An Inch of Time (23 page)

Commerce in Corfu Town was relentless. Predictably, many of the more picturesque and colonnaded streets were devoted to tourist tat, though even here there was a sprinkling of useful shops such as greengrocers and cheesemongers. I happily drifted around for half an hour, stopped for a coffee in a little place that mysteriously offered ‘pressed eggs' and ‘curdled milk' on its menu, while the bakery next door had a handwritten sign in English promising ‘Fresh Dread Every Day'. No thank you. I had my own supply.

Just when I thought I'd best ask someone, I stumbled on the very thing I was looking for: an internet cafe. Outside, the weather was close as more cloud crept in from the west; inside, the stuffy air was being stirred by a buzzing fan that jerkily shook its head at the task like a faulty robot. Internet cafes like these had practically disappeared from Britain, but here they clung on with battered clacky keyboards and an assortment of monitors that looked as if they'd come out of various skips. I ordered a beer and started.

Tim is an IT consultant at Bath Uni when he's not doing jobs for me, so he is usually found within eight inches of a computer. First I mailed him my woes and worries. I had lost the only picture I'd been given of Kyla. Could he find the group photograph he had unearthed, scan it and mail me a copy? Then I lied a bit about the weather and how much time I was spending lazing around on the beach, to pay him back for not lending me his car, and hit the send button at the precise time that thunder cracked overhead. By the time I'd paid and got to the door, it was raining hard, sending tourists running for cover. Within a couple of minutes, the only people still walking in the street were locals carrying umbrellas.

I remembered the card Dimitris had given me in case I ever needed to hire a car. It had moulded itself to the curve of my bum in my back pocket. Under the picture of a small green car, I recognized the name of the street; it was near the police station. I stayed out of the rain by skitting from colonnade to colonnade until I ran out of shelter. Then I stepped into the pouring rain and accosted a well-dressed middle-aged umbrellaed local with my card and asked the way. He said something like ‘Oh, it's not far, please share the shelter of my brolly so I might walk you there'; only naturally it was in Greek and I couldn't swear to the precise wording, and he did sigh a lot but was simply too polite to chase me from under his umbrella. It was only a five-minute walk and he usefully filled the time by muttering to himself in Greek. In front of the rental place, I thanked him profusely for getting me there nearly dry. Actually, my right shoulder was soaked and so was his left since his brolly wasn't really big enough for two. Without a word, he trotted back the way we had come. Bless.

It was a tiny office. A tourist couple were just completing some business at the desk and the man behind it was talking to them in English while simultaneously holding down a Greek conversation on his mobile. When I saw passports being returned to a handbag, I realized that I didn't have a scrap of ID on me. Tricky. The couple completed their business and stood by the door, and the man, after a few final words on the mobile, turned his energetic attention to me.

‘Yes, can I help you, please?' he said brightly.

‘Erm, yes, I need to rent a car. A very cheap car, if possible.'

‘You have come to the right place – cheapest cars in town. Welcome, please take seat.'

I took a seat, while outside the couple's rental car was being delivered – a shiny green Citroën Something or Other.

‘How long is your stay here, Mr . . .?'

‘Honeysett. One week,' I told him confidently.

He pointed out the types of car they rented out in a laminated holder, all lime-green Citroëns, then added that the only one they had left was the Citroën
Something
. Fine.

‘I will need to see licence and your pass-a-port, please.'

‘Ah. I'm afraid I haven't either of those on me.' His face fell. Outside, the rain was intensifying. Perhaps I could rent an umbrella without a passport. ‘Ah, here.' I found the card Dimitris had given me. ‘Dimitris, your cousin, I believe, gave me your card. He'll vouch for me, I'm sure.'

Reluctantly, he took the card off me and angled it against the light from his desk lamp, then nodded. ‘Is from my cousin. You see? Two little scratches under the picture of the car. Is his mark so I know is him.' He tapped the side of his nose. I presumed this had to do with family and commission and not being quite grown-up yet. ‘Still, no pass-a-port . . . You will excuse me, please.' He speed-dialled on his mobile and soon bellowed into it. He talked and talked, listened and listened, perhaps reminiscing about their school days or warming up an old family feud – it was hard to tell. His smile, when he hung up, was unconvincing, but apparently the Dimitris connection had swung it for me. He made another bellowing phone call, took a wodge of money off me and told me to wait for the car to be delivered. What eventually arrived outside wasn't the expected Citroën Something, more the Citroën Something Else. It wasn't lime green, either – more the colour of a tomato you know will taste disappointing even before you bite into it – and it was squarely a last-century model. Which had arrived here through a mud-choked time tunnel. I opened my mouth to point this out, but the man pulled his shoulders up to his ears, laid his head on one side and said quietly: ‘No pass-a-port . . .' It was raining as heavily as ever and the thought of a fuggy bus full of
sakoola
-clutching Greeks quickly won me around.

This was more or less the French equivalent of the rusty Fiesta, with the addition of a screeching fan belt, so I soon felt at home again as I splashed the thing out of town and into the hills. It was still raining when I got to Neo Makriá and beeped my horn outside Dimitris's cafe. He stayed in the shelter of his door. We exchanged thumbs-up signs. Then he went inside, presumably to roll on the floor laughing.

‘Y
ou live in England; you ought to be used to changeable weather,' Morva said.

‘Yes, but this is extreme,' I insisted. ‘Yesterday you couldn't see five yards for the rain.'

‘Listen, once the weather makes up its mind and summer starts, you might not see a cloud for months. After a few weeks you forget about the sky – it's blue and that's it. You forget about clothes, too; you wear as little as you think you can get away with, no matter what time of the day.'

‘It's the strength of the sun that's so amazing,' said Annis who smelled strongly of coconuts this morning, her freckled skin glistening with factor fifty. ‘There were three inches of water in this yard last night; now look at it.' She stomped one foot down on the dry, hard-baked ground in the courtyard where we were standing with our tiny china cups of Greek coffee. ‘The mud has set like concrete.'

Morva nodded sagely. ‘Which is just as well or the whole island would have slithered into the sea a long time ago. Listen: isn't that a wonderful sound?'

I angled my head in the direction towards which she had tilted hers. ‘What sound? I can't hear it with Charlie's sawing and humming going on.' Charlie hummed continuously while working. Nothing you'd recognize.

‘That
is
the wonderful sound. At last this enterprise is moving again. There's hope.' She called across the yard to where a half-naked Charlie was working on what was to be the communal shower. ‘Do you want some more coffee, Charlie?'

‘I'm fine, honest!' he called back without looking up. So far the construction consisted of a latticed floor and four uprights and no water supply, but last night, after shaking the last drops of red wine from a bottle, he'd announced he now knew how to solve the ablution crisis.

‘Leave him be. You know what they say about watched kettles. Same goes for builders. Where are your students?'

‘Out there, painting away. Rob's still by the churchyard, Helen is doing a study of a crumbling wall of one of the houses, and Sophie hasn't reappeared yet. I'll go and chat to them in a minute. Best go and gear up for it.' To walk anywhere outside the house and yard, Morva donned tightly laced boots over bandaged ankles and carried a rustic walking stick.

Annis held her pale freckled arm against mine where I had acquired the hint of a tan. ‘I'll never catch up standing here. What's this private beach like someone mentioned last night? I think it's time I stuck myself in the sun for a bit.'

‘Bad for you.'

‘Factor squillionzilliontrillion. And it matches the price.'

‘I've no idea what it's like. I've never made it down there. The one time I tried, someone rolled a car down the hill at Morva. No one thinks it's really worth the climb. The climb back up, that is.'

‘Excellent, let's check it out, then.'

Kitted out for the beach – towel, drinks, sun lotion, book – we set out. ‘Where's the path?' Annis asked.

‘Right below that.' I pointed at Morva's crumpled Fiesta, still leaning against the tree on the edge of the track.

Annis gave it a speculative shove with one sandalled foot, then peered down the steep drop towards the glittering sea. ‘I know it's been here a while, but perhaps we should try to pull it away before we go down there. Now we've got a working car. Is there a tow rope anywhere?'

There was one in Matilda. I backed the Citroën down the track, attached the rope to both cars, slowly took up the slack.

‘OK, go!' Annis called from a safe distance.

It was at that moment, when I increased the pressure on the accelerator, that I realized what would happen. The Fiesta would come away from the tree that was holding it up, slip sideways and so put its full weight on the rope while hanging off the cliff face. Then it would pull me backwards over the edge into free fall towards the sea. Anyone with half a brain would have stopped there;
I
put my foot down. The tow rope strained, the engine strained, its wheels spun on the gravelly track, but the Citroën didn't move an inch. Fortunately, neither did the Fiesta. ‘That's not going anywhere until we get a tractor up here,' I announced, somewhat relieved.

Tow rope put away and Citroën once more parked near Matilda, I gave the Fiesta a reassuring pat on the way down the track. The switchback footpath down the cliff widened and narrowed, sometimes disappeared altogether where a series of rocky outcrops forced us to scramble down backwards, holding on to tufts of grass and the occasional myrtle bush. Yet a few minutes was all it took before we dropped on to the beach below.

The minute bay consisted of a narrow sickle of coarse sand that turned first to shingle, then rock at the edges. Laid side by side, sardine-style, one might have fitted two dozen determined sunbathers on it. Just offshore, a series of large rocks calmed the waves before they reached the sand. The cove gave the impression of a very sheltered place, yet the tide marks well above head-height showed that the waves broke over the entire beach in rough winter weather.

‘I think it's perfect,' Annis announced. ‘Who needs leccy and plumbing when you've got a private beach?' She looked up. You couldn't see the crashed car from here. ‘Told you we wouldn't need our cozzies.'

The sun may have been unusually hot for the time of year, but the water kept to a breathtakingly seasonal temperature. I was in and out in three minutes, enough to remind myself that the sea takes a long time to warm up in spring. I stood shivering on the sand, towelling myself, but Annis went on mermaiding it between the rocks and casting aspersions on my manhood (as opposed to mousehood).

‘It's lovely. You don't feel the cold after a while!'

‘That's because you've gone numb!'

‘Come back in here, you wimp!'

‘In a little while!' I promised. ‘
Like August
.'

Another five minutes and she was back on the beach, getting herself towelled down by the wimp while her teeth chattered. ‘It's g–g–g–g–great out there, c–c–c–can't wait to do it again. In a w–w–wetsuit, perhaps.'

We huddled together and soon warmed up in the sunshine. Another ten minutes and we were baking as the heat radiated from the rocks. I applied a fresh layer of factor fifty all over Annis's fair skin. Thoroughly. But however careful you are, you always end up with sandy bits, which means you have to get back into the sea, then towel yourself dry, reapply lotion, get sandy bits . . . the endless, insane cycle of life on the beach.

Eventually, Annis settled down with a swollen bathtub copy of
Harlot's Ghost
, while I failed to get enthusiastic about
The Naked and the Dead
, which I decided was a bad choice for the beach. After a while I gave up on it, put on my jeans and shoes and took a ‘walk' to the edges of the cove. The left side was pretty disappointing, offering me a collection of worn plastic bottles, bits of tarry wood, the leg of a toy doll and cigarette ends. I scrambled over the rocks at the end to try to peer around the corner but nearly ended up in the drink and gave up on it.

The other side proved more interesting. The first thing I found was a small dead starfish. Next to it, the sharp corner of an angular plastic object showed above the sand. I pulled and wriggled it until the wet sand gave it up.

‘Ha, look what I found!' I called to Annis.

She didn't. ‘What?'

‘A Monkees CD. Still sealed in cellophane. Aren't I the lucky one!'

‘Beachcombing has its ups and downs. Keep looking till you find something to play it on. On second thoughts – don't bother.'

‘You can't beachcomb to order, you know,' I complained. As I stood there, I heard a tiny noise above. Looking up, I saw a couple of marble-sized stones come bouncing down the cliff. I ducked instinctively, but they fell nowhere near me. Erosion . . . I went to explore the other end of the cove. It didn't take long and yielded no more treasure.