‘But your English spring is something too. You know, I was in your country for two years, in the war. In Chatham. I have seen your “Garden of England”. Your “toast-houses”.’
He was waiting for me to pass comment, and like a true Englishman I had buttoned my lip. It was only as we came down into Vougliameni itself and saw the blue sea and the yachts, the awnings of the tavernas and the beach dotted with coloured umbrellas, that he gave up waiting.
‘Ah, Mr Carmichael, in your country you have your system — Winston Churchill, Buckingham Palace, Rule Britannia — but here we do it differently, eh? Bam-bam! Everybody change! Bam-bam! Everybody change again! Ha! Why so solemn, Mr Carmichael, why so quiet? You are ill? You have a pain somewhere? Why not enjoy yourself? No one is stopping you from enjoying yourself. Why look over the hill when the view this way is so beautiful? Kalí orexímas, Mr Carmichael, kalí thias-kedasímas! The sensible man enjoys himself. What is the desire of every man? What is the duty of every man? To enjoy himself!’
Harry
Dear Sophie. Someone has to be a witness, someone has to see. And tell? And tell? Tell me, Sophie, can it be a kindness not to tell what you see? And a blessing to be blind? And the best aid to human happiness that has ever been invented is a blanket made of soft, white lies?
I never knew that Dad knew about Anna. But that night — the men on the moon and Anna up on Olympus — our minds must have crossed paths. I said, ‘There’s something I want to know.’ And after a long pause he said, ‘Anna?’ And I knew that he knew.
We had turned down the sound on the TV. The moon-men bobbed in silence over the Sea of Tranquillity.
He said, ‘Yes, I knew about Anna.’
‘But you didn’t tell me.’
‘I didn’t know if you knew.’
‘You were never going to tell me.’
(Sixteen years!)
‘Would you have wanted me to? If you hadn’t known?’
‘The truth.’
‘The truth!’ He snorted, made a wry face and raised his whisky glass to his lips. Outside, it was getting light.
He said, ‘You never told Sophie?’
‘No.’
‘And how did you know?’
‘Because she told me. She — confessed. You know when she got the news about Uncle Spiro. The state she was in. It wasn’t just — Before she left she said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” She was crying. She said, “I’m pregnant.” ’
But I knew before that. I knew that summer, in Cornwall. Do you remember that day — the day you almost drowned? I already knew then.
I was sitting on the rug with Stella, half-way up the beach. She was getting out the things for our picnic and I was watching her emptying the bag, shooing away a fly. I never had any special feelings for Stella Irving. Just the usual jokey flirtation (jokey! Jesus!) that goes on when two couples are together. But that morning I could have reached across that rug and hugged her like my sister, because she looked so innocent, getting out those sandwiches and chicken legs, and I could see so clearly she didn’t have an inkling.
You’d gone down to the water with Anna, and Frank had gone for some beers. It was hot. Blue sky, waves coming in lazily. Anna used to say that when the weather was like that it reminded her of Greece. She was holding your hands and making you float up in the water and kick your legs and you were both laughing.
Stella had a wide straw sun-hat. In a year’s time she would be a mother too: her own daughter. As she bent over the picnic things, the brim of the hat hid her face and I looked at her breasts in her wet swim-suit. But I thought, even if she were stark naked beside me and we were the only ones on this beach, I wouldn’t feel a scrap of lust for her. Just this need to hold her tight and say — God knows why — ‘Sorry.’
She turned towards me and I looked away, and she said, ‘You’re quiet today, Harry.’ But just as she said it, I wasn’t quiet any more. I yelled, ‘Jesus Christ!’, or something like that, and jumped to my feet. Because I’d looked towards the water and I couldn’t see you any more. I couldn’t see you. I saw Anna, ten, fifteen yards out, with her head tilted back as if she were relishing the sensation of floating freely by herself. And then I saw the splash and thrash of your arms, some way to Anna’s left, maybe five yards out. I didn’t wait. I ran down the beach, plunged in and grabbed you.
Maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe, as Anna said, my eyes had tricked me. (My eyes!) She said you’d learnt to do it — to float by yourself and splash your arms — and in any case you could still touch bottom there with your feet. We stood round the picnic rug, and I just kept repeating, ‘She might have drowned! She might have drowned!’ I was holding you and you were crying. Frank came down the beach with a string bag full of bottles of beer and lemonade, and I saw the way he checked, recognizing a crisis: ‘What’s happened?’ Stella said, ‘Sophie got into trouble in the water. Harry’s just got her out.’ His look changed, almost relaxed. ‘Poor little Sophie,’ he said, putting down the bottles. ‘Poor little Sophie.’ Anna said, ‘She wasn’t drowning, everyone. She was trying to swim.’ Her face had this calm, sensible expression. Could she tell? Then she said to me, ‘She’s crying because you’re holding her so tight. If you’ve just saved her from drowning, there’s no need to suffocate her now.’ She said this lightly, laughingly, without anger. I thought: She doesn’t suspect. She picked up the beach towel and held it between her opened arms. ‘Come here, Sophie. Ela sti Mammásou. Daddy just thought —’ I thought: I could just hold on to you. Let her stand there like that with the towel and her arms emptily open. Then she’d know.
Her hair was wet and streaming and she was making a kissing shape with her lips. It was a decision, you see. For her sake. You were still crying and I really didn’t want to let you go. But I handed you over. And as soon as I did, you stopped crying. Then I knew I’d have to pretend. Silly Daddy. Made a silly mistake. Frightened little Sophie. Thought she was drowning.
But I really did think you were drowning. That’s what I saw: my daughter drowning.
And it wasn’t a mistake, either — I really saw what I saw, though I tried hard enough to make it something I hadn’t seen, a trick of the eyes — when I went back to the hotel that previous afternoon.
She had already gone back, to lie down. A headache. The day had turned cloudy and sullen. Then Frank said, looking restless, that if nobody minded, he’d go and chase a ball around the course for a bit. He said, ‘Be good, you two,’ and winked. And Stella said, ‘We’ve got our chaperone.’ Pointing at you. Then, just a few moments after Frank had gone, she said, ‘Damn! I left my book in the room.’ And I said, ‘That’s okay. I’ll get it. I’ll see how Anna is, anyway.’ I got up, brushing away the sand. I walked off, then stopped.
‘Key?’
‘Oh, they’ll let you take it from the desk, won’t they? Or you might still catch Frank.’
I suppose I did catch Frank.
Do you remember the zig-zagging path up the cliff? The wooden steps covered with sand? Slow going, with you. You’d want to be carried. Frank and I would toss a coin. The last bit through a tunnel of wind-curved trees. Then the hotel appearing, the flagpole on the lawn, and the view round the headland along the coast.
Frank’s car was still in the car park. The big Rover. Our A40. We were like the poor relations in those days. Frank, the rising star of the Company. Me, the boss’s renegade son. Though on that holiday, I think, everyone wondered. Frank wondered. Anna wondered. Did I wonder?