The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I stood in the street by the police car and watched the lovely sunset behind Telendos while Christine was inside the house. An elderly woman in a flowery dress carrying bags of shopping limped by and stopped.

‘I hear you found one of the twins,’ she said. ‘The nice one.’

‘Nice?’

‘I do the cleaning and make the beds every morning at nine.’ She nodded towards the house. ‘Most of them have gone off climbing by then, but sometimes I woke the two of them. One was always grumpy, the other one just smiled and laughed and said I could come back and do it tomorrow. Julian, that was the nice one’s name. I never found out what the other one was called.’

‘Franz.’

‘Franz.’ She savoured the name.

‘It’s German,’ I said.

‘Well, apart from that Julian I don’t like Germans. They screwed us during the war and they’re screwing us again now. Treat us like we’re bad tenants in their Europe who haven’t paid the rent in a while.’

‘Not a bad image,’ I said, thinking as much of my own native country as of Germany.

‘They act like they’ve changed,’ she scoffed. ‘A woman leader and all that stuff. But they’re Nazis and they always will be.’ She shook her head. ‘One morning I saw handcuffs on the bedside table. No idea what that Franz used them for, something fascist I expect. Is he dead?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Probably. Almost definitely.’

‘Almost?’ She looked at me, still a trace of that contempt for all Germans in her face. ‘Isn’t it the police’s job to know?’

‘Yes it is,’ I said. ‘And we know nothing.’

She waddled away, and I heard laughter from the other side of the road.

I turned and there, sitting on a veranda beneath a cypress tree, sat Victoria with her feet on the railings and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

‘You get screwed?’ she said with a laugh, puffing out smoke into the still dusk.

‘You understand Greek?’

‘No, but I understand body language.’ With a slow, languorous gesture she tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘Don’t you?’

I thought of the night. I sobered up in the course of those hours. It was good. We were good to each other. A bit mean, but mostly good. ‘Yes I do, I do.’

‘See you later in the bar?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m flying to Athens tonight.’

‘Like a visit?’

From the look on her face I realised the question had just popped out. And she understood — or misunderstood — my hesitation in replying.

‘Forget it.’ She laughed again, and drew hard on her cigarette. ‘You’re married with kids and a dog in Athens. You don’t want trouble and you won’t get any.’