Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [31]
She smiled at him. ‘It’s so . . . beautiful,’ she said lamely.
Derek looked morose and yanked open his door. ‘People who don’t live here always think it’s beautiful.’
As the car lurched through the car park, out into the street, Wendy dragged her gaze back from the Greek town to Derek.
‘Have you had much to do with the wedding preparations?’
He shot her an odd look. After an instant he said, ‘No-o,’ and looked as if he might laugh. He said, ‘I have a few dramas in my life at the moment.’ Then he leaned forward, squinting out under the sun visor, and revved the car in a savage burst up around a corner onto a larger ring road.
Wendy looked back at Ruth, who made a face that meant, ‘He’s crazy,’ but also gave a little smirk that meant she was glad to be in the back seat.
‘I’m just doing them a favour,’ said Derek. ‘I work for myself, so they obviously just thought I could up and leave everything and come and get you.’
They climbed the hills. Down below them was white limestone and green water. Derek ground the gears.
‘Well,’ said Wendy, ‘we’re very grateful. Aren’t we, Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ came Ruth’s bored, unconvincing voice from the back.
‘What sort of work do you do, Derek?’ said Wendy.
He looked depressed. ‘I’m a lawyer.’ He reached forward and wrenched a large purple plastic container with a lid from the cup holder and drank from it deeply. Wendy watched him, with his rumpled clothes and his sorrowful face, and wondered if he were a drunk. She gripped her seat and looked out of the window again, about to remark on the Greek mythology she had been reading on the plane, but Derek said, peering through the windscreen as they tore around a steep bend, ‘The internet is very useful, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ cried Ruth from the back seat, her little face suddenly appearing by Wendy’s shoulder.
And Wendy could leave the two of them talking, as Ruth began detailing the bookings they had made, the pleasures of something called PayPal.
Wendy’s fingers wrapped around the little plastic salad dressing container in her pocket. She watched the turquoise water beyond the dark branches of the pines sweeping past below them.
Suddenly Derek braked hard, and the car swerved to the side of the road and lurched to a stop. His door burst open and he leapt from the car. Both the women yelped. The car, driverless, began rolling slowly down the hill.
‘Oh my God!’ cried Ruth. Wendy gasped. But then Derek’s long arm reached in and yanked the handbrake on, and the car stopped. He stood out on the road and flattened himself against the car as a large dusty truck heaved past. Then he removed his jacket and climbed back inside, stuffing the jacket under his seat.
‘Bit hot,’ he said, revving the engine again.
By the time their bags sat on the paving stones outside the house on the hill, Ruth had abandoned any pretence at manners. She charged off with the house key while Wendy thanked Derek too many times and wondered whether she should offer to pay him.
His car gone, she stood on the terrace of the tall white house they had chosen from a picture on the internet. Grapevines curled along a series of crossed wires above her, and a small iron table and two chairs were set in a convivial arrangement beneath the canopy. A little iron balcony overlooked the terrace from the first floor. The air smelled of pine and ocean. She was in the Greek Isles, the Islands of Magnesia. It sounded mythical and momentous. It was still so hot that the air seemed to vibrate.
Inside the stone house it was all coolness and gloom. The heavy wooden shutters were closed, and the floors were flagstone. She could hear Ruth calling from upstairs, aghast. ‘You’re not allowed to flush toilet paper!’
Wendy climbed the stairs, the dark banister thick in her hand.
Ruth was reading a small sign on the bathroom wall explaining that the ancient plumbing could not cope with toilet paper, and the covered bin was there for your convenience.
‘That’s disgusting,’ Ruth said.
Wendy stepped away from the bathroom and