short. He will not waste what time he has on frivolous friendships. As for myself-people do not understand our being together, Nichos and I. They pry, and I withdraw. And so, I too, am a loner.'
There was no accusation in her voice, but still I felt obliged to say: 'I certainly didn't intend to pry, Mrs.-'
'Adrienne,' she smiled. 'Please. No, of course you didn't. I would not want you to think we thought that of you. Anyway I will tell you why we are together, and then it will be put aside.'
Her husband coughed, seemed to choke, struggled to his feet. I stood up and took his arm. He at once shook me off-with some distaste, I thought-but Adrienne had already signaled to a waiter. 'Assist Mr. Karpethes to the gentleman's room,' she quickly instructed in very good Italian. 'And please help him back to the table when he has recovered.'
As he went, Karpethes gesticulated, probably tried to say something to me by way of an apology, choked again and reeled as he allowed the waiter to help him from the room.
'I'm…sorry,' I said, not knowing what else to say.
'He has attacks.' She was cool. 'Do not concern yourself. I am used to it.'
We sat in silence for a moment. Finally I began: 'You were going to tell me-'
'Ah, yes! I had forgotten. It is a symbiosis.'
'Oh?'
'Yes. I need the good life he can give me, and he needs…my youth. We supply each other's needs.' And so, in a way, the old woman with the idiot boy hadn't been wrong after all. A sort of bargain had indeed been struck. Between Karpethes and his wife. As that thought crossed my mind I felt the short hairs at the back of my neck stiffen for a moment. Goose-flesh crawled on my arms. After all, 'Nichos' was pretty close to 'Necros', and now this youth thing again. Coincidence, of course. And after all, aren't all relationships bargains of sorts? Bargains struck for better or for worse.
'But for how long?' I asked. 'I mean, how long will it work for you?'
She shrugged. 'I have been provided for. And he will have me all the days of his life.'
I coughed, cleared my throat, gave a strained, self-conscious laugh. 'And here's me, the non-pryer!'
'No, not at all, I wanted you to know.'
'Well,' I shrugged, '-but it's been a pretty deep first conversation.'
'First? Did you believe that buying me a drink would entitle you to more than one conversation?'
I almost winced. 'Actually, I-'
But then she smiled and my world lit up. 'You did not need to buy the drinks,' she said. 'There would have been some other way.'
I looked at her inquiringly. 'Some other way to-?'
'To find out if we were English or not.'
'Oh!'
'Here comes Nichos now,' she smiled across the room. 'And we must be leaving. He's not well. Tell me, will you be on the beach tomorrow?'
'Oh-yes!' I answered after a moment's hesitation. 'I like to swim.'
'So do I. Perhaps we can swim out to the raft…?'
'I'd like that very much.'
Her husband arrived back at the table under his own steam. He looked a little stronger now, not quite so shriveled somehow. He did not sit but gripped the back of his chair with parchment fingers, knuckles white where the skin stretched over old bones. 'Mr. Collins,' he rustled, '-Adrienne, I'm sorry.…'
'There's really no need,' I said, rising.
'We really must be going.' She also stood. 'No, you stay here, er, Peter? It's kind of you, but we can manage. Perhaps we'll see you on the beach.'
And she helped him to the door of the bar and through it without once looking back.
3.
They weren't staying at my hotel, had simply dropped in for a drink. That was understandable (though I would have preferred to think that she had been looking for me) for
my hotel was middling tourist-class while theirs was something else. They were up on the hill, high on the crest of a Ligurian spur where a smaller, much more exclusive place nestled in Mediterranean pines. A place whose lights spelled money when they shone up there at night, whose music came floating down from a tiny open-air disco like the laughter of high-living elementals of the air. If I was poetic it was because of her. I mean, that beautiful girl and that weary, wrinkled dried-up walnut of an old man. If anything, I was sorry for him. And yet in another way I wasn't.
And let's make no pretence about it-if I haven't said it already, let me say it right now-I wanted her. Moreover, there had been that about our conversation, her beach invitation, which told me that she was available.
The thought of it kept me awake half the night.…
I was on the beach at 9.00 a.m.-they didn't show until 11.00. When they did, and when she came out of her tiny changing cubicle-
There wasn't a male head on the beach that didn't turn at least twice. Who could blame them? That girl, in that costume, would have turned the head of a sphinx. But-there was something, some little nagging thing,
different about her. A maturity beyond her years? She held herself like a model, a princess. But who was it for? Karpethes or me?
As for the old man: he was in a crumpled lightweight summer suit and sunshade hat as usual, but he seemed a bit more perky this morning. Unlike myself he'd doubtless had a good night's sleep. While his wife had been changing he had made his way unsteadily across the pebbly beach to my table and sun umbrella, taking the seat directly opposite me; and before his wife could appear he had opened with: 'Good morning, Mr. Collins.'
'Good morning,' I answered. 'Please call me Peter.'
'Peter, then,' he nodded. He seemed out of breath, either from his stumbling walk over the beach or a certain urgency which I could detect in his movements, his hurried, almost rude 'let's get down to it' manner.
'Peter, you said you would be here for one more day?'
'That's right,' I answered, for the first time studying him closely where he sat like some strange garden gnome half in the shade of the beach umbrella. 'This is my last day.'
He was a bundle of dry wood, a desiccated prune, a small, umber scarecrow. And his voice, too, was of straw, or autumn leaves blown across a shady path. Only his eyes were alive. 'And you said you have no family, few friends, no one to miss you back in England?'
Warning bells rang in my head. Maybe it wasn't so much urgency in him-which usually implies a goal or ambition still to be realized-but
eagerness in that the goal was in sight. 'That's correct. I am, was, a student doctor. When I get home I shall seek a position. Other than that there's nothing, no one, no ties.'
He leaned forward, bird eyes very bright, claw hand reaching across the table, trembling, and-
Her shadow suddenly fell across us as she stood there in that costume. Karpethes jerked back in his chair. His face was working, strange emotions twisting the folds and wrinkles of his flesh into stranger contours. I could feel my heart thumping against my ribs…why, I couldn't say. I calmed myself, looked up at her and smiled.
She stood with her back to the sun, which made a dark silhouette of her head and face. But in that blot of darkness her oval eyes were green jewels. 'Shall we swim, Peter?'
She turned and ran down the beach, and of course I ran after her. She had a head start and beat me to the water, beat me to the raft, too. It wasn't until I hauled myself up beside her that I thought of Karpethes: how I hadn't even excused myself before plunging after her. But at least the water had cleared my head, bringing me completely awake and aware.
Aware of her incredible body where it stretched, almost touching mine, on the fibre deck of the gently bobbing raft.
I mentioned her husband's line of inquiry, gasping a little for breath as I recovered from the frantic exercise of our race. She, on the other hand, already seemed completely recovered. She carefully arranged her hair about her shoulders like a fan, to dry in the sunlight, before answering.
'Nichos is not really my husband,' she finally said, not looking at me. 'I am his companion, that's all. I could have told you last night, but…there was the chance that
