The Venetian House, page 17
Chapter Fifteen
The following morning the sky looked cloudy as if the weather had not made up its mind what sort of mood to be in and though the stained-glass brilliance of the previous day had vanished, the storm that had threatened the evening before had not yet materialised.
Guy came down to find Jake had already finished his breakfast.
‘Can we go in the boat this morning?’ asked Jake, adding quickly, ‘because you promised last night.’
‘I certainly didn’t. I said we’d go if the weather was right, and if it is – then we will. Anything to do with boats depends on the conditions, as you know perfectly well – unless you’ve forgotten everything your father and I taught you last summer.’
Jake gave him a speculative look, seeing the trap and unwilling to admit that he’d forgotten anything.
‘When will you know?’
‘When I’ve finished my breakfast – not at all, if you badger me.’
Guy selected an orange from the fruit bowl and helped himself to coffee with maddening slowness before opening yesterday’s To Vima, the newspaper Evanthi took.
Jake considered his options. On the one hand he had learned a wholesome respect for Guy’s intolerance of childish scenes and badly wanted his good opinion. On the other hand it had not been lost on him that his bereaved status seemed to make grown-ups unusually reluctant to thwart him, thus providing unwonted opportunities for extra treats.
‘Yes, I know …’ he began in a tragic voice, trying to look interestingly soulful, ‘but I would feel very sad if we couldn’t go …’
Guy shot him an amused look over his coffee cup. ‘No buts! Don’t pull that pathetic stuff on me, Jake,’ he said, cutting him short in what Jake considered a thoroughly unfeeling way, ‘because it won’t wash.’
‘Can we go in Daddy’s boat?’
‘No, that we really can’t do. The Aphrodite’s been laid up for the winter. I’ll take you out in her in the summer. We’ll have to go in Nonna’s old pilotina if Yannis isn’t using it.’ Guy and Richard had always shared a sailing boat, but during the winter months they kept it down at Gouvia, the island’s original, fortified, safe harbour, which had been so strategically important to the Venetians, and was still a wonderfully sheltered bay. The ancient Vrahos pilotina was a utilitarian craft with a tiny cabin, a faded old canopy for the sun, an antiquated outboard engine and no pretensions to elegance.
‘So how’s Mum this morning?’ Guy asked casually, though he felt far from casual inside.
‘Dunno,’ said Jake. ‘Dora said she might take her up her breakfast in bed so I wasn’t to wake her. And I didn’t,’ he added virtuously.
‘Quite right. Give me twenty minutes and we’ll take a weather-check. You scoot off and find Angelo, and I’ll call you when I’m ready.’
He was still not sure how much Victoria had overheard the evening before because Evanthi, without a second’s hesitation, had said: ‘Oh, Victoria, you’ve come at just the right moment! Guy has been telling me such lovely news – which he’s somehow managed to keep from you all day because he wanted me to be the first to know – Francine’s having a baby! Isn’t that wonderful?’ Guy thought that whatever toll old age might be taking on his grandmother’s body, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her wits.
‘Guy doesn’t seem very keen on sharing his news with me himself nowadays,’ said Victoria in a tight little voice. She gave her cousin a blistering look. ‘First his wedding … now this. Well, many congratulations then, Guy.’ And she had turned and walked out of the room.
Guy started to go after her but Evanthi laid a restraining hand on his arm.
‘Leave her,’ she said. ‘She’s too upset. Give her time. Now, will you help me upstairs? I need to rest first if I’m to dine with you both.’
They had met again for the simple dinner Dora had left prepared for them. It was a tense meal with none of the teasing – or even fierce argument – that normally took place in the dining room at Vrahos when there was a family reunion: usually everyone spoke at once with the noise levels rising on gales of laughter. Now an icy distance on Victoria’s part and an awkward silence on Guy’s that was quite foreign to them both replaced the cousins’ customary ease and delight in each other’s company. Evanthi, suddenly looking old and exhausted, had made a few sporadic attempts at conversation and then lapsed into silence herself. As soon as they had finished eating she retired to bed, and Victoria had gone up with her.
‘Can I look in on you to say good night when I come up, Vicky?’ Guy had asked, hoping to break through the electric fence she had put round herself, but she had looked at him with a distaste that turned him to stone and said no thank you – she just wanted to be left alone and go to sleep. She had left him to telephone his wife and drink rather more whisky than he intended in his grandfather’s library under the baleful eye of the stuffed eagle that had once frightened him so much as a small boy.
But upstairs in her white childhood bedroom, more desperate and confused than she had thought possible, her thoughts in a turmoil, Victoria had not slept all night.
A rising wind was whipping the olive trees when Guy went out on to the terrace. It would not have made him hesitate if he’d been going on his own, but it was sufficient to make him think twice before taking two small boys too far out to sea. Storms could blow up with alarming speed, and apart from the safety angle he had no desire to cope with seasick children. He’d hoped to go down the coast beyond Aghia Sophia and out to the uninhabited rocky little island a mile offshore – the scene of countless expeditions when he and Richard and Victoria were children – a place of entirely happy memories. He was seized with a longing to go there now – to face some private demons, make some resolutions for the future and try to lay ghosts from the past – but perhaps the weather was doing him a favour. For that particular purpose it would be better to go alone. The island hadn’t been inhabited for years, except by visiting swallows, who built or renovated nests in the stone ruins of what must once have been an old house – a welcome and very exclusive summer resort after their journey from Africa. Last summer he, Richard and Victoria had taken Jake there and spent an idyllic day swimming and sunbathing; making a driftwood fire on the beach and barbecuing souvlaki. They had come across the remains of the rough wooden playhouse that Nafsica’s husband, Socrates, had put up for them years ago when they were going through a camping phase. Jake had been enchanted, spent a blissful time making a den in it and had been longing to revisit this paradise ever since. Guy was thankful he hadn’t mentioned it last night. ‘There’s too much wind to go down the coast,’ he said. ‘How would it be if we went along to the harbour at Kryovrisi for an ice?’
‘Cool,’ Jake beamed at him. Any boat trip was a treat.
‘You could fish off the jetty for a bit, so get some bread for bait and put your life jackets on, I’ll get the lines and hooks and we’ll see if Dora wants any shopping done.’ It occurred to him that if the wind really got up before the return trip he could telephone Yannis and ask him to come and pick up the boys in the car while he brought the boat back on his own.
Dora was in the kitchen, just about to take up Victoria’s breakfast. Nafsica was sitting at the wooden kitchen table – scrubbed almost white over the years – mumbling her way through a bowl of bread and milk. She owned a perfectly good set of teeth, made by the dentist in Kérkyra and paid for by Evanthi, but she regarded them in much the same light as her best dress – only to be worn on special occasions. She was dressed in her habitual black, her face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. She was a couple of years younger than Evanthi but the fierce Mediterranean sun is not kind to women’s complexions unless they are protected and cosseted. Nafsica had looked sixty when she was in her forties, whereas Evanthi had looked much younger than her years until she was over seventy. Nafsica greeted Guy with doting affection – and what Victoria considered the maddening reverence she accorded to the male sex. Victoria always claimed that Nafsica had ruined Guy when they were children by encouraging all his most outrageously arrogant attitudes. Evanthi had already told Dora the news about Francine’s pregnancy when she called her with her morning tisane, so Guy was forced to delay the boating trip while Nafsica insisted on filling him up not only with a celebratory glass of Metaxa – not his chosen drink at that hour of the morning – but also with dire tales about every conceivable disaster that could occur in childbirth.
He was gulping down the last of the fiery Greek brandy when Dora returned with the breakfast tray. ‘That was quick,’ he said, and then seeing that nothing on the tray had been touched asked: ‘She hasn’t eaten a thing – is she all right?’
‘She wasn’t there,’ said Dora. ‘I don’t know where she is. She’s not with Kyria because I checked.’
‘Probably gone for a walk then,’ said Guy lightly. ‘I expect she’s at the viewpoint – you know how she loves to go there. We’ll meet her on our way down to the bay. Come on then, you two.’
‘I’ll come down with you and bring the spare petrol can,’ said Yannis, appearing in the kitchen. ‘I think it’s running low. We’ll put some in to be on safe side and then you could get more and also refill the can in Kryovrisi.’
There was no sign of Victoria on the way down. The boys ran about whooping and laughing; pushing each other over and rolling downhill like a couple of puppies, but Guy and Yannis strode quickly down the track, each keeping a sharp lookout for her. When they got to the bay, the sea was more than a little choppy, the wind definitely getting up – and there was no boat tied up to the landing stage.
‘Where the hell … ?’ started Guy, and then: ‘Oh my God!’ He and Yannis looked at each other.
‘Victoria – she can’t have gone off by herself? In this weather?’
‘Looks bloody like it. Where else could the boat be – or her? How much petrol was there?’ asked Guy.
‘Enough to get to Kryovrisi. Not enough to go much further.’ Yannis’ normally cheerful face was creased with anxiety. Black clouds were rolling overhead and a few drops of rain were now falling.
Though Victoria was reasonably competent with boats, they had never been a passion with her as they had been with the boys and she was inclined to be a nervous sailor; she enjoyed expeditions if someone else was in charge of the boat, and was prepared to take it out herself in good conditions to do the shopping in Kryovrisi or take Jake to a nearby bay on a lovely day, but she certainly wasn’t given to taking solo trips for fun. All the same, under ordinary circumstances Guy would not have been too concerned – but circumstances were anything but normal at the moment. He had told his grandmother the night before that he felt afraid of tipping her over an edge after all she had already been through. He thought of her standing too near the edge of the cliff at Angelókastro – and suddenly the memory didn’t bear thinking of.
He felt in a pocket for his mobile. ‘What’s Petros’ number?’ he asked urgently, then: ‘Shit! Shit! I’d forgotten there’s no bloody signal here. I’ll have to go straight back up to use the house telephone. Anyone else who could lend us a boat if I can’t get hold of Petros?’
Yannis looked doubtful. ‘Petros is the best one.’
Petros Kaloudis was the entrepreneur of Kryovrisi. His father had been a local fisherman and from small beginnings Petros had started hiring out boats in the tourist season, a business that had rapidly grown into a flourishing concern. He and his English wife now owned the popular Harbour Lights bar and there were not many local pies in which he did not have a finger. Guy and Victoria had known him all their lives. He and Guy were old sailing companions.
‘What’s happened to the boat? Where’s Mummy?’ Jake’s voice wobbled dangerously.
Guy squatted down and took him by the shoulders. Jake seemed all delicate bones. It was like holding a bird between his hands. ‘Looks like Mummy’s stolen a march on us, old boy, and nabbed the boat before us. We won’t half give her a piece of our minds when she gets back – spoiling our trip! But I must get petrol to her right now and I need you to be a grown-up chap and not make a fuss. You and Angelo can stay with Yannis and I’m going to find her.’
‘She won’t have got shot will she?’ asked Jake in a whisper.
‘No, of course not.’ Guy felt his throat constrict. ‘But she’ll need help with the boat in this wind and the best way you can help is to stay with Angelo and let me go to her. OK?’ Jake nodded. ‘Good man.’
Guy spoke rapidly to Yannis in Greek, who agreed to stay on the landing stage in case there was any sign of Victoria while Guy went up to the house to telephone Petros and try to borrow a boat. He would send Dora down to collect the boys.
It was a good thing he was in training. He ran all the way up the steep path.
Petros had just walked into the bar when Guy rang.
‘O The’ mou! Where’s she gone?’
‘God knows. But she might have headed down towards Aghia Sophia.’ Guy had the strongest hunch that Victoria, like him, might have wanted to go to the island.
Petros said he’d come straight down to Vrahos in his speedboat and pick Guy up: ‘Quicker than you coming here by car – and if she’s between Kryovrisi and Vrahos I’ll see her before I get to you. I’ll send Spiro and Nikos out the other way.’
During the summer season Petros could be seen in his speed-boat every evening patrolling the coast to make sure none of his clients had got into trouble and that all the hired boats – about which some of the holiday-makers knew absolutely nothing – could be accounted for and were properly anchored. If the weather looked really rough he would send his brothers to collect the boats and take them back to the shelter of Kryovrisi harbour till the wind settled again.
‘I’ll be on the landing stage.’ Guy rang off.
It was only about ten minutes before Petros roared up in his powerful boat and he and Guy set off to the south, looking anxiously out to sea as well as scanning every small bay along the coast. They passed Spilia with its famous cave, and the pretty little harbour of Aghia Sophia with its two rival tavernas – until recently only accessible by boat, but now joined to the main road by a steep track. There was no sign. Guy had no idea how long Victoria had been missing – or what her intention might have been, but as they headed out towards the island, known locally as Helidonia – the island of swallows – he hoped desperately that his hunch was taking them in the right direction.
At five o’clock in the morning Victoria had abandoned hope of sleep – or rather decided she couldn’t face the possibility that after eight hours of aching insomnia she might suddenly drop off just as morning was approaching only to have to wake again in a couple of hours and face afresh her turmoil of misery. She opened the shutters and leaned out of the window. She felt terrible. The first glimmerings of dawn streaked the sky and everything seemed extraordinarily still – as though the whole island was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. She felt desperate to order her thoughts before she faced anyone: Guy, Evanthi – even Jake – but most especially Guy. She had no idea how she was going to cope with all her conflicting emotions about him. The sea had always been her source of help and healing – she would let herself out of the house, walk to the viewpoint to watch the light creep over the mountains, look down on the sea, and think.
She tiptoed into Jake’s room. She’d left the landing door ajar and a light burning all night and could see that he was sleeping peacefully, one arm flung over the pillow the other clutching the ancient rabbit that was still a necessary night-time companion. She stood looking at him, anguishing for his present and trembling for his future.
Victoria shivered, and closed the door softly as she went back into her own room. She dressed swiftly, took her trainers in one hand and padded softly along the passage and down the stairs in her stockinged feet; as she went through the salon with its treacherous, creaking floor-boards she felt as if she must have roused the whole household – but all was silence. She inhaled the familiar scents of the room: the pungent smoky smell of olive-wood fires mixing with the heavier fragrance of lilies; the smell of old leather books blending with the fainter trace of Evanthi’s own distinctive scent. Normally all these smells would have been reassuring, but this morning, to her distraught mind, they were reminders of a world that seemed to be crumbling round her.
Opening the huge double doors was a noisy business, and after she had managed to raise the heavy iron bar, which latched across them, and then turned the vast key in the lock, she was relieved to get out on to the top terrace, put on her shoes and walk noiselessly over the flag stones and down the outside steps. Cocks were crowing and a donkey brayed raucously from the olive grove, all sounds evocative of her childhood – though donkeys were growing obsolete as beasts-of-all-work nowadays and those that had simply been abandoned and turned loose were becoming a real problem on the island. The idea of culling wild donkeys filled her with horror.
When she reached the viewpoint a breeze was beginning to feather through the olive trees, turning the leaves from green to silver and back again against the grey beginnings of the new day. Albania had disappeared in cloud and the sea looked leaden – the view was not at its beautiful best. She decided to get nearer to the sea and go on down to the bay, memories flooding her mind of many expeditions with Richard and Guy as she walked down the rough path between the scrub and holly oaks.
When she saw the boat she didn’t stop to think at all, but on an impulse hauled on the mooring rope, pulled the boat in and clambered aboard. She lowered the outboard engine into the water and it started at the first pull on the cord.
To begin with she had no particular destination in mind and was only conscious of a liberating sense of escape as she headed out to sea, relishing the taste of salt on her lips and the feeling of wind blowing through her hair. It wasn’t until she passed the point at Spilia that the idea of going as far as the island took hold of her. Then it seemed an absolute necessity to get there – as though if she could only reach it she might find magic solutions to all her problems, as though she might recapture and rewrite the past. With some part of her mind she was aware that the weather was deteriorating fast, that the sea was wilder – waves slapping the bows with increasing fury – and that she had never been by herself in such rough conditions before. But wrapped in a curious detachment, to her none of this seemed to matter. It was as though she was protected from reality and as the island came into view she felt triumphant.
