The Girl Below(86)

Harold smiled. “That sounds like my mother.”

“She wanted to see you the second you got here,” said Pippa. “You should probably give her a kiss.”

Rather stiffly, Harold moved to the bed and pecked Peggy’s forehead once.

“She’s dying,” said Pippa. “It isn’t contagious.”

Harold bristled, but I saw why he’d held himself back, and was shocked by it too. Instead of the tan she’d hoped for, Peggy’s skin had lost all pigment, and peeled off her body in chalky layers. Her hair had thinned out too, what was left standing up from her head in downy, newborn tufts. She was really only a collection of bones, except for her abdomen, which was horribly distended.

Pippa saw me staring at the protrusion. “It’s fluid,” she said. “An edema. It means her organs are failing.”

We shuffled back out to the courtyard, more sober than when we had left it, only to be baked alive by the midday sun. Under my clothing, my unwashed skin was starting to itch. “Would anyone mind if I took a shower?” I said.

“Of course not,” said Pippa. “I’ll show you to your digs. It’s a bit of a squash I’m afraid, but we’ll all just have to rub along.” She still held the parcel of fish, and tentatively started to unwrap it until the smell overpowered her. “Where did he get this?”

“I don’t know,” said Harold, before I could answer. “Suki and Caleb absconded this morning—we nearly missed the ferry—and that thing was their excuse.”

Pippa looked at us both blankly and smiled. “Well, Elena will know what to do with it.” She disappeared into a room I assumed was the kitchen, and came out carrying two glasses of water. “We boil our drinking water here,” she said, handing one to each of us. “I wouldn’t advise drinking from the tap—just to be on the safe side.” She led us into a long, narrow room next to the kitchen, where shuttered windows cast a weak gray light. The floor was pebbled, like the courtyard, but most of it was covered with faded red and blue woven mats. Around the room were platforms at varying levels, and these were crowded with patterned cushions and textiles, discolored from age or too much sun. At the far end stood a shrine festooned with candles and effigies, the centerpiece of which was a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary holding a midget Jesus nailed to a cross. Both icons were plastic and wore lurid halos made from fairy lights, switched off at that time of day.

“This is where you’ll be sleeping,” said Pippa, pulling open a striped curtain with a spindly ladder behind it. At the top of the ladder was a platform and a thin, rolled-up mattress. “Elena sleeps over there.” She pointed to a mass of pink lace and quilting directly underneath Jesus and Mary. “She’s terribly sweet, but snores like a walrus, so I hope you’re far enough away. There wasn’t anywhere else to put you, I’m afraid.”

“Am I sleeping in this room too?” said Harold, looking around at the other platforms.

“No,” said Pippa. “This is the girls’ dorm, and you’re bunking with Caleb.”

“Great,” said Harold. “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Left alone in the crypt, I lifted my suitcase onto the platform and climbed up after it. The space was about six feet wide, with no railing and a drop of about the same distance. With the curtain shut it was almost private, but also strangely coffinlike, and I was acutely aware of Jesus and Mary just over yonder, watching, praying, leaking their plastic tears. Above my mattress, nailed to the wall, was a wooden bleeding heart, its paint rubbing off in places.

I was considering where on the platform to stow my suitcase when the sounds of an argument, heavily muffled, filtered through the wall. The baritone voice I recognized as Harold’s, and after a time I heard Pippa yelling too. Most of what they were saying was indecipherable, but at the peak of the crossfire I heard Caleb’s name spat out in the same sentence as my own, by Harold.

Consequently, I arrived at supper that evening in a state of high apprehension. Whatever Pippa and Harold had been arguing about, I was sure would come out. But I was also starving, and allowed myself to be distracted by a feast of stuffed peppers, tomato salad, oven-baked bread, and rich, bubbling moussaka. Elena might have been doubled over with osteoporosis, but she was no slouch in the kitchen. Even Caleb’s fish, grilled to a crisp, looked good enough to actually eat. Though once it was on my plate, my stomach disagreed.

“Is something wrong with your meal?” asked Pippa, pointing to it.

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s amazing.”