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Rhodes Taken

Norm Hudson

    I’ve taken them from all over. This was the first time I’d taken one from Rhodes.
    I’ve always been an international traveller. Taking a photo here. A photo there. On a bus trip here. A bus trip there. No five star hotels for me. I prefer the small out of the way hotel. Where no one can find you.
    No one notices you at all. When you’re a single traveller. I’ve used that to my advantage. Though at the beginning, I didn’t think it was an advantage at all. Let’s face it. The world is geared to couples. Families. Groups. I was none of those. Yet we’re born alone. And die alone. It doesn’t make sense.
    Discrimination. That’s what it is. Dearer taxes, dearer insurance, dearer retirement. And dearer holidays. That’s why I’ve made it my life’s work to see the single traveller has a good time.
    I can always spot them on a bus trip. No one beside them on a coach. The occupant of the single seats in a mini-bus. I go out of my way to speak to them. To foster an acquaintance. To cheer them up. They don’t deserve that misery. I know what it’s like. The enforced silence for hours. Everyone talking to someone else. The peculiar stares like you’re a Gorgon. Wondering what’s wrong with you. Why you haven’t got anyone to talk to.
    What is wrong with people? Why are they so selfish? Why are they so wrapped up in themselves they don’t reach out to other people?
    Like me.
    She was the only single one on the bus. Apart from me. Each of us in our own silent island surrounded by a cacophony of vocal voices.
    I didn’t have the opportunity then.
    I lost her at Lindos. It appeared the rep did too. We’d all boarded the coach after a fraught fight to clamber the climb to the acropolis through the throngs of tourists tottering their way up the steep incline to the top. I watched the rep race up and down the coach twice counting heads. It appeared her counting was as bad as my planning.
    We descended the bus at Rhodes Town and followed the guide through the meandering streets of the medieval city. It was as we stopped that I heard the clatter of feet behind me and a breathless voice as a woman rushed up to the rep.
    It was her. Miss Single Traveller.
    “You left me behind at Lindos!”
    The woman’s voice was accusing.
    The guide looked like that was an impossibility.
    “I couldn’t have. I counted everyone in the coach,” she said. “Everyone was there.”
    “Well I wasn’t,” stated the woman. “I was left at Lindos!”
    “But how did you get here?” said the beguiled guide.
    “Another coach driver brought me. No thanks to you.”
    The woman wiped the beads of sweat that had accompanied her from her upper lip and forehead.
    She was clearly distressed. I grabbed the opportunity even as the guide, anxious to distance herself from this disturbance to her duty, moved off with ne’er an apology.
    “An expert at history but a novice in knowing about people,” I said.
    “Pardon?”
    I nodded in the direction of the guide.
    “The rep,” I carried on. “Utterly useless!”
    The guide had already disappeared from sight along with most of the others on the coach.
    “So much for caring. And so much for the free drink at a local café she promised us,” I said.
    “I don’t even have any money. I’ve left everything on the coach. Wherever that is,” added the woman.
    “Look it’s almost lunchtime,” I said. “Have lunch on me. You can pay me back when we get back to the coach if you want.”
    “Oh, that’s really kind of you,” she said.
    Like I said. I always make it a policy to give them a good time.
    She was from Edinburgh. A cold city in a caring, Cancerian country, I thought. I’d never taken one from there before.
    We had lunch in a busy bustling café in the Old Town. It turned out she wasn’t single.
    That was my first surprise. And my first mistake.
    The others had all been single.
    She’d left her husband behind at the hotel. It seems he didn’t like bus trips. I should have left her there. I didn’t mess with married women. But I didn’t.
    That was my second mistake.
    It was just so good to have someone to talk to. I always felt like that about them. For I knew they always felt the same. Only single people would understand that.
    We wandered around the old town, looking longingly in shop windows and venturing into those for visitors like all tourists tend to do. It was only as the sun was starting its slow descent into Hades that I suggested sauntering over to Mandraki Harbour.
    Most of the tourists were still in the medieval old town. A trio of tour buses were the only bystanders.
    I knew I’d given her a good day. So that she’d forgotten her former troubles. Like I’d forgotten mine.
    If only the rest of the world could have been the same, I might have been different. But I was too old to change now.
    I always give them a good time. Before they go.
    She was gone in an instant. Crumpling like the Colossus into the warm waters of the harbour. I knew she couldn’t swim. I’d ascertained that over lunch.
    I made my way swiftly back through the cobbled streets to the coach meeting point, Within a few minutes they’d all turned up.
    “Right we’re all here,” said the guide.
    I didn’t say a word.
    No, we’re not, I thought.
    I told you they never notice. The single traveller.
    That’s what made it all so easy for me.
    To make them disappear. To spare them a lifetime of loneliness. At least they knew I’d noticed them. For however brief a space of time.
    We all made our way to the coach.
    The guide did her usual inept head count.
    “We’re all here,” she said.
    I was home free. Again. Like all the other times.
    “Someone’s missing!” said a voice from far behind me.
    I tell you my heart, and I do have one, stopped for all of three seconds. But at the next words it started again.
    “The man in the seat in front of us.”
    A man. I was safe then.
    I hoped he wouldn’t be long. Funny I’d never noticed him, a single traveller, before.
    I hoped he wouldn’t be long. I could already see an ambulance screeching off and see a crowd gathering along the edge of the harbour. And in the distance I could hear a police siren.
    The man appeared all right. Boarding the front steps of the coach. Dripping wet.
    “That’s him!” he said, pointing at me. “That’s the man that pushed my wife into the harbour. I watched him befriend my wife from the first moment I arrived in Rhodes Town. I joined the coach at Lindos, hoping to meet up with my wife there. I didn’t realise she wasn’t on the coach till we got here. I thought she was sitting further down the coach from me. When I saw her appear, I made my way towards her but he got there first. I followed them both, jealous at first because my wife was taking up with another man. I intended to confront her at some point but then I got anxious when I overheard him asking her if she could swim. My anxiety increased when he took her so near water. She’s never liked being near water.”
    I thought of the guide counting heads at Lindos. That’s why she hadn’t noticed the woman missing.
    Her husband had been on the bus! Her husband had been the extra head!
    He had no proof. It was his word against mine. Only his wife could corroborate his story. And she was dead.
    I should have paid more attention to the man’s physical state. That was my third mistake.
    I stood up. Everyone was noticing me. I liked it.
    “The man’s a maniac!” I said, boldly. “I don’t even know his wife.”
    “It’s you who are the maniac!” said the man. “And my wife will corroborate it when we visit her in hospital. It’s lucky I’m a good swimmer!”
    His wife was alive! That’s why he was wet. He’d jumped in and saved her!
    They took me from Rhodes Harbour. The police. Behind the man.
    No more international travelling. No more taking photos here. Taking photos there. On bus trips here. Bus trips there. No more small hotels where no one can find you.
    They’d found me. The man who’d given all those women a good time before they’d gone.
    If only someone had found me sooner. Noticed me. Paid attention to me. Loved me. I might not have taken the road I did.
    They notice me in prison. Though it’s not the same as being outside. And free.
    There’s no enforced silence in here. Everyone’s talking to everyone else. We’re all single people. In here. No discrimination. No peculiar stares like you’re a Gorgon. No one wondering what’s wrong with you. We all know what’s right. And wrong. It makes sense.
    I’ve given up travelling. I’m here. I might take a new road. Take the opportunity. Not that it feels like an opportunity. But then maybe that’s what opportunities are. Things that don’t seem right in the beginning. I’ll use it to my advantage.
    Maybe there’s something to be said for being single after all.

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