me on. I turned on my stomach and made love to the memory of Alison, like an animal, without guilt or shame, a mere machine for sensation spread-eagled on the earth. Then I ran across the burning stones into the sea.
I climbed the path by the wire and the undergrowth, passed beside the peeling gate, stood once more before the mysterious sign. The grassy track ran level, curved and dipped a little, emerged from the trees. The house, dazzlingly white where the afternoon sun touched it, stood with its shadowed back to me. It had been built on the seaward side of a small cottage that had evidently existed before it. It was square, with a flat roof and a colonnade of slender arches running round the south and east sides. Above the colonnade was a terrace. I could see the open french windows of a first-floor room giving access to it. To the east and back of the house there were lines of swordplants and small clumps of bushes with vivid scarlet and yellow flowers. In front, southwards and seawards, there was a stretch of gravel and then the ground fell away abruptly down to the sea. At both corners of the gravel stood palm trees, in neat whitewashed rings of stones. The pines had been thinned to clear the view.
The house abashed me. It was too reminiscent of the Cote d’Azur, too un-Greek. It stood, white and opulent, like Swiss snow, and made me feel sticky-palmed and uncouth.
I walked up a small flight of steps to the red-tiled side colonnade. There was a closed door with an iron knocker cast in the shape of a dolphin. The windows beside it were heavily shuttered. I knocked on the door; the knocks barked sharply over stone floors. But no one came. The house and I waited silently in a sea of insect sound. I went along the colonnade to the corner of the southern front of the house. There the colonnade was wider and the slender arches more open; standing in the deep shade, I looked out over the tree-tops and the sea to the languishing ash-lilac mountains … a déjà vu feeling of having stood in the same place, before that particular proportion of the arches, that particular contrast of shade and burning landscape outside – I couldn’t say.
There were two old cane chairs in the middle of the colonnade, and a table covered with a blue-and-white folkweave cloth, on which were two cups and saucers and two large plates covered in muslin. By the wall stood a rattan couch with cushions; and hanging from a bracket by the open french windows was a small brightly polished bell with a faded maroon tassel hanging from the clapper.
I noticed the twoness of the tea-table, and stood by the corner, embarrassed, aware of a trite English desire to sneak away. Then, without warning, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was Conchis.
13
Before anything else, I knew I was expected. He saw me without surprise, with a small smile, almost a grimace, on his face.
He was nearly completely bald, brown as old leather, short and spare, a man whose age was impossible to tell: perhaps sixty, perhaps seventy; dressed in a navy-blue shirt, knee-length shorts, and a pair of salt-stained gym shoes. The most striking thing about him was the intensity of his eyes; very dark brown, staring, with a simian penetration emphasized by the remarkably clear whites; eyes that seemed not quite human.
He raised his left hand briefly in a kind of silent salutation, then strode to the corner of the colonnade, leaving me with my formed words unspoken, and called back to the cottage.
‘Maria!’
I heard a faint wail of answer.
‘My name is…’ I began, as he turned.
But he raised his left hand again, this time to silence me; took my arm and led me to the edge of the colonnade. He had an authority, an abrupt decisiveness, that caught me off balance. He surveyed the landscape, then me. The sweet saffron-like smell of some flowers that grew below, at the edge of the gravel, wafted up into the shade.
‘I chose well?’
His English sounded perfect.
‘Wonderfully.
I climbed the path by the wire and the undergrowth, passed beside the peeling gate, stood once more before the mysterious sign. The grassy track ran level, curved and dipped a little, emerged from the trees. The house, dazzlingly white where the afternoon sun touched it, stood with its shadowed back to me. It had been built on the seaward side of a small cottage that had evidently existed before it. It was square, with a flat roof and a colonnade of slender arches running round the south and east sides. Above the colonnade was a terrace. I could see the open french windows of a first-floor room giving access to it. To the east and back of the house there were lines of swordplants and small clumps of bushes with vivid scarlet and yellow flowers. In front, southwards and seawards, there was a stretch of gravel and then the ground fell away abruptly down to the sea. At both corners of the gravel stood palm trees, in neat whitewashed rings of stones. The pines had been thinned to clear the view.
The house abashed me. It was too reminiscent of the Cote d’Azur, too un-Greek. It stood, white and opulent, like Swiss snow, and made me feel sticky-palmed and uncouth.
I walked up a small flight of steps to the red-tiled side colonnade. There was a closed door with an iron knocker cast in the shape of a dolphin. The windows beside it were heavily shuttered. I knocked on the door; the knocks barked sharply over stone floors. But no one came. The house and I waited silently in a sea of insect sound. I went along the colonnade to the corner of the southern front of the house. There the colonnade was wider and the slender arches more open; standing in the deep shade, I looked out over the tree-tops and the sea to the languishing ash-lilac mountains … a déjà vu feeling of having stood in the same place, before that particular proportion of the arches, that particular contrast of shade and burning landscape outside – I couldn’t say.
There were two old cane chairs in the middle of the colonnade, and a table covered with a blue-and-white folkweave cloth, on which were two cups and saucers and two large plates covered in muslin. By the wall stood a rattan couch with cushions; and hanging from a bracket by the open french windows was a small brightly polished bell with a faded maroon tassel hanging from the clapper.
I noticed the twoness of the tea-table, and stood by the corner, embarrassed, aware of a trite English desire to sneak away. Then, without warning, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was Conchis.
13
Before anything else, I knew I was expected. He saw me without surprise, with a small smile, almost a grimace, on his face.
He was nearly completely bald, brown as old leather, short and spare, a man whose age was impossible to tell: perhaps sixty, perhaps seventy; dressed in a navy-blue shirt, knee-length shorts, and a pair of salt-stained gym shoes. The most striking thing about him was the intensity of his eyes; very dark brown, staring, with a simian penetration emphasized by the remarkably clear whites; eyes that seemed not quite human.
He raised his left hand briefly in a kind of silent salutation, then strode to the corner of the colonnade, leaving me with my formed words unspoken, and called back to the cottage.
‘Maria!’
I heard a faint wail of answer.
‘My name is…’ I began, as he turned.
But he raised his left hand again, this time to silence me; took my arm and led me to the edge of the colonnade. He had an authority, an abrupt decisiveness, that caught me off balance. He surveyed the landscape, then me. The sweet saffron-like smell of some flowers that grew below, at the edge of the gravel, wafted up into the shade.
‘I chose well?’
His English sounded perfect.
‘Wonderfully.
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