She could be right. Perhaps falling hopelessly in love again is my secret wish as well as my greatest fear.
Danny brings me back to business. ‘Have you filmed all sixteen of the couples you outlined in your proposal?’
‘I’ve done fourteen,’ I tell him. ‘I was planning to do a British couple when I’m back home and then one more European couple to finish up.’
‘So it’s feasible you could be good to go for the start of your next contract?’
‘Absolutely!’ I pip. ‘Are you really going to let me try this out on a live audience?’
He nods. ‘But as for the notion of offering guests sample aphrodisiacs from the countries you are featuring . . .’
‘Oh jeez!’ Kirby mutters. ‘If this boat’s a-rocking!’
‘Is that a no?’ I look rueful.
‘Well, we checked with the head chef and he said not enough research has been done into the potential effects of mixing, say, damiana tea with oysters or the borojo fruit of Colombia, so he suggested little heart-shaped cookies.’
‘That’s a bit lame.’ Kirby grimaces. ‘What about chocolate-dipped strawberries?’
‘Oooh, I like that!’ Danny and I concur.
‘Great, well, I’ve got to dash but have a safe flight and good luck finding true love!’ He winks as he leaves.
Wow! I really am amazed. I was on the verge of a major mope but now I feel I have a little life raft to cling to in this sea of uncertainty!
Maybe it’s even a good thing that Jules won’t be around to lead me astray when I first get back. I still have a fair bit of editing to do on the other films, cutting hour-long interviews down to ten minutes or so, this way I can get straight down to it – prop myself out on Jules’ patio with a flower behind my ear and a jug of fresh lemonade . . .
‘Have you heard it’s tipping down in England?’ Lana ruins my fantasy as she appears with a new set of gaudily coloured cocktails. ‘They say it’s set to be the wettest summer in fifty years.’
‘Who told you that?’ I cry in dismay.
‘One of my blackjack regulars – he called his daughter to arrange for her to pick him up at the airport.’
Suddenly I feel a bit claustrophobic – shut away in a damp flat in Watford with only other people’s love to keep me warm? I give an involuntary shiver.
‘Cold?’ Kirby enquires.
‘I don’t have toes any more,’ I complain. ‘Just ten little icicles. I was really looking forward to some heat . . .’
‘I know someone who could defrost you . . .’
I give him a withering look but it doesn’t stop him.
‘Alekos Diamantakis.’ He gives his most seductive, dark-roast vocal impersonation as the man himself enters the room, causing my stomach to loop wildly.
‘Lower!’ Lana paws at his throat.
‘Alekos Diamantakis!’ He drops his chin to his chest.
‘That’s it!’ she swoons. ‘Do you think all Greek men have such deep voices, or is it just the officers? When he speaks I don’t hear him in my ears, I just get a rumble right here.’ She motions to her groin.
‘I don’t know how you can resist him, Selena, I really don’t.’ Kirby pricks me with his swizzle stick. ‘I mean look how taut that material gets over his thighs . . .’
‘You don’t find it all a bit Officer and a Gentleman strippogram?’ I cringe, refusing to even look in his direction.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing!’ Lana scoffs. ‘Do you know, sometimes I deliberately stand next to you when he’s looking your way just to get the second-hand lust.’
‘You think that’s bad!’ Kirby toots. ‘I’ve been known to leave my client mid-blow just to get a sniff of him.’
‘Oh, he smells so good, doesn’t he?’ Lana rasps in rapture.
‘Ay up – the OAPaparazzi are at it again.’ This is Kirby’s name for the older ladies who get snapping every time Alekos passes. ‘Classic move!’ he cheers as one woman drops her sequinned clutch, so that Alekos bends to retrieve it, giving her seated friend a faceful of his pert rear.
I can’t help but smile – I suppose in some warped way it’s been fun being the object of his affection. I mean, how often do you get to turn down someone that handsome? Or that resilient. Alekos obviously doesn’t have the normal human issues with rejection. Mind you, I have recently evolved a theory on this, one I now share with my salivating colleagues.
‘So it dawned on me this morning that in Greek “neh” means yes,’ I begin, pausing to taking a slurp of pink Martini. ‘I say no to him but he hears neh, hence his confusion.’
‘So what’s Greek for no?’ Lana enquires.
‘Well, I don’t know how to spell it, but it’s pronounced oh-hee.’
‘Sounds Chinese.’ She frowns.
‘Or a bit Scottish, like och-aye!’ offers Kirby. ‘Definitely too enthusiastic for a negative.’
‘Exactly. Do you wanna have sex with me? Oh-hee!’ I chirrup. ‘Sounds like a cross between Okay and Oh yeah!’
‘Talk about mixed messages.’
Not that the language should really be a problem – I happen to know Alekos spent four years doing Maritime Studies in Merseyside before becoming an environ-mental officer and his English is so good he can even do the full Liverpudlian clicking in words such as ‘like’ and ‘chicken’. Less explicable is his liberal use of the cockney phrase ‘Innit?’, though I actually find that oddly charming. It’s his overpowering virility that’s off-putting. Now some of my best friends are womanisers (well, ship life does seem to breed a ‘What happens mid-ocean, stays mid-ocean!’ mindset) and provided you’re not on the receiving end of their philanderings they can be fun people to be around – big appetite for life, whereas I sometimes feel I’m still nibbling at the doily. Anyway, I thought I’d try and parlay flirtation into friendship with Alekos but it just doesn’t seem possible – one minute we’re talking normally, and I’m thinking he’s quite a reasonable chap, but then a shadow will pass over his eyes, his lids will lower, he’ll study my mouth in a salacious way, and suddenly I can’t think straight. I get panicky and on the defensive and I can’t wait to get away, hence why I now try to avoid him altogether. Much to Kirby’s annoyance.
‘I think it’s just plain selfish.’ He pouts with a blue curaçao-stained lip. ‘We all want to know what he’s like in bed; you’re the only one who can find out and you’re cruelly withholding the experience from us all!’
‘Yeah, selfish,’ Lana concurs.
‘I very much doubt that I have exclusive access,’ I tut. ‘Besides, the second I’m gone he’s bound to move on to someone else.’
‘Look, I know that Polish girl who worked with him last summer said she saw him with a different woman every hour and yes, he does always seem to be surrounded, but if he really was so rampant how come he turned me down?’ she challenges.
This really is virtually inexplicable. No one turns Lana down. They just lie back and praise the deity from their part of the world.
‘You must have just caught him on an off day,’ I mutter.
‘Three off days in one week?’ She’s having none of it. ‘I don’t think so. Anyway, you leave tomorrow, what harm could it possibly do now to have one night with him?’
‘I just couldn’t!’ I protest, feeling more than a little hounded. ‘If I slept with him now I’d feel like he’d won in some way.’
Lana throws her hands up in despair. ‘Why can’t he be the notch on your bedpost? That’s how I’d look at it!’
‘Sweetie, you’ve got nothing left to notch,’ Kirby ribs her. ‘Last I heard you were sleeping on four toothpicks and a wafer.’
‘Oi!’ She threatens to squirt him in the eye with a kumquat.
‘I’m going to say goodbye to Jindrich,’ I excuse myself, pointing in the direction of my Czech waiter pal, but Lana pulls me back. ‘Selena, I know that whole episode with the Norwegian left you hyper-suspicious and cautious but that was over a year ago – you can’t dismiss all t
he officers because of one man with a harem fixation.’
‘And as far as Alekos’ reputation goes,’ Kirby adds his twopenn’orth, ‘let us bear in mind we have no hard evidence about his womanising; it could just be sour grapes – some gal he turned down bad-mouthing him. Yes, he does always appear to have a harlot on his arm but from what I see, they’re going up to him.’ He gives me an earnest, if a little blurry, look. ‘There is a chance that he’s actually as Cary Grant gorgeous as he seems.’
‘You’re right,’ I say quite reasonably before shrugging. ‘It’s just not a chance I’m prepared to take.’
And then I turn and slam straight into Alekos’ brass buttons.
As I reset my nose, I sense the tension around me – Kirby pretending to scan the cocktail menu (as if he didn’t already know it off by heart) and Lana freezing like a street performer statue, only without the silver spray paint.
‘Is it true?’ he growls at me.
I take a breath. The only thing worse than talking to Alekos is talking to him when other people are listening. And looking. Even the lady who has finally won an audience with the captain is peering around the side of his head to have a good gawp. I decide to lead Alekos over to a private nook by the window, yet all those spying eyes in the bar are no match for the intensity of his greeny glinters. He could do keyhole surgery with that stare, it’s just so invasive!
‘Is what true?’ I huff. Is this going to be a line?
‘That you’re leaving the ship tomorrow?’
‘Oh. Yes,’ I say simply.
‘So this is my last chance?’
I give a non-committal shrug. I was going to make some comment about ‘no chance’ but there’s no need for me to be rude – he’d probably mistake it for banter anyway.
He takes a step closer. His hand is beside mine on the ledge. His little finger steals closer. ‘You can’t turn me down now!’ he husks.
‘Actually I can,’ I tell him matter-of-factly, folding my arms.
‘You can’t.’
‘I am.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Really. Aleko. It’s never going to happen.’
‘But why?’ He looks absolutely dumbfounded.
At moments like this I half expect him to take out his diary and jab the page, ‘Look, I had you down as succumbing to my charms this evening, you can’t go messing up my schedule!’
Anyone would think I was being deliberately obstreperous, just to vex him.
‘I don’t think you realise what you are turning down, just how good we would be together . . .’
Give me strength! ‘Do you know, I discovered the perfect word for you the other day.’ I smile sweetly. ‘Braggadocio.’
He raises an eyebrow.
‘It’s someone who is full of empty boasts and swaggering self-aggrandisement.’ I give him the official definition.
‘You think I swagger?’
Actually I like the way he walks, it’s more about the way he sits – one arm slung behind the chair back, splayed out like lord of all he surveys. He’s gone beyond the realms of superiority, straight to a Greek-god complex. Apparently it’s typical of men from Crete – it’s the biggest Greek island and they have an ego to match. Myth in his own lunchtime and all that.
‘How can you possibly know if my boasts are empty, until you try me?’ he wheedles.
I shake my head despairingly. ‘Wouldn’t you rather someone slept with you because they liked you, not because you dared them to do it?’ I enquire.
‘I don’t see the problem—’
‘The problem,’ I cut in, ‘is that you won’t take no for an answer.’
It’s almost as if the word has a perishable quality for him. He says, ‘Ah well, you say that now!’ For Alekos every day is a new day – she didn’t say no today. If he keeps going he’ll eventually catch me in a different mood, wear me down . . .
‘Persistence is an admirable quality,’ he says proudly.
‘Not in this case. It’s just annoying.’
‘But what if I know best – what if I know that we are meant to be together?’
‘That’s so romantic!’ a random passer-by coos.
‘No it’s not!’ I snap, outraged. ‘It’s presumptuous and pompous and shows a total disregard for my feelings and opinions.’
This is so typical of him. I remember one time I was sitting at the bar and he came up and ordered a drink for me. He didn’t ask what I wanted, simply decided what would suit me best. I think he thought he was going to woo me with his taste in fine wine but from my reaction you’d think he’d offered me a poisoned chalice.
Alekos takes off his hat and gives his head a rub before giving me a pitying look. ‘I don’t know why you think I can’t be trusted.’
‘Because, frankly, it would be weird if you could!’ I blurt out, trying to resist the temptation to fix the section of jet-black hair he’s left skew-whiff. ‘A man with your looks in your position – endless offers from an ever-changing parade of women – why would you?’
In my mind there are two types of handsome men – the oblivious and the know-it – and Alekos is so self-aware he practically comes with wing mirrors. He really is the only person I know who would rush to get in that mirrored cubicle with Trinny & Susannah and relish seeing himself from every angle.
‘Do I know I’m considered good-looking?’ he asks, matching my exasperation. ‘Yes! Do I know women find me attractive? Yes. I’d have to be some kind of moron not to realise.’
Finally some straight talk!
‘Have I been with other women? Of course. But what does that matter now that I have met you?’
I roll my eyes. ‘I fail to see what could be so earth-shattering about meeting me! Which isn’t to say I don’t think I’m utterly fabulous, but you hardly know me.’
‘I know you better than you realise.’
‘What?’ What does that mean?
‘And if I don’t know you well enough, it’s because you won’t let me.’
‘Because you’re too pushy, too intense!’ I rally.
‘It’s just . . .’ For once he looks lost for words. ‘I have waited so long for this.’
‘A month. You’ve known me a month.’
‘Yes, but I’ve waited a lot longer than that, to feel this way . . .’
For a second he throws me. I don’t know how to snub that. That actually did feel romantic.
‘But what’s the point?’ I have to state the obvious. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow . . . and when I do come back, you’ll be gone.’
That’s the other suspect thing about Alekos – he’s a relief officer which means that whereas the rest of us do eight-month stints, he does short bursts of two. Wouldn’t that suggest he has to keep switching ships to keep the women on the speediest possible turnover?
‘I could change for you.’
I know he’s referring to his schedule but I can’t help but think how men do change when you let them in . . .
When you’ve been hurt before you tread carefully, meanwhile they’re doing this frantic dance trying to impress you. They spoil you, dote on you, tell you they love you . . . Gradually you start to believe them and you coax your heart into making itself vulnerable again and then the second you reciprocate, they change. I’ve seen this happen almost overnight – suddenly I’m a sure thing, someone who no longer requires the effort. And I’m not just talking about Ricky. And I’m not just talking about me. I see this happening all around me all the time.
Why would it be any different with Alekos, of all people? And, frankly, why am I even having this conversation with him? I’m ready to cut my losses and turn on my heel when he baits me one more time:
‘What frustrates me the most is that you never gave me a chance.’
Oh my god, the man is infuriating!
‘You are so darn entitled!’ I marvel. ‘That’s not how it works. I can’t go whining to Hugh Dancy that he’s never given me a chance – these things have to start with some kind o
f mutual attraction.’
His confidence, as ever, is unshakeable: ‘I know you like me really. I’m just a few steps ahead of you, that’s all. It would come in time. Every day you spent with me it would get a little clearer and you’d trust me a little more.’
I expel a weary sigh. ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know.’
And then I tell him yassou, which, in case you don’t know, is Greek for goodbye.
Usually when I conclude a scenario with a man, I feel a sense of relief – I am out of the danger zone. My pact with myself to never marry is intact. All is well.
But as I walk away from Alekos I get a sense of unfinished business.
It’s then I remember that ‘yassou’ also means hello . . .
3
‘Beware the barrenness of a busy life.’ – Socrates
It’s that classic morning-after cry – why did I have that last lychee Martini? I tut myself as I divide up my toiletries, adding Nurofen to the essentials for the flight and then placing them in a zip-loc sandwich bag. Ah, the glamour of modern-day travel.
It’s funny, I actually feel nervous today. As I clatter my case down the metal gangway I see passengers lined up to board, twittering excitedly about leaving home to brave the wintry wilds of Alaska. Our positions seem curiously reversed – having done the circuit innumerable times this season I know every pebble on the beach at Icy Strait Point, where to go to measure my ‘wingspan’ in Juneau and exactly what I’d order if I went back to the Twisted Fish Grill (baked salmon fillet served on a cedar plank with a bourbon-molasses sauce on the side). It’s this trip back to England that feels like the real voyage into the unknown for me.
Out of the Blue Page 3
