Michael Frayn - Skios

“But…”

“Two…”

“Listen!”

They listened, as Dr. Wilfred’s “Three” was followed by a brief crescendo of breaking china. Nikki and the backs in front of her sprang outwards from the flying white fragments and dark splashes of coffee dregs. Something struck Nikki on her upper arm, then fell at her feet. It was the spout of the coffee pot.

“Exactly!” said Dr. Wilfred. “And that, Professor, is the answer to your question.”

Professor Ditmuss was still holding the tablecloth. He wiped the coffee off his shirt with it. He seemed dazed. He also seemed as if there was something more he wanted to say.

“I’m so sorry!” said Nikki, as he opened his mouth. “Me again! I’m afraid I’m carrying Dr. Wilfred off for his next engagement.”

* * *

“Brilliant,” said Nikki as she led Dr. Wilfred towards Democritus. “Though I arrived a bit too late to really understand what was going on.”

“So,” said Dr. Wilfred, “what’s the next challenge?”

“Drinks with Mrs. Fred Toppler.”

“Shall I do my demonstration with the coffee cups? Or just get into bed with her again?”

“Simply be your normal brilliant self. And remember that my future in this institution does rather depend upon you. Also her friend Mr. Papadopoulou has something of a reputation in this country.”

“A reputation? Does he? For what?”

“In modern Greek philosophy one of the rules for a happy life is: never ask questions about Vassilis Papadopoulou.”

I might have guessed, thought Georgie, as Dr. Wilfred appeared round the corner of the house yet again. She turned over onto her stomach and covered herself with the towel, but he vanished into the villa without a word or a glance. She kept the towel over her. He had seemed to be in a state of collapse. But you never knew, in her experience, with even the shakiest old gent.

After a while he emerged with water running off his head once again, and sank slowly down onto the edge of the other lounger, at some distance from her. She kept her head turned warily towards him, her left cheek pressed against the towel she was lying on, her eyes open.

“They’re sending a buggy for me,” he said. “It’s too far to walk. I have to wait for the buggy. I am giving a lecture. This evening. At the foundation. The Fred Toppler Lecture.”

He dragged a scruffy binder out of the flight bag that he was still clutching and held it up for her to see.

“At least I still have the lecture. Everything else has gone. It was all in my suitcase. Someone took my suitcase.” He loosened the damp shirt around his neck. “Clean clothes, toilet bag. I shall have to borrow things from the foundation.”

He wiped his hands on his torn trousers and extracted a phone from his sweaty shirt pocket. He wiped more sweat off his hands.

“So where’s this buggy they’re sending?” he said. “It should be here by now.”

She watched him as he waited with the phone to his ear.

“Or have they forgotten about me?” he said. “Do I actually exist? Or have I somehow vanished like my suitcase?”

For a moment he remained completely still and silent, listening.

“Engaged,” he said. He pressed a button to redial. Another patient pause. Then he let out a sudden howl of fury that made Georgie jump.

“Not in service!” He hurled the phone away from him to the other end of the lounger. It skidded over the edge and disappeared into the pool.

For a moment he sat there, watching the blue reflections of the sky in the water, which lapped gently back and forth, as serene and unconcerned as a lizard that has just swallowed a fly. Then he put his head into his hands and gazed for some minutes at his dusty shoes.

“I’m sorry,” said Georgie. “You’re having a bad time.”

Eventually he lifted his head, and sat gazing at something else. Her beach bag, she realized, and the things that had spilled out of it. One of them was her phone.

“I might be able to remember my PA’s number,” he said humbly.

She switched on the phone and held it up to show him the blankness of the screen. “Battery,” she said.

“Charger?” he said.

“But no adapter.”

He sprang to his feet, energized and reborn.

“ I’ve got an adapter!” he said.

“In your suitcase?” she said.

He sank back onto the lounger and looked at his shoes again for a long time. Then he raised his head once more. “The buggy’s going to the guest quarters,” he said. He had become a different person, calm and quiet, like someone recovered from a fever. He looked at the house. “This isn’t the guest quarters,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with the foundation. It’s somebody’s villa. What — yours?”

She nodded. He bowed his head. “I do apologize for my misunderstanding.”

He had become a normal human being. An abnormally quiet one, perhaps. She knew what particular aspect of his trespass he was thinking about, but was too embarrassed to specify: how he had taken possession of not only her house but her bed, and how close he had come to taking possession of her as well. Well, everyone made mistakes. She had made a slight mistake herself. She decided to forgive him, and to put him out of his misery.

“I’m waiting for my friend to arrive,” she said. “I presume he’ll be in a taxi. You can have the taxi.”

“Thank you,” he said humbly. “I should be extremely grateful. Do you mind if I wait here? It’s very hot out there.”

She picked up the wide flowered sun hat lying beside the lounger and spun it across to him. “You’re going pink,” she said.

He looked at the hat, and reluctantly put it on. She laughed. He took it off.

“Come on,” she said. “You’re going to look a lot sillier if you stand there giving your lecture and you’re bright red.”

He put it on again, and she threw him the tube of sunblock. He obediently anointed himself, and they went on waiting.

“So when are you expecting your friend?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” she said.

Mrs. Fred Toppler and Dr. Norman Wilfred were getting on like a house on fire. They were sipping champagne cocktails in the loggia high up on the corner of Democritus, where it caught every slight breath of air from the sea. His nocturnal expedition into her bed in search of the wire cutters seemed to have been forgotten.

“It’s such a tonic,” she said, “to have someone here who is not only so distinguished but so young ! It sometimes makes me just a little bit sad that the people who share our passion for promoting civilized values are almost all past retiring age. I feel so young in heart myself! This is what brought the late Mr. Fred Toppler and me together. He was eighty-one years old when we first met. ‘Baby,’ he said — he always called me Baby—‘you make me feel young again.’ I was a dancer. A serious dancer. Nothing cheap. I had a beautiful body. I was happy to express myself with it. I was in a show in Vegas. I’m in my dressing room afterwards and the girl comes in and says, ‘Miss LeStarr’—I was Bahama LeStarr, second billing—‘there’s a gentleman to see you, and he’s in a white tux!’ A white tux, would you believe! Like something in an old movie!

“So he takes me out to dinner. Champagne, caviar, all the baloola. He was a gentleman. This was twenty years ago. There were gentlemen then. ‘Baby,’ he says, ‘you make me feel like I’ve never grown up. Will you marry me?’

“I say, ‘Mr. Toppler, that is so sweet, I am so touched, but I have my career!’

“And he says, ‘You go right on with your career, Baby, because that’s what I love, to watch you dance.’