Michael Frayn - Skios

Bag, though! Flight bag! Still in the taxi…! No, here, hung round his neck before he went to sleep just in case he did exactly what he for a moment thought he had done.

The luxury of the accommodation made up even for the appearance of the man they had sent to meet him, not to mention all the “No problems” and “No worries.” He rewarded him, as he turned to go, by repeating the man’s own demotic salutation. “Yes, and … what was it…? Phoksoliva !”

The front door key was in the lock. As he pushed the door open the interior of the house sprang softly into being.

No, never before had he been in guest quarters like these! Dark traditional furniture, peasant pots, and earthenware plates. Everywhere there were little civilizing touches that made it seem more like a family home. Dolls, amateur watercolors, scattered books and magazines. The almost inaudible reassurance of the air-conditioning. On the counter in the spacious kitchen a handwritten note: “Help yourself to anything you can find. Pool towels etc. in the changing rooms outside.”

The foundation had more than made up for the shabbiness of its welcome at the airport. He felt as if he had wandered into the enchanted castle in a fairy story. The bed was hung about with swagged white mosquito netting, like the curtains around a sleeping princess. Many of the cupboards and presses were locked. Perhaps the bodies of earlier lecturers who had been lured here were hidden inside them.

Now what, though? He should probably stroll along to wherever it was that the guests of the foundation gathered and introduce himself. But when he got to the edge of the silver world at the end of the garden path the blackness beyond looked impenetrable, and the soft, welcoming nest behind him even more enticing. He went back and ran a bath, with purple crystals from an old-fashioned pharmacist’s jar. He found a bottle of local white wine in the refrigerator and a corkscrew waiting with glasses on the worktop. He undressed and folded his clothes carefully — he was going to have to put them on again in the morning — on top of the flight bag beside the bed … Lecture! Yes.

He lay back in the foam and sipped the wine. It was good. The day had gone some considerable way towards redeeming itself.

He dried his hands on one of the soft towels scattered about the marble counters around the bath, and phoned Vicki. She was back on duty again.

“Me … Here, yes. Suitcase, however, not … I know, I know. Not the airline this time, though — some idiot woman at the carousel … All my papers, yes … Not the lecture, no. I’ve got the lecture … You’re not in the office now…? No, of course not, but you might e-mail me all the bumf in the morning. All I need now is a phone number. Make contact, set their minds at rest … Not too fast — I’m putting it on the phone … 00 30—yes, go on … Wonderful … Bless you … However should we live without these magical little things?”

He pressed the new number.

“Fred Toppler Foundation,” said the voice at the other end. “How my dreck your call?”

“I just thought I should let you know I’d arrived safely. Your lecturer. Dr. Wilfred.”

“Oh, Dr. Wilfred, yes, good, thank you! You had a good flight, you found your room, is everything OK, nothing you want, sandwiches, whatever?”

“Fine,” said Dr. Wilfred. “No, nothing I want. Except my suitcase, which some idiot at the airport seems to have taken.”

“Not a problem. Leave it to me. I fix it in the morning.”

“Anyway, it’s a very nice accommodation. Thank you. I thought I’d have an early night. Say hello to everyone in the morning.”

“OK. Great. Pour yourself a bath. Run a glass of wine.”

“I already have, thank you.”

“And in the morning, OK, you come out your door, you walk down the path in front of you towards the sea, there is breakfast by the water, everyone is so pleased to see you. Sleep well.”

“I will. Phoksoliva. ”

“How was this?”

“ Phoksoliva. No?”

“Phoks…?”

“… oliva. Yes?”

“Oh … OK … Phoksoliva ? You too.”

* * *

Oliver rose like a god, refreshed from the last of the bubbles in the bath, and wrapped himself in the waiting bathrobe. Straight, then left — veranda on the right. He unzipped his bag to find a clean shirt.

Except that it wouldn’t unzip. Something was jamming it. A padlock.

A padlock ? He’d never padlocked a bag in his life!

This was his bag, wasn’t it? Or, to be pedantic, Annuka Vos’s bag? He lifted the cover of the red leather address tag. “Dr. Norman Wilfred.”

Good God! He had Dr. Norman Wilfred’s suitcase! He had taken over not only his identity but the physical fabric of his life! Was now possessed of everything, probably, that Dr. Norman Wilfred owned on the island of Skios! Had found it put into his hands, without any conscious effort on his part, by fate! The heavens had noted his initiative, and smiled upon it!

Perhaps he really was now Dr. Norman Wilfred! Had actually become him!

The flight tag told the same story. “Name,” it said: “Dr. Norman Wilfred. Destination: Fred Toppler Foundation, Skios.” And when he looked in the mirror this time it agreed. The man looking back at him was, yes, Dr. Norman Wilfred.

All he needed was the key to his own suitcase. Which was where? And for the first time the obvious thought came to him — one he should have thought before, but somehow, in the onrush of events, hadn’t: that somewhere in the world there must be another Dr. Norman Wilfred. A Dr. Norman Wilfred with none of Dr. Norman Wilfred’s worldly possessions, it was true, except the key to the padlock that secured them. A Dr. Norman Wilfred sustained by the dangerous belief that he and no other was Dr. Norman Wilfred, and that his rightful place in the world was precisely here, in this very room.

Where was he at the moment, this former Dr. Norman Wilfred, whom the gods had so decisively rejected?

On the island, presumably, arrived on the same plane as the new and improved edition of himself. Not more than a dozen or so miles away, since the island seemed to be only a dozen or so miles long. Still at the airport, perhaps, waiting patiently for someone to collect him. Or, more likely by now, impatiently. Phoning furiously to ask where his car was. Being told that some confusion must have occurred. Finding himself a taxi. In a taxi already. On his way. Raging. Almost in sight of the foundation …

At any moment now the usual embarrassments would be beginning. “I was somehow confused” the new Dr. Norman Wilfred, already fading back into Oliver Fox, would be saying. “Can’t apologize enough. A moment of inexplicable aberration … Nothing like this has ever happened to me before…”

So, no time to waste. Straight along the path at once, left, veranda on the right, before the superseded incumbent arrived. No time to put on his clean shirt — and no clean shirt to put on, anyway. Go just as he was, in his snow-white bathrobe.

He was out of the door so fast that he almost forgot to take his room key— did forget the champagne! — ran back to get it — and was out of the door again in a flash. Heard his phone ringing — realized he’d left it in the pocket of his dirty shirt — couldn’t go back for it, because the door was already closing behind him, and the key was where he had put it down in the kitchen while he’d got the champagne out of the refrigerator.

Bridges burnt, then. No retreat.

Georgie Evers came down the steps of the plane into the hot Mediterranean night, her phone to her ear, waiting for Oliver to answer.