Skios: A Novel by Frayn Michael

Author:Frayn, Michael [Frayn, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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