by Sandy Barker
‘Whoa,’ said Hannah behind me. ‘Whoa’ was right.
Gary turned to grin at us. ‘Yeah, pretty nice, huh?’
As we sailed into the inlet, the port of Ios sat directly ahead of us. While Gary and Josh darted about the boat following Duncan’s orders, I searched for signs of life along the waterfront. The grocery store was open, so that was good. And it looked like there was at least one café open – we wouldn’t starve. I got called away to buoy duty and joined the others to secure the large rubber bumpers along the length of the boat on both sides. I was going to have to get better at tying knots.
As we neared the dock, Duncan turned the boat around and manoeuvred it into a slip next to a slightly longer yacht bearing an Italian flag. As we approached, an older man wearing a straw porkpie hat ran up his gangplank to the dock and signalled to Gary to throw him our tow rope.
There was some reverse throttling of the engine and some more quick footwork by Gary – he really did know his way around a boat – and with the Italian skipper’s help, we were soon secured to the dock. We called our thanks to our new neighbour, and he waved it off modestly and tipped his hat at us. I adore Italians.
A flash of red hair and swish of flowing fabric pushed past me. ‘Don’t wait up!’
‘As if we would,’ I muttered as Patricia swayed her way along our gangplank and staggered off into the town. Hannah, who was now in the land of the semi-living and was standing next to me, smirked in solidarity.
‘Off to find the nearest bar, is my guess,’ said Gary. I heard murmured agreement from the others. I obviously wasn’t the only one who’d decided to steer a wide berth from our citizen of the world.
After Duncan secured the boat cabin, the seven of us headed to the only open café for a late lunch.
‘Hey, I’m going over to the supermarket after we eat,’ I said to Josh who sat next to me. ‘Wanna come? Stock up on some essentials – like food?’ He was up for it, and we agreed to leave as soon as we’d finished eating.
We were sitting outside on plastic garden furniture so tired, it should have been sent to the dump years before. We did have a gorgeous view of the port and its neighbouring beach, and it was a much prettier port than Vlychada, but we were the only patrons at the only open café. Where was everyone?
I asked Duncan. ‘Gone,’ he replied. Okay, Captain Obvious.
‘Where? Why?’
‘This is actually one of the most touristy islands – lots of kids – but they’re usually gone by mid-August – back to uni, most of them.’ It was the tail-end of August, so that explained why the town was deserted. I hoped when we got to other ports, they’d be a little livelier. I was all for relaxation, but I also wanted to get amongst the Greeks and experience some local flavour.
Speaking of which, a Greek woman appeared like an apparition and threw laminated menus onto the table. Starving after our pauper’s breakfast, I practically snatched one up. It was sticky to the touch, but at least it matched the table, which was dotted with unidentifiable splotches of goop. I flicked through it, reading the bastardised English, and the others did the same. The woman hovered impatiently while we turned its many pages.
I was craving something, but couldn’t find it on the menu. I caught her eye by waving at her, ‘Kalispera – hello – do you have dolmades, efharisto?’ A look of utter puzzlement crossed her face. I said it more slowly, ‘Dol-ma-deez?’ The puzzlement remained, and she turned to the others to signal they should order something – as in, she didn’t understand me and the best way to deal with me, was to ignore me altogether.
Duncan stepped in and ordered enough food for all of us, plus seven beers. He was so charming in the way he spoke to her that I even saw the corner of her mouth twitch into the semblance of a smile. But what about the dolmades? I love dolmades, and I was in Greece. Could I not get some dolmades? PLEASE!
She came back out a few minutes later with our beers and Marie, the goddess that she was, tried to support my dolmadic efforts. ‘Excuse me, we’d really like an order of dolmades if you have them,’ she said in her most-enunciated North American accent.
The frown returned to the woman’s face, and she left without saying or doing anything to indicate that dolmades were on their way. But it turns out they were! A few minutes later again, she pretty much tossed a plate of them onto the table. Dolmades!
But I was wrong.
‘Doll-mah-dezzz,’ she said at me slowly. Then she turned on her heels and huffed away. Right then, I guess I’d been told.
The doll-mah-dezzz were delicious, by the way.
After we finished eating, Josh and I told the others we were heading to the supermarket. We asked if anyone wanted to come, but the others seemed happy to linger and have more beer. Duncan had everyone put twenty euros each into a pile on the table – our kitty for the shared food. By default, I was now in charge of said kitty for breakfasts, snacks and lunches on the boat. I was also under strict instructions to get beer, but that was just for Duncan. He slipped me an extra twenty.
‘Any other requests?’ I asked, getting a small notebook out of my bag.
‘Water,’ said Duncan. ‘Bottled water and lots of it.’ I wrote down ‘water – LOTS’. Then I wondered how we would carry lots of water back to the boat.
‘Tzatziki,’ said Marie. ‘Oh, and something to eat it on – bread, I guess? Oh, and tomatoes.’
‘Oh god yes,’ I replied. I underlined tomatoes three times.
‘Snacks,’ replied Hannah, unhelpfully.
‘What snacks?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever they have. Just snacks.’ Great. So far, being on kitty duty sucked.
‘I’ll help figure it out,’ said the cute guy next to me. I looked up at him – gosh, he was tall – and he was smiling down at me, damn him.
‘Right,’ I said, tidying up the pile of cash and putting it into my bag. ‘We will see you back at the boat.’
I cringed a little as Hannah called out after us, ‘Have fun, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ Wonderful – she was still running with the whole ‘you look like a couple’ thing.
The grocery store was a couple of blocks away from the café, and Josh grabbed a trolley when we got inside. Walking the aisles side by side, we stocked up on breakfast foods – muesli, cereal, jam, bread, peanut butter, milk, yoghurt – they do just call it ‘yoghurt’, by the way, rather than ‘Greek yoghurt’. As we tried to guess what the others might enjoy, we discovered we liked a lot of the same things.
Snacks were a little trickier than breakfast, but we found crackers, cookies, nuts, chocolate, and fresh fruit. I hoped Hannah would approve – I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of my roomie. For lunches, we went with the stuff for Greek salad, pita, tzatziki, cured meats and extra tomatoes. So far, the shopping experience was exactly like shopping back home in Sydney, which I admit was a little disappointing. I had been looking forward to a more authentic experience – local markets, having the grocer select the best tomatoes for me – but this shop was obviously catering to the tourist crowd.
Then we got to the liquor aisle. ‘Oh my god. Look at how cheap it all is!’ I exclaimed, immediately realising how I must have sounded. But the prices were ridiculous – about half of what we would pay in Australia. And right in the middle of the middle shelf was a familiar, pretty blue bottle. As I reached for the Bombay Sapphire gin, so did Josh. I looked at him. ‘Hey! That’s my fave.’
‘That’s my favourite too,’ he replied.
‘No way.’
‘Way.’
‘That’s brilliant – we can share. And it’s only seventeen euros. That’s like …’ I tried to do the conversion to dollars and came up short ‘… cheap.’
‘For sure.’
Then I had a real brainwave. ‘We should get two.’
‘Will we drink two?’ he asked.
‘Even if we don’t, the others will. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re sailing with a bunch of drinkers – and that’s n
ot even including Patricia.’
‘I have noticed that, yes.’
‘And thank god!’ He laughed at my effusiveness. ‘Can you imagine the alternative? Being on a boat with a bunch of teetotallers? I mean, kill me now!’
‘Torture.’ I think he may have been making fun of me, but I didn’t care.
‘Exactly.’
We got two. And beer for Duncan.
I looked down at our nearly full trolley. Did we have enough food? I hated the thought of running out while we were in the middle of the ocean. Yes, I do know the Aegean Sea is not an ocean, but I figured that running out of food on any body of water would be a bad thing.
‘Is this enough?’ I asked my kitty buddy.
He responded by laughing at me.
‘Uh, yes, probably for the rest of the trip and I am pretty sure there will be other grocery stores in our future if we run out of anything.’
‘How are we getting this back to the boat? We can’t carry all this.’
‘I figure we’ll just steal the cart.’ He smiled cheekily. I frowned at him, ‘Or, we could use the cart, and I can bring it back when we’ve unloaded it.’
‘That’ll work.’ We paid, we bagged, and we pushed the wonky-wheeled trolley three blocks to the boat where we were greeted with great enthusiasm by our boatmates, who then insisted they put the stuff away.
I was totally cool with handing over the reins; I’d hit a wall of exhaustion. So much so that, when the shopping was put away, and Duncan announced an expedition to explore more of the island, I declined. My plans included my bunk and a nana nap. I probably should have gone with them – who knew when I’d be back on Ios again – but I desperately needed to sleep.
I had only been asleep for about an hour when I woke to a loud voice in the cabin next door. ‘You know, you’re a smart guy. I like you.’ Patricia. She was back from her drinking spree, and I could only guess she was talking to Josh – and what was he doing back so soon?
Patricia continued her diatribe. ‘You’re not like the others on this boat. They have no idea what real life is all about; they have no soul. You take those two next door – Princess and Queenie. That blonde one, moping about ’cause she’s lost the supposed love of her life – well, guess what, sweetheart? Get over it. Find a new man – they’re everywhere! And the other one! The Queen of fucking Sheba. She thinks she’s all that. She thinks she knows. She doesn’t know! She’s misguided, see?’
Finally, I heard Josh’s voice, but he spoke so softly I could only make out a few words – ‘smart’, ‘sweet’, and ‘friends’.
Then she laughed one of those taunting I-know-better-than-you laughs. ‘That’s a joke. That girl’s not your friend. She’s collecting people like they’re trinkets for her charm bracelet. I’d watch that one if I was you.’
‘Yeah, we’re going to have to agree to disagree there, because I like her. And we are becoming friends.’ Well, I heard that! He was sticking up for me.
‘Listen, kiddo,’ she said, interrupting my thoughts about what great friends Josh and I were becoming. ‘You do your thing. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Look, I’m going to head back out. I’ll catch you later.’
‘Later.’ And then I heard her leave the boat. I got up and opened the door of my cabin to make sure she was gone. Josh must have heard me, because he popped his head around the corner from his cabin.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I replied. I really had to concentrate on not staring at his torso, because he was only wearing a pair of shorts. And it was a nice torso.
‘Did you hear any of that?’
‘Most of it. Boy, she really hates me, huh?’
‘I wouldn’t take it personally. She kind of hates everyone.’
‘Except you.’
‘Yeah, except me for some reason.’
‘Hey, I thought you were going out with the others.’
‘I was going to, but then I realised how tired I was – especially as I didn’t really sleep last night. When they left, I took the cart back and then came back to sleep. As soon as I drifted off, Patricia came in and woke me up.’
‘Oh. Bummer.’
‘Yeah.’ I was still avoiding looking at his half-naked body, so of course, I ended up staring at his lips. He must have just licked them. They were shiny and looked very kissable.
‘Well, I’m going to try to get some more sleep,’ I said, as though the two of us lying on our respective beds with only a paper-thin wall between us was a perfectly platonic way to spend an afternoon.
I mean it was, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead I’d end up lying there thinking about Josh lying on his bunk half-naked and of course, I’d be wondering if he was thinking about me. The whole thing was far too sexually charged for my liking, and even though I was still ridiculously tired, I found myself saying, ‘Actually, scratch that. I’m going for a walk instead.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Josh coming with me wasn’t part of my revised plan. A walk was my version of a cold shower. Didn’t he know that?
‘Sure. Sounds good,’ I lied.
‘Just let me get a shirt on.’ Yes, for god’s sake please put on a shirt! In fact, please never forget your shirt around me again. Damn him, he was causing a real stir. As I picked up my sandals, I reminded myself in no uncertain terms that I was not on this trip to have a holiday romance, especially with someone too young for me who lived on the other side of the world.
I was relieved when we departed the confines of the boat and I could breathe nonsexually charged air. As we walked along the pier away from the boat, I took in huge gulps of it, hoping to clear my head of extremely impure thoughts. Just friends, just friends, just friends, I chanted in my head.
We walked past waterfront cafés and bars, and there were a few more boats docked than when we’d arrived. The sun, still warm on our faces, was hanging low in the sky. It was magic hour, the time in the late afternoon when everything was bathed in golden light.
The water in the bay was an incredible blue, deep and inky, with patches of aqua near the surface where the light caught hold. It was a beautiful place, even if there was hardly anyone there – or maybe it was because of that.
Without talking about where we were going, we made our way up to the church we’d seen from the boat as we sailed in. It was just as breathtaking as it had seemed from far off – and much bigger than I’d thought. There was a low wall on the seaward side. I climbed up and swung my legs over so we could sit and look at the water. Josh did the same, coming to rest a few inches from me, our fingers nearly touching. Just friends, Sarah.
Away from the boat and fully clothed, the conversation flowed easily with Josh. Sometimes you meet someone, and even though on the surface they seem really different from you, you soon realise that you see the world through a similar lens. I’m not really one to talk about kindred spirits or anything hokey like that, but I found it refreshing talking to someone without having to edit everything I was thinking. As much as I loved my friends back home, too often I’d say something, and they’d tilt their heads to the side a little and look confused.
For some time, I’d felt that maybe I was just really weird. Talking to Josh made me feel understood – normal even.
Our conversation eventually turned to siblings, and we discovered we were both the eldest of two. ‘There’s this unspoken expectation that you’ll be the one to lead the way, to always get it right,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘No matter what “it” is.’
‘At least in your family, it was unspoken. I was always being told to set a good example, to be responsible, to be good. So, I did – I was. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t exactly what you would call a happy child.’ I paused a moment, absorbing what I’d said. I was onto something, and I let the thought continue. ‘Even as a little girl, I was hyper-conscious of doing the right thing. I was so afraid to make a mistake.’ My heart twinged a little for that girl – for me. ‘Meanwhile my sister spent most of her childhood having a ball. S
he was so cute and charming, and so funny. People adored her. Even today she’s the freer spirit.’
‘So, do you think it’s in there somewhere?’
‘What?’
‘Your free spirit,’ he replied.
I looked at him for a moment and then back out at the water. ‘I hope so. I’m kind of exhausted by being good all the time. But you know, I put more pressure on myself to be perfect, to get it right, than anyone else does. I’m my own harshest critic. It’s tiring.’ I hadn’t ever expressed it in those terms before – not even to Cat. Especially not to Cat.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of stuff lately,’ Josh said, breaking through my thoughts.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘What I’ve realised – and only recently – is that I want my life to be bigger.’
It was such an elegant thought. So simple. Succinct, yet all-encompassing. He didn’t need to explain it beyond those few words, because I completely understood. Bigger than routine. Bigger than normal. Bigger than the constraints of expectation.
‘Well, this trip is a good start, I’d say.’ We shared a smile.
‘Yes.’
I remembered the moment on the bus when I’d wondered if we would become friends. It was hard to conceive how, in such a short time, we’d got to the point where he could share something like that with me. Or that I was comfortable enough to say what I’d said, something no one knew about me, not even my closest friends.
Josh and I were becoming friends.
When we got back to the marina, the others had returned to the boat – except Patricia, of course – and the all-women boat was docked beside us. Their skipper, Stuart – a guy who in any other circumstance would probably not be surrounded by women – looked like the cat who’d got the cream. I knew that look. I’d seen it on the faces of coach drivers I’d worked with in Europe during my tour managing days. That look said, ‘I’m going to shag every one of them if I can.’ Not that I blamed him – they were a very attractive group of women.
