Perhaps a step back in time would take her mind off the present and help her refocus on the reason she had come to Corfu.
‘Daffodil Yellow Villa, here I come,’ she said as she grabbed her car keys and rucksack, throwing her books and phone into it, as she walked out of the apartment.
Chapter 31
North of Corfu Town the main road hugged the coastline, interrupted by smaller byways that led to shops, hotels, or beaches. To the north, Penny’s car climbed as the foothills of Mount Pantokrator pulled her towards them. Olive trees by the winding roadside guided her along the sometimes narrow thoroughfare. Large coaches squeezed into the small villages, on roads that had originally been created by the passage of donkeys and their owners.
The wilder, higher, and elemental north was a place of exquisite natural beauty. Gorges and hidden streams, old villages, and remote, secret places where you could imagine you were the only person left on earth – now much-sought-after locations for buying a house on Corfu, as a permanent home or a holiday getaway.
Ironically, Penny wondered what it was about human beings that, when they saw a clean, clear, and solitary place of beauty, they immediately wanted to build on it, take ownership of it, conquer it with bricks, and glass, and gazebos.
Agni, Kalami, Kouloura, and Kassiopi – four golden enclaves along this picture-postcard coast. Each bay, without ever seeing the other, attempted to outdo its neighbour. Each succeeded in bringing a different and uniquely enchanting experience, despite the essentially same ingredients of beach, sky, olive groves, harbour, jetty, and a view of distant Albanian shores.
Penny didn’t need much imagination to conjure up a vision of gods and mortals from long ago: days of myth and the heroes of legend who had never really left, with only a thin gauze-like veil between this time and theirs. Here was the landscape that had greeted Odysseus, rough-hewn but verdant, the snow-capped mountains of Albania visible from the shoreline and the shingle beaches, that once bore the tracks of boats heaved ashore, now sporting parasols and sunbeds.
Lawrence Durrell used to speak of the ‘spirit of place’. I know what he means now, Penny thought, as she followed the deep curve of the hillside road. It involved feeling the essence of somewhere in your bones and finding that you shared the same DNA, had found your match for life. Corfu is becoming part of me. It’s opened a door and is inviting me to walk through, she mused. The Durrells’ books and stories of their life here had been the beginning; this was the next step. Being here, experiencing everything.
Day by day Corfu wove its magic around her and pulled her in, closer and closer to the heartbeat of the island.
Penny travelled on towards the second home the Durrells had lived in during their Corfu idyll. The far north would have to wait for another day. The only Durrell dwelling located there was the White House, at Kalami.
Kontokali stood less than a quarter of an hour beyond Corfu Town. Penny had trawled through many Durrell-based websites, taking notes from previous travellers and their tales. She knew that the Daffodil Yellow Villa was now a privately owned house and not open to the public, so her curiosity would be tempered by a restricted view from the gate.
A stone’s throw from the real villa was the one used in the TV series, a multi-storey Venetian dolls’ house, with a stone terrace that caught the sunsets and held back the Ionian Sea.
As Penny drove, familiar names on signposts drew her attention and distracted her with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu and familiarity. Her confidence in finding the spot grew. Her dad had demonstrated the same ability. This legacy, as much a part of her as the eye colour she had inherited from him, was an innate ability to make the most ordinary trip or moment extraordinary. To conjure days to bottle out of sometimes very small things – which she would have argued were really the big things: a sunset, a delicious meal, a poem, or a piece of music.
Penny had no one to share this gift with, no one who understood the importance of stories past and present, the narrative of people’s lives, and the joy of elevating them to something uplifting and fine, making them live again.
As she acknowledged the uncanny sense of being at home, the prospect of living on Corfu forever suddenly appealed to Penny more than anything else had for a very long time. Nothing bound her to any particular place other than memory, and she carried that with her.
Penny basked in the warmth of the dream, as a gift to herself, surprised at her train of thought and the clarity of her vision, as endless days of light and small miracles played out in her head.
The Daffodil Yellow Villa hid at the end of a gravelled road, revealing little other than white-pillared gates and a lush, foliage-filled entrance. Penny strained to see glimpses of yellowed stucco and a corner of the villa’s pantiled roof in the distance. The house, silent in its closed-off kingdom beyond a high wall, gave away no secrets.
She stood still and tried to absorb the sounds around her. The cicadas chirped loudly as always, but the footsteps and laughter, the bray of Gerry’s donkey Sally, and the calls of other animals in his menagerie, had been carried away on the sea breeze long ago. Penny looked down at her feet contemplating, absorbing the atmosphere. Her eyes were drawn to the view across the road, towards the sea.
As cars passed, she imagined local drivers spotting her, knowing why she was standing by an anonymous-looking closed gate at the side of the road. Another fan. Another pilgrim. Just another Durrell sightseer.
A yearning ache for the simple gifts of family, home, love, community, and gratitude for the ordinary overwhelmed her in that moment. The Durrells’ life on Corfu had encompassed all these things, but Penny’s life at home stretched emptily ahead of her, devoid of family and love.
Minutes later, after parking at a local supermarket, buying a cold bottle of water and walking the few yards back towards the sea, Penny found herself close to the Durrells’ fictional TV home, contemplating what a joy it must have been to recreate some of the scenes of those lives. Maiden aunts and tortoises, donkeys and drunken sea captains – the harlequin colours and shapes of lives lived richly and spontaneously.
Penny’s time revolved around the gentle rhythm of walking, sitting, and drawing, all accompanied by the sun. After several languid days in the sun and out of it, her skin felt softer, kissed by a dark honey hue, so different from her pallid winter look.
She recalled Margo Durrell and her sunbathing adventures, her endless optimism. There had been something fearless, as well as naturally warm about her, that Penny had related to. As she stood close to the place connected to the drama series rather than the real family, the air still shimmered with something special. The whole island resonated with the heart and presence of those who’d been there before.
The mysteries and lyricism of the Corfu landscape had been the catalyst for Gerry Durrell’s unique and powerful world of words, and that of his brother, Larry. The contrast with ‘Pudding Island’, as he’d called England, was palpable. The Durrells’ trip from Bournemouth and Blighty in the midst of a cold winter to the warm welcome of Corfu mirrored her own journey, from grief-laden silence to the warm chatter of life.
She turned around at the top of the road and shielded her eyes to look across towards the tiny island of Lazaretto. Through the centuries it had been a place of quarantine and incarceration, now it was a greenish-blue hump on the horizon, benign and at peace with itself.
It was just after noon, the heat relentless and unyielding. Penny wanted to take photos, to capture the colour of the sand in the light for a storyboard she was creating in her head for a book. Although she’d illustrated many, Penny had never written a children’s book.
As she’d sat with Theo, drawing and painting by the harbour, she’d listened to his tales, watched him draw, and fallen into his 7-year-old world of animals real and imagined, the places they lived, by the coast and in the tumbling, verdant interior, all made vivid by the wonder without walls that only a child could conjure up, as he subconsciously reassembled the jigsaw of his
life, making up for the missing piece of his father.
He’d said something that had touched Penny deeply, caught her out as it mirrored her own inner turmoil. ‘When I woke up this morning, I tried to see my papa’s face in my head and I couldn’t.’
Penny had listened quietly and let him chatter about his dad, feeling every word he said, knowing the truth of absence. Where were they now, these departed souls? If their faces were no longer in front of those left behind, would they be remembered or forgotten?
In different ways Penny had asked herself all of these things. But with the resilience of a child, a few minutes later, Theo was drawing again and laughing at the new animal he’d created.
Walking now to the sea and beach in the sun, Penny found incongruent the idea that anything tragic, hurtful, or heartbreaking could happen on Corfu. But the sometimes deeply cruel randomness of life touched all corners of the earth.
A large ferry chugged its way to Corfu Town, among several smaller boats, including a yacht at anchor and a speedboat closer inland. One boat veered a little closer, probably to take a look at the house around the corner. The onboard guide’s commentary was muffled, but sounded animated and excited in tone.
As she took some photos from the beach, a couple walked across the sand towards her, the woman struggling to walk in her espadrille sandals. Her partner held her hand, guiding her slowly, step by step. As they reached Penny, the woman acknowledged her: ‘That’ll teach me. I shall choose my footwear more carefully next time.’
Penny smiled.
‘To be fair,’ said the woman’s partner, ‘we didn’t know we’d be wandering about today.’
She stopped and took off her shoes.
‘If it’s the Durrells’ house you’re looking for, you’ve nearly found it,’ said Penny. ‘It’s just around the corner. It’s a private house now, but you can see a little of it from the gate.’
‘That’s great, thank you,’ said the woman, but looked a little quizzical.
‘You’ll probably get a better view of the house from the sea,’ Penny added as the excited voice floated again in the air towards them from the water.
‘We’re taking a boat down the coast tomorrow,’ the man said, taking the sandals from the woman, ‘from Kassiopi to Corfu Town, and then back by the coastal road.’
‘That’s one of the highlights of being here, I think,’ Penny replied. ‘Are you staying in Kassiopi?’
‘Just above in a villa in the hills. It’s the first time we’ve been here. The villa belongs to friends, so we had no real excuse to say no.’ The woman folded her arms, as if annoyed that she’d ended up on holiday in Corfu.
‘They’re Peter’s old colleagues from the practice,’ she continued. ‘We’d usually be in Florida now,’ she declared, as though this might explain her apparent ennui.
Peter tried to change the subject and asked Penny if she was a regular visitor. ‘This is my first time here, but I’ve wanted to come here for years. So far, it’s been everything I hoped, and more.’
Penny was on full pro-Corfu alert, surprised to find that she took personally anything implied or said about the island that wasn’t wholly positive, and never one to let a slight or indifference pass without challenge.
‘Who wouldn’t love being here? It’s paradise,’ she concluded. With a jaunty wave, her heart beating just a little faster, she walked back to the road, muttering to herself under her breath: ‘What does it matter to you what one person thinks about Corfu?’
Her dad had once quoted a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream after she’d taken part in a school debate when she was 16: ‘And though she be but little, she is fierce’. A nod to her small stature, but inner strength and courage, when taking a stand about something she believed in.
Some days, though, it wasn’t so much about taking a stand, but more a sign of her own inner frustration with something or someone. Today she put it down to the small shreds of worry that Bruce’s messages had left her with; still bothering her, like a stone in her shoe.
As she drove back towards Corfu Town, the sea on her left and the sun at its height, she decided to stop somewhere on the way back to St George South for lunch, to see another beach, another village, another taverna, and sit in soothing anonymity for an hour or two and watch the world go by.
Chapter 32
Dimitris stayed in town after his dinner with Alicia and her friends. The group had moved on to another venue and he’d found out more about each of them, particularly Alicia.
Her friends formed an enthusiastic entourage, rather than a casual friendship group, and took every opportunity to bring her into the conversation. Not that she needed any real help to be the centre of things; a girl currently unattached to anyone, but who could, he had no doubt, remedy that whenever she chose.
The company had been light and diverting, reminding him of the many nights and early mornings spent in London with Sally and their colleagues.
Colleagues, he reflected, a more accurate description of the people he had spent so much time with a decade earlier. His mind left the chatter and wandered off with annoying and unwelcome clarity into past revelries. As vivacious and charming as Alicia was, he recognized the character traits and expectations of a particular personality and lifestyle, and with his own unique combination of perception and self-deprecation, realized that on paper he fulfilled all the statutory requirements of ‘holiday romance’ material. He was Greek, tall, tanned, in good shape, and hadn’t broken any mirrors recently. The fact that his quiet and natural charm made him more of a challenge placed him more in the realms of a conquest – not a scenario that Dimitris cultivated or looked for.
As he sat on the terrace bar of a hotel overlooking Garitsa Bay, he observed a large cruise ship, which had just left the new port, round the headland dominated by the Venetian fortress. The stone balustrade marked the boundary of the eyrie at the top of the hotel and featured two Victorian lamps, which framed the panoramic view before them like twin beacons. An inspiring and uplifting vista for even the most jaded and sophisticated traveller, he thought.
In his mind he was on the Antiopi, experiencing the lull of calm waters, lying back on the deck away from the light pollution staring up at the stars. He no longer did this as often as he used to – needed to – when he’d first come home. Then it had been like daily medicine, a dose of solitude, and he could admit now, a time to wallow in his grief.
On the moonlit terrace, the conversation had moved on to what everyone did at home. Alicia had placed herself on a chair arm next to him, balanced, cross-legged, nearly every sentence punctuated with a gentle touch on his arm or shoulder.
As a boy he’d been tactile and loving, never shying away from displays of affection, a live wire in company, never wanting to leave the party. It had been one of the things about him that people had noted when he’d come home: the absence of energy and natural warmth, replaced by a monochrome, two-dimensional version of himself. Present, but a spectator rather than a participant.
Now, he noticed when Alicia leant over and touched his shoulder lightly, but he didn’t really feel it. As the volume of the chatter grew and the glasses of prosecco were refreshed, Dimitris felt removed from the moment and the company he was in, drawn back to earlier that evening and his unexpected meeting with Penny, a woman in whom he sensed, without really knowing anything about her, someone he could talk to; a calming and warm presence.
Another cork popped and in spite of his polite protestations his glass was refilled.
As his eyes met Alicia’s and cries of ‘Yamas’ filled the air, Dimitris asked himself two questions: ‘Why did I decide to come this evening?’ and ‘Why am I still here?’
He’d genuinely hoped that tonight would be a turning point, a chance to dip his toes in the water of the wider world, to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’. It had soon become clear that this was not the right time, or the right crowd, from the moment he’d seen Penny sitting at the Rex. Or more precisely, the moment she
had brushed past him as she’d left.
Without adding any layers of angst, self-denial, or practised indifference, he knew he wanted to follow her, to sit down, listen, be in her company. When they’d shared a drink at the Athena earlier, he had spoken to her on impulse; there was no plan, and the interruptions and busy atmosphere had made him lose whatever thread he’d had in his mind when he’d sat down. She too had seemed a little guarded, even distracted. But every time he saw her, he wanted to see her again, wanted to spend more time with her. As she’d brushed past him at the Rex the impulse to catch her, hold her, speak with her, keep her there for a minute longer had caught him by surprise.
He wasn’t sure why or what that might mean, but it was the first real sensation he’d felt for a long time, when he’d been a different person, someone he had thought was never coming back.
Dimitri stood, stooped to kiss Alicia lightly on the cheek, and said, ‘Let me take care of the drinks. I have an early start, but thank you so much for inviting me. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay on Corfu.’
And before anyone had a chance to comment, he was halfway across the terrace, speaking to the waiter, ordering another bottle of prosecco for the table, and settling the drinks bill.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter 33
Nic had a window seat on the plane back from Athens and took the opportunity to follow the coastline below, as mainland Greece unfolded like a child’s drawing of an imaginary place beneath him. He mused for a moment that this was the view the gods had enjoyed, whether from Mount Olympus or the clouds.
The invention of flying must have created more than a ripple of confusion and anger among them. He imagined them reclining, feasting, making love, fighting or mischief-making, interrupted suddenly by flashing phones and cameras from the passengers of a 737 en route to Crete for their holiday. An undignified scuttling for cover and a whirl of silken robes, and they’d be gone. The scene made him smile and it felt like a release. It had been a very intense twenty-four hours.
Looking for the Durrells Page 15
