Back in the room, I reach for my phone – if only I could get Jules’ input. She’s two hours ahead but is it too early to call her? Oh! She’s just texted me! I quickly press the appropriate button, delighted to be connected to my other world.
Sorry didn’t get chance to reply last night – went to sleep with a hibiscus flower behind my ear and now my cheek is stained yellow. How’s everything look with you in the morning light?
I grin at her message – life’s awkward moments are so much more bearable when you’ve got a friend enquiring after your well-being! Haven’t seen him yet but dreading it. Was such a screechy harpy last night. All very embarrassing.
Fret ye not! she taps back. He’s totally baiting you – however neurotic you were before bed you get a fresh chance this morning. Greet him all smiles, if he makes any comment act like you don’t remember what was said because, really he barely registers with you, RIGHT?
If only this were true. He couldn’t be of less consequence! I mirror my guru. I’m just here for the taramasalata.
That’s my girl! Keep the updates coming!
I’m about to tap back, eager to hear how she’s getting on in Mauritius, when I hear Alekos address Loulou. I’d like to face him while Jules is still ‘around’ so quickly discard the troublesome nightie, opting instead for my most Amish beachwear. Which is more than I can say for him.
‘Oh dear god, do you have to?’ I lose my footing and practically fall off the staircase at the sight of his stark nakedness at the sink.
‘Oh! I didn’t realise you were up!’
I open my eyes presuming he’s covered himself but instead he has merely turned to face me!
‘Could you please put some clothes on!’ I implore, staring intently at the wall.
‘What’s the problem – I’m in my own home!’
‘You have guests!’ I exclaim.
‘Guests?’ he mocks.
‘Okay, one guest but a very prudish, repressed one, remember?’
He sighs heavily. ‘Okay, if you insist.’
As he slips behind the curtain to rifle through his suitcase I realise I’ve fallen at the first hurdle – I reacted! Jules wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Still, something tells me I’ll have plenty more chances to practise curbing my disdain before the day is out.
‘Happy?’ he challenges as he reappears sporting a pair of red boardshorts.
‘Happy that you didn’t need me to help you get them on, yes.’ God bless Velcro.
He gives me an enormous grin, apparently harbouring no ill will from last night, and enquires, ‘So, how did you sleep?’
‘Amazingly well,’ I only now realise. ‘What about you?’
‘I woke myself a couple of times when I lent on this.’ He nods to his arm. ‘Apart from that, good. You hungry?’
‘Starving.’
He looks apologetic. ‘With my hand like this I can’t do anything in the kitchen.’
‘Well, frankly even with two hands neither can I,’ I confess, eager to get out into a public arena. ‘How about I take us for breakfast?’
‘I know just the place!’ He smiles.
Initially I wonder if he might exploit my offer by suggesting one of the five-star resorts draped so elegantly along the prime aspects of coastline, but instead he leads me to a backstreet bakery and suggests I try a flattened pastry envelope seemingly filled with semolina.
My first bite is tentative but oh my! ‘It’s so melt-in-your-mouth flaky!’ I enthuse. ‘Like porridge and a croissant all in one!’
‘You like?’
‘Love it!’
Darn it! I’m so easily won over! Must try harder to hold a grudge!
Once we’re done he dips into a scrappy little grocer’s a couple of doors down offering to get some fruit for the beach. I follow behind, intrigued to discover a Greek Bobby Ball smoking behind the tatty counter. The fruit looks pretty misshapen and manky by M&S flawless standards but Alekos sniffs and squeezes his way to a bag full of perfectly ripe produce, at which point a second Bobby Ball appears, equally furry of moustache, to take his money.
‘Twins?’ I enquire as we exit.
He nods. ‘They have two other brothers, also twins.’
‘Must be something in the water here. You’re not—’
‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘it’s just me and Angelos,’ he says, putting paid to a brief fantasy of a shy, humble version of Alekos waiting in the wings.
Funnily enough the Norwegian was a twin. I never did find out if his brother was good to his evil or whether they were in cahoots as far as the womanising went. Mind you, with all the ladies he had on the go, he’d really need to be part of a set of quadruplets. Or more appropriately sextuplets.
‘You really are a morning person, aren’t you?’ I observe as Alekos taps along to a jubilantly jingly Greek tune on the drive to the beach.
‘It just feels so good to be back here,’ he beams, hailing another pal on a passing motorbike.
‘You really do know everyone here!’ I marvel.
‘I should know him – he’s my father.’
‘What?’ I experience an instantaneous stab of meet-the-parents anxiety – heightened by the fact that Alekos then pulls over beside a hotel jetty and announces, ‘This is where he works.’
He gets out of the car but as usual there is no corresponding instruction for me. Am I supposed to wait or follow?
He’s halfway down the slope to the beach before he turns back and exclaims, ‘Selena!’
I take it that means I should join him. As I close the car door behind me I watch him greet the man with the motorcycle helmet: despite his dodgy arm they still manage to have a hearty, if sideways-on, embrace. The older man then pulls back and cups his son’s face, looking at him with such twinkly-eyed affection it takes my breath away. I have only ever pictured Alekos being adored by women, never by a father figure. And whereas I would have predicted a Greek George Hamilton, this man is actually gauntly rugged and whiskery like Angelos.
As he enquires after his son’s injury, I edge closer, extending my hand to greet him.
‘This is Selena!’ Alekos quickly remembers his introduction duties.
‘Yassou!’ He grins, introducing himself as Petros though for me it’s like beholding my beloved Dimitri all over again. He’s just so overwhelmingly warm and likeable. I don’t feel I have to say anything fascinating to impress him, which is just as well because even if I had my wits about me, there simply isn’t time to exhibit them.
‘He seems so nice!’ I mutter, stunned, as Alekos marches me back to the car.
‘He is nice. Why do you sound so surprised?’
‘I just thought—’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing.’
I don’t really know why I’m so thrown. I suppose bad boys don’t necessarily have lothario fathers. Just as runaways such as myself can have very stay-at-home parents. Even if they are now staying at home on the other side of the world from where they grew up.
We drive on for a few minutes in silence, both thinking our own thoughts, until some flags flag up our next stop – Driros Beach.
‘This is us!’ Alekos informs me, gathering up our wares and then eagerly leading me down the scuffly, skiddy pathway.
Just as I’m wondering if my flimsy flip-flops are up to the task, one sole catches on a rock and bends back on itself, thus propelling me forward and yanking the strap from its socket. Well, if I will wear footwear that comes free with magazines.
I hobble onward barefoot, with the inevitable oo-ee-aah-arrghh! soundtrack as the flintier gravel nips at my toes.
‘Please do not injure yourself as well!’ Alekos cautions as he reaches back to help me make the last and trickiest leap. ‘It is true that we overlook a former leper colony but we don’t want to sit here with a row of arm-slings and crutches in a line between us. It does not give the right impression.’
‘Are you serious, about the leper colony?’
He nods and poi
nts across the water to a bijou island with a Venetian fortress, encircled by a protective wall. ‘Spinalonga,’ he says with appropriate gravitas. ‘They had patients there right up until the 1950s. A lot of our business is boat trips there. We take people over, leave them to explore for an hour and then go back to pick them up. Alternatively they can pedalo there in about ten minutes.’
‘It’s really that close?’ I marvel, stepping towards the shoreline and then letting my eye wander across to the lean stretch of land directly opposite us. ‘What’s over there?’ I ask, spying no discernible features.
‘Well, in truth that is Spinalonga – meaning “long thorn” – but the names got switched and it is now known as Kalidon but really there is nothing to see there.’
‘I guess the sea is the real attraction,’ I decide as I contemplate the narrow band of unpretty shingle with a gritty pathway that Alekos tells me leads to a taverna with a large water-lapped patio. Already I can’t wait for lunch. Is there anything nicer than eating al fresco with a sea breeze? Maybe a little slurp of wine from a hand-crafted jug? But of course there’s work to be done first.
‘This will be our base!’ My new boss pads over to a raised area paved with flagstones, sheltered with palm-frond raffia and dominated by a vast wooden office desk painted bright blue. ‘This is where you can set up your laptop and this is where you can lock it up if we’re both out at sea,’ he says, tapping a metal locker set against the back wall alongside further storage units and a small fridge.
‘When you say at sea . . .’ I look a little concerned, ‘just how far out are we likely to go?’ I’ve only been here for a matter of minutes but already I’m finding the quiet, secluded vibe soothing – do we really have to venture back out into the big wide world?
He gives me a look of bemusement. ‘You have been on cruiseships days from land in far more forbidding waters than this, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t captaining any of those cruiseships!’ I reason.
‘You don’t captain a speedboat, you just drive it.’
‘Whatever!’ I huff. ‘I’m just trying to get my bearings.’
‘Most of the action will take place within the area you can see,’ he says, addressing the bay. ‘If we get requests for trips around the island or to go octopus hunting—’
‘Octopus hunting!’ I cut in with a splutter. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘No,’ he says simply.
‘Well, what exactly does that entail?’
‘If my arm was working I’d show you.’
‘I bet you would,’ I can’t help but mutter. Even though we’ve established that the boob grab was an accident, I still feel I have to make the odd disparaging remark just to stop myself getting any funny ideas. I mean, look at him – there’s no denying his absurd good looks, a fact currently amplified by the removal of his shirt.
It may be an inelegant manoeuvre, what with his sore arm to consider, but the final effect is the same. After last night’s close encounter by moonlight, you’d think I’d be prepared for that defined torso, but in the shimmering beach-light it’s hard not to want to throw him down on the sand and have a From Here to Eternity moment. Only there’s not really much in the way of surf here. And the immediate water does seem a bit congealed with slimy frills of seaweed.
Just as well, I think to myself as I try to focus on the job in hand – namely dragging assorted floatation devices out of the wooden storage shed.
Kayaks come first. They may only weigh about a few stone but even pulling a twelve-foot ostrich feather along the sand would be too much effort in this heat.
‘It doesn’t seem right to have you do this . . .’ Alekos grimaces as I struggle along.
‘Oh come on, I bet you’ve let women do all the work a few times before!’ I tease through my puffing.
‘The pedalos are heavier,’ he warns. ‘They will take two of us.’
I shuffle backwards guiding the front as he hoiks up the back with one hand, a funny look on his face.
By the third trip it dawns on me what is going on. ‘Are you looking down my top?’ I accuse him.
‘Only because you expect me to,’ he chuckles. ‘You’re the prude and I’m the pervert, remember?’
‘Right,’ I grumble as I wipe off my hands. ‘Maybe I’ll get T-shirts made up for us, just so we don’t forget.’
The lifejackets come as a light relief – we sling them over the branches of the tree like we’re hanging laundry out to dry. I have a brief moment of housewifey anxiety but the setting is so far removed from a suburban washing line I manage to push on through.
Thankfully the windsurf equipment is already in position in its own slatted letter-rack unit but though the boards look the most robust, they are the items I am to keep the closest eye on, in terms of protecting them from wreckage on the shoreline rocks. ‘Make sure no one sails them closer than fifty metres in,’ he explains. ‘From that point they need to be carried. Got that?’
‘Got it!’ I say, wading ankle-deep into the sea in a bid to cool down.
‘And at the end of the day we have to hose the saltwater off all the equipment.’
‘Right! So now what?’
‘We wait for a customer.’
‘No appointments? No schedule?’ On the cruiseship everything is allocated a strict time-frame, usually designed around the customers’ desire to be back on board for lunch. Here it’s apparently a little more unpredictable.
‘We’re wide open until three p.m.,’ Alekos confirms.
‘And what’s happening at three p.m.?’
‘We are going on a little excursion. You’ll see.’
I get the feeling I’m going to hear a lot of his ‘You’ll see’ phrase this week. But then it’s probably a novelty for him to be able to act laissez-faire after his own regimented schedule on the cruiseship. He definitely seems more relaxed here.
While he ambles off to stretch his good arm on a waterski rope attached to a pole, I survey the beach for prospective clients – I see a family with three frolicking nippers, two fiftysomething women gossiping animatedly, a skinny young couple as flat and featureless as the sunloungers on which they are pasted, and a single man conspicuous in that he’s even more covered up and studious-looking than me. Sitting in the shade, he seems to be favouring a bulky-looking reference book over the latest Robert Harris. I wonder what the subject is – there appear to be several photos but I can’t make out the details. Still, I’m glad to see I won’t be the only one at work on the beach and reach for my laptop.
‘You’re not going swimming?’ Alekos sounds scandalised.
‘Not right now, no.’
‘Don’t feel you can’t because I am unable to,’ he says, acknowledging his bandages. Poor fellow, he’s obviously desperate to plunge into the cooling waters.
‘It’s not that,’ I assure him. ‘I just thought I’d get a bit of work done first.’ A reasonable enough explanation, though not entirely true. I’m self-conscious on the beach at the best of times but I can’t think of anything worse than stripping down to a bikini in front of someone so naturally toned as Alekos. Of course I shouldn’t care what he thinks but some warped part of me doesn’t want him to stop fancying me. Not because I want anything to happen, because I don’t. It’s just vanity, I know, but it is what it is and I’m not dunking myself until he’s off on some boat trip.
I open my laptop. Right, shall I start with the love-birds from Latvia or the couple kissing at the Kremlin? Suddenly I couldn’t feel less inclined to work. I want a customer! I want someone to stroll up to me and ask me how much it is to go skimming across the water on an inflatable ring. Which reminds me . . .
‘Gosh, these prices are very reasonable,’ I say, perusing the chart.
Alekos concurs mid-sinew extension. ‘My brother’s not into ripping people off. He just wants to make a living.’
‘I suppose I’m used to some major mark-ups,’ I say, thinking of what w
e charge for our ship’s excursions. It’s actually one of the reasons I try so hard to ensure people have a good time – I know what the real local cost is and thus I have to make my service worth the extra dosh.
‘What about you?’ I ask. Something tells me Alekos is not on this earth to simply make a living. ‘What’s your strategy?’
‘I’m going to retire at forty-five.’
‘In ten years’ time? That’s ambitious! How do you plan to do that?’
‘I have a few business ideas that I am exploring. In fact’ – he releases the rope and reaches for the galia melon he purchased earlier – ‘I’ll show you one right now.’ He approaches the table with two plates and has me hold the melon steady as he starts neatly slicing it with a knife.
‘You’re going to make your fortune from diced melon?’ I ask, taking over the chopping, keen to retain my fingertips.
He gives me one of his withering looks. ‘The secret isn’t in the melon, it’s this!’ At which point he pulls what looks like a dull gold credit card from his pocket and places it under one of the plates.
‘Is this some kind of magic trick?’
‘You’ll see. We just have to give it a few minutes.’
I look at him and then back at the melon. He really is not a predictable man. Perhaps I will be able to last a week after all – how could I possibly leave not knowing what bizarre behaviour may occur tomorrow, and the day after that?
‘Ready yet?’ I’m impatient to see the results.
‘Five more minutes.’ He leans on the corner of the desk. ‘What about you? What are your plans for the future?’
‘Keep moving,’ I give my standard reply, only to mumble a less assured, ‘at least that’s always been the plan.’
‘You don’t ever want to stop?’ He sounds almost concerned. ‘I mean, it’s wonderful being on the cruise-ships but I also want to make a home for myself here sometime soon.’
Home? This subject matter is so delicate, so pertinent to me at the moment I can’t help but feel unsettled. ‘I don’t know, lately . . .’ I trail off.
Out of the Blue Page 8
