by Polly Samson
‘It’s the only dress I ever felt beautiful wearing.’
She holds up a finger to silence my questions. ‘Yes, I know Axel’s back and I know he’s lost his mind,’ she says. ‘I must forget all about him but that’s not so easy to do.’
She bends down and scoops up the baby and laughs as he covers her bare shoulder in slobbery kisses while I struggle to follow what she’s saying as we clatter downstairs – something about making a charm to help Leonard. ‘Maybe you should do one for your Jimmy too, I’ll show you how.’
There are herbs, sprigs of lavender, some numbers written out on a grid. She pulls out a chair. ‘From tonight the planet Mercury will be in retrograde and it can be very bad for creative people. Oh, I can see by your face you think I’m ding-a-ling in the bowl,’ she says, tapping her head. ‘But I always did this for Axel and I know your Jimmy will appreciate the gesture, even if he doesn’t believe.’
Her cheeks are round, pinchable as the baby’s; her eyes set at an adorably mischievous slant. I pick up the pen and obediently copy out the grid and the numbers on a new sheet of paper. She pours us both a glass of tea and shows me how to draw the seal of Mercury, talks more of her atmospheric fears for Leonard’s novel than she does of Axel losing his mind.
‘He needs to get it written before he burns himself out. He’s desperate to stay on here, so it’s Benzedrine to stay awake and phenobarb to sleep.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not healthy. And it’s not just because he needs the dollars. The I Ching is quite clear that in the eighth month the reversal will kick in and that could be any time now.’
She gives the baby some strings of beads to play with and brings out her workbasket. I hope to become lovelier by osmosis as I watch her slow and graceful movements. She cuts two pieces of purple fabric from an old shirt and together we sew the herbs inside, with the magic numbers and symbols: lavender for expression, sage to protect, lemon balm to soothe and, because she tells me to, an eyelash for love. As an afterthought she writes out the title of Leonard’s novel, Beauty at Close Quarters, and slips it inside before tightening the cord and stitching it shut.
There isn’t time for much more. I have to fly. I have Jimmy’s charm hanging from a cord around my neck. I’ve almost forgotten about the cinema, I’ve been so absorbed in this witchcraft.
‘It’s Boy on a Dolphin tonight, you should come.’ How thoughtless I feel as soon as the words leave my mouth. Of course, she isn’t free. But where is Leonard? How come he’s not here writing his book?
‘Leonard has gone to Fidel’s house to see Axel,’ she says with a shiver. ‘I haven’t a clue what he’ll say to him …’ She widens her eyes. ‘I only know that he’s taken him a new steel razor blade,’ and just for a moment a vision of Axel’s throat hovers before me. She laughs, dispels it, ‘Leonard told me his mother believes a good shave will sort out any problem,’ and grasps my hand and pulls me towards the baby. ‘Look, Erica, look at him! My little caterpillar just managed to move himself all that way across the floor.’
It’s rowdy at the film. Beneath its ceiling of tumbling vines the courtyard is crowded with extra rows of chairs, and men who swig beer and cheer as Sophia Loren emerges from the sea in a pleasingly wet and clinging yellow dress. She is poor, hence the tiny scraps of ragged clothing, and lives at the windmill above the rocks where every crag and cannon and step and stoop is familiar to us. The locals erupt to their feet whenever they spot themselves in the crowd sequences. Yiorgis, the limping boatman, who despite his simple mind makes himself indispensable with ropes on the quay, appears several times to the greatest cheers of all. A shutter is thrown open in the middle of the screen. A roar goes up. Maria leans out from her window, shouts, ‘Alexi! Come inside at once!’ as Sophia swims along the ocean bed in her rag of wet dress. The reeds and the fishes embrace her, a mermaid is singing.
‘If the boy whom the gods have enchanted should arise from the sea, and the wish of my heart could be granted, I would wish that you loved only me.’
Back at the windmill Sophia’s bad-boy lover throws her roughly to the bed. Bats flit across the screen as her breasts heave with temper and desire, but now here’s Bobby interrupting, bursting through the door from the street. ‘Quick, quick. He’s been beaten up.’ He’s yanking me to my feet. ‘You have to leave right now if you want to go with him.’ There’s a chorus of shushing and someone throws a chicken-bone at his head.
‘Who, what?’
‘Jimmy.’
‘Go where?’
‘Away from here. Now!’
Bobby hauls me down the street and along the waterfront. He’s making no sense. Something about an old friend of George’s with a boat who’s willing to take Jimmy across the channel to Metochi.
I force Bobby to a standstill, wrench myself free. My voice is shaking. ‘What? Where is Jimmy going? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
And though he grabs my shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes, still what he’s saying won’t come together.
I hear: ‘Spiratoula …’
‘Who?’
‘The wife of Panayiotis …’
I hear: ‘The sailmaker’s loft.’
He’s dragging me so forcefully my legs keep running despite my screaming desire to stop.
‘Quicker, Erica. Come faster. He has to cast off. There may be a worse duffing on the way for him. Panayiotis’s uncle is coming from the Three Brothers Tavern.’ Again I wrench myself free, we’re both panting. The words still haven’t come together but I hear my voice howling. ‘No!’
Later, much later, I lie listening to the tomcats on the prowl. There’s low rumbling, growls, an explosion of snarls and a lady cat’s ear-piercing cry that signals anything but pleasure. The pill Bobby has given me is taking effect; the agonised screams slide away. I lie on my bed between Edie and Janey while they stroke my arms and my back and I drift towards dreamlessness.
Twenty-Four
Didy Cameron arrives on the island like a breath of cool fresh air with the passing of the meltemi. She is an elegant woman, fortyish, dark-haired and deeply tanned with observant eyes that burn as blue as the centre of a flame.
My first encounter with her is at Charmian’s. She strides in, after one sharp knock and a musical ‘cooo-eeee’. She’s tall, dressed in a safari skirt suit with a string of bright pearls at her collar and a chunky gold bracelet hung with charms that clink as she shakes our hands. She comes bearing books, says: ‘But don’t worry, I’m only half-Greek so there’s no need to fear my gifts.’
Her smile is so huge her gums show above her teeth, and this and her liveliness lend her an air of eccentricity that is slightly at odds with the smartness of her clothing.
The books are her friend Elizabeth Jane Howard’s new saga The Sea Change. She hands one to Charmian, tells her it’s signed, and then a second – ‘Goodness, how many copies of her novel do we need?’ Charmian says – but Didy tells her that this one is personally inscribed to Martin, and explains that it was the author recommended Didy come to Hydra to buy a house, instead of following her mother’s roots to a grand manse on Chios.
‘Jane is right, of course. Once I’d cooled down I had to concede it would be foolhardy for me to attempt to renovate a big house with so many children and a husband working in Africa for months at a time,’ Didy says.
Charmian tells me that this Jane spent a summer writing her book on the island and by the way she only glances at the inscription I guess she hadn’t liked her very much. Though it’s still early, she pours us all a glass of retsina, and Didy doesn’t bat an eyelid.
They clink glasses, ‘Here’s to you and your family,’ Charmian says and opens Martin’s copy, reads what the author has written to her son. When she looks up, her eyes are much softer. She gulps at her wine and calls up the hatch for Martin to come down.
Didy chats on. ‘Oh yes, she’s had rave reviews,’ she’s saying as Martin arrives crashing and blinking, a copy of Tristram Shandy held inches from his nose.
Charmian gazes at gawky young Aristotle while Didy shows him the sections of the book in which he appears as the boy ‘Julian’. From the parts she reads out we all recognise this wise child with as wily a grip on the island’s ways and economics as he has an insightful understanding of the Greek myths and the heavens. Charmian is taking more pleasure in all of this than Martin, who stands first on one leg and then the other, his streaky blond mop falling but failing to conceal his discomfort. As Didy turns another page he manages to interrupt.
‘Did the cat get back to England? Do you know? It was a black kitten. I found her a basket to hide it in, one with a fastening over the top …’
Didy claps her hands. ‘Katsikas! Of course.’ Her charm bracelet tinkles. ‘He’s a lovely cat. I’d forgotten that she smuggled him from here. He’s very spoiled these days, quite the little prince. Jane roasts him duck gizzards and he has her leopard-skin coat for a bed.’
Charmian beams at her. ‘Oh, how lovely for all of us that Jane gave us such a good review. Welcome to Hydra, Didy!’
Didy turns out to be just what I need too. I’m rather glad Charmian has so bossily despatched me to walk her back through the port to Spiti Heidsieck. Charmian wanted to drop tools, was really quite crestfallen not to show Didy around herself, but impossible, of course, with George at the crucial final chapter of his book. ‘Two men, a jeep and a hundred thousand corpses. I’d far rather come with you,’ she said.
Didy has a lively interest in everyone and everything. She speaks Greek to the shopkeepers, and even Kyria Anastasia at the bakery is charmed. She exclaims over the organ-pipe beauty of the beeswax candles at Stomasis’s, the intense smell of honey in the streets. She gets me laughing for what feels like the first time in weeks. She exclaims over the glowing pink marble beneath our feet, and at every corner and wall and courtyard and doorway she talks of the geometry of light and shadow, of how Hydra is surely the birthplace of cubism, of the Raoul Dufy boats and the shameless blue sea. She can understand why artists are drawn here, she says, and I’m seeing it all as though through her eyes and falling in love all over again. I take her via the sponge factory and Fotis is there and demonstrates the superior water-retaining qualities of the local sponges over those from the Arabian fields and how silky the elephant ears are, five of which she buys, without even quibbling, one each for herself and her children.
Though dark-skinned, she looks impossibly English, with her purposeful brogues and good tailoring. I can imagine her riding to hounds and being fearfully brave. Her new baskets are full. She’s almost emptied the shelves of tins at Katsikas and Martin’s promised to track down Manos to introduce him as Didy will need a boatman to run her back to Kamini. She steers me to a shaded table outside Tassos.
‘It’s too hot to keep marching about. Let’s have a nice cold drink and while we wait you can tell me what a young girl like you is doing running wild in a place like this,’ she says and her bright eyes flicker with interest. ‘My Annabel says she won’t leave the house, she’s in such a funk at being dragged here by me instead of being allowed a season in London, so I’m rather hoping you might help me to winkle her out and into the direction of some fun.’ There’s not a condescending note to her tune and I fill her in on the basics: my mother’s death and the mysterious car she left Bobby and the post-office savings for me and my dreams. Didy asks me quite practical questions like how long I think I can make the money last, and when I shrug gets me to do the maths there and then and scribbles a few figures on the paper tablecloth.
She orders a coffee for herself and an orangeade for me, asks for cake. ‘And, my dear, do you have a beau?’ she says, once it’s all dealt with. I swallow hard. It’s too squalid to have to tell her about Jimmy and it’s still too raw.
‘No, not any more,’ I say with a forced shrug.
There’s been not a word from Jimmy Jones since the night he ran past me wailing ‘Sorry, sorry’ and leapt for the boat. I’m trying to get over it, really I am. Edie and Janey have been helpful in this respect, not saving me from a single detail of Jimmy’s many island adventures. One morning I caught a glimpse of what had been done to Spiratoula’s face, not simply the bruises but the light that had been washed from it, and yet still I can’t seem to stop the craving. The sudden ownership of a typewriter is a bittersweet souvenir. I bash so hard the keys cut holes in the paper, the carriage jams, the ribbon slips, my words fail me.
‘Oh, my tears could fill the cistern,’ I say, attempting to quell my bitterness and longing, but everything starts going blurry, especially when she calls me a poor lamb and says how horrid that my first love should turn out to be such a rotter.
‘Concentrate on the things you didn’t like about him,’ Didy says and looks around for Tassos to bring us more drinks, like she has all the time in the world for me and my broken heart.
‘This is the only known antidote. You need only one thing at the beginning,’ she says, with the efficiency of one offering advice on getting over hiccups or removing stubborn stains. ‘One thing to focus on. Something physical,’ she insists, lifting the cake to her mouth and waiting for me to come up with my own medicine. ‘It’ll help with the if onlys, I promise.’
It’s not hard to summon Jimmy to my mind’s eye. He flickers there constantly, reel upon reel. His soulful gaze; his elastic mirth, tumbling and diving, leaping and bounding; the chatter of the typewriter; the raking of his hands through his hair. I see his white teeth as he sings to me over a fistful of drachmas, misappropriating the words, ‘There’ll never be anyone else for you but me,’ and remember feeling the curse of it then, and now it seems to be coming to pass because since he’s been gone I’ve woken up beside Tomas, and Marty and handsome Angelos from the naval school, and that sort of thing has never felt right with anyone but Jimmy Jones.
Didy looks on expectantly, head cocked to one side. I see Jimmy’s face turned towards me on the pillow: sooty curls and lashes, lips swollen by sleep, his thumb in the nook of his collarbone.
Didy’s eyes are an electrifying blue against her mahogany tan. I turn back to Jimmy on the pillow beside me, and now I find myself zooming in as he wakes. His armpit is inches from my nose as he stretches and yawns. He smells spicy, familiar – it’s not that. I wince as it comes in to focus. The hair that sprouts from his pits is not dark like his head, but weedy and yellowish, like something from under a stone, crusty with sweat, repulsive. I start to laugh and Didy clinks her glass to mine when I manage to find the words.
‘To Jimmy’s revolting yellow armpits!’ she says.
She tells me about her children who are all sulking about being dragged away to Greece on another of her whims, apart from her youngest, Fiona, who is excited to ride the donkeys and who, Didy hopes, will make friends with little Jason Johnston. ‘There he is now,’ I say as Booli sprints past with Max nipping at his heels. We watch as he bounds aboard a peppermint-green caique and settles on deck, a little man with a job to do, picking tiddlers from the nets and plopping them into his bucket. Didy crosses her fingers. ‘I do hope Fiona will be jolly enough for him,’ she says.
The monastery clock clangs the half hour, tables are filling up, here and across the alley outside Katsikas. Donkeys file past, the more cash-strapped or lovelorn of my friends sit smoking or gnawing at their nails while they wait for the ferry, Costas wheels his ice-cream cart into position. Bim and Demetri saunter by like hunters scenting fresh meat aboard the approaching Nereida.
Didy wants everyone’s stories. I point out Edie and Janey, who have made themselves new bikinis out of Jimmy’s favourite yellow T-shirt and breezily flout Police Chief Manoli’s rules, wearing little else as they loll at a table where Marty and Charlie Heck are arm-wrestling. Across the way the Swedes are all talking over eac
h other. The word ‘Wittgenstein’ keeps jumping out. Lena downs a shot of raki and snatches up a book and reads a passage out loud. Axel Jensen breaks from his conversation with Leonard to give her a slow handclap. A little tribe of Goschens are shrieking as David wheels them along in a market cart, tumbling together all naked and brown and haloed with curls. Only Göran is hunched over his notebook, oblivious to all but the heavens as he writes.
Some boisterous Greek kids climb a mast and leap into the harbour; men unload vegetables from caiques on to straw mats spread along the quay. The cats sprawl on the warm rocks with eyes to the mole and an incoming fishing boat.
‘But who is the ravishing creature with the legs and the baby?’ Didy says as Marianne manoeuvres her pram into position by the grocery door. Her fisherman’s smock is only just long enough as she bends to her son. She joins Leonard and Axel who are laughing and talking. Leonard pulls out a chair for her but still has his ear cocked to whatever Axel is saying.
Axel’s rucksack is at his feet so I guess he’s about to set sail again. This has been his first return to the island since Leonard’s gift to him of a poem about a man who burned the house he loved and sailed away in a boat of scorched and mutilated wings. This poem and Leonard’s visit with a razor blade were, apparently, all it took to transform the quivering wreck I saw at the butcher’s to this freshly shaved and free man. If Axel feels ashamed, he wears it lightly.
Didy gasps like it’s some sort of thriller, especially when I get to the part about Patricia’s accident. We both try not to stare at Axel, who is still too busy talking to pay attention to Marianne or his son. It’s Leonard who calls to Nikos to bring her juice, Leonard who pulls a funny face at the baby.
‘What a very civilised and kind young man,’ Didy says. I agree with a sigh as I watch him and Marianne twine their fingers beneath the table. The sun breaks through the awning to find her, all lightness to his shadow in her white smock. ‘Oh, Marianne’s living the dream,’ I could almost wail it. She glows in Leonard’s gaze, her eyes sparkle, her hair shines palest gold against her honey skin. She laughs a lot, and easily. He’s brought out the girl within the saintly and martyred Madonna.
