by Polly Samson
Marianne lays a hand on my arm. ‘The clown puppet you made for the baby has made us both happy,’ she says.
Charmian smiles up at me. ‘How was the trip?’
‘Oh, I meant to say: Jean-Claude was on the ferry and he’s not coming back here.’
I blurt this out, wild with panic at so immediately having to face Marianne. I try not to look at her. I don’t want to be the messenger. Don’t want to say: ‘Look here, I saw Axel …’
I babble about how frustrating it was with all the shopping we had to do. ‘We never did make it up the Parthenon,’ I say.
Even though Jimmy and I had split up for a while to save time, there were still too many errands to run. Jimmy took his typewriter to the mender’s in Pouliandros Street while I queued at the American Express office with my traveller’s cheques. As time ticked by, our trip to the seat of the gods was looking increasingly unlikely.
The American Express building was stifling, panelled with dark wood. People shuffled along; in front of me two men in shorts and ragged espadrilles were so stinky with old sweat I had to turn my head away to breathe. I was struck by our mass, the backpacks and bedrolls, and by how many of the men needed a shave.
There were blinds to keep out the heat, apart from a top window where they were torn and shafts of sunlight fell to the floor in front of the tellers’ desk. When he turned around, his Nordic hair flashed almost silver in the brightness of the beam. It took me a moment to believe it was him. Axel wore his fine-striped linen shirt untucked and was stuffing banknotes into the back pocket of his sailor pants. In his hand was a letter. His smile cut a dimple in his cheek and I followed his gaze to where she waited with their bags. So, not in Chicago after all, but standing not even ten yards away from me, with hair newly washed and shiny as treacle. I edged closer. Patricia’s dress was penitent black silk and almost to her ankles, a row of jet buttons down the front.
She was pointing to the letter. Axel looked surprised to find it in his hand. She dumped the bags and stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder as he opened it. Yellow daisies came spilling as he shook out the folded sheets. He brushed them from his shirtsleeve and I watched as he tore up the unread pages and threw the pieces into a corner. He snatched up their bags and grew impatient with Patricia, attempting to pull her behind him, but she resisted and stooped down to the fallen flowers. She chose two or three and pressed them between the pages of her sketchbook before following him into the street.
I am glad to be shaken from thinking about this by George who returns to our table with his letters.
‘Nothing for me then?’ Marianne says and George shakes his head and Charmian pats her hand.
There’s nothing for me either and I wonder if this is it, if my father really meant it when he disowned me.
Leonard’s received something bulky from Canada and draws up a chair to read, leaning back with his feet to the wall and his sixpenny cap cocked to the sun. Nikos brings a jug of retsina as all around me everyone settles down to bulletins from the outside world. Jimmy has an encouraging letter about his first few chapters from a friend in England and, with much relief, a small cheque from his mother.
Charmian curses, pushes a bill across to George. ‘Last warning from Foyles before they close our account, darling.’
George is using his pocket knife to slit open an envelope. Our Majesty on the stamp. Charmian notices the letterhead of William Collins Publishers. She stops talking as he scans the letter and refolds it. It’s hard to tell if it’s pain or pleasure that makes him close his eyes.
‘Well?’ Charmian says as she shakes out a cigarette.
His hand tremors a little as he lights a match. ‘Looks like Billy might be going all guns blazing on Closer to the Sun,’ he says as she leans to the flame. ‘He’s getting that Kenneth Farnhill who does all the Agatha Christies to design the cover and they’re using puffs from Muriel Spark and J. B. Priestley for an advert.’
Leonard is back with us, still chuckling to himself over the contents of his letter. ‘What’s up?’ he says when he notices the look on Charmian’s face.
‘Oh, George is rather pleased with himself,’ she says, with a martyr’s smile. ‘Looks like Collins think they have a bestseller with his new novel.’
Leonard narrows his eyes as he looks at her, dangles his komboloi behind his chair. Click, click, click; the amber beads drop.
‘The thing is, I so terribly want to be pleased for him – for us, really – after all these years of keeping that pot boiling he deserves a success; but there’s a character who too closely resembles me in this damn book and I’m wondering if I should reserve myself a place in the loony bin in time for publication.’
George groans the deep groan of a man returning to battle in heavy armour.
‘My God, woman,’ he says. ‘Give me some credit for having an imagination. Closer to the Sun is not only about you and bloody Nature Boy, you know …’
Leonard comes between them, with the delicate authority of one attempting to unite Khrushchev and Eisenhower.
‘If you can make something that is beautiful out of something you’ve experienced, I think that everybody concerned is happy about it,’ he says.
Charmian shakes her head at both of them. ‘But what about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald? You can’t say it worked out all that bloody well for her that he used their experiences, can you?’
‘Yes, well, she wanted to … I guess she had ambitions as a writer, but I don’t know …’ Leonard’s words peter out as he catches the look on Charmian’s face. It’s as though he’s only that moment remembered that she too is a writer.
‘But would you do it?’ Marianne says, springing to life. ‘Would you use the woman you loved in your work?’
Leonard scrapes at his sandpaper jaw, back and forth, back and forth, while he feasts his eyes on her face. ‘I don’t think I take anything that anybody could use anyway, another way …’
They smile at each other before Marianne lowers her eyes and attempts a more sympathetic expression for Charmian. ‘I know how you feel. I’m glad I shan’t be in Oslo when the film of Axel’s novel is on,’ she says, unable to completely staunch her sunny smile. ‘I know it feels bad to be in the pages of a book, but imagine the fuss when this teenage actress who is supposed to be me is lying naked in the pine forest with everything showing.’
Leonard gives her an enormous grin. I can see him imagining the scene, appreciating it. ‘When it comes down to it, all subjects are just an allegory, a metaphor for human experience,’ he says.
Baby Axel Joachim is stirring; Marianne leans across to jiggle the pram, sees me watching. ‘Would you like to take him?’
I sit with the baby on my lap and she gives me his bottle of water. The baby plays with the teat but is more interested in wrapping his fingers around my ponytail and staring into my eyes. His eyes are as blue as the ocean, as blue as the sky. I’m trying not to think about Axel standing with Marianne’s yellow flowers scattered around his feet because for all I know the baby can see the pictures in my mind. I glance across at Charmian who is nodding at something Leonard is reading out from his sister’s letter. She stops and catches my eye for a moment and I feel my mouth almost contort with the effort of not becoming the bearer of bad news.
There was a small café in the street off Syntagma Square, opposite the American Express office, on the way to the art shop. It was where I’d agreed to meet Jimmy, at one of the tables beneath the dark blue awnings.
The gods we’d made no time for must have been having fun with us from their temple on the hill. Patricia was there, leafing through her sketchbook, and I was surprised to see Jimmy’s hand on her waist, before Axel came out of the café’s door, shaking water from his hands.
He stopped when he saw me.
‘Hydra?’ he said and his face paled.
He spoke rapid Greek to the waiter, turned to Patricia. ‘Now I’ve got the cash, you’re the one who is going to have to make up her mind …’ He was d
rumming his fingers on the table and his eyes were darting and bright as minnows.
‘There’s my Karmann Ghia at Piraeus. But you’ll have to drive it because I don’t have a licence right now and it’s a long way to Troy. Maybe there’s somewhere you’d like to sail to instead? Kos? Mykonos?’ He threw back his glass of water, almost buzzing with desire to be somewhere else.
Patricia explained that they were looking for somewhere quieter than Hydra where Axel could write his novel and she could paint. Axel took his coffee like a shot. The scars on the back of his hand were minutely raised and pale as silverfish. He made no mention of Marianne or the baby.
I’m trying not to think about it. I take Marianne’s baby inside with me to the grocery store; I like his babbling, am lost in a daydream that this bundle of warm sweetness is mine and Jimmy’s. Charmian is beside me, checking the price on a tin of corned beef. Of course she’s picked up on all the looks I’ve been giving her outside. ‘Go on, what is it you’re not saying?’ she says and I tell her about Axel and Patricia.
Outside Leonard is standing with his towel over his shoulder, Marianne smiling up at him, shaking her head. ‘It would be so nice, but …’
Charmian gives her a shove. ‘Go on, Marianne, a swim will do you the world of good. I’ll take this little fellow home with me and you can pick him up later. I could do with the distraction, to be honest.’ She takes Axel Joachim from me, holds him in the air and nuzzles his fat belly through his vest. ‘And I promise not to eat him all up …’
She turns to me once they’ve gone. ‘Now, what were you saying about Jean-Claude Maurice?’
Sixteen
The days grow so hot I don’t know where my skin finishes and the air begins. By lunchtime there’s only one place to be and that’s in the sea. Jimmy carries the basket packed with our towels and books and a picnic of feta, fresh bread from the baker, and tomatoes as big and knobbly as my fist.
A cruise ship is moored at the mouth of the harbour. Its passengers disgorge in a flotilla of rowing boats and, with not enough to interest them at the port, now swarm over the rocks above the cave at Spilia.
Jimmy and I pause beneath the fig tree at the turn. Maybe there’s fun to be had? I follow his gaze, check all the bikinis, like none as much as my own. My new two-piece is stitched from pale blue-and-white-striped seersucker. I wear it with my dress buttoned over because, unlike the Edies and Janeys of this world, I’m not willing to risk a fine. Police Chief Manolis patrols the waterfront with a new vigour since so many beautiful young women are flouting the public-decency rules of the island.
Music floats up to us from a transistor radio; the sea ripples with bright rubber hats, flippers, snorkels, mermaids on the rock; and a pair of young gods in matching red swim shorts have roped inflatable beds to the iron steps and lie golden and bobbing side by side. Toddlers squirm beneath their mothers’ sun-creaming hands, two beach balls are in play, Lena is at the lip of the cave with the other Swedes and has daringly removed her top to sunbathe.
Jimmy and I have been talking about Bobby. My brother has gone off on another long hike by himself, heading out straight after his chores with his backpack.
‘He’s looking better for it, whatever it is he does while he’s away,’ Jimmy says as we continue along the clifftop path. The heat is hazy, the rocks beaten bronze and rust and iron by strong light, faceted, run through with scraggly olive and pine, clumps of thyme and balls of acid-yellow euphorbia. Most of the wild flowers are brown with seed, only the occasional bright stab of a poppy flares and, as we turn a corner, below us a miraculous swathe of yellow meets the lapis-blue sea.
We decide to head for the beach in front of the old olive mill, which is never too crowded, and wander on through the lanes to the supermarket at Four Corners for a bottle of retsina.
I can’t wait to cool off in the pebbly shallows, while around every corner the sun-dazzled white walls offer enchantment, splashed with hibiscus bright as blood, or overhung by cascades of baby-blue plumbago and clashing pink and purple bougainvillea, narrow passageways leading us back to the sea. We stand high on the crest of the harbour, the fishing boats rock at their moorings, nets have been stretched out to dry on the shoreline. A gang of tabby cats are sleeping in the shade of a grove of cypress trees with a donkey snoring beside them, a white cockerel and his hens scratching about.
The Taverna Mavromatis stands square and boldly painted in rusty red and ochre with strong yellow awnings and tables with chequered cloths. Theodorakis plays through a small loudspeaker. Manolis Mavromatis cooks the best lobster on the island and his wife makes sweet cakes with candied prickly pears. Panayiotis and a couple of the older fishermen are playing tavli at a table outside, but it isn’t them that my eye is drawn to.
Marianne is laughing with Axel Joachim on her lap. Leonard is with them, making aeroplane noises, loop-de-looping a teaspoon towards the baby’s mouth. The sun pours through a gap in the awning and pools at their feet. Leonard wears his old tennis shoes without laces and one of her dainty feet rests beneath its freed tongue.
Panayiotis calls to Jimmy with his sun-baked growl. Marianne blows a shy kiss as we approach. She is plainly dressed in faded fisherman’s trousers and a man’s shirt but still manages to look as fresh as a new day’s gardenia. Axel Joachim is pulling a disgusted face at whatever is on the spoon and Marianne calls to Manolis not to take this as a comment on his cooking.
‘He’s tasting things for the first time, look he has two little teeth,’ she says, opening his mouth with her finger to show us.
Leonard is waving to the baby, pulling a monkey-grin.
‘Look how he waves back!’ Marianne cries as Axel Joachim raises his chubby hand. ‘I think my son is a genius.’
There’s an almost empty bottle of wine on the table, a flush to her cheeks, and as we go on our way it’s with music in our ears.
The next day is cooler and after our siesta I must leave Jimmy working in our room, his typewriter set up beside the door for the breeze. He returns to his writing slender and brown and naked as a reed. I dance about for a while, trying to distract him. I swirl within our new embroideries, doing my best Salome or at least attempting to interest him in working out how to fix them from the rafters above our bed. Red and blue flowers, birds, look at those millions of stitches …
He springs and I let him wrestle me. We tussle and play and it isn’t long before the bedsprings are singing their immodest song. After that I promise to give him the peace he needs. I make him a sandwich before I set off to consult Charmian.
I am so pleased with my flea-market find, and tell myself my mum wouldn’t mind me splurging out, just this once, on something so fine. The old lady at the stall in Monastiraki didn’t speak much English but I gathered they were from a bride’s trousseau, every stitch from her own fingers while she sat on her stoop, maybe more than a century ago. There are red peacocks, blue-and-red-striped jugs, a repetition of tiny knots of red thread that make flowers and vines.
There’s a blue boat in every corner. ‘And look, a dolphin for luck,’ Charmian says, running her eye across the needlework. ‘She must have been waiting for her sailor boy for a very long time …’
Charmian tells me about the old families on Kalymnos, about wedding festivities that would go on until not another morsel could be eaten nor another drop drunk, at which point the bride and groom were locked for three days in their new house. ‘To fuck,’ she said, as though I might not understand. ‘On the third morning the families would gather, very solemnly, at the door of the house and wait for the boy to emerge with the blooded sheet …’
My flea-market sheets are without stains, uniformly aged to the colour of palest sherry.
It’s chaos; the whole family here. Shane’s had her way with the music and ‘Alley Oop’ plays on the gramophone. Charmian is doing about eight things at once, a ragged tea towel at her shoulder, and a wild-cat’s prowl as she chops and tidies. Zoe is filling the iron with charcoal embers, lettuce leave
s crisp in an enamel pail. Shane and Martin peel potatoes at the table, bickering in English and Greek about one of them having to give up a room, about Shane’s appalling taste in music.
George looks up from the lamp he’s fixing to tell me about his friends who are coming with their children from Athens and, Martin hopes, some new comic books. ‘Charlie Sriber’s me old cobber, used to sub my copy in Melbourne. They let us bunk at their place in the Metz when we need to be in Athens and we have them here in return. It’s all fireworks and dancing on the island this weekend ….’ He touches the wire with his pliers and the lamp sparks and fizzles, making us all jump; Charmian begs him not to electrocute everyone.
There’s always a festival of some sort, the bells are constantly ringing, but this weekend is a big one in honour of Admiral Miaoulis, whose statue guards the harbour mouth to the east, a ship’s wheel in his hand and a dagger at the ready in his cummerbund. Martin knows all the facts, every detail of the skirmishes with the Turks, the revenge our great hero took against the Sultan’s fleet for the massacre of Chios … The boy’s a walking encyclopaedia and his parents couldn’t be prouder, though Charmian shoots George a furious look each time he calls him ‘Professor’.
‘It brings out the worst sort of nationalism in the people who come for the fireworks and parties,’ George grumbles and Martin starts begging him for gunpowder so he can make his own firecrackers this year.
Someone Charmian refers to, with a grimace, as ‘Big Grace’ will be arriving too. ‘Big Grace has designs on my hubby. Isn’t that right, darling?’ she says, planting a kiss on George’s cheek while he growls at her. A whole cask of wine stands beside the sink, its spigot dripping into a jug. Charmian has a devilish gleam; her skirt swishes around while she teases him. ‘Big Grace took very good care of my husband while he was recovering after the hospital in Athens. Very good. All his favourite delicacies – isn’t that right, darling? Dressed crab and teeny-tiny portions of veal tartare …’
