nobody else about. I found a note on the kitchen table, in Inez' hand:
I shook my head at the lack of an inverted comma, threw the note away and took a slice of melon from the fridge. I wandered through the dining room, dripping and scattering little black seeds. Luxury to be so messy without Inez there to shout at me. I sat on the terrace with my feet up on the rails and looked out over a small olive grove and the villa's cove of beach towards the bright blue sea; a haze was just starting to form. Tiny white specks, wavering on the uncertain surface, were ferries. It was at least six hours by ship to Piraeus, but the seaplane could be there and back in two.
It wasn't too terrible to be alone; in fact I thought it might be quite pleasant, just for a change. I went for a walk, to a little village on a hill, and sat drinking a cold beer or two under the shade of an ancient, gnarled tree, mirror shades gazing out to sea over the brilliant white jumble of buildings. In certain directions, all I could see was either white or blue; whitewashed stone or the sea-sky vault. Donkeys clopped and clattered up from the lower village, loaded with bottles and giant tin cans. A cat came and sat looking up at me; I ordered a little pastry for it.
The cat ate the pastry; I drank my beer and watched the donkeys pass, wondering what it must be like to live in a village like this... One of those places where nothing changes much, where time must seem like a standing wave, not something always at your back, the breaking surf, the breathtaking one-way ride to the dry, dead beach, Goodbye...
I'd heard that one of my prod flatmates had been killed in a car crash, last time I'd gone back to Paisley. I'd looked up one of my other flatmates, and we'd met for a drink. That was when he told me; it had happened two years ago. And I'd bumped into one of Jean Webb's aunts, in a Glasgow coffee shop where my ma and I were taking a time-out during a shopping expedition. The old woman came over to chat with my ma, and mentioned that Jean was married now; she and Gerald had a wee girl (I didn't catch the name); just toddling now; och, a bonnie wee thing.
Sitting there, mildly bored, listening to my ma and the other woman talk, I thought again about Jean Webb, and experienced a strange sense of loss, regret. Married; a mother. I'd have liked to have seen her again. But it had been a long time ago, and... I wasn't sure what it was; I felt a sense of something like incompleteness when I thought about her. It was as though she was somebody I should have known fully, perfectly, and then parted from, older and wiser, still good friends... instead, somehow, we had never got that far. I'd messed it up as usual, clumsy to the very core of my being. Would Gerald mind me looking them up? Did he think I was a first love, know I'd been a sort-of first lover? And was I jealous of him because of the child ?
Ah... better not to. Leave it. Leave them alone. As long as she was happy... I hoped she was happy.
Steamy Glasgow coffee shop on a rainy October weekday, wedged in with shopping bags; glare-white and azure view from a village on a hilltop, across the Cyclades in late spring.
You pays your money and toddles off home in both places.
I had a shower when I got back, then lay naked on a lounger on the terrace, drying in the sun and waiting for the drone of the seaplane's engine when it returned. I was reading Sense and Sensibility and thinking about mixing myself something long and cool and alcoholic, when Christine appeared out of the lounge.
'Oh,' she said.
I jumped a little, then put the opened book down across my groin.
'Sorry, I thought...' Or something very similar was what we both started to say.
'I didn't hear you come back' I said. Christine hesitated at the door, looking a little bleary-eyed, dishevelled, and confused and amused as well. She gave what might have been a shrug, then sat down on a hanging basket- chair, throwing me the towel that had been on its seat.
'Back from where?' she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. 'I haven't been anywhere.'
'Didn't you go to Piraeus? I found a note.' I picked the towel off my legs and repositioned it modestly. 'About going for milk; Inez must have decided she needed cows' milk for something... I suppose just she and Davey must have gone. You been asleep?'
'Oh, it shows?' Christine smiled, and stretched, arching her back and neck and putting her arms out in front and above her. She was wearing a long white T -shirt. It rode up over her thighs; I found myself looking furtively at her blonde pubic hair. She pulled the T-shirt down, and I saw her looking at me. She cleared her throat while I blushed. 'God,' she said, laughing. 'We're all at it. Want a drink?' She got up.
I nodded. 'Anything. Beer.'
'Two beers,' Christine said, disappearing.
Oh, well, I thought, what with all this topless sunbathing and all, I guess I've seen more or less every bit of our Christine. I wondered what Jane Austen would have made of it all.
Christine came back, bikini bottom on too now, and we drank our beers, and waited for the seaplane, and gazed out into the hazy blue.
She closed her eyes at one point, and put her head back on the lounger. I studied her face, thinking she looked older than my usual mental image of her. There were little lines at the corners of her eyes, and between her dark eyebrows.
She opened her eyes, looking at me.
'Can't seem to stay awake,' she said, though she didn't sound drowsy.
'I have that effect on most people,' I said grinning.
'No, I'm just tired. Very, very tired.' She stared at her empty beer bottle and turned it this way and that in her hand.
'It was a tough tour,' I said. She just nodded her head after a while, then brought the bottle up to her lips and blew across the hole, producing a low, faltering note.
The plane didn't come back that afternoon. We drank a few more beers, played some tapes we'd brought with us, had a couple of games of cards.
The evening came on, and it started to get dark. If the plane didn't come in the next half hour or so, it wouldn't come at all; even Davey had drawn the line at night landings on the water. We waited, while the sun's glow faded and Venus, and then the stars, slowly brightened... but; no plane.
'Think they've flown back to Britain for pasteurised?' I said. Christine had an angora jumper on now, though her long brown legs were still bare. She shook her head slowly.
'Probably a break-down.'
'We should have had a radio we could call them up on,' I said.
'Hmm,' Christine said. She got up. 'Let's eat. Want to walk to that little place we were in the first night you were here? Along the coast? You know; Thingy-os or whatever. It's a bit of a walk, but...'
Stuffed peppers, red mullet; bitter coffee and incredibly sticky sweets. The gods were smiling on us that night; not a single noisy German youth in earshot. The restaurant had champagne, too. We ate our fill, and wandered back along the shore path and across the beaches, clutching a last bottle of champagne and talking and belching.
Christine yawned, stood on the beach and looked up at the clear sky. I stopped too. She took a slow drink from the bottle, then handed it to me. 'What's that?' she said, pointing.
'What's what?' I looked.
'That; there; beside those stars. Across from the moon and down a bit. Moving. Is that a plane? A UFO? What is it?'
I saw what she meant eventually, after she'd got me to kneel down and she'd crouched behind me, arm over my shoulder, so I could follow the line of her arm. 'Oh, that,' I said. 'It'll be a satellite.'
'Really? I didn't know you could see them. Are you kidding me on?'
'No; it's a satellite.'
'Hmm.' Christine shook her head. 'Never knew that...' She took the bottle back, yawned and drank. 'So fucking tired, Weird.'
'Come on,' I said, holding out my hand. 'We'll get you back to your bed.'
She shook her head, sat down heavily on the sand. She looked towards the quietly breaking waves. 'Do you know what we've been doing the past two weeks, Weird?' she said. I squatted beside her.
'Just relaxing?' I suggested.
Christine took a deep breath. 'Trying to get Davey off smack, finally, for good... at last... one last...' She
