There was another small cloud overhead … He closed his eyes. When he opened them there was no cloud.
“Now I come to think about it,” said Georgie, “I see why he hasn’t shown up yet. It’s just like you said — there’s a perfectly logical explanation. It’s because he hasn’t bothered to listen to his messages. He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m arriving this evening.”
The two moles, the sliced bread, and the unmade-up bed all vanished from Dr. Wilfred’s head as he took in the implications of this. “You mean … he may not come until this evening? But that’s when my lecture is! I need the taxi before then! I need the taxi now!”
“You’ll just have to relax and have a day off. I shouldn’t worry. They’ll think of something else to do. People often don’t turn up for things.”
He saw the faces in the hall. Distinguished faces, important faces — people who had flown from Athens and even farther afield for the Fred Toppler Lecture. He heard the eager anticipatory hum die away as someone stepped up to the lectern to introduce him. Not to introduce him, though. To explain that for reasons beyond their control … Or that Dr. Norman Wilfred was unfortunately indisposed … Or quite frankly that no one knew where he was. He had simply failed to show up.
And where he would be was here, toasting sliced bread with some entirely irresponsible young woman who didn’t seem to think it mattered whether people honored their professional obligations or whether they simply sloped off and jumped into bed with people they’d only known for five minutes. Not that she would be jumping into bed with him, of course, because at that moment she would be jumping into bed with someone else, and what he himself would be jumping into, if anything, would be the taxi that had brought the man she actually was jumping into bed with; and he would be on his way to run into the lecture hall, even more embarrassingly than if he had never shown up at all, just as everyone left.
“Though of course,” said Georgie, “now I’m thinking, Why hasn’t he bothered to listen to his messages? And I know why — because he had to hang around for half an hour with nothing to do, and he went into a bar, and he saw some woman, and he brushed the hair out of his eyes and gave her his ridiculous grin, and now he won’t be coming this evening, or tomorrow, or all the rest of the week.”
Dr. Wilfred thought about this. He might not be running into the lecture hall just as everyone left. He might still be here. For the rest of the week.
“So you’re in charge now, Wilfred,” said Georgie. “Food, yes. Eating. You’d better start thinking how we’re going to find something.”
He already was. He was looking at himself in the days ahead, roaming the hillsides. Bargaining with peasants for bread. Stealing fruit off trees. Strangling stray pheasants. Milking the wandering goats. He had an old song running through his head that he hadn’t heard since he was a boy: “If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy…”
“It’s probably only for a few days,” said Georgie. “Sooner or later someone’s going to notice you’re missing. Your wife or someone. Send out a search party.”
Sooner or later, yes. In the meantime, though …
Already the disappointed owners of all those respectfully upturned faces had vanished from his head as if they had never been. So had the lecture, and his professional obligations and reputation. They had all been pushed into oblivion by the two moles. And the three condoms in the right-hand inside pocket of his jacket.
And the words of the song. “If you were the only girl in the world,” they murmured to him, over and over again, as if they had taken on a life of their own, “and I was the only boy…”
28
A fire bell was ringing. Oliver, instantly alarmed, looked out of the porthole of the theater where he was just about to perform his juggling act and saw smoke and flames pouring out of the starboard outer engine. He struggled to sit up, terrified.
Late-afternoon sunshine was coming through unfamiliar curtains. He was in a bedroom of some sort, not a theater or an airplane. But the fire bell was still ringing. Except that it wasn’t a fire bell — it was the phone beside his bed. He scrambled the receiver up to his ear and managed to make a sound like “Hello.”
“It’s me,” said a woman’s voice. “Nikki.”
There was something familiar about both the voice and the name, but he couldn’t quite place them. “Um?” he said.
“That is Dr. Wilfred?” said the voice.
“Wrong number,” he mumbled, and went back to sleep.
* * *
When the phone rang again the woman was laughing.
“So that isn’t Dr. Wilfred?” she said.
It was her laughter that at last woke him up and returned him to recognizable normality.
“Nikki!” he said. “Nikki? Nikki…”
“Oh, so it is Dr. Wilfred?”
“I was asleep.”
“You certainly were. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Never mind. You obviously needed it. Not enough sleep last night, perhaps. Anyway, we’ve got here. He’s just dropping his bag in his room and freshening up. Then he’s on his way.”
“Who is?”
“Wellesley Luft! Your old friend!”
And now he was even more awake. I can do it, he thought at once. I can talk anyone into anything. Even my old friend Wellesley Luft into recognizing me as Dr. Wilfred. Bring him on.
As he put the foundation’s phone down he saw his own lying beside it, neglected and forgotten, where he had put it when he arrived the previous evening. He turned it on. He had texts, he had voice messages. He opened the texts. There were five new ones from Annuka. He skipped quickly up through the little windows. She seemed to be softening somewhat. She was forgiving him for having allowed her to throw him out.
He turned to the voice messages. The most recent was from Georgie. Yes, he should listen to it again, as he had promised himself earlier today, so he could truthfully tell her tomorrow that when she had said she was arriving tomorrow he had quite reasonably supposed that it had been not yesterday’s tomorrow she meant but today’s. Which would give him another night in hand.
He tapped the screen. But what sprang into his ear was not the message about arriving tomorrow — it was incomprehensible uncontrolled hysteria. Her voice was scarcely recognizable. “Oliver! Where are you?” it screamed at him. He snatched the phone away from his ear in surprise, but he could hear her raving on even at arm’s length. He turned the phone off. He thought he might sit this one out.
He had committed a solecism of some sort, obviously. Failed to phone when he had promised, or forgotten her birthday. But what he had promised was not to phone while she was with — what was he called? — Patrick. And her birthday? When they’d only ever met for five minutes?
He had a pee and splashed cold water onto his face. Then he sat down and concentrated his mind on being Dr. Wilfred, on being so overwhelmingly, so immanently Dr. Wilfred that he and Dr. Wilfred’s old friend would immediately recognize each other as such.
* * *
Georgie lay there on the lounger all afternoon in the shade of the beach umbrella, perhaps asleep, apparently entirely content to do nothing. Dr. Wilfred, though, grew more awake as the hours went by. He lay on his lounger, his head turned away from the source of his trouble, unable to move. He felt light-headed and nauseated, as though he had a temperature. He hadn’t had these symptoms for this particular reason for twenty years or more. A feverish shudder went through him, so sharp that his teeth rattled.