Michael Frayn - Skios

“We go on?” said Spiros. “Life and death?”

“Wait,” said Oliver.

He was standing transfixed, gazing at the skirt. A horrible thought had come to him. When it said “Annuka Vos” on the label, it couldn’t possibly mean, could it, that this was a suitcase that belonged not to him at all, but to…? Oh, no!

* * *

Of course, thought Annuka, as she stood there with the mosquito netting in her arms. Of course ! This is why the house was full of discarded tangerine knickers! This is why Oliver had had a bad night! This is why he had been thrashing about in bed!

How could she not have seen it at once, at the first glimpse of tangerine? After she had had seven months to learn what he was like!

She flung down the mosquito netting, ran back into the house, and snatched up her phone.

* * *

And if, thought Oliver, as he stood there in the middle of the track, his hands full of flowered silk and his head full of gradually dawning implications, if there was a suitcase belonging to Annuka Vos on the island, then possibly there was also—

His phone rang. He looked at the name that had appeared on the screen. Of course. As if hypnotized, he pressed the button and put the phone to his ear.

“The cleaning person!” said the familiar voice. “Yes! That’s me! The cleaning person! I don’t believe this! Even from you! Because it’s so absolutely typical ! As soon as my back’s turned! And here, of all places! You bring her here! I borrow a place where we can quietly be together for a week! I borrow it, not you! Because it doesn’t belong to some people you know! They’re friends of mine, thank you very much! You’ve never even met them! And there you are, rolling around their bed with her great fat boobs flopping everywhere in her orange knickers! And before you know where you are you’ve smashed the place to pieces! And then you expect me to clean up after you! And you’re not even here! So where are you? And don’t tell me, because I don’t want to know, I don’t care where you are! Just so long as it’s not where I am! Drop dead, all right? And show your face here if you dare! The cleaning person? Right, then, I’m going to finish the cleaning!”

Oliver had drawn in a good supply of breath for the reasonable and pacifying reply that he would surely find himself uttering as soon as he had thought what it would be, but before he could convert any of it into words the phone had gone dead.

He threw the long silk skirt back onto the track.

“OK?” said Spiros, getting back into the car. “We go fast now?”

“Wait,” said Oliver.

“Wait?”

Oliver was thinking.

Georgie tried to go on sunbathing. But the sun was getting low in the sky, and she felt a bit guilty that her nakedness had obviously upset the cleaning person. She pulled the towel around her and went back to the house to put some clothes on. Just as she reached the door, though, it opened, and her clothes came out. They were in her open suitcase, which was being carried by the cleaning person.

“Oh, thank you!” said Georgie. “How sweet of you! And you’ve even folded everything up and put it away for me!”

The cleaning person said nothing, and the clothes marched straight past Georgie without stopping. She turned and watched, still holding the towel around her. The cleaning person was taking the clothes back to the lounger for her to get dressed. No, to the pool … And was tipping them in … was shaking the bag over the water to make sure she had got every last item out of it … was throwing the bag itself into the pool … was wiping her hands on a towel … was turning back to confront Georgie …

For a moment they stood facing each other, both too surprised to move — Georgie by the fate of her clothes, the cleaning person by Georgie’s renewed and even more brazen effrontery, because, as the clothes went into the pool, she had stretched out her hands in a remote and ineffectual gesture of dissuasion, which had let the towel she had been holding around her fall to the ground. The standoff lasted only a moment. When Georgie took in the expression on the cleaning person’s face she saw that the situation had somehow got beyond discussion or explanation, and that the only possible action was to get out of her way as fast as possible. She turned and fled. Back to the house, grabbing the fallen heap of mosquito netting on the way and dragging it round herself, the cleaning person right behind, shouting something in what was presumably Greek, was certainly abusive, and was almost certainly obscene.

Georgie slammed the garden door in the cleaning person’s face, which delayed her for a moment, and ran into the bedroom, eager to find some more suitable and dignified covering to replace the mosquito netting. Her clothes had gone, though. Of course. Every last stitch of them. She just had time to run into the bathroom and slam the bolt home as the cleaning person ran into the bedroom.

“Open the door, you filthy little slut!” said the cleaning person. “Or I’ll kick it in!”

Georgie sat down on the lavatory seat, where she had sat for so long during the previous night, and pulled the mosquito netting round her. She was shivering and her hands were shaking. Life seemed to be going round in circles.

* * *

Oliver stood in the middle of the roadway, still trying to adjust his plans to the changing situation. So, there were two of them at the villa now. Georgie was no longer alone to face the rapist outside the bathroom door. She had someone to protect her. She had Annuka. Against Annuka even the most violent attacker was unlikely to prevail.

It was one thing to rush to save Georgie if she was on her own. He hadn’t hesitated. He had been ready to sacrifice everything. But if she already had someone to protect her … And if that someone was Annuka …

Then again, if Georgie and Annuka were at the villa together there would be other issues to be settled. But it seemed to him that they would be the sort of issues that his presence could only exacerbate. It might be better to let the two of them sort things out between them.

“So,” said Spiros, “we go on?”

Oliver shook his head. “Airport,” he said.

* * *

There was suddenly silence in the bathroom, and the door stopped shuddering so alarmingly in its frame. The house was solidly built, and the door had evidently frustrated the cleaning person’s efforts to kick it in. Georgie held her breath, waiting to hear what the woman would do next, and perhaps also so as to make her own existence loom less objectionably large to her. Even through the thickness of the door she could hear her breathing hard enough for both of them.

“Right, then,” shouted the woman finally. “I’m going to phone the police! I’m going to have you arrested!”

Silence. She had evidently gone off to fetch her phone. Her objections to nudity, even practiced by her employer’s guests in the privacy of their own garden, were astonishingly violent. Perhaps she had weird religious convictions of some sort. Unless she had bristled at being called the cleaning person. She looked Greek, but she sounded English. Maybe you had to call local English employees something different. Cleaning supervisors. Directors of leisure services.

Footsteps coming back, and another sudden volley of blows on the door.

“My phone!” the cleaning whatever-she-was was screaming. “Give me my phone! You’ve got my phone in there!”

Georgie invisibly but involuntarily shook her head. She hadn’t got anything in here! The woman had cleared out even the great muddle of creams and lotions that Georgie had left around the washbasin. They were all in the pool.