The Count of Eleven (47 page)

The coach laboured up the slope above the town, past a donkey lying down for a rest, and turned towards Heraklion. Solitary churches gleamed white on the mountains, then the road was threaded through towns which appeared still to be under construction in order to house the throngs of tourists. The veering of the coach had put the burning figures out of Jack’s head, but his brain felt stuffed with ash. He was sitting in front of Laura and her mother, and every so often he gave in to a compulsion to turn and reassure himself that they hadn’t deserted him.

The coach climbed through Heraklion to the site of the palace of Minos. The guide led the coach load of passengers through the ruins, past parties which were being advised in German and French and Dutch. Here on the hill surrounded by olive groves and cypresses were fragments of great porches supported by red pillars, giant horns carved on ancient pavements, exposed subterranean rooms full of jars larger than a man, a stone throne guarded by mythical animals, even a queen’s privy. Finally the guide brought her party to the road along which Minoan royalty would walk between their palaces. Jack gazed along the path of stone slabs outlined by moss and saw where it was crossed by a mirage of a stream, heat transformed into water. “We didn’t see where the Minotaur lived,” Laura said wistfully.

He could show her a labyrinth, he thought. It was himself. He was the monster in it too, and he’d trapped himself at the centre with no way out. “There’s no magic here, only history,” he opened his mouth to say, but a thought silenced him.

Perhaps there was magic after all, because he had grasped what he’d been trying to remember. The world seemed to brighten as if a fire had been lit, and he felt as though an oracle had helped him. He could still protect the family, and he had to. He was all at once certain that one or more of those who’d claimed to have sent the letters, or had promised to do so, had lied to him.

On the morning of their last full day in Crete Jack said “Have we done everything you wanted to do?”

“We have now,” Julia said.

“Everything,” said Laura.

They were at Lato, a ruined city about three miles’ walk from the main road. On one side of the hill ancient altars faced a valley below a jagged peak, on the other the white streets led below a second peak towards Aghios Nikolaos, piled in the distance against the pale sea. Apart from a few goats and a shy snake and a chorus of insects, the Orchards had the ruins to themselves. Laura kept wondering aloud whether any of the thick stones which made up the pavements and the remains of the houses and workshops and shops were really three thousand years old, until Julia told her gently not to bother so much about numbers. Jack stood by the altars and gazed at the greenery which overgrew the crags and let the growing heat catch up with him, and eventually Julia called “Penny for them.”

“They’re worth a lot more,” he said, smiling easily at her.

“Shall we head for humanity before it gets too hot?”

“If you’ve seen all you wanted to see.”

“You too, Jack.”

“Oh, I’ve got what I wanted out of the trip,” he said, resting his hand for a few seconds on the slab of the altar. Its warmth felt like a secret it was sharing with him. He slithered down the path, dislodging a few pebbles that rattled after him, and took Julia and Laura by the hand as they returned to the dirt road.

An old woman in black was selling her embroidery near a shrine at the edge of the ruins, and later the Orchards encountered a couple of jeeps bound for Lato, but otherwise the road was deserted. It wandered downhill between groves and fields where the only sign of cultivation was the occasional abandoned farming implement. After half an hour of trudging Jack felt as though he had been walking for ever while the sun rode his back, yet the experience was peaceful because his outlook was. When the Orchards halted for a mouthful each of bottled water, Laura said “What did you like best?”

“Sailing to Santorini,” Julia said.

“You mean when we first saw it and we thought all the houses on the top of the island were snow?”

“And having to ride up on donkeys because the streets were so steep.”

“And when they let us dive off the ship on the way back and we swam over the drowned city.”

“Was that your favourite, Laura?”

“No, the Bounty beach.”

“Even though it took us half the day to get there and there weren’t any Bounty bars at the beach shop and they’d had to hang coconuts on the palm trees when they were filming the advert?”

“Yes, because the sand was so white and we swam out to that little island. What was your favourite, Dad?”

“All of it. Being with you two. You don’t realise how much you can fit into thirteen days until you have to.”

“At the top Mum said not to worry so much about numbers.”

“I’m not worried,” he said, feeling their hands in his, Julia’s rougher than it had been when they’d first held hands but still essentially soft, Laura’s almost as big as Julia’s now and both of them slim though, he reflected, anything but frail. “Come on or we’ll miss the next bus,” he said, worried after all. “We mustn’t have you two getting sunstroke on our last day.”

When at last they reached the end of the rubbly path the bus was pulling away from the stop, but sighed to a halt when the driver saw them despairing. The conductor gave Laura the tickets once she’d treated him to her six words of Greek, and then an old woman who was taking a basketful of produce into town engaged her in a conversation which soon turned into smiles and gestures, and gave her a handful of olives which Laura didn’t like to refuse. Jack ate most of them and held the stones in his fist, having counted them: “Florist, plumbress, psychic, dressmaker, rich girl.” Their bitter taste lingered in his mouth all the way to the bus station by the harbour.

The driver inserted the bus into the rank of vehicles with, it seemed, hardly an inch to spare. As the Orchards climbed down from it an Orthodox priest strode by, the hem of his robe flapping. Jack could smell fish, the sea, the fumes of the bus, the spicy meat of a kebab, the faintest hint of Julia’s body lotion. They walked away from the roaring of engines and the distorted shout that announced the destinations of the buses, and Jack heard the cries of gulls seesawing above the wake of a fisherman’s boat. “Shall we come here next year?” Laura said.

“Let’s make the most of now for now,” Jack told her. He felt ambushed by unhappiness until she said “I’m going to look in the jewellery shop’ and ran ahead.

Julia watched her long tanned legs moving gracefully, her body slim in shorts and a T-shirt, her red hair no longer so cropped. “She’s growing up.”

“We all are.”

“I’m not so sure about you,” Julia said, and became thoughtful. “I wish you could have seen her when we found the burglar in the house. She ran straight at him as he came out of our room before I could stop her. I don’t think he knew what hit him.”

“I can imagine.”

She put one arm around Jack’s shoulders and kissed him, gazing into his eyes. “I’m glad you managed to unwind. I didn’t know what was wrong with you the first couple of days we were here.”

“Just getting used to the heat and trying to catch up on my sleep.”

“I think it’s turned out to be our best holiday ever.”

“I think you’re right,” Jack said, walking ahead of her for a few steps so that she couldn’t read his face. “Let’s go back to the hotel and have lunch in the shade,” he said, catching her and Laura by the hand.

The family sat under the awning of the taverna beside the hotel. A man wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat was paddling a plastic boat hired from the next beach, and a group of new arrivals were braving the height of the sun on recliners below the hotel. A breeze set the waves glittering and brightened Julia’s and Laura’s eyes, touched up their freckles, twined and untwined Julia’s hair over her shoulders. The waiter brought swordfish and retsina, and Jack wanted the meal to last for ever. All too soon Julia finished her brandy and coffee and said “I’m going up for a shower.”

“I’ll get the keys,” Laura said, and ran to the office while Jack waited for the bill. When he went inside the taverna to pay, the proprietor offered him a shot glass of raki from a plastic bottle that had once contained water. Jack knew about the drink Greek moonshine and drained the glass at a gulp. “Dutch courage,” he told the proprietor, who assumed that was a toast and raised his own glass.

Jack stood beneath the awning for a few moments, feeling the spirit burn down into his stomach and rise into his brain, then he sent himself towards the hotel. There was no point in wishing that the day would never end; he’d saved the holiday only by knowing what he would have to do. Suddenly anxious to be with Julia, he hurried to their room.

She opened the door to him and retreated, to welling herself. Ghosts of her swimsuit emphasised her breasts and the bushy ginger division of her thighs. Her hair, sleek with water that dripped down her back, made him think of a wildcat’s pelt. He heeled the door shut and put his arms around her and threw the towel on the bed, and was running his hands down her spine to her naked bottom when Laura knocked on the door. “Mummy, there’s a cockroach in my room.”

“It’s a good job it wasn’t an insect that burgled our house,”

Julia murmured, and called “Don’t worry, Laura, it’s twice as scared of you as you are of it.”

“Can’t I come in?”

Julia pressed her cheek against Jack’s and her body against him. “What for?”

“Just for a little rest. I won’t be able to sleep for thinking that’s in my room.”

Julia hugged Jack, then eased herself away from him. “You don’t mind, do you? We’ll be alone later.”

He gave her a last kiss, chasing her tongue with his, then turned away quickly not so quickly, he hoped, that she would wonder why. It was for the best, he thought as he opened the door; by the time Julia had gone to sleep Laura might well have been awake. “It was this big,” Laura said.

“If it was that big we should have caught it and had it stuffed.” He stood back to let her in while Julia finished to welling herself. “Where’s Daddy going to sleep?” Julia said.

“You can have my bed, Laura. I’m going to read.” He picked up the guidebook from Julia’s bedside table and stepped onto the balcony, leaving the windows ajar.

He took his time over leafing through the guidebook. They hadn’t found time to walk down the Samarian Gorge; they’d never seen the rare flowers or the bearded vultures or the goats whose horns bent back. Perhaps one day, he thought, and told himself he mustn’t try to plan for them. He examined the map that showed the Sea of Crete. As he’d noted on the way to Santorini, there were very few islands, and the whole of Britain could have been fitted into this sea. He gazed from the balcony at the glittering of the water, a message he understood now, and then he looked into the room.

Julia and Laura were asleep. They didn’t stir when he tiptoed in and found a pen in Julia’s handbag. On the balcony he smoothed out the envelope addressed to Janys Day and tore off the back before stuffing the rest of it, together with the letter, into his shirt pocket. Gone to hire a boat from the next beach for a paddk, he wrote, and glanced at his watch: nearly three o’clock. Back by 4.30, he wrote, and bit his lip and rubbed the corners of his eyes hard. He drew eleven kisses and turned to the window again, but had difficulty seeing until he wiped his eyes with one forefinger and thumb. Then the heat dried his eyes and the sight of Julia and Laura gave him strength.

It was only right that they’d crowded him out, he thought; they didn’t need him. Eleven was the number of a team a winning team and Julia and Laura added up to that without him. His worst mistake had been to think that the Count had won Julia her new job. It showed how much Jack underrated her that he hadn’t realised she had achieved that herself.

He slipped the keys with the clown’s head out of his pocket and crept into the room. Placing the guidebook on the otherwise bare table near the window, he laid the note on top of the book and weighed it down with the clown’s head. As he stood between the beds he felt as if he was already nothing more than his shadow on the wall. He knelt between the beds and kissed Julia’s forehead, then Laura’s. “Mum,” Julia said, and Laura greeted him with almost the same sleepy contented sound. Once he was certain they were still asleep he stood up carefully. “Look after each other,” he whispered, and tiptoeing out of the room, inched the door shut.

He felt unexpectedly exhilarated as he went down the sunlit steps. There was something to be said for being able to see the future so clearly. He tore the letter and the remains of the envelope into small pieces and dropped the fragments in a waste-paper basket beside the reception counter. “Just going to hire a boat for an hour,” he told the receptionist, and pointed along the coast towards the next beach.

A road closed by bollards led in that direction. Five minutes’ walk brought Jack to the public beach. A man and a woman were splashing and ducking each other a few hundred yards out from the edge of the waves, but the beach was deserted apart from a bearded Greek on a canvas chair beneath a wide umbrella next to several canoes. He gestured at the sun with one thick calloused hand and set his face in an advisory grimace when Jack held out the hire fee, then he shrugged and accepted the money. “One hour,” he said.

The canoes were made of moulded plastic. Near the back of each was a flat ridge for sitting on, flanked by pedals that were no more than U-shaped pieces of metal. Each boat had a number and yes, Jack saw, one was number 13, the digits and the red plastic dulled by sea and sun. He cradled it in his arms and staggered across the pebbles and sand to drop it in the water, almost falling on top of it. The man and woman splashed inshore towards him, competing to see who could drench the other worst. They were the couple from Birmingham.

When they recognised him they finished their game with one last defiant splash each and then seemed to be trying to pretend that he couldn’t have caught them at anything so undignified. As they paddled towards him Jack sat on the boat, which immediately touched bottom and tilted to one side, nearly throwing him off. “More awkwardness between my legs,” he said.