Skios

29

Dr. Wilfred had finally summoned the willpower to raise himself from his sickbed, as the lounger beside the pool had become. He was going to make a first move, and he had at last decided upon a way to start. Or upon two possible ways. He was going to say either “So!” or “Well, then!” He hadn’t yet decided which.

Before he could open his mouth, however, and see which emerged, he became aware of a faint sound. His own racing blood in his ears, perhaps. No, something outside himself. A scrunching sound, of the sort that the wheels of a car make on a dirt road. He turned his head toward Georgie. She sat up very suddenly, her breasts tumbling eagerly forward.

“Oliver!” she said. “He’s here!”

She jumped up from the lounger and ran towards the gate, then ran back and pulled the towel around her. “And I’ll tell the taxi to wait and take you!”

She vanished round the side of the house. Wilfred sank slowly back onto the lounger. His fever slowly subsided. A long and dreary convalescence had begun.

* * *

A taxi drew up outside the front of the foundation just as Oliver came running out. He waited while three men and one woman, together with two violins, one viola, and a cello, very slowly and painfully extracted themselves.

“Airport!” he said as he jumped in. “And fast, fast, fast!”

“No problem,” said the driver, putting the taxi into gear.

“No!” said Oliver.

“No? Not airport?”

“Not airport!”

It had just come to him. It wasn’t a bathroom at the airport that Georgie was trapped in. If it was a bathroom at the airport she would have shouted. People would have come running. The airport was in the past. She would have arrived at the airport, then left and gone to the villa they had borrowed. It was the bathroom of the villa she was trapped in.

“Villa!” he said.

The driver put the gear back into neutral. Oliver saw that he was looking at him in the rearview mirror. He had a wart like a bluebottle on the end of his nose. He seemed to be waiting for something. Of course. He was waiting to know which villa, and where it was.

Oliver quickly reviewed the arrangements of the last few days, before he had become Dr. Norman Wilfred. Got it! Of course! “It’s in my suitcase!” he said.

Still the taxi remained motionless. Still the driver watched him in the rearview mirror.

“So, yes, where’s my suitcase?” said Oliver. “In my room! No!”

The suitcase in his room was Dr. Wilfred’s. He was not Dr. Wilfred — he was Oliver Fox. And Oliver Fox’s suitcase was presumably still at the, yes—“Airport!”

“Airport?” said the driver. “No problem.” He put the taxi into gear.

“No!” said Oliver. “Not in my suitcase!”

The driver put the gear back into neutral.

“They never gave me an address!” said Oliver. So how had he been going to get to the villa? “In a taxi! I was going in a taxi! There was going to be a taxi!”

The driver thought. Then he raised his eyebrows speculatively. “Fox Oliver?” he inquired.

“Phoksoliva?” said Oliver. “Oh! Yes! Right! Fox Oliver! And fast, fast, fast!”

“No problem,” said Spiros, as he put the taxi into gear.

* * *

“You bastard!” cried Georgie, half in jest and half not, as she came running out of the front gate, then stopped. The taxi was backing and filling as it turned to go. But where was Oliver?

She detached one of the arms holding up her towel and signaled to the taxi. “Wait! Stop!” she shouted.

The driver wound down his window. She knew him — it was Spiros. “OK?” he said. “No problems? Nice holiday?”

“Fine,” she said. “But, Spiros—”

“Stavros,” he replied.

“Stavros. Where is he?”

“Where is he? There he is.”

He pointed. There was a suitcase standing beside the gate.

“Suitcase?” she said.

“OK?” The taxi began to move off.

“Wait! Wait! The person! The person with the suitcase!”

Stavros pointed at the villa. And suddenly she realized. What he had brought wasn’t Oliver, it was Wilfred’s missing suitcase.

“Oh,” she said.

“No?” said Stavros.

“Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

The taxi began to move off again.

“Wait,” she said.

He waited. She lifted the suitcase back into the taxi.

“No?” said Stavros. “Don’t want?”

“Of course he wants it,” said Georgie. “But he’s coming with you.”

* * *

Slowly Wilfred took his underpants down from the clothesline and put them on in the shelter of the bathrobe. They were still damp. But then so were his spirits. So, obviously, were Georgie’s as she watched him.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t Oliver,” he said.

“You must be pleased to get your bag back, though.”

Was he? He hadn’t really thought about it. His bag had long lost its central place in his picture of the world.

“And to have a taxi. So you’re going to be able to give your wonderful lecture.”

Yes, he was going to be able to give his wonderful lecture. He put his shirt on. It stuck around his armpits and across the back of his neck.

“It’ll dry out as you go along,” she said. “Anyway, you can put some dry things on in the taxi. Now you’ve got your bag back.”

A thought came to him slowly as he forced the buttons back into the damp buttonholes. If no Oliver …

“You wouldn’t like to come with me?” he said. “To the lecture?”

“What, about how it all goes back to some dot in the middle of nowhere ten thousand years ago?” she said, pulling the towel tighter round her. “Thanks most awfully.”

He put his trousers on. They adhered to him in ways that made it quite awkward to walk.

“Thirteen point seven billion years ago,” he said.