Michael Frayn - Skios

She snatched the phone to her ear.

“Oh, Nikki, thank God!” she said. “He’s gone out, I’ve locked all the doors, I can’t get hold of Oliver, I might have known it was going to be like this, I simply don’t know what to do, where can he possibly be, what’s happened to him, I’m so worried, I’ll never speak to him again—”

She stopped, because Nikki was talking at the same time.

“… be able to do something if I only knew where you were, ” she was saying.

“I don’t know where I am!” said Georgie. “I’m in some villa somewhere, it belongs to some people, only listen, this phone’s going to run out again, I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve plugged it in—”

But she was talking to no one and nothing, she realized. The phone had relapsed into a coma.

She fetched the charger from her suitcase, and found a convenient socket. Socket and plug, though, she realized as soon as she tried to introduce them, were not on speaking terms. Of course. It was Patrick who looked after things like adapters.

* * *

“No,” said Nikki, “I mean what country are you in, because then maybe I could, I don’t know, phone the local police or something—”

But she became aware that she was talking to herself. She had already tried four times that morning to phone Georgie, and now Georgie’s phone had gone dead again. There was nothing she could possibly do to help her.

She would have to go back to her other worry. Four times that morning she had tried to phone Dr. Wilfred. Five times she had gone to tap on his door. Four times she had abandoned the call before she had got through, five times she had walked away again.

All she could think of was wire cutters. And the little pools of water on the veranda outside her window. And the night creams on Mrs. Toppler’s face. And Dr. Wilfred’s soft, lopsided smile. And the dark forest on the lower slopes of Mount Papadopoulou. And Dr. Wilfred’s long list of publications, positions held, honors won. And the wire cutters. And the face cream. She had been thinking of these things all night. She would never forgive Dr. Wilfred. She would never forgive herself.

Her career was over. She had made a disastrous mistake in her choice of lecturer. She hated him.

She was standing by the Temple of Athena, the phone still in her hand, looking absently down at the tables in the square on the waterfront, some of them under the great plane tree, some of them shaded by blue umbrellas. Breakfast was being served. She was waiting to see him come into breakfast, she realized.

Her attention was caught by a shifting straggle of people that had collected around one of the tables. They were all looking at something that was happening in their midst … It was him. It was Dr. Wilfred that was happening.

Her heart gave an uneasy lurch. She hurried down the path towards breakfast to clear up any misunderstandings, and to make clear to everyone who might have got the wrong impression quite what an extraordinary human being Dr. Wilfred was.

* * *

“The Fred Toppler Foundation,” said Elli, for the twelfth time that morning. “How my dreck your call?”

She slid back the window in front of her little cell, trying with her left ear to hear what the postman was saying in Greek as he handed over the morning mail with various receipts that needed her signature, and with her right ear to make sense of the incoming confusion of English in her headset.

“Sorry, who is this, please…? Oh, Dr. Wilfred! Dr. Wilfred…? Yes, hello, good morning. You sleep well? You find breakfast…?

“No? No breakfast…? Oh …

“You’re where …? You don’t know where…? So, what, you don’t want breakfast…? Oh, sorry — you do want breakfast …

“OK … OK, OK, OK … So you just do like I told you. You go straight down the path and you see tables, chairs, people, coffee … No…? Yes! Just by the sea! You can see the sea, I hope…! You can’t see the sea? No sea …? Only trees…? And what…? Goats …?

“OK, so now I understand. Here’s what happened, Dr. Wilfred. You went the wrong way! I told you ‘Go down the path…’ OK, sure, you went down the path … But, Dr. Wilfred, you went down the wrong path!

“So here’s what you do. You go back to where you started … Up the hill, yes…? All the way back up the hill. And then you start again on the right path. OK…? You’re welcome.”

“Wilson Westerman…” “Darling Erlunder…” “Peter Comax…”

At every moment the cloud of names hanging about Oliver’s head became more tangled and less attached to all the smiling faces and outstretched hands.

“Dickerson and Davina…” “And I’m Smoky…” “Chuck … Chuck who? Chuck nobody! Just Chuck…!” “Chuck Friendly, in fact — he’s too modest to say…” “Kate Katz…” “Kate Kurz…” “Morton Rinkleman, and you may have met Kellogg Rinkleman, who is in fact my second cousin…”

“Hi,” said Oliver — no, Dr. Wilfred, Dr. Wilfred. “Hello, there. How nice to meet you. Hi.”

“A great honor…” said the smiling faces. “A real pleasure … We’re all so excited…”

Dr. Wilfred remained alert and braced. It would get harder than this, obviously. Sooner or later there would be questions put to him, and he would have to find answers.

“I believe you know Senator Hauptmayer, sir?” said one of the faces.

And here it was — a question. A perfectly easy one to deal with, however, even though he so rarely resorted to lies.

“How is the senator?” he asked.

“Poorly, as you know.”

“Give him my best regards.”

“I will, sir.”

Another face: “I read your book … What was it called…?”

Harder, but not impossible. Dr. Wilfred spread his hands helplessly and smiled. He didn’t know, either. Everyone laughed.

“Anyway,” said the face, “you know the one I mean, and I wanted to ask you: when you wrote this book, what were you trying to tell us?”

He could put this one away in the same fashion as he had the last one.

“Heaven knows,” he said. More laughter. “Only whatever it was I was trying to tell you, I obviously wasn’t trying hard enough.”

Another hit. On the edge of the group, behind all the unfamiliar faces, was one that he knew. Pleasantly open eyes, watching him and smiling. He gave her a little wave, and a small special smile that she would be able to see was different from the smiles he was handing out to all the others. She did; she quickly looked away to hide how pleased she was.

Another face: “Now, I’ve read that book, and I was somehow expecting you to be … well, I don’t know … different …”

“No,” said Dr. Wilfred. “I’m pretty much the way I am.”

They loved it. Another face coming up, though: “You won’t recall this, Dr. Wilfred, but we have met before.”

Ironical, obviously. Means he’s met Dr. Wilfred and it wasn’t me. On the other hand … “Where was it? Not at that thing in Mexico?”

“Montreal,” said the face.

“Montreal … In the bar?”

“In the hot tub!”

“I wonder you recognized me with my clothes on.”

“I never forget a face. Though, yes, you’ve changed.”

“Changed? Have I?” The dark depths waiting below the high wire. The audience watching expectantly.

“You’ve got younger, Dr. Wilfred!”

“Hot tubs, obviously.”

Unbelievable, thought Dr. Wilfred. You were who you said you were, even if they knew you weren’t! And even as he thought this he realized that it was Dr. Wilfred who was thinking it. He was Dr. Wilfred not just for the people around him. He was becoming Dr. Wilfred for himself.