Free The Man Who Was Left Behind by Rachel Ingalls Page A

bench in the lounge where the evening before they had listened to music and drunk wine.
    “I don’t have any more postcards,” she said, and rummaged through her purse. From the outside pocket of it she took out three postcards, already written on and stamped. All were addressed to the same name and place, and at the top left-hand corner of each she had conscientiously put down the day, and the month, May, and year, 1965, as though the cards were intended to be saved for posterity.
    “Don’t worry about it,” her husband said. “We can buy some more as soon as we get off.”
    They had been married for eighteen months, although they did not look married. To look at, they might even have been related by blood rather than by law. They looked like students, and John Larsen was one; his wife had graduated the year before. She had majored in English, he was in his last year at business school.
    Standing near them was another American couple, who were on their honeymoon. They came from New York, and, in contrast to the Larsens, looked well-dressed, sophisticated, and as though they were either not married at all or had been married for several years and were taking a break from the children and a life of suburban cocktail parties. Their name was Whitlow. And they were on their honeymoon,all right. When the boat had put them ashore at Crete for the day, the Whitlows had had a quarrel of some kind and John and Amy had found Mrs. Whitlow alone, standing as though posed, with the sun on her shiny hair, and her tropically flowered sleeveless dress looking brand new, like a magazine ad for winter holidays in the Caribbean. She had walked forward towards them, peered this way and that into the other sightseers among the reconstructed ruins of King Minos’ palace, and recognized them.
    “Lost your husband?” John had asked.
    “Well,” she had said, “he went off in a huff, but I think maybe he’s lost now. I’ve been wandering all over the place.”
    That night they had laughed about it as they drank with the Larsens. Another couple named Fischer, a New Jersey businessman and his wife, had joined them. The Fischers were already grandparents, but were throwing themselves into the spirit of things with more zest than the younger couples. They had all begun to talk about the places they had visited or would have liked to see. The Whitlows had been to Nauplia.
    “Oh, we were there, too,” Amy had said. “That’s where we couldn’t get any artichokes.”
    “We sat down on the terrace of the hotel restaurant, you know, facing the harbour——” John had said.
    “That’s where we were, too,” Whitlow had told them.
    “And two tourist buses drove up and parked. We started to order dinner and the waiter handed us the menu and said, ‘With group?’ ”
    “With group?” Amy had repeated, in the voice the waiter had used.
    “So we said no, not with group, and started to order.”
    “And there were artichokes on the menu, which I just love.”
    “We were okay till we hit the artichokes, and then itturned out that they were all for group, forty-seven darn orders of artichokes. That just about finished the place for us.”
    “Did you notice what a funny kind of butter they had there?” Amy had asked. “It was white. It tasted just like Crisco.”
    “I told you, it was some kind of margarine,” John had put in.
    “Not tasting like that. I’m sure it was Crisco.”
    “Did you go to the island?” Mrs. Whitlow had asked.
    “Yes, we had tea there.”
    “So did we, but we made a mistake about the boat. Tell them about the boat, Hank.”
    “Well, when Sally and I got there, we saw this beautiful boat tied up at the landing-stage.”
    “A yacht, really, but a small one——”
    “And later we wanted to get out to the island, but the boat was gone. We went and looked at the sign, and it had the times of sailing on it.”
    “So then——”
    “Do you want to tell it?”
    “Oh, go ahead.”
    “So then later in the