Aphrodite’s Smile. Stuart Harrison
and the wet wind that came off the river. I was still certain that he would come back for me as soon as he could, or at least write and tell me when that would be. But every week my disappointment grew like a cancer. He never came or sent word.
My reflections were abruptly disturbed when a child bumped into the table as he chased a ball. ‘Signomi,’ he said, grinning apologetically.
As he ran off to continue his game I glanced at the girl opposite me. She didn’t appear to have noticed what had happened. Though she still held her book open, I was sure she hadn’t read a page since I’d sat down. She seemed completely absorbed in her thoughts. Perhaps lost was a better term. She exuded a kind of melancholy aura. I wondered what gave me that impression and decided that it was her stillness and the fact that she took no notice of what went on around her. The dark glasses she wore made her seem removed from the world, but imprisoned rather than unobserved.
I finished my beer but couldn’t attract the attention of a waiter so I got up to go inside to fetch another. When I returned, the girl had gone. I saw her crossing the square among the crowd, but somehow apart from them. As she retreated into the darkness she looked small and vulnerable.
When I had finished my beer I decided to go for a walk. I hoped that the exercise would tire me out so that I’d be able to sleep later. Away from the centre of town there were fewer bars and restaurants and the streams of people thinned to a trickle. Small fishing boats replaced the yachts and launches at the wharf and across the road tiny cottages looked over the water. I walked almost to the very end of the wharf beyond the last of the iron lamps that cast a string of pools of yellow light in a crescent along the waterfront. There, only the moon that had risen above the hills softened the darkness. It was very quiet, the water like oil close to the shore, turning to silver grey further out. Cicadas chirped from the trees on the hillside. I paused to take it all in.
About thirty feet away somebody else was gazing across the harbour. Whoever it was didn’t seem to be aware of me and I had the feeling I was intruding on a moment of quiet reflection. I was about to turn away when I recognised the girl whose table I had shared. Her melancholy air struck me again. Without warning she seemed to waver, then, as if in a dream, she vanished into the darkness and I heard a splash as she hit the water below.
It felt afterwards as if I had been rooted to the spot in surprise for a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a moment before I ran to where I had last seen her. The wharf was perhaps seven or eight feet above the water. I couldn’t tell how deep it was because it was black as pitch, but I saw a streak of movement below and heard a gasp. Without thinking, I leapt in. Immediately I sank. I couldn’t see a thing. The water was cool but not cold. When I didn’t touch the bottom, a flutter of panic rose in my throat and I kicked for the surface. A second later I took a breath of warm air. I spun around looking for the girl. She was half-floating face-down only a few feet away from me and with a stroke I caught hold of her and turned her pale face to the air. Her eyelids fluttered and she coughed. Grasping her underneath her shoulders I struck out for shore. My feet touched the ground within seconds and I hauled her onto the rocks.
She had been in the water for no more than half a minute. As I laid her dead weight down I pushed her over onto her side and almost immediately she began to cough up sea-water. She gasped for breath and was gripped by a bout of retching. I did what I could for her until she finally collapsed from the effort with a low moan of either despair or pain. When I was sure that she was breathing normally I asked if she was all right.
She turned her head weakly and peered at me with a mixture of surprise and mild shock. She could only nod feebly. I got up and, helping her as much as I could, encouraged her to stand. ‘You’re cold,’ I said, feeling her skin. Her hair was plastered to her scalp and she looked even paler now that I had her out of the water. She did not resist as I led her back to the wharf and then she began to shiver. Her features were oddly expressionless and, though I tried to get her to rub her arms, she seemed incapable of doing anything.
‘Wait here,’ I said, guiding her to the kerb by the road so she could sit down. When I let go of her she reached out for me.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get help.’
She stared at me slackly and then something in her brain seemed to kick-start into life again. ‘I’ll be all right. Just give me a few minutes. Please.’
I hesitated, persuaded by the appeal in her voice. She seemed to have snapped out of her trance-like state, but I was still worried that she was shivering so much even though the night air wasn’t cold. I looked back toward the nearest cottages. ‘All right. Just wait for a moment.’
I remembered seeing some washing hung out to dry on a small terrace, and when I found it I took down what looked like a bedspread and left some sodden euros under a stone. When I got back, the girl hadn’t moved. She sat hunched over and shivering and when I put the bedspread around her shoulders she looked at me gratefully and clasped it tightly around her.
‘Thank you.’
For a couple of minutes we sat in silence. I studied her as best I could in the darkness. Wrapped up in the huge, threadbare bedspread and without the glasses she’d worn earlier, her hair plastered to her skull, she looked even more vulnerable than she had before. Gradually she stopped shivering.
‘What happened?’ I asked. She didn’t look at me.
‘I don’t know. I was thinking. I sort of forgot where I was. The next thing I knew I was in the water and then you were dragging me out.’
When I thought about what I’d actually seen I couldn’t say that she had jumped. It seemed rather that she had deliberately fallen, though for the time being I didn’t say so. Instead I decided to try to get her somewhere warm and dry. ‘Is there somewhere I can take you?’ I asked. ‘Do you have family here, or friends?’
She shook her head.
‘You mean you’re here alone?’
‘Yes. I’m renting a room. It isn’t far.’
‘You need to get out of those wet things. Can you walk there?’
After a moment she nodded and got to her feet. I put my arm around her shoulders and she stiffened slightly but then leaned against me and allowed me to lead her away. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder. We didn’t speak at all except when she gave me directions. I was trying to think about what to do when we arrived wherever we were going. I knew if she really was alone I couldn’t leave her. For all I knew she’d turn around and go straight back to where I had found her.
It took nearly thirty minutes to reach the house where she was staying, though as she’d told me it wasn’t actually far. It was on a narrow street on the hillside, a largish place surrounded by a low wall with a sign outside advertising rooms for rent. There were lights on inside, but when I headed for the front door the girl gestured towards a low building that had probably once been a garage.
‘That’s my room.’
At the door she dug in her wet clothes and produced a key. Inside I found a light. The room was simply furnished but clean and tidy and there was a small bathroom attached. From the few things I saw hanging in a cupboard and the single bed, I gathered that she really was alone.
‘I’ll just get changed,’ she said, and then noticed for the first time that I was wet through as well. She also recognised me. ‘I saw you earlier tonight didn’t I? You sat at my table.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes were a startlingly pale shade of green. She caught me staring and looked momentarily self-conscious, though I imagined she must have been used to it.
‘Did you follow me?’ she asked.
‘No.’
She appeared to consider whether or not to believe me, then she went into the bathroom and came back with a towel. ‘I haven’t anything to give you to wear I’m afraid.’
‘This is fine,’ I said and took the towel.
‘I