programme about us, our history and all that, and I’ll tell you then.”
“I might just do that,” said Jemima Shore, Investigator.
I sabel said afterwards that we were really getting too old for that sort of thing; which remains perhaps the best verdict on the whole sad affair. Unless you take the line—as my wife did—that the moon was to blame.
They’ve never found out who did it: just some ugly little incident among a lot of drunken campers. Since clearly none of us was involved, they let us all go and back we all came to England. Not immediately: that would have looked odd since we’d rented an expensive villa, but a little sooner than planned. You could hardly blame us for cutting short our holiday by a few days. A death on the beach below, police crawling all over the place,
Greek
police what’s more: not that we put it like that to the charming young woman in the villa rental office, given that she
was
a Greek. In any case she was most understanding. Especially as we showed no signs of asking for a reduction in the rent.
Obviously none of us four was involved; how could we be involved, up on that great big villa on the rock? How could a smart villa party of well-off married people from Londonbe involved with some little scrubber camping down below? Different worlds. Utterly different worlds. Quite soon, the police took that line too.
The world of the campers below was not only a different world, but a pretty horrible one to boot. Crowds—there must have been nearly fifty of them down there—and squalor naturally, since there was no sanitation beyond the natural shade of the olive trees, those graceful trees whose leaves had flickered so exquisitely in the sunlight on the day we arrived, when the beach was still empty.
“Do you realize that apart from anything else, apart from the noise—ye gods, the noise, we hardly slept a wink last night, did we, Isabel?—do you realize that it’s
illegal
?” That was Nick. Isabel nodded vigorously; she always agreed strongly with everything that Nick said in public. (In private, since the villa walls were not entirely soundproof, we were aware that matters were somewhat different.) But my wife, Dinah, did murmur to me afterwards in that light voice of hers—the one she uses for her really snaky remarks—that it was wonderful to have Nick standing up for the law here on the tiny island of Bexi, it really must be the effect of the sun, since back on the great big island of Britain, Nick sometimes took rather a different line about the law …
But I had better begin at the beginning. No, not at the very beginning, not from our very first business enterprise; suffice it to say that the four of us, Dinah and myself, Nick and Isabel, had become close enough over the years to take villas together in sunny foreign parts over a considerable span of time. The Algarve, Italy, Greece (Corfu followed by Paxos), all these have produced comfortable villas, more or less, and happy holidays, of which the same could probably be said. And frankly a holiday which is more or less happyis way above most holidays you take: which is, I think, why we all persevered with the arrangement.
Did I mention that something else unites us? Beyond the same line of work and living nowadays in the same part of London. We’re all childless, or effectively childless. Nick did have a son by his first marriage, I believe, but either the mother kept him to herself or Isabel dumped him—the story varies—at all events he never figures in our lives. As for ourselves, we’ve certainly never wanted children. We’re enough for each other, always have been. I look after Dinah, she looks after me, as we’re fond of saying. So that at the age when our contemporaries are spending all their time worrying over their ungrateful 20-year-olds—and a good deal of their money rescuing them from this, that and the other, also without getting much thanks—we four have the luxury of our time to ourselves.
“I might just do that,” said Jemima Shore, Investigator.
I sabel said afterwards that we were really getting too old for that sort of thing; which remains perhaps the best verdict on the whole sad affair. Unless you take the line—as my wife did—that the moon was to blame.
They’ve never found out who did it: just some ugly little incident among a lot of drunken campers. Since clearly none of us was involved, they let us all go and back we all came to England. Not immediately: that would have looked odd since we’d rented an expensive villa, but a little sooner than planned. You could hardly blame us for cutting short our holiday by a few days. A death on the beach below, police crawling all over the place,
Greek
police what’s more: not that we put it like that to the charming young woman in the villa rental office, given that she
was
a Greek. In any case she was most understanding. Especially as we showed no signs of asking for a reduction in the rent.
Obviously none of us four was involved; how could we be involved, up on that great big villa on the rock? How could a smart villa party of well-off married people from Londonbe involved with some little scrubber camping down below? Different worlds. Utterly different worlds. Quite soon, the police took that line too.
The world of the campers below was not only a different world, but a pretty horrible one to boot. Crowds—there must have been nearly fifty of them down there—and squalor naturally, since there was no sanitation beyond the natural shade of the olive trees, those graceful trees whose leaves had flickered so exquisitely in the sunlight on the day we arrived, when the beach was still empty.
“Do you realize that apart from anything else, apart from the noise—ye gods, the noise, we hardly slept a wink last night, did we, Isabel?—do you realize that it’s
illegal
?” That was Nick. Isabel nodded vigorously; she always agreed strongly with everything that Nick said in public. (In private, since the villa walls were not entirely soundproof, we were aware that matters were somewhat different.) But my wife, Dinah, did murmur to me afterwards in that light voice of hers—the one she uses for her really snaky remarks—that it was wonderful to have Nick standing up for the law here on the tiny island of Bexi, it really must be the effect of the sun, since back on the great big island of Britain, Nick sometimes took rather a different line about the law …
But I had better begin at the beginning. No, not at the very beginning, not from our very first business enterprise; suffice it to say that the four of us, Dinah and myself, Nick and Isabel, had become close enough over the years to take villas together in sunny foreign parts over a considerable span of time. The Algarve, Italy, Greece (Corfu followed by Paxos), all these have produced comfortable villas, more or less, and happy holidays, of which the same could probably be said. And frankly a holiday which is more or less happyis way above most holidays you take: which is, I think, why we all persevered with the arrangement.
Did I mention that something else unites us? Beyond the same line of work and living nowadays in the same part of London. We’re all childless, or effectively childless. Nick did have a son by his first marriage, I believe, but either the mother kept him to herself or Isabel dumped him—the story varies—at all events he never figures in our lives. As for ourselves, we’ve certainly never wanted children. We’re enough for each other, always have been. I look after Dinah, she looks after me, as we’re fond of saying. So that at the age when our contemporaries are spending all their time worrying over their ungrateful 20-year-olds—and a good deal of their money rescuing them from this, that and the other, also without getting much thanks—we four have the luxury of our time to ourselves.
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