The Girl Below(111)

Harold drank too, but he became withdrawn, and wandered off into the night on his own. Quite understandably, Caleb had been avoiding me since the sticky sheet incident, and had disappeared with his friends right after the service.

In the crowded taverna, Pippa sat wedged between two old widows dressed in black, who leaned forward and talked to her in English or across her in Greek, depending on the topic. I had been cornered by a couple of Ari’s young nieces who wanted to practice their English, and at their request, found myself teaching them swear words and slang. I’d switched from whiskey to ouzo by then, and everyone in the room was beginning to seem jovial and kind. Ari and his backgammon cronies formed a singing circle around a couple of lads with balalaikas, and the decibel level rose inexorably. To a tremendous cheer, towers of white plates arrived in a crate, and I noticed that Pippa had disappeared. A few minutes later I found her in the kitchen, rinsing glasses and scraping dishes—the beads, brocade, and boa discarded to one side.

“I’ve always hated balalaikas,” she said, looking up when she saw me. “They make my teeth vibrate.”

“I hadn’t realized Peggy was so popular.”

Pippa smiled. “Imagine what it’s like when a local dies.”

I had a sudden urge to rescue her, just as, I now realized, she had rescued me, and pointed to the back door. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?”

She looked relieved that someone had given her permission to leave. “What a bloody good idea.”

The alley behind the restaurant reeked of rotten fish heads and deep-fryer fat and we had to walk a fair distance to reach this mythical fresh air I had spoken of. Then, we just kept on walking, right through the square and down a long cobbled street toward the port. On a low, white plaster wall with a jaw-dropping view, Pippa sat down and closed her eyes, letting the breeze wash over her face. “God, the end was horrible,” she said, to the sky. “I can’t get that awful moaning noise out of my head.”

“Death is awful even when it’s quiet. I guess we should hang on to what the doctor said, that she wasn’t actually in pain.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Pippa said. “She was in agony.” She opened her eyes and I saw they had tears in them. “All day, I’ve been trying to replace it with a good memory of her, but I just don’t have any. She’s been cross with me for the last forty years.”

“What about before that?”

“I’m forty-one,” she said drily.

“Maybe she loved you more than she let on,” I said, thinking of my own mother. “I think that’s why Hillary didn’t tell me she was dying. It was too awful. She couldn’t face doing it.”

“You might be right,” said Pippa. “But I don’t think Peggy was like other mums—especially not like yours. Hillary was worse than I am with Caleb. I remember her telling me this crazy story once about how she loved you so much that she actually thought she’d killed you. It was that day you all went down in the bunker. She said one minute you were standing next to her on the step, when she had this awful premonition that you were going to fall down the stairs and hit your head—and the next thing she knew, you had fallen. Almost as if she had pushed you.”

The hair on my head stood on end. “She told you that?”

“Something like that—it was a long time ago.”

I felt a residue of tingling on the back of my neck, almost like an aftershock. “Don’t you think that’s sort of creepy?”

Pippa shrugged. “I thought it was at the time, but now that I’m a mother myself I don’t. I’m always having visions of the horrible things that could happen to Caleb . . . and if something did, I might blame myself for it.”

I understood what Pippa meant, but it wasn’t the track my thoughts had taken. I had been wondering if my mother had killed me—or at least a piece of me—that day in the bunker. That’s what it had felt like all these years, that hunger, that emptiness, like some vital part of me was missing. But did that also mean it had now been restored?

Pippa stood up from the wall, seeming lighter than when she’d sat down. “Let’s go swimming. I haven’t put my feet in the water since we got here.”

The main beach was reached by a narrow, cobbled path that snaked down the hillside to the water, then veered up again toward an ancient acropolis on the hill. Despite a steady flow of tourists and donkeys, the path had never been widened, and we had to walk down it in single file.

When we got down to the beach, we were not the only ones there. At the far end, some kids had lit a bonfire, and from their ghetto blaster the tinny sounds of Euro house-music spilled out across the bay. Pippa took off her shoes and walked straight to the water’s edge. I thought she was going to paddle in the shallows and leave it at that, but in one stealthy movement, she discarded her shirt and pants, bra and knickers, and waded in. “Come on, you! It’s magic,” she said, and dove underwater, surfacing a few meters out.