Michael Frayn - Skios

“It’s probably only for a few days,” said Georgie. “Sooner or later someone’s going to notice you’re missing. Your wife or someone. Send out a search party.”

Sooner or later, yes. In the meantime, though …

Already the disappointed owners of all those respectfully upturned faces had vanished from his head as if they had never been. So had the lecture, and his professional obligations and reputation. They had all been pushed into oblivion by the two moles. And the three condoms in the right-hand inside pocket of his jacket.

And the words of the song. “If you were the only girl in the world,” they murmured to him, over and over again, as if they had taken on a life of their own, “and I was the only boy…”

A fire bell was ringing. Oliver, instantly alarmed, looked out of the porthole of the theater where he was just about to perform his juggling act and saw smoke and flames pouring out of the starboard outer engine. He struggled to sit up, terrified.

Late-afternoon sunshine was coming through unfamiliar curtains. He was in a bedroom of some sort, not a theater or an airplane. But the fire bell was still ringing. Except that it wasn’t a fire bell — it was the phone beside his bed. He scrambled the receiver up to his ear and managed to make a sound like “Hello.”

“It’s me,” said a woman’s voice. “Nikki.”

There was something familiar about both the voice and the name, but he couldn’t quite place them. “Um?” he said.

“That is Dr. Wilfred?” said the voice.

“Wrong number,” he mumbled, and went back to sleep.

* * *

When the phone rang again the woman was laughing.

“So that isn’t Dr. Wilfred?” she said.

It was her laughter that at last woke him up and returned him to recognizable normality.

“Nikki!” he said. “Nikki? Nikki…”

“Oh, so it is Dr. Wilfred?”

“I was asleep.”

“You certainly were. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Never mind. You obviously needed it. Not enough sleep last night, perhaps. Anyway, we’ve got here. He’s just dropping his bag in his room and freshening up. Then he’s on his way.”

“Who is?”

“Wellesley Luft! Your old friend!”

And now he was even more awake. I can do it, he thought at once. I can talk anyone into anything. Even my old friend Wellesley Luft into recognizing me as Dr. Wilfred. Bring him on.

As he put the foundation’s phone down he saw his own lying beside it, neglected and forgotten, where he had put it when he arrived the previous evening. He turned it on. He had texts, he had voice messages. He opened the texts. There were five new ones from Annuka. He skipped quickly up through the little windows. She seemed to be softening somewhat. She was forgiving him for having allowed her to throw him out.

He turned to the voice messages. The most recent was from Georgie. Yes, he should listen to it again, as he had promised himself earlier today, so he could truthfully tell her tomorrow that when she had said she was arriving tomorrow he had quite reasonably supposed that it had been not yesterday’s tomorrow she meant but today’s. Which would give him another night in hand.

He tapped the screen. But what sprang into his ear was not the message about arriving tomorrow — it was incomprehensible uncontrolled hysteria. Her voice was scarcely recognizable. “Oliver! Where are you?” it screamed at him. He snatched the phone away from his ear in surprise, but he could hear her raving on even at arm’s length. He turned the phone off. He thought he might sit this one out.

He had committed a solecism of some sort, obviously. Failed to phone when he had promised, or forgotten her birthday. But what he had promised was not to phone while she was with — what was he called? — Patrick. And her birthday? When they’d only ever met for five minutes?

He had a pee and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he sat down and concentrated his mind on being Dr. Wilfred, on being so overwhelmingly, so immanently Dr. Wilfred that he and Dr. Wilfred’s old friend would immediately recognize each other as such.

* * *

Georgie lay there on the lounger all afternoon in the shade of the beach umbrella, perhaps asleep, apparently entirely content to do nothing. Dr. Wilfred, though, grew more awake as the hours went by. He lay on his lounger, his head turned away from the source of his trouble, unable to move. He felt light-headed and nauseated, as though he had a temperature. He hadn’t had these symptoms for this particular reason for twenty years or more. A feverish shudder went through him, so sharp that his teeth rattled.

All he could think about were the two moles. The two moles and the three condoms. She the only girl in the world, he the only boy … The question was what he was going to do about it. How they were ever going to get out of this situation, where she was lying on one lounger and he was lying on the other. He had to do something. He had to make some kind of move, or they would remain here for ever. The more he thought about it, though, the less he could see what it should be.

* * *

Dr. Wilfred, thought Oliver, thought Dr. Wilfred, as he waited for his old friend. I’m Dr. Wilfred. Born wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred was born. Went to school wherever it was that Dr. Wilfred went to school. Am, in a word, two words, Dr. Wilfred.

His concentration was disturbed, though, because he kept remembering that note of hysteria in Georgie’s voice. An unsettling thought somehow thought itself. Maybe Georgie’s outrage had reached such a pitch that she had by one means or another discovered where he was. Maybe she was even now pursuing him here. Impossible, of course. Wasn’t it? There was no way in which she could have followed his sudden private sideways leap into the persona of Dr. Wilfred. Dr. Wilfred, Dr. Wilfred … In any case, she was still waiting for a plane in Turkey. Wasn’t she?

He picked up the phone and touched the screen. “Oliver! Where are you?” she screamed again, but this time he kept the phone within screaming distance of his ear. “He was in bed! He was pretending to be you! He hasn’t done something to you, has he? Tied you up? Murdered you?”

And then silence.

He gazed at the phone in astonishment. He had quite often found it difficult to understand what women were complaining to him about, but never had any complaint been as totally incomprehensible as this one. Who was this man who was in bed, and who had done, or might have done, all these things? Patrick, presumably. But why should Patrick have pretended to be him? How could Patrick have pretended to be him, when he didn’t know him, since he’d taken care to get out of his chair in that bar, and out of his life, before Patrick had returned from his smoke? And how could Patrick have tied him up and murdered him when he was in Turkey and he himself, whether he was Dr. Wilfred or whether he wasn’t, was in Greece?

There was an earlier unplayed message from Georgie.

“Oliver,” said the voice, this time not in a scream but in a desperate whisper, “will you please answer your phone! I’m locked in the bathroom! He’s hammering on the door! I thought it was you ! He nearly raped me! I don’t know how to phone the police in this country! Oliver! Please help me! I’m all on my own! In the bathroom!”

And then, again, silence.

He jumped to his feet, overwhelmed by alarm and anguish. He must do something, and do it at once! But what? He ran to the door, but couldn’t think where to go. He ran back, picked up the phone, and tried to call her back. “This number is not available,” it said.