Michael Frayn - Skios

So, she was trapped in a bathroom. By a potential rapist. Somewhere in Turkey. Phone the police, obviously. Phone which police, where? Which part of Turkey had she said she was going to be in? Or — yes — the British embassy! Look up Istanbul. No, Istanbul wasn’t the capital of Turkey. What was the capital of Turkey? He’d forgotten the name of the capital of Turkey!

As he gazed hopelessly at the phone he saw that there was an even earlier message from Georgie still waiting to be played. He pressed the button, bracing himself for the next horror. This time her voice was entirely different, though. Hurried and incoherent, but very pleased with itself.

“Hi!” she said. “It’s me! I suddenly saw there was a flight to Thessaloniki…!”

He found it difficult to take in all the circumstantial details. He got the general gist of it, though — that she wasn’t in Turkey any longer. She had arrived. She was here, in Skios. At the airport already. He looked at his watch. How long to get to the airport? And when was he giving the lecture? No, forget the lecture, forget all this Dr. Wilfred nonsense. Georgie was trapped by a rapist in a bathroom at the airport, and it was he who was responsible for her being there. This was serious. He hadn’t so far in life had much practice in making moral choices, but in these circumstances even he could see what had to take priority.

He ran about the room, picking up things he might need for the task ahead and putting them down again. Cash, credit cards. Phone, passport. A bar of chocolate and a pack of soluble aspirin he had found in the suitcase. Phone, phone, where was his phone! He put everything down yet again. Oh, yes, in his hand.

He was aware that he had reached an epoch in his life. He knew that he had without warning found himself faced with the chance — the necessity — to become the kind of human being he had always wanted to be. He couldn’t help noticing that he had risen to the occasion. Without hesitating for an instant he had given up the best adventure he had ever embarked upon. Not to mention his forthcoming hour upon the world stage, and however many million dollars a year he was going to be getting for the various jobs he had accepted.

And Nikki. He had given up the prospect of Nikki. For a moment he hesitated, bar of chocolate and soluble aspirin in hand.

No, not even the thought of Nikki could deflect him from his duty. Anyway, there might perhaps be a chance to slip back for an hour or two at some point and explain.

As he ran out of the door with his eyes on his phone, trying to think who to call to get a taxi, he found himself dancing left right left right with a bald-headed man in a seersucker jacket who was coming in the opposite direction holding a notebook and a bottle of bourbon, and who was struggling so deferentially to get out of his way that he was perpetually in it.

“I do beg your pardon,” said the man, as deferentially as he was jumping from one side to the other, “but could you tell me where I might find Dr. Norman Wilfred?”

“Out,” called Oliver over his shoulder as he ran on down the path. “Gone. Urgent business elsewhere.”

Dr. Wilfred had finally summoned the willpower to raise himself from his sickbed, as the lounger beside the pool had become. He was going to make a first move, and he had at last decided upon a way to start. Or upon two possible ways. He was going to say either “So!” or “Well, then!” He hadn’t yet decided which.

Before he could open his mouth, however, and see which emerged, he became aware of a faint sound. His own racing blood in his ears, perhaps. No, something outside himself. A scrunching sound, of the sort that the wheels of a car make on a dirt road. He turned his head toward Georgie. She sat up very suddenly, her breasts tumbling eagerly forward.

“Oliver!” she said. “He’s here!”

She jumped up from the lounger and ran towards the gate, then ran back and pulled the towel around her. “And I’ll tell the taxi to wait and take you!”

She vanished round the side of the house. Wilfred sank slowly back onto the lounger. His fever slowly subsided. A long and dreary convalescence had begun.

* * *

A taxi drew up outside the front of the foundation just as Oliver came running out. He waited while three men and one woman, together with two violins, one viola, and a cello, very slowly and painfully extracted themselves.

“Airport!” he said as he jumped in. “And fast, fast, fast!”

“No problem,” said the driver, putting the taxi into gear.

“No!” said Oliver.

“No? Not airport?”

“Not airport!”

It had just come to him. It wasn’t a bathroom at the airport that Georgie was trapped in. If it was a bathroom at the airport she would have shouted. People would have come running. The airport was in the past. She would have arrived at the airport, then left and gone to the villa they had borrowed. It was the bathroom of the villa she was trapped in.

“Villa!” he said.

The driver put the gear back into neutral. Oliver saw that he was looking at him in the rearview mirror. He had a wart like a bluebottle on the end of his nose. He seemed to be waiting for something. Of course. He was waiting to know which villa, and where it was.

Oliver quickly reviewed the arrangements of the last few days, before he had become Dr. Norman Wilfred. Got it! Of course! “It’s in my suitcase!” he said.

Still the taxi remained motionless. Still the driver watched him in the rearview mirror.

“So, yes, where’s my suitcase?” said Oliver. “In my room! No!”

The suitcase in his room was Dr. Wilfred’s. He was not Dr. Wilfred — he was Oliver Fox. And Oliver Fox’s suitcase was presumably still at the, yes—“Airport!”

“Airport?” said the driver. “No problem.” He put the taxi into gear.

“No!” said Oliver. “ Not in my suitcase!”

The driver put the gear back into neutral.

“They never gave me an address!” said Oliver. So how had he been going to get to the villa? “In a taxi! I was going in a taxi! There was going to be a taxi!”

The driver thought. Then he raised his eyebrows speculatively. “Fox Oliver?” he inquired.

“ Phoksoliva ?” said Oliver. “Oh! Yes! Right! Fox Oliver! And fast, fast, fast!”

“No problem,” said Spiros, as he put the taxi into gear.

* * *

“You bastard!” cried Georgie, half in jest and half not, as she came running out of the front gate, then stopped. The taxi was backing and filling as it turned to go. But where was Oliver?

She detached one of the arms holding up her towel and signaled to the taxi. “Wait! Stop!” she shouted.

The driver wound down his window. She knew him — it was Spiros. “OK?” he said. “No problems? Nice holiday?”

“Fine,” she said. “But, Spiros—”

“Stavros,” he replied.

“Stavros. Where is he?”

“Where is he? There he is.”

He pointed. There was a suitcase standing beside the gate.

“Suitcase?” she said.

“OK?” The taxi began to move off.

“Wait! Wait! The person! The person with the suitcase!”

Stavros pointed at the villa. And suddenly she realized. What he had brought wasn’t Oliver, it was Wilfred’s missing suitcase.

“Oh,” she said.

“No?” said Stavros.

“Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

The taxi began to move off again.

“Wait,” she said.

He waited. She lifted the suitcase back into the taxi.

“No?” said Stavros. “Don’t want?”

“Of course he wants it,” said Georgie. “But he’s coming with you.”

* * *