Skios

34

“Dr. Wilfred?” said Nikki cautiously, tapping softly on his door. The interview couldn’t still be going on, could it? If it was, if he had still not managed to get rid of Wellesley Luft, he might welcome an interruption. He would presumably want to freshen up and get changed before the evening began. She tapped again. Still no response.

The door was open a crack. She put her ear to it. Silence … and then a strange low sound, a kind of gathering deep groan.

She pushed the door open at once.

“Dr. Wilfred!” she said in alarm. There was a sharp snort, and the bald head she could see over the back of the armchair jerked upright. The suddenly awakened face of Wellesley Luft appeared, trying to work out in evident confusion where its owner now was.

“I was at Junior Prom,” he said. “I’d just gotten to dance with Jackie Kennedy … I do apologize. I was on the red-eye, as you know. Also I am seven hours out of step with Eastern Standard Time.”

“He’s still not here?” said Nikki. She looked at her watch. “I’m awfully sorry. He must have stepped out for a moment, and then … I don’t know … got cornered by his admirers, perhaps. So many people who want to talk to him!”

“Everyone wants a piece of Dr. Norman Wilfred!”

“He’s going to be in a bit of a rush when he arrives. I’ll try to find you a little time after dinner.”

“Even half an hour would be most deeply appreciated. Oh, and I guess sooner or later he’s going to be needing this. I found it on the floor.”

“On the floor? Oh, dear. He does seem to be a weensy bit disorganized.”

She opened the passport and glanced briefly at the familiar face. “I’ll put it somewhere safe for him. You go on down. Ask them to give you a glass of champagne.”

* * *

Nikki put the passport on the desk, where Dr. Wilfred would be sure to see it. But as soon as Wellesley Luft was out of the room she picked it up again and resumed her study of Dr. Wilfred’s photograph. He was unsmiling, of course, as passport regulations required, and made strangely alien by his staring immobility. He was still Dr. Wilfred, though, still chuckle-headed Norman Wilfred. Her eyes moved to the date of birth and other details beside the photograph. Good God, no wonder he seemed so young! He was only a couple of years older than herself! And he had already achieved so much in life! Her eye moved up to feast on his name for a moment or two …

Her phone was ringing, though. It was him! At once her eyes were more pleasantly open than ever, her shirt more crisply ironed. “Nikki Hook,” she said.

It wasn’t Dr. Wilfred. It was a woman having some kind of hysterical breakdown.

“Sorry—who is this?” said Nikki. “I can’t hear … Oh—Georgie!” Of course. Georgie. Again. Who else? She stood, holding the passport in her hand, trying to make sense of the cascade of sound in her ear. “Georgie,” she said, “Georgie … Georgie…! Slow down a moment…! Yes, but I can’t … Had to Google me…? Fingers shaking…? But why did you have to Google me…? The cleaning person’s phone…?”

She kept her eyes fixed on Dr. Wilfred’s sane and untroubled face.

“Georgie … Yes, yes … But just tell me one thing: where are you? The bathroom? You’re back in the bathroom? Oh, Georgie, no!

“And this person outside the door … is the cleaning person? And is he the same man as before?

“Not the same man? Not a man? Her? The cleaning person is the cleaning woman?”

She looked out of the window. The yachts rode quietly at anchor. Shirtsleeved waiters hurried back and forth to the Temple of Athena with crates of champagne and bags of ice. The Fred Toppler Foundation was quietly, thrillingly, doing what it had been founded to do: promote the civilizing values of European culture. Meanwhile, out there in the rest of the world …

“Georgie, let me just make sure I’ve got all this straight. You were lying by the pool. Nothing on — no — of course not — sunbathing — yes. And the cleaning woman came out? Yes … yes … And threw all your clothes in the pool? Everything … Emptied the suitcase …

“Of course … Yes … I understand … So, Georgie, have you got any clothes on now?

“You’ve got what on? Mosquito netting?”

Nikki opened the passport again as she listened. Even without his regular smile there was something calming about Dr. Wilfred’s appearance. You looked at him and you knew that the world could be a simple and straightforward place, that it was possible to live one’s life without getting besieged in bathrooms by cleaning women with insane religious convictions. He had been born in London, she discovered. He was a British citizen. And his name was somehow as reassuring as his appearance. She let her eye move up the list to savor it. “Given names/prénoms: OLIVER.” Yes! It somehow suited him. So did his surname/nom: FOX.

“Georgie,” she said, “you’re in the bathroom, yes, but what country is the bathroom in?”

She didn’t hear Georgie’s reply, though, because it had just occurred to her that there was something odd about the spelling of Dr. Wilfred’s name.

* * *

In fact Georgie hadn’t replied, because she hadn’t heard Nikki’s question. The cleaning woman had suddenly discovered a new grievance. Georgie had only just taken in what it was.

“My suitcase!” she was screaming through the woodwork. “What have you done with my suitcase?”

Her suitcase? What suitcase? There wasn’t a suitcase!

There had been a suitcase, of course. There had been her own suitcase, now floating in the pool. And, yes, there had been another suitcase before that. The one that had come in the taxi — Wilfred’s suitcase.

A queasy, unsettling insight came to Georgie. She had jumped to conclusions, she realized, as she had done quite often in life before. Wilfred’s suitcase hadn’t been Wilfred’s suitcase. It had been the cleaning woman’s. The taxi had been bringing the cleaning woman. And her suitcase with her.

But why would the cleaning woman have been arriving in a taxi? Why would she have been bringing a suitcase with her?

And suddenly, in one lightning leap after another, everything became clear to Georgie. It was because the cleaning woman wasn’t the cleaning woman. She was coming to stay in the villa. Just like Georgie herself. A fellow guest. Of Oliver’s. Like herself. She was some part of Oliver’s notorious past. Or even, like herself, of his notorious present.

There seemed to be another ceasefire in the siege of the door. Instead there was the sound of the suitcase search moving through the house, of doors being flung open, of tables being shifted and chairs overturned. Georgie wondered whether to try shouting through the door that the suitcase was presumably still outside the gate where the taxi driver had put it. But then she remembered — it wasn’t. She had picked it up herself, and put it back in the taxi. So now it was …

Wherever Wilfred was. Giving a lecture. Gone.

At any moment the woman would be back, still suitcaseless, and angrier than ever. It might be an idea, thought Georgie, to follow the example of the suitcase — to be out of the house and away from here.

* * *

Oliver rested his head against the side window of the taxi, absently watching a plane that had taken off from the airport just ahead of them. Up, up it soared, catching the early evening sun as it began a long climbing turn. He felt like that plane — light, unencumbered, free. As magically as a plane becoming airborne he had become Dr. Norman Wilfred. As easily as a plane revolving the landscape beneath itself he had rocked the world a little on its axis. Had varied the great dullness of things, the vast yawning predictability of the planets going round the sun.

Then, just as easily, he had reverted to being Oliver Fox again, and was off. There was nothing he had to drag through the airport and get airborne with him. His suitcase could stay where it was, in the room he had left. Nothing in it that he couldn’t abandon as easily as the room. Nothing in it that belonged to him, in any case, now he thought about it. Not even the suitcase. Somewhere there must be another suitcase, full of things that actually were his. It was presumably in the keeping of that other Dr. Norman Wilfred, the shadowy figure who was now free to step forth into the light again and resume his existence. Let him have both suitcases, whoever he was.

All Oliver needed in life he carried in his pockets. A little cash and a couple of credit cards. He checked his trouser pockets. OK. Fine. He checked his shirt pocket. He had his phone. Not essential, perhaps, but certainly useful. The bar of chocolate and the pack of soluble aspirin. Optional, but handy. Nothing else in the whole wide world did he require.

Oh. One thing …

* * *

Nikki sat down. Her legs had gone wobbly. She looked at the passport yet again.

No, there was no way round it. The spelling was definitely wrong. “Norman” was not spelled O-L–I-V-E-R. “Wilfred” was not spelled F-O-X.