Michael Frayn - Skios

“The name?” he said. “You’ve heard of me? Oliver Fox?”

She raised her eyebrows. She was expressing something. Irony, perhaps. And she smiled. Definitely smiled.

“Good God,” he said. “You haven’t heard of me when I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred? And you have when I’m Oliver Fox ?”

She rested her elbow on the table, and her chin on her hand. She looked straight into his face and raised her eyebrows again. Then started to laugh.

* * *

Nikki felt a sour acid around her heart as she watched them. He was making Mrs. Skorbatova laugh just as he had made her laugh. And what a deceiving manipulative cow Mrs. Skorbatova was! Refused to be able to understand a syllable of English when it was spoken by anyone else. A few flattering words from Dr. Wilfred, though — no, from Mr. Oliver Fox — and she understood them perfectly. As well as Nikki herself had.

This is why he’d done it, of course. This is why he’d put Nikki in this impossible situation. For a laugh. He’d seen the name she was holding up at the airport and simply decided on the spur of the moment to have a bit of fun at her expense. He’d told everyone so this afternoon. He’d been speaking the truth for once. So of course nobody had believed it.

Or was it quite as simple as that? Her eye moved from Mrs. Skorbatova and Mr. Fox to Mrs. Toppler. She was reading yet again through the speech that Nikki had written for her, then glancing yet again at her watch, making herself more and more nervous. Nikki’s eye moved on to Mr. Skorbatov, on the other side of Mrs. Toppler. He was cutting himself some grapes from the bunch on the table in front of him with a tiny pair of silver scissors. There was something about the way he was holding the scissors, about the single-minded concentration with which he was using them, that made Nikki uneasy.

Her eye moved back to Mrs. Skorbatova and Oliver Fox. He was still talking to her. She was still laughing. What was he telling her? Was it something that Mrs. Toppler had just been telling him ? Was this why he was here? To find out about the foundation for Mr. Skorbatov? She knew, of course, about Mr. Papadopoulou’s money laundering, though she was careful not to know the details of it. But what else was he involved in? His guests at the House Party were presumably not discussing European civilization. She had a shrewd idea that Mr. Papadopoulou and Mr. Skorbatov had some new enterprise in hand for a start. She suddenly thought about the new swimming pool that no one was allowed to see. Or rather the hole in the ground that would one day be the new pool. A hole in the ground, while it lasted, might come in rather handy for other purposes. Burying radioactive material, for example. Or a body. More than one body, even. A regular supply of bodies. Mr. Skorbatov no doubt had a capacious cold store on his yacht. He might be giving Mr. Papadopoulou a regular contract to do his undertaking for him. She felt a sudden coldly dismal lurch in her stomach. Marine diesel spares! She had noticed the crate on the waterfront that morning. No! Not possible! Was it?

But if it was, then perhaps he wanted to know a little more about his business partner. Something he could have to hand if Mr. Papadopoulou ever took it into his head to increase his charges.

She watched Mr. Skorbatov put one of the grapes in his mouth … His jaw snapped shut on it, and was still again. The grape had gone …

She looked at Mrs. Toppler, sitting all unawares beside him. I could talk to her now, thought Nikki, while Dr. Wilfred is talking to Mrs. Skorbatova.

She was just about to move when she saw that Dr. Wilfred had turned away from Mrs. Skorbatova and was talking to Mrs. Toppler again.

She stopped, and stood watching the catastrophe approach, unable to move, as in a dream.

Oliver Fox had now told Mrs. Skorbatova all about the difficulties he had got himself into in the days when he had been Oliver Fox, and she had gazed at him throughout without saying a word. She was obviously interested, though; particularly, it seemed to him, in the parts that involved his smiling his smile, and brushing aside the lock of hair that from time to time fell into his smiling brown eyes. And above all in the parts where he recounted how negatively so many people reacted to the very mention of the name Oliver Fox. Each time it made her smile in her turn and raise her eyebrows, and sometimes lightly slap his hand.

Now Mrs. Toppler’s hand was on his other arm. “You’re a genius, Dr. Wilfred!” she said. “No one else has been able to get a toot out of her! How did you do it? You don’t speak Russian, do you?”

“No,” said Dr. Wilfred. “I just tell her…” He turned back to Mrs. Skorbatova and whispered in her ear. “Mrs. Toppler wants to know what I tell you to make you laugh,” he said. “But that’s our little secret. The fact that I’m Oliver Fox.” Mrs. Skorbatova laughed again, and gave him a little punch on his arm.

“This is what we need to replace Christian,” said Mrs. Toppler. “Someone like you, who can get along with people. Even with an ice princess who can’t speak English, but who just happens to be married to one of the richest men in the world. You seem to be able to do anything! And stay so calm about it all! Look at me. I’m in such a state! Can’t eat, can’t think — and all I’ve got to say is these two pages! ‘Our guest of honor tonight needs no introduction…’ Whereas you…”

She stopped and looked around.

“Your lecture!” she said. “The script of your lecture! Where is it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “My lecture.”

“You hadn’t forgotten about it?”

“Of course not,” he said, though in fact just for the moment he had, under the pressure of events.

“So where is it?” she said in alarm. “The script — the text — the words?”

He shrugged. “Inside my head.”

“You’ve learned it by heart?”

“No, I thought I’d just make it up as I went along.”

She gazed at him.

“It’ll be fresher that way,” he said. “More spontaneous. I’ll take myself by surprise.”

“I’ve sat next to a whole slew of guests of honor since this place opened,” she said. “But I’ve never met one like you. Well, if you can make things up as you go along, so can I! And here’s an idea I’ve just had, straight out of the oven and onto the table, still bubbling…”

She put her hand on his arm and began to murmur something that he had to bend close to hear.

* * *

Nikki watched Oliver Fox leaning with his head lowered and then sitting back in surprise. And in one of those eureka moments that the real Dr. Norman Wilfred, she knew, had devoted his life to bringing some order to, she understood why Oliver Fox was so astonished, and why Mrs. Toppler was now waiting so attentively for his response.

Not possible, though! No, no, no! Not possible!

But it was possible. Anything was possible. In the last twenty-four hours that horrible trickster with the modestly surprised look on his face had proved it over and over again.

This was her flash of insight: that Mrs. Toppler had just invited Mr. Oliver Fox to become the next director of the Fred Toppler Foundation.

Her flash of insight was followed by a second flash. Of anger. At Oliver Fox, at Mrs. Toppler, at herself. And at last she knew how to explain to Mrs. Toppler.

The passport. She would simply show Mrs. Toppler the passport. The passport would say it all, just as it had to her.

“Suitcase,” said Annuka Vos into her phone, very loudly and clearly. She was standing in the floodlit garden of the villa, to make sure her words got through with a minimum of interference. “Stolen. Has been. Suitcase. Mine. Yes…? Oh, for heaven’s sake! There must be someone in the Greek police who can speak English better than this!