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‘A couple of hours at least. You must have been tired. Pandora has been sleeping, too. I must go and wake her up soon. We should dock in an hour.’
She slid off the lounger and joined him. Ahead of them in the distance, rising out of the sea, was a small island, its indented coast rocky and wild.
The centre was green and mountainous, steep sides climbing from the shore, with few signs of habitation.
‘It looks deserted. Do many people live there? Where’s the hotel?’
‘There are a few hundred inhabitants, that’s all. The hotel is a short drive from the harbour, but you can’t see it because it’s surrounded by trees. As we get closer you may catch a glimpse of white walls and red roofs. The hotel building is one storey; it isn’t very big because the guests live in bungalows scattered through the grounds. It gives them more privacy. They can cook and eat in their bungalow, or walk up to the hotel to eat.’
As they drew closer, a rough, powerful scent blew towards them on the wind. She distinguished pine, herbs, lavender, and other smells she couldn’t identify.
‘What an amazing scent!’ she said to Charles who nodded.
‘The French call it the maquis; it’s the smell of the plants and shrubs that grow all over the island. There’s a lot of gorse, heathers, wild olives, pine trees.’
‘I can smell those!’ She could make them out, tall, gaunt, leaning in the wind’s path, and even see the olive trees now, their silvery green leaves tossing and fluttering. ‘Is yours the only hotel on the island?’
‘Yes. There aren’t many roads, and those there are really aren’t suitable for motor traffic. You need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get about. There are no towns, just a few villages scattered around the coast. The main industries are fishing and farming. This is still an unspoilt island, tourism hasn’t had much of an impact.’
‘But somebody built the hotel!’
‘Not exactly. It was a private house, built around the turn of the century, and not that big – there were six bedrooms in the beginning. When it came up for sale, Pandora’s father bought it, to turn into a hotel, but decided not to build on to it. It would have spoilt the appearance. Hence the bungalows in the grounds. Pandora’s brother designed them – they’re adobe style, very plain, rough-cast white plaster on the walls inside and out. Some have just one bedroom, some have two and there are a couple with three bedrooms. They have shower rooms and a tiny kitchenette in one end of the sitting room. The decor is pretty; each is furnished in just one or two colours. There are televisions but mostly so that guests can watch videos. We have a video library in the hotel. There are several pools. The bungalows are set around them so that guests can swim in privacy if they wish, only using their pool if nobody else is in it.’
‘And they’re mostly British, the guests?’
‘We get people from all over Europe and America, actually, but the majority speak English. He turned away. ‘I’d better go and wake Pan.’
They were close enough to the shore now for her to make out the harbour, white-walled, set round with small white houses, a church bell tower here and there in the back streets, fishing boats moored at the jetty, and along the sea wall a few tavernas, with fluttering awnings in blue or yellow. Further along there was a narrow beach with half a dozen children playing on it.
As they moored at the jetty she jumped, seeing a couple of pelicans clacking their beaks and making squawking noises of affront.
Pandora laughed behind her. ‘They’re the island’s watchdogs. Don’t go too close, they sometimes push people off the jetty into the sea.’
‘I’ve never seen them outside a zoo. Are there many of them on the island?’
‘A few. There were far more, once, I think, but now there are just a handful. The fishermen don’t like them because they eat fish, but I don’t think they persecute them, they are too popular with everyone else. I’m not sure why the population dwindled.’
‘They’re so funny!’ Miranda watched them stalking back and forth, their beaks constan
tly opening and shutting. ‘A couple of clowns! Where do they nest?’
‘On the beach somewhere. People keep away but tourists sometimes go down to take pictures, which upsets the pelicans. In the spring the storks nest on the church tower; everyone complains about the noise they make, but it’s charming to watch them sit up and spread their big wings and clack their beaks, when they’re disturbed. They do it every time the priest rings the bell. But tourists can’t get up there to take their everlasting photographs, so the birds keep coming.’
Charles leaned over the side, pointing. ‘Here comes the car.’
It was not a limousine this time, but a large, black four-wheel-drive. Charles and the young crewman helped Miranda and Pandora up the ladder to the top of the jetty and the driver of the vehicle came to give them a hand into the back seat. Then he and the other two men shifted the luggage into the spacious boot before they slowly backed off the jetty on to the narrow road running along the sea front.
Miranda wished she had her camera to take pictures of the tavernas, the pelicans, the brightly coloured boats, some of them painted with an eye or an open hand, on the side. But she had packed it, and from Pandora’s tone when she talked about tourists taking photos it was probably just as well.
‘Why are there those signs painted on the boats, Pandora?’
‘They’re ancient symbols against evil and bad luck.’
The eyes were slanting, black, with a faintly sinister look in Miranda’s opinion; the hands were small, fingers spread wide, outlined in frilly black and red. She couldn’t guess what they symbolised.
The road out of the fishing port deteriorated within minutes. Despite the excellent springs on the four-wheel-drive they began bouncing and rocking to and fro as they drove along. Charles looked anxiously at his wife. Pandora was holding on to the strap on the window beside her; Miranda saw her knuckles whiten and her face took on a greenish tinge.
‘You aren’t going to be sick, are you?’ she asked and Pandora grimaced.
