Skios

28

A fire bell was ringing. Oliver, instantly alarmed, looked out of the porthole of the theater where he was just about to perform his juggling act and saw smoke and flames pouring out of the starboard outer engine. He struggled to sit up, terrified.

Late-afternoon sunshine was coming through unfamiliar curtains. He was in a bedroom of some sort, not a theater or an airplane. But the fire bell was still ringing. Except that it wasn’t a fire bell — it was the phone beside his bed. He scrambled the receiver up to his ear and managed to make a sound like “Hello.”

“It’s me,” said a woman’s voice. “Nikki.”

There was something familiar about both the voice and the name, but he couldn’t quite place them. “Um?” he said.

“That is Dr. Wilfred?” said the voice.

“Wrong number,” he mumbled, and went back to sleep.

* * *

When the phone rang again the woman was laughing.

“So that isn’t Dr. Wilfred?” she said.

It was her laughter that at last woke him up and returned him to recognizable normality.

“Nikki!” he said. “Nikki? Nikki…”

“Oh, so it is Dr. Wilfred?”

“I was asleep.”

“You certainly were. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Never mind. You obviously needed it. Not enough sleep last night, perhaps. Anyway, we’ve got here. He’s just dropping his bag in his room and freshening up. Then he’s on his way.”

“Who is?”

“Wellesley Luft! Your old friend!”

And now he was even more awake. I can do it, he thought at once. I can talk anyone into anything. Even my old friend Wellesley Luft into recognizing me as Dr. Wilfred. Bring him on.

As he put the foundation’s phone down he saw his own lying beside it, neglected and forgotten, where he had put it when he arrived the previous evening. He turned it on. He had texts, he had voice messages. He opened the texts. There were five new ones from Annuka. He skipped quickly up through the little windows. She seemed to be softening somewhat. She was forgiving him for having allowed her to throw him out.

He turned to the voice messages. The most recent was from Georgie. Yes, he should listen to it again, as he had promised himself earlier today, so he could truthfully tell her tomorrow that when she had said she was arriving tomorrow he had quite reasonably supposed that it had been not yesterday’s tomorrow she meant but today’s. Which would give him another night in hand.

He tapped the screen. But what sprang into his ear was not the message about arriving tomorrow — it was incomprehensible uncontrolled hysteria. Her voice was scarcely recognizable. “Oliver! Where are you?” it screamed at him. He snatched the phone away from his ear in surprise, but he could hear her raving on even at arm’s length. He turned the phone off. He thought he might sit this one out.

He had committed a solecism of some sort, obviously. Failed to phone when he had promised, or forgotten her birthday. But what he had promised was not to phone while she was with — what was he called? — Patrick. And her birthday? When they’d only ever met for five minutes?

He had a pee and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he sat down and concentrated his mind on being Dr. Wilfred, on being so overwhelmingly, so immanently Dr. Wilfred that he and Dr. Wilfred’s old friend would immediately recognize each other as such.

* * *

Georgie lay there on the lounger all afternoon in the shade of the beach umbrella, perhaps asleep, apparently entirely content to do nothing. Dr. Wilfred, though, grew more awake as the hours went by. He lay on his lounger, his head turned away from the source of his trouble, unable to move. He felt light-headed and nauseated, as though he had a temperature. He hadn’t had these symptoms for this particular reason for twenty years or more. A feverish shudder went through him, so sharp that his teeth rattled.

All he could think about were the two moles. The two moles and the three condoms. She the only girl in the world, he the only boy … The question was what he was going to do about it. How they were ever going to get out of this situation, where she was lying on one lounger and he was lying on the other. He had to do something. He had to make some kind of move, or they would remain here for ever. The more he thought about it, though, the less he could see what it should be.

* * *

Dr. Wilfred, thought Oliver, thought Dr. Wilfred, as he waited for his old friend. I’m Dr. Wilfred. Born wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred was born. Went to school wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred went to school. Am, in a word, two words, Dr. Wilfred.

His concentration was disturbed, though, because he kept remembering that note of hysteria in Georgie’s voice. An unsettling thought somehow thought itself. Maybe Georgie’s outrage had reached such a pitch that she had by one means or another discovered where he was. Maybe she was even now pursuing him here. Impossible, of course. Wasn’t it? There was no way in which she could have followed his sudden private sideways leap into the persona of Dr. Wilfred. Dr. Wilfred, Dr. Wilfred … In any case, she was still waiting for a plane in Turkey. Wasn’t she?

He picked up the phone and touched the screen. “Oliver! Where are you?” she screamed again, but this time he kept the phone within screaming distance of his ear. “He was in bed! He was pretending to be you! He hasn’t done something to you, has he? Tied you up? Murdered you?”

And then silence.

He gazed at the phone in astonishment. He had quite often found it difficult to understand what women were complaining to him about, but never had any complaint been as totally incomprehensible as this one. Who was this man who was in bed, and who had done, or might have done, all these things? Patrick, presumably. But why should Patrick have pretended to be him? How could Patrick have pretended to be him, when he didn’t know him, since he’d taken care to get out of his chair in that bar, and out of his life, before Patrick had returned from his smoke? And how could Patrick have tied him up and murdered him when he was in Turkey and he himself, whether he was Dr. Wilfred or whether he wasn’t, was in Greece?

There was an earlier unplayed message from Georgie.

“Oliver,” said the voice, this time not in a scream but in a desperate whisper, “will you please answer your phone! I’m locked in the bathroom! He’s hammering on the door! I thought it was you! He nearly raped me! I don’t know how to phone the police in this country! Oliver! Please help me! I’m all on my own! In the bathroom!”

And then, again, silence.

He jumped to his feet, overwhelmed by alarm and anguish. He must do something, and do it at once! But what? He ran to the door, but couldn’t think where to go. He ran back, picked up the phone, and tried to call her back. “This number is not available,” it said.

So, she was trapped in a bathroom. By a potential rapist. Somewhere in Turkey. Phone the police, obviously. Phone which police, where? Which part of Turkey had she said she was going to be in? Or — yes — the British embassy! Look up Istanbul. No, Istanbul wasn’t the capital of Turkey. What was the capital of Turkey? He’d forgotten the name of the capital of Turkey!

As he gazed hopelessly at the phone he saw that there was an even earlier message from Georgie still waiting to be played. He pressed the button, bracing himself for the next horror. This time her voice was entirely different, though. Hurried and incoherent, but very pleased with itself.

“Hi!” she said. “It’s me! I suddenly saw there was a flight to Thessaloniki…!”

He found it difficult to take in all the circumstantial details. He got the general gist of it, though — that she wasn’t in Turkey any longer. She had arrived. She was here, in Skios. At the airport already. He looked at his watch. How long to get to the airport? And when was he giving the lecture? No, forget the lecture, forget all this Dr. Wilfred nonsense. Georgie was trapped by a rapist in a bathroom at the airport, and it was he who was responsible for her being there. This was serious. He hadn’t so far in life had much practice in making moral choices, but in these circumstances even he could see what had to take priority.

He ran about the room, picking up things he might need for the task ahead and putting them down again. Cash, credit cards. Phone, passport. A bar of chocolate and a pack of soluble aspirin he had found in the suitcase. Phone, phone, where was his phone! He put everything down yet again. Oh, yes, in his hand.

He was aware that he had reached an epoch in his life. He knew that he had without warning found himself faced with the chance — the necessity — to become the kind of human being he had always wanted to be. He couldn’t help noticing that he had risen to the occasion. Without hesitating for an instant he had given up the best adventure he had ever embarked upon. Not to mention his forthcoming hour upon the world stage, and however many million dollars a year he was going to be getting for the various jobs he had accepted.

And Nikki. He had given up the prospect of Nikki. For a moment he hesitated, bar of chocolate and soluble aspirin in hand.

No, not even the thought of Nikki could deflect him from his duty. Anyway, there might perhaps be a chance to slip back for an hour or two at some point and explain.

As he ran out of the door with his eyes on his phone, trying to think who to call to get a taxi, he found himself dancing left right left right with a bald-headed man in a seersucker jacket who was coming in the opposite direction holding a notebook and a bottle of bourbon, and who was struggling so deferentially to get out of his way that he was perpetually in it.

“I do beg your pardon,” said the man, as deferentially as he was jumping from one side to the other, “but could you tell me where I might find Dr. Norman Wilfred?”

“Out,” called Oliver over his shoulder as he ran on down the path. “Gone. Urgent business elsewhere.”