A Perfect Spy

Mary heard herself talking but didn’t understand a lot of what she said because she had one ear in the pillow and the other was listening to the morning sounds of Lesbos through the open window of their little brown terrace house halfway up the hill that Plomari was built on, to the clatter of mopeds and boats and bouzouki music and lorries revving in the alleys. To the scream of sheep having their throats cut at the butcher’s and the slither of donkey hoofs on cobble and the yells of the vendors in the harbour market. If she squeezed her eyes tight enough, she could look over the orange rooftops across the street, past the chimneys and the clotheslines and the roof gardens full of geraniums, down to the waterfront and out to the long jetty with its red light winking on the point and its evil ginger cats soaking themselves in the sunshine while they watched the tramper putter out of the mist.

And that was how Mary saw her story henceforth as she told it to Jack Brotherhood: as a nightmarish film she dared look at only piecemeal, with herself as the meanest villain ever. The tramper draws alongside, the cats stretch, the gangway is lowered, the English family Pym — Magnus, Mary and son Thomas — file ashore in search of yet another perfect place away from it all. Because nowhere is far enough any more, nowhere is remote enough. The Pyms have become the Flying Dutchmen of the Aegean, scarcely landing before they pack again, changing boats and islands like driven souls, though only Magnus knows the curse, only Magnus knows who is pursuing them and why, and Magnus has locked that secret behind his smile with all his others. She sees him striding gaily ahead of her, clutching his straw hat against the breeze and his briefcase dangling from his other hand. She sees Tom stalking after him in the long grey flannels and school blazer with his Cub colours on the pocket, which he insists on wearing even when the temperature is in the eighties. And she sees herself still doped with last night’s drink and oil fumes, already planning to betray them both. And following them in their bare feet she sees the native bearers with the Pyms’ too-much luggage, the towels and bed linen and Tom’s Weetabix and all the other junk she packed in Vienna for their great sabbatical, as Magnus calls this once-in-a-lifetime family holiday they have all apparently been dreaming of, though Mary cannot remember it being mentioned until a few days before they left, and to be honest she would rather have gone back to England, collected the dogs from the gardener and the long-haired Siamese from Aunt Tab, and spent the time in Plush.

The bearers set down their burdens. Magnus, generous as ever, tips each of them from Mary’s handbag while she holds it open for him. Stooped gawkily over the reception committee of Lesbos cats, Tom declares they have ears like celery. A whistle sounds, the bearers hop up the gangway, the tramper is returned to the mist. Magnus, Tom and Mary the traitor stare after it like every sad story of the sea, their life’s luggage dumped around them and the red beacon dripping slow fire on their heads.

“Can we go back to Vienna after this?” asks Tom. “I’d like to see Becky Lederer.”

Magnus does not answer him. Magnus is too busy being enthusiastic. He will be enthusiastic for his own funeral and Mary loves him for this as she loves him for too much else, does still. Sometimes his sheer goodness accuses me.

“This is it, Mabs!” he cries, waving an arm grandly at the treeless conical hill of brown houses that is their newest home. “We’ve found it. Plush-sur-mer.” And he turns to her with the smile she has not seen until this very holiday — so gallant, so tired-bright in its despair. “We’re safe here, Mabs. We’re okay.”

He throws an arm around her, she lets him. He draws her to him, they hug. Tom squeezes between, an arm round each of them. “Hey, let me have some of that,” he says. Locked together like the closest allies in the world, the three move off down the jetty, leaving their luggage till they have found a place to put it. Which they achieve within the hour, for clever Magnus knows just the right taverna to go to first time, whom to charm and whom to recruit in the surprisingly passable Greek identity he has somehow cobbled together for himself on their journeying. But there is the evening yet to come and the evenings are getting worse and worse, they hang over her from when she wakes, she can feel them creeping up on her all through her day. To celebrate their new home Magnus has brought a bottle of scotch though they have agreed several times in the last few days to lay off the hard stuff and stick to local wine. The bottle is nearly empty and Tom, thank God, is finally asleep in his new bedroom. Or so Mary prays, for Tom has recently become a fag-ender, as her father would have said, hanging around them for whatever he can pick up.