Korčula #2
To his surprise, she laughed. “I must say, I am very relieved you are not perfect. That would make you extremely hard to like.”
“Far, far from it. Although I do recall you used to think I was.” He winked.
“Another imperfection. A middle-aged man who winks.” But her eyes were sparkling in just the way he remembered.
“So for the record, is winking good or bad?”
“Work it out for yourself. You were always the clever one.”
He snorted. “And what about you? Running a hugely successful business? Isn’t that clever?”
“It was what I was brought up to do. Perhaps, whatever might have happened between us, it would always have been that way. I’ve thought about those might-have-beens so much this last week, but we can’t possibly know.
For a start, we wouldn’t have seen each other for years because of the war.
Even without Kesten’s scheming, we can’t be sure it would have worked out, can we?
” An almost pleading tone belied her laughter, and Lloyd put his hand on her arm.
“No, we can’t. We can’t second guess anything because it didn’t happen. All we have is where we are now.” A moment of stillness surrounded them, and Lloyd’s head began to thump again, in time with the blood pumping noisily through his heart. Mirjana blinked first.
“And where we are now is very close to the top of a cliff,” she said, “so we’d better watch our step. Look, there’s the old battery, so what’s next?”
Lloyd pulled his phone from his pocket. “I put the co-ordinates into Google Maps, so let’s see.
” He angled the screen towards her and away from the sun.
“We need to keep the battery to our right, but it looks as though the path shelves very steeply, so be careful.” He was about to offer her his hand, but she set off ahead of him, the gravel and grit beneath their feet soon giving way to lumps of slippery shale punctuated with rocks and small, scrubby bushes of pine and wild thyme, releasing their fragrance as they passed.
Mirjana came to an abrupt halt where the path petered out into a steeply slanted slab of rock with the sea hundreds of feet below.
“Over there to our right. There’s some sort of structure. Or at least, what’s left of one. I wonder if that’s where the entrance is?”
They edged along the treeline until they were above a curved wall, built to surround an oval-shaped platform.
A couple of metres below them, half-hidden by the cliff-face, was what looked like the entrance to a tunnel, but it would be quite an ask to clamber down over the mass of broken rocks and boulders to reach it.
“I’m sure it’s the place in the video, but do you think you can make it?” Lloyd asked.
“We’ve come this far.”
“We need to be sure we can get back up again. This might be the only viable entrance.”
Twisting her head around, Mirjana looked him up and down. “You look pretty well muscled to me, and although I’m not exactly built for this, I’ve got strong arms from years of kneading pizza dough.”
Lloyd nodded. Mirjana was certainly even more curvy than she’d been before, but given how she’d coped so far her fitness wasn’t in doubt.
Nor her courage, as she half climbed, half slid down the slope in front of them, gripping a trailing bush for support before jumping into the concrete-lined pit at the bottom.
Within minutes they were both in front of the entrance.
Lloyd took off his rucksack then reached inside for the torches.
Beneath an arched ceiling, man-made steps led down into the cliff, the walls on either side stained with rust almost as far as they could see.
Mirjana pulled Kesten’s letter from her pocket.
“And so, we begin,” she said. “First fork, turn left.”
At the bottom of the mortar-lined staircase the neat walls gave way to rough-hewn rock and the steps to a grit-covered floor.
It was little more than a cave, Lloyd thought, a cave burrowed out for humans.
Underground. Clandestine. A deep sorrow rolled through him.
What had the men who’d lived and worked here seen when they’d gone to war?
What had they had to do? No wonder the place was making him feel so uncomfortable.
The wash of the sea faded behind them, leaving only the steady scrunch of their feet.
Lloyd followed the round beam of his torch, fixed firmly on the tunnel ahead, but behind him Mirjana was flicking hers from walls to ceiling and back.
Not much further in were signs of former habitation and the walls became smooth again, and tinged with green.
The air smelt heavy and stale, and Lloyd shivered, goosebumps appearing on his arms.
“There’s a jumper in my rucksack,” he said, then asked Mirjana if she wanted it.
“No. I think I can see the fork ahead. This shouldn’t take much longer.” She shuddered. “It’s horrible down here, really horrible.”
“You can go back, if you like.”
“Not likely. We’re in this together.”
As they neared the fork, a breath of slightly fresher air teased them, and at the end of the path to their right Lloyd could just make out a small circle of light. “At least there’s another way out,” he said. “That makes me a bit happier.”
“Unless it leads to a vertical cliff-face.”
“I’m loving your optimism.”
“Sarcasm. Another fault. Good.” At least she was still joking. There was a rustle of paper as she read the next instruction. “Third door on the right is the shower room.”
Lloyd moved forwards again, counting the blank holes in the walls.
No doors remained and there was little inside the concrete-lined rooms either, only the remains of a broken metal bunk bed in one.
The place had been stripped and he began to lose heart.
The people who’d done this would surely have found the jewellery.
The third room was no different, except three round holes in the floor gaped at them, surrounded by a scatter of broken ceramic tiles. He stopped at the door, aware of Mirjana’s warmth next to him.
“This is it. The moment of truth. Which one did he say?”
“The middle one.”
Wishing he’d at least brought a glove of some sort, Lloyd crouched on the floor while Mirjana held the torch over him.
He knew that any last dregs of water would be long gone, but he didn’t like to think what sort of wildlife might have taken up residence in the drainage system.
At the very best a spider, at worst a rat or a snake.
But hopefully his groping fingers would meet nothing that was actually capable of movement.
In fact, they met nothing except gritty dust as he reached downwards, so he knelt on the floor to lean closer to the hole. Still nothing, so he lay flat on his stomach. “Let’s hope my arms are longer than Kesten’s,” he muttered.
“I’m sure they are.” Mirjana’s voice came from close beside him. “You were so much taller. Miserable little bastard that he was.” She sounded so venomous she’d probably give any stray snake lurking in a corner a run for its money.
He braced himself and plunged his arm back down into the hole. At least now he’d reached the bottom and yes, he was sure there was something, some sort of plasticky fabric, tucked into a groove just behind where the vertical and horizontal pipes met.
“There’s something here,” he told Mirjana.
It was stuck fast and he tugged it gently.
What if it ripped? But even if it did, it wouldn’t be impossible to pick up one by one the small pieces of jewellery he hoped were inside.
Just painstaking and time consuming. And the chill of the concrete beneath him was already seeping into his bones.
He wriggled his fingers more firmly around the bag, grazing them in the process, but now he had just enough purchase to work it free. The fabric held, and he closed his fist around it, hauling himself to his knees as he pulled it up the drain.
Sitting back on his aching calves, he opened his hand. Mirjana’s torch like a spotlight illuminating a man’s sponge bag with a drawstring top, grubby beyond belief, but which looked as though at one time it had been striped. As she took it from him, she brushed his arm.
“You’re freezing!” she said. “Get up this minute. We’ll look at this when we’re back in the sun.”
“What if it’s the wrong one?”
“Oh very funny. You are such an idiot, Lloyd.”
“There’s no fool like an old fool. Isn’t that what they say?”
Mirjana looked around. “I don’t see anyone old.”
“Two adventurers in the prime of life.” Lloyd jumped to his feet, dusting off his trousers.
“Come on then, Indiana Jones, let’s get out of here.”
* * *
It was only when they reached their picnic spot at Raznjic Point that Mirjana asked Lloyd for the sponge bag.
The almost circular outcrop formed the far eastern tip of Kor?ula, and with the hills on the mainland barely visible through the heat haze, it felt as though they were at the end of the world.
From a little way off came the cries and screeches of tourists enjoying a cliff-jumping adventure, but otherwise they were completely alone.
Thankfully they were protected from the ferocity of the midday sun by a small copse, and Mirjana spread out the rug she had brought at the edge of the trees.
“I’ve made my own take on poga?a,” she told him. “Filled with tomatoes, olives and panceta instead of anchovies. Do you remember the panceta? Tata had to cook it for you because you wouldn’t eat bacon raw.”
“It’s fair to say my tastes have changed, and now I know the difference. I’ve eaten more European food.”
“So have you travelled much?”
“A little. When Ruth was small we mainly went camping in Cornwall or France, then later we’d have flotilla holidays sailing around the Med. We’d just started on city breaks when Jenny got ill.”
“You say a little, but it is far more than me. We would sometimes visit Milo’s relatives in Campania, and he took me to Venice for our honeymoon, but apart from that I have not left the country. Barely left the island, in fact.”
“But you always wanted to travel.”
“With the restaurant it was not possible.”
“Surely in the winter…”
She shrugged. “All right. With Milo it was not possible. He was happier at home.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Again, Lloyd, it is not your fault.” Her dark eyes flashed, then she looked away, taking plates and plastic boxes from the cool bag.
“But if I am honest, it was one of the things that made me most angry when I saw you outside the konoba – the idea that you had stolen our dream of travelling the world, then come back to see if I was still here, waiting.”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“I know that now, of course I do. But it was how it felt to me. I couldn’t bear the thought of you on the island, lurking around any corner, so when I saw you talking to Kristina and she came straight into the konoba afterwards I asked if she knew you, and she told me you’d be coming to Kor?ula every week… ”
They gazed in silence over the bright turquoise waters that faded to the deepest of blues further away from the land.
Lloyd so wanted to make it right for her.
He wanted to show her London and all the other places she’d dreamt of more than thirty years before.
Paris, the pyramids, New York… The strength of feeling rocked him to the core.
Could he be falling for Mirjana all over again?
She handed him a slice of poga?a and a bottle of beer, then opened one for herself, taking a deep draught.
“It’s hardly enough Dutch courage,” she told him, “but you’d better give me that bag.”
He watched as she smoothed the centre of the rug flat, her hands liver-spotted, her finger puffed a little around her wedding ring.
It had been barely more than a year for her; far too soon.
Even for himself, he wasn’t sure he was ready for a new relationship, but when he looked at Mirjana he wondered if he’d be willing to try.
Not to take up where they’d left off, of course, but to forge something entirely new.
The idea fascinated him, but he pushed it to one side as she tipped the contents of the bag onto the fabric. Tarnished silver, dull gold, a chip of diamond glinting in the sun. She picked up an earring, a loop studded with the tiniest chips of the stone.
“Tata gave these to Mama the night before they were married. She grieved over them more than anything. They had so little, and he’d saved so hard.” Her voice was breaking. “Sorry,” she said harshly. “I’m being stupid.”
“Far from it. They hold such memories. Such love.”
“Shut up, Lloyd,” she sniffed. “I’m trying not to cry as it is.”
“Why?”
“Because…” She set the earring to one side, then found its partner, before sifting gently through the other pieces until she came across a string of pearls.
“My grandmother’s. Now I can give them to Krasna to wear on her wedding day.
I never imagined…” Mirjana’s shoulders began to shudder, and she put her face in her hands.
Lloyd edged across the rug and wrapped his arm around her, his own eyes brimming with tears.
For a moment he thought she might pull away, but instead she leant into him and sobbed.
She needed to cry. He needed to hold her. Nothing else mattered right now.