They had not come at the end of September because they had been after a cheap holiday. They were both well-remunerated and owners of a Victorian townhouse in Queen’s Park, which boasted, as the estate agent had said, six bedrooms and three bathrooms. A slight extravagance for just the two of them, but they justified it by saying that they often entertained (and besides, it had made them, so far, millionaires twice over). In fact they had chosen the end of September because it would be quieter. Last year they had gone to Machu Picchu and had been disappointed. They knew it was a popular destination of course, but they did not expect so many tourists perched on that narrow rocky peak of the Andes. It was true that the place had a certain energy to it. The dawn mist rising above the ancient terraces, the intoxicating air at that altitude, the mossy stones, the spectacular views – but the hordes had ruined it all for them. What had Ben and Lucinda had in common with the wretched souls suffering from the altitude bends led around the ruins by stressed guides who held up umbrellas and called at their charges not to fall behind? Nothing. The couple had sworn never to have a holiday like that, no matter how old and frail they got. Not them. They were independent travellers.

 

This year they had decided to take a break from all that. They had booked a holiday in the sun with the tacit agreement that next summer they would take their chances in Angkor Wat or the Galápagos, crowds or no crowds. It was with a spirit of compromise that they had come to the small Mediterranean island. They had married nine years before but had no children, a decision made after a long discussion over several glasses of corked Rioja and a spliff or two late one night in Ben’s bedsit in Kilburn (those were the days), only a short walk but a long way from their present-day complacent house. Afterwards they had made love, half-drunk, half-stoned, half-asleep and full in love. They had not changed their minds about little people, and if they had ever had any doubts they only had to remind themselves that they worked too hard, and it would not have been fair to the children.

 

The hotel was a whitewashed, three-storeyed stone house with blue shutters a short but strenuous walk up a slope from the beach. Their room was on the ground floor and faced the sort of emerald green sea one saw on postcards. Seagulls flew overhead, a cool wind blew and the tamarisks on the sandy beach rustled. It was all just about enough for Ben to forgive the instant coffee served at breakfast on the terrace where he sat with his tablet to read the wifi-ed papers. An article about the volatility of the markets convinced him that Lucinda and he had made a wise decision to invest in bricks and mortar. He did not want to be reminded about the time that he had dabbled in the stock market, that mercurial monster. After an initial surge, which had seen his investment almost double in value, he had lost the lot within a year while he stubbornly held onto his shares like a lifebuoy. There had been no bounce back; the company had been liquidated. Kaput. It was diamonds, somewhere in Africa. He could not remember where exactly or did not care to talk about it. Maybe King Solomon’s mines. Let bygones. He had had a considerable loss, but mercifully it had not been the kind of disaster that makes one reach for the revolver and write with trembling hand: ‘My dear Lucinda, Can’t carry on any longer. This is the only way out. I am unworthy of your love. Love, Ben.’ Nothing like that. But it had been enough to teach him a lesson. In a strange way it now felt good that he, a staunch socialist in his student days, no longer had anything to do with the stock market, that capitalist cathedral. For God’s sake, he used to sell the Socialist Worker back then. He had even had a beard, albeit briefly (Lucinda did not like it). And what had he done with that army jacket?

 

He had not told her about it of course. She would have been furious about the money, but worse than that would have been her disapproval. She was more idealistic than he was, a dyed-in-the-wool lefty unlike him who considered himself a liberal now – and his hair had not even turned grey yet. She had already told him that he had sold out. Who, he? No, he hadn’t.

And yet she was the one who had gone for the corporate career while he had stayed on at university, had run the gauntlet of graduate school and the rest of it. Now he was a full professor, the youngest in the faculty. In fact he had hoped to do some work on their holiday, but a week had gone by in utter indolence, and his notes remained at the bottom of his suitcase along with his pyjamas, which he had also unnecessarily packed. Too hot. It was not conducive to putting forward a good argument on the carnivalesque in Shakespeare. Even tapping the tablet felt like too much of an effort while the cicadas hummed under a sun-bleached sky. In the distance the grey pink curves of Asia loomed. The Orient. A Thousand and One Nights. Kama Sutra. Odalisques. The Islamic State. Only the rusty moped of the hotel proprietor coming from the town disturbed the unnatural peace. Sitting in the shade of the pergola Ben took a sip of his coffee, winced at its taste and stretched his legs. A sense of rapture flowed down to his besandaled feet.