Michael Frayn - Skios

“Such a load she’s carrying on those lovely young shoulders of hers!” said Mrs. Friendly.

* * *

A flute of champagne and a plate of canapés sailed head high through the guests still getting out of taxis and limousines in front of the lodge. “Oh, Nikki!” said Elli. “That’s so sweet of you! I think everyone has forgot me, sitting here in my box like a doll in a shop and nobody wants her.”

“You haven’t seen Dr. Wilfred, have you, Elli?” said Nikki. “Our lecturer? He hasn’t phoned, by any chance?”

“Oh my God!” said Elli. “He’s not here?”

“I can’t find him.”

“But it’s nearly time!”

“I know.”

“He’s got lost again! This great brain, and he can’t find his way from the guest room to breakfast! He phones me. ‘All I can see is goats,’ he says.”

“Anyway, if he phones now, or if you see him…”

“I call you at once, Nikki. Oh my God!”

Yes, oh my God, thought Elli, as Nikki hurried away again. She loses the great man just before his lecture — she never gets to be director! And what happens to me? I never get to be Mrs. Fred Toppler’s PA, and I’m stuck here in this glass box forever!

* * *

“Sixty-three euros,” said Stavros. “I take a credit card. Not a problem.”

There were no overworked glass doors here, only a striped barrier pole and uniformed security staff. No obesity, no sunburn, only slim and distinguished-looking people presenting gilt-edged invitation cards with raised italic print. Dr. Wilfred had finally arrived at his destination.

“Invitation,” said the security man.

“I’m your lecturer,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Your guest of honor.”

“No invitation?” said the security man. “No admission.”

* * *

“Sixty-nine euros,” said Spiros. “I accept Visa and MasterCard. No problem.”

“Wait here,” said Oliver. “I’m coming back. I’m just fetching my passport.”

“Invitation,” said the security man.

“You’re Giorgios, right?” said Oliver. “You saw me before. Nikki’s guest, remember?”

“No guest come in,” said Giorgios, “only he have invitation.”

* * *

The first security man looked dubiously through Dr. Wilfred’s passport, and then through the text of his lecture.

“I haven’t got an invitation to the lecture,” said Dr. Wilfred, “because I am the lecturer. It’s me who is giving the lecture for which the invitations have been issued. This is the lecture I am giving.”

He was surprising himself once again by the patience and politeness he was managing to display. The security man turned back to the beginning of the lecture and began slowly to turn all the pages over again.

“I know it says I am in Kuala Lumpur,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Or Western Australia. But they are deleted. I am here, in Skios. I shall put that in before I start.”

He couldn’t help noticing that there was someone else who was also being refused admission by one of the other security people. Also no invitation, and in his case no passport or lecture to offer in lieu.

“Come,” said the security man. Still holding Dr. Wilfred’s passport and lecture he led the way towards some kind of lodge or gatehouse. Dr. Wilfred kept very close to him, never taking his eyes off the lecture.

* * *

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Wilfred!” a familiar voice called out to Oliver from the darkness. “We’re going to miss your lecture!”

Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Friendly, the second-richest couple in the state of Rhode Island, were emerging from the pedestrian gate beside the barrier, on their way out with a couple of companions.

“We were really looking forward to it!” said Mrs. Friendly.

“I have to fly back to the States,” said Chuck.

“A sudden summons!” said Mrs. Friendly. “Right out of the wide blue yonder!”

“So, Dr. Wilfred, why aren’t you in there drinking champagne with all the rest of them?”

“No invitation,” said Oliver. “They won’t let me in!”

Mr. and Mrs. Friendly both laughed. “I love it!” said Mr. Friendly. He fetched out his wallet. “Here’s his invitation,” he said to Giorgios and slipped something into Giorgios’s shirt pocket.

Giorgios shrugged and waved Oliver in.

“Let’s hope we meet again!” said Chuck Friendly to Oliver. “I have a number of ideas about the possibility of creating something out of nothing that are remarkably consonant with yours, and I greatly look forward to exploring them with you!”

He raised his arm to wave good-bye, and Oliver couldn’t help noticing the gleam of the handcuffs that connected him to one of his companions.

* * *

The young woman behind the screen inside the lodge finished the phone call she had been making and looked at the passport and the lecture that the security man was holding.

“Dr. Wilfred!” she said. “It’s you! You’re here! Hi! I’m so happy! We talk, talk, talk on the phone, but I never see you! Where you been? You get lost again? You get eaten from goats? Nikki’s going crazy! I call her.” She dialed as she talked. “You just got time to change! You know where to find your room? No, you don’t! You’re going to get lost again! You’re going to phone me—‘Where am I?’

“Wait — I get you a buggy … Nikki! He’s here!”

“Dr. Wilfred!” cried Mrs. Comax. Oliver was trying to slip past the Temple of Athena unobserved, since he was no longer Dr. Wilfred, but merely Oliver Fox on his way to recover his passport and go. Everyone, though, was just at that moment beginning to emerge from the temple to move on to the agora for dinner, and now that Mrs. Comax had spotted him he was caught and surrounded.

“Oh, Dr. Wilfred!” The name pressed in upon him from all sides. “We’ve all been looking for you, Dr. Wilfred! We thought you’d despaired of us poor simpletons, Dr. Wilfred, and abandoned us!”

Oliver wondered whether to confess the truth to them, now that the game was over, but no one had believed him when he had tried before, and it scarcely seemed worth the effort of trying again, or the social disruption it would entail, since as soon as he had fetched his passport he would have vanished from their lives. And since, after all, at any moment the real Dr. Wilfred would almost certainly show up and do the job for him.

* * *

There was a young man just coming out of Parmenides as Dr. Wilfred approached it. He was wearing three-quarter-length orange skateboarding trousers and a plum-colored T-shirt that bulged obsequiously at Dr. Wilfred as he passed. All thought of him went out of Dr. Wilfred’s mind, though, when he opened the door of the guest suite. Another guest was obviously already in occupation. There were clothes scattered everywhere — shirts, trousers, underwear. On the luggage rack a suitcase lay open, with more clothes tumbling from it like fruit from a cornucopia, so profusely that it took Dr. Wilfred a moment to see that it had a red leather address tag.

He stood stock-still for a moment, then put his passport and the text of his lecture carefully down on the desk and opened the flap of the luggage tag. “Dr. Norman Wilfred,” it said. The name smiled up at him like a reflection in a mirror. It was his suitcase. He picked up a handful of the scattered shirts and underpants. The patterns on the shirts were old friends. They were his shirts. The underpants were pure silk. They were his underpants. He and his lost luggage had been reunited. It was not some other guest who was occupying the room. It was himself.

Presumably the airline had somehow found the address and sent the suitcase on. But why was it open? Why had the contents been taken out and thrown around? Someone must have come in and opened it. He looked at the padlock. Yes, it had been forced. That unsavory-looking young man who had been leaving as he approached … He had been ransacking the room when he had heard the buggy outside …