“Or no one says anything,” said Mrs. Chuck Friendly, “but people just think someone’s a genius, or whatever, and they don’t even know why they ever thought so in the first place!”
“We’re all such fools!” said Morton Rinkleman.
“How do you know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.
“How do you know you’re Harold Fossett?” said Morton Rinkleman.
“Hey, how do I know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.
“Who, indeed, am I?” said a distinguished Indian guest whose name and job description nobody had grasped, and got no answer.
“Are any of us, in fact, anybody?” said somebody.
They all sipped their coffee and green tea, and looked at one another with new interest and respect, delighted with the idea that they might none of them be who they said they were, their delight rooted in their absolute confidence that they were.
“OK,” said Mr. Erlunder. “I’m not Mr. Erlunder! I’m Mrs. Erlunder!”
“That makes two of us,” said Mrs. Erlunder. “Unless I’m you.”
“I’m George Washington,” said Russell Pond. “I cannot tell a lie.”
“I’m a freshwater crayfish,” said Alf Persson, the Swedish theologian.
“I’m a sunspot,” said Suki Brox.
“I’m Professor Norbert Ditmuss,” said Professor Norbert Ditmuss.
“And Wellesley Luft is Wellesley Luft,” said Nikki, before Professor Ditmuss could expand on this. “And Wellesley Luft is waiting to interview Dr. Wilfred for the Journal of Science Management.”
Dr. Wilfred got to his feet and inclined his head. Some of the others also got to their feet, and everyone else got to his or her feet and applauded, apart from the curmudgeonly K. D. Clopper, who still thought it was all bunkum, and Wilson Westerman, who was worrying about what Frankfurt had been doing since he last looked at his phone.
“He’s actually not arriving for ages yet,” murmured Nikki as she maneuvered Dr. Wilfred away from various people who rather pressingly wanted to continue the conversation.
“You were saving me from Professor Ditmuss again?” said Dr. Wilfred.
“Just in case you really aren’t Dr. Wilfred,” said Nikki.
He felt a sense of triumph. He had climbed the most exposed pitch yet and survived. If he could do that he could do anything. Except that there wasn’t anything left to do. Apart from the lecture. His sense of triumph began to fade.
“I’ll send Mr. Luft up to your room, shall I? You might want to have that little siesta of yours first while I’m fetching him.”
“You’re going to be holding up your sign again? Just make sure he is Mr. Luft, though, and not somebody else. One somebody else is quite enough.”
She stopped and looked round, then gave him a very swift kiss.
“Quite enough for me,” she said. “Anyway, you’ll know if it’s not him. He’s an old friend of yours. He’s interviewed you three or four times before.”
“Has he?” said Dr. Wilfred. The dark depths below him reached tinglingly up into his knees again. “So let’s see if he thinks I’m Dr. Wilfred.”
27
“But you’re not Oliver Fox,” said Georgie finally, after the shimmering hot silence of the afternoon had gone on and on. “You’re Wilfred somebody.”
She was on the lounger again, with the towel in place around her middle, but now she had turned onto her back. She evidently felt that after all this time she knew him well enough. He, likewise, felt that after all this time he knew her well enough to take an occasional look, particularly since she seemed to have her eyes closed behind her dark glasses, though her two breasts, sprawled softly outwards, had still not seized his imagination as strongly as those two small and now concealed moles.
“Take a good long look, if you’re going to,” she said. “You’ll do something to your neck, twitching back and forth like that. Why did you tell the taxi driver you were Oliver Fox?”
“I didn’t tell the taxi driver I was Oliver Fox,” said Wilfred.
“Well, someone did. He told me he’d driven you here. Oliver Fox. He said you were waiting for me.”
Wilfred tried to remember exactly how the conversation had gone. Phoksoliva … Euphoksoliva … Yes, of course.
“It was him,” he said. “The taxi driver. He told me.”
“The taxi driver told you were Oliver Fox? What, and you believed him? And you’re a famous scientist, are you, Wilfred? What else have taxi drivers told you?”
* * *
The afternoon went hotly on and on. A small cloud was created out of empty air, moved slowly across the sky, and dissolved again, exhausted, before it got anywhere.
“What I don’t understand,” said Wilfred — no, Dr. Wilfred, he was Dr. Wilfred—“is that this pal of yours is supposed to be coming in a taxi. He’s not renting a car? How are you proposing to get around?”
“What, to art galleries? Famous cathedrals and so on?” She laughed. Little soft trembles ran through her breasts, like almost imperceptible waves in a calm summer sea. “I don’t suppose he was thinking of getting around very much.”
No, of course not, thought Dr. Wilfred. Art galleries and famous cathedrals were probably not what either of them had at the forefront of their minds.
“Haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wilfred?” she said. “No? What — just a wife? Or no wife, even?”
He was not going to get drawn into a discussion of his own domestic arrangements. In any case, what he was thinking about was the still unmade bed in the villa. They would get out of it sometimes, he thought. To sunbathe, perhaps. Take a dip in the pool. What else? Nothing. Back to bed again. Yes, why should we need a car? Or rather they. Why would they need a car?
“Food, though,” he said. “Meals. Groceries. You weren’t planning to live on a loaf of frozen bread and a packet of frozen peas all week?”
“I don’t know what the arrangements are. I suppose Oliver’s thought of something.”
There was a silence while they both thought about the possible contents of Oliver’s thinking.
“Or probably not, actually,” she said. “I don’t think he thinks. Not that sort of thinking. Just something comes into his head and — woof! — he does it.”
Woof, he does it. Of course. Woof, they both do it. Dr. Wilfred suddenly found this feckless pair and their brainless pleasures profoundly distasteful.
“No business of mine, of course,” he said, “but what about this other friend of yours?”
“Patrick? He’s in Turkey.”
“He’s in Turkey. Oh. So as soon as Patrick turns his back you’re off with this one, are you?”
“What do you mean? It’s not like it’s, you know, a regular arrangement! I’ve only met him once! For about five minutes!”
You heard this kind of thing about young people these days, thought Oliver, thought Wilfred, thought Dr. Wilfred, but you never really believed it until you actually came face to face with one of them.
“Only met him once?” he said. “For five minutes? Oh, that’s all right, then.”
“Well, you’ve got to be spontaneous, haven’t you? You’ve got to go along with things. Anyway, we’ve sent each other lots of texts.”
Lots of texts. Of course. Plus sliced bread and frozen peas. Or rather, now, no sliced bread and no frozen peas.
Then back to bed.
* * *