by Polly Samson
An American friend of Leonard’s called Doc Sheldon arrives for a holiday on the island at the same time as little lumps of Lebanese hashish start to sweeten the air of our late-night courtyard gatherings. The first time I tried it I thought I might die laughing. I was with Marianne, running, holding hands, downhill all the way from her house to the port, crazy as schoolgirls. By the end we couldn’t brake if we wanted to and Marianne was whooping, ‘See, it’s like flying!’ and we had to grab hold of Marty and Leonard to stop ourselves falling.
Leonard and Marianne walk hand in hand like a honeymoon couple. The rest of us can’t help feeling jealous, especially since news got around that Leonard has come into an inheritance of 1,500 dollars from his granny and has decided straight away that he’ll buy a house with it. He thinks he’s found the right one: three storeys and a large terrace with old lemon trees that sits solid in the saddle between the port and Kamini. It has a good vibe, apparently, and he and Marianne hope little by little to do it up. The I Ching is very much in favour of this purchase. Charmian has given it her blessing too, with the promise of an ironwork flowery bed. George twists him a wry grin. ‘Maybe now you’re a property owner you’ll have to stop whining about Canadian government grants,’ he says, downing a brandy.
Leonard and Marianne take trips to Piraeus and come back laden with oriental rugs, fine old linen and an antique gilded mirror wrapped in blankets that will hang in his hall. They are rich in love and rich in books which they bring tied in bundles, new records too, and a gang of us follow them from the boat and up the streaming hill through a rainstorm with their parcels and baskets strung between us. We arrive at Marianne’s out of breath and soaked to the skin. She hands out towels and while we shed our wet clothing stays outside on the terrace and sings encouraging words to the marijuana seedlings that have started to thrive among her tomato plants.
We dry off and she pours us all wine, arranges bunches of grapes on a large copper plate. We settle around a low Turkish table. Through the shutters the summer downpour hammers and steams and I have to resist an urge to run outside naked and dance in it. I look around at us all reclining among the cushions in our wrappings of towels. We’re as gilded and gleaming as ancients at the symposium. The grapes are pale as polished jade and everyone is smiling, shining from the rain. Göran reads aloud from a book that is lying there, Cavafy’s ‘Ithaka’. Lena peels him a grape. Marty pulls me close, and I settle, grateful to have this happy giant’s chest for my pillow.
Marianne rolls a joint while Leonard slides the record from its sleeve and, with the care demanded of a sacrament, places it on the turntable. The loudspeaker crackles as he stoops to blow a speck of dust from the needle before lifting it to the groove. He takes the joint from Marianne and settles himself beside her on the goatskin rug. Mahalia Jackson sings gospels while Marianne curls herself around him and they lie very still.
There’s a day when the whole quay smells curiously of ouzo and the talk turns to departures. At the waterfront the oak wine casks are being hosed down with salt water. A priest stands beside the wine boat sprinkling holy water and intoning prayers for its return filled with a good vintage by Saint Demetrios Day. Each empty barrel sports a festive bung of bay leaves that flutter farewell as the bell tolls. The circles shrink around the café tables.
‘Bloody decadents, the lot of them,’ George says as the students start to slope away with their bedrolls and rucksacks.
The grand houses are being shuttered, easels disappear from the streets, Maria’s tourist shop opens only one hour each day and sometimes the ferry brings nobody at all. The painted wooden caiques outnumber the yachts in the harbour, the port returns to the business of caulking hulls and mending nets. The quay is piled with netted mountains of sponges from Benghazi and, though the crop is meagre, not a soul has been lost. The cannons have been fired from the roofs of the captains’ houses and from the workshops comes the sound of men working on engines, the fresh resinous smell of newly planed planking. The mountains sigh with relief and birds gather on the wires of the awnings to sing of Africa. There are tearful farewells. I cry me several rivers when Bobby leaves with Trudy, but Charmian mops me up at her table, reminds me of the unhappy boy he had been when he arrived. I hang on her words. Perhaps by taking such good care of Trudy, she says, Bobby has managed to put the ghost of his failure to nurse our mother to rest.
George is in a despicable mood – no surprises there; he has been for days. He sits coughing and bellyaching in his own smoky cloud of brandy and funk. Didy is attempting to chivvy him while at the same time deal with the kids, his three as well as her younger two, all talking at once and slurping on strawberry milkshakes.
Leonard and Marianne share a dish of tiny prawns. Marianne doesn’t mind the cats snaking around her legs, not even the manky, one-eyed ginger who jumps on her lap. The intense adoration is making Leonard sneeze so he moves away a little, and wipes his fingers before opening his newspaper.
Today’s ferry has delivered to Bim a fresh rejection letter, this for the third draft of his novel. ‘Look at this,’ he says, licking his finger and rubbing at the signature. ‘They couldn’t even be bothered to sign it. It’s printed on.’
Leonard looks up, but only briefly. Something in the Herald Tribune is making him frown. He’s scribbling some words in his notebook. Marianne picks up Bim’s cup and turns it three times on a saucer. She tells him she sees a dollar sign in his coffee grounds and Robyn sighs and agrees to send off for a new supply of paper and carbons so he can have another stab at it. Bim’s bloodshot eyes betray the decaying spirit behind his handsome brow. He makes a perfect victim for George who shifts over to have a pick while he’s still fresh from the blow of the publisher’s rejection.
‘Look, I don’t mean to be some old-bastard Chronos here but take it from me, mate, sitting around on this rock and drinking too much does little for the syntax and only blunts the wits. Maybe it’s time you asked yourself what it is you have to say that’s so bloody important?’
Bim tries to defend himself but George talks over him and ends with theatrical despair, motioning to his children who are attempting to get the cats to fight for sardine tails.
‘With these three and a voracious wife to provide for, I’m no longer free but civilisation is going to hell in a handcart and you young writers need to get your hands dirty and tell the world about it. Go to Cuba, Korea, Hungary, Ethiopa … You know, I covered over sixty countries before getting myself manacled to this rock. What’s the bloody matter with your generation? We’re being brought to the brink of atomic annihilation and all you want to do is moon about sucking on lotus? Why are you not more angry?’
Leonard looks up, startled.
‘There are lots of things that anger me,’ he says, tapping out a cigarette and narrowing his eyes at George as he lights it. ‘But let us not destroy ourselves with hostility, let us not become paranoiac. If there are things to fight against, let’s do it in health and in sanity. I don’t want to become a mad poet, I want to become a healthy man who can face the things that are around me.’ He smiles at Marianne before returning to whatever has been preoccupying him in the newspaper. Eichmann’s thin, surprisingly ordinary face stares back at him from the page.
‘Very well put,’ Bim says, but George swipes the grin from his face by pointing to the publisher’s rejection slip on the table in front of him. ‘Proof of the pudding, mate.’
George has said his piece and is now waving to an old friend who is saluting him from the deck of a large wooden caique. It’s The Twelve Apostles, a former sponge boat, and it’s been moved from its mooring at the western mole to a slot right in front of us. Captain Andreas gives George a thumbs-up. Martin pulls at his father’s sleeve.
‘You know, I suddenly have a very good idea,’ George turns a roguish smile on Didy. Martin has his fingers crossed under the table. It’s slightly uncomfortable because we both know that whatever George is about to suggest has not only just occurred to him at all
. He points to the harbour. The Twelve Apostles gleams with new paint: pink and lemon yellow with a blue strake at the waterline. Captain Andreas has waxed his whiskers and looks rather like a walrus beneath his blue cap. He is sitting on deck at a marble table playing dominoes.
‘If you want the kids to see some of the classical sights, you should let me set you up a charter with my old friend over there, an excellent sailor and a top bloke. I’ve loaned him a little to get kitted out now sponge is truly over. Mercedes engine, comfy bunks,’ George is saying, Didy nodding away.
‘What a very kind thing to do.’
‘She might not look as sleek as some tourist boats, but she’ll give you a smoother sail on these seas and he could make you a beaut little trip to Mykonos.’ He ruffles Martin’s hair. ‘And I don’t mind sparing the Professor here, should you need an interpreter.’
‘Oh, but that’s a wonderful idea, all of it!’ Didy says, clapping her hands, all gums and teeth and rattling bracelet. ‘Do you think Charmian would allow me to borrow him?’
Pete and Martin are bumping their fists together. Shane’s eyes blaze. ‘And you too of course, Shaney!’ Didy says, and little Fiona pipes up, pointing to Booli, ‘Please not him as well, Mummy, he’s so horrid,’ and Didy has to tell her off for being rude.
I don’t think Charmian’s noticed us at all, she’s so intent on something the American painter is saying as they come from the alley and the light is against her. I think his name’s Chip or Chick; he’s only been on the island a few days and Charmian has been helping him to find a house and settle in. Chip is almost as tall as George; she has to tip her face up to his to talk to him. From our vantage point, the light that momentarily blinds them only highlights their folly. They are too close, even I can see that. His hand is on her waist, her lips almost brush his ear. Too late, she springs away, puts a decent distance between them.
Shane scrapes back her chair and turns to her father. ‘Why don’t you have them both killed, Daddy?’
George sets his mouth to a snarl and staggers to his feet.
Didy gasps. ‘Really, George, you all need to get away from here.’ She puts a hand on his arm to detain him. ‘I want you and Charmian to think seriously about my offer. Some decent medical care and a stint in the Cotswolds will do you all the power of good.’
Twenty-Seven
The sun is setting as we scramble from the sea. On the beach Göran and Lena pile up armfuls of brushwood brought down from the hills and here comes Marty, hefty and blond, with Edie and Janey bearing gifts of a wicker-covered galloni, a box of cakes from Eleni’s and a watermelon as big as a baby. It’s Leonard’s birthday, his twenty-sixth, and over a month since he sent off his manuscript. He sits on the smooth shingle at the edge of the water, hunched over his guitar. Marianne says that there’s still not been a word from his publisher, though the I Ching remains nothing but encouraging. The furrows from his nose to his mouth run deep as a ventriloquist’s dummy, make him look old for his age. He growls some words to the ocean as he strums.
I’m shivering a little, I’ve been in the water so long, and Charmian gives me a rub and slips her cardigan over my shoulders. We’ve both been watching Leonard, trying to catch what it is he’s singing. He turns, still strumming, as Marianne comes to him wrapped in her white towel. He smiles and changes key, picks out some notes. His fingers pluck a melody right out of the air. She has a taper from the fire, and she brings him a Greek cigarette, keeps her hand cupped around the flame.
The Twelve Apostles is anchored at the tip of Shark Bay and beyond it the familiar chain of islands – the sleeping whale, the pyramid, the squatting toad – and a sky the fuzzy mauve of sugar paper. Captain Andreas has fixed up a hoist and Shane and Martin are showing off to the other kids, swinging out into the water from the top of the mast. George is watching them, smiling and pulling his jumper around his skinny frame. His cough has been so bad it’s a wonder he’s had the breath to make it all the way to the beach. Didy’s had her donkey-boy bring down a couple of chairs from Spiti Heidsieck and sits beside him in her hacking jacket and pearls. She talks about England while he smokes and admires his fine healthy children.
Demetri and Bim have lighting the fire under control; they don’t need old George to tell them to get down on their knees and blow. They’ve already hauled sacks of splintery wood from the mill and hefted large stones into a ring for Marianne’s cooking pot. Carolyn and Robyn scatter woven rugs and cushions, Göran strums Leonard’s guitar, Charlie Heck has scored two racks of chops which he lays on a bed of rosemary branches. A truce has broken out between Charmian and George and she settles herself at his feet. I surreptitiously sniff at the wool of her cardigan, and we watch as the dry brushwood crackles and releases swarms of cinders to the night.
Our Vespers is the fire and the shore and Leonard’s guitar, the children’s laughter across the waves. The stones retain warmth from the sun; the last few days have been blazing. ‘The Little Summer of Saint Demetrios’ is what the locals call it. Charmian turns her face to the first sprinkling of stars and, in a dreamy counterpoint to our surroundings, starts to recite Keats on autumn. George stops tearing at his nails as he listens and his worn, addled face shifts to one of devotion. She talks, her voice low and warm, of mellow mornings with dew-dampened grass underfoot and English church spires rising from the mist, of suet puddings and bramble jelly, of wet dogs and wellington boots.
‘My darling, brave Cliftie,’ he says, her wistfulness not lost to him. He puts his lips to the top of her head. ‘All this will still be here for us when we return.’
Leonard retrieves his guitar and Charlie Heck sings of union men at the factory gates, of freight trains and of riding an old paint through the prairie. Lena weaves in some silver notes with her flute. Demetri taps time on the back of a box. The children have all been settled for the night on Captain Andreas’s deck and we catch brief snatches of their voices from the bobbing silhouette of the boat. When Marianne sighs and says, ‘I wish this summer would last forever,’ she speaks for us all.
I think she has added an extra ingredient to her grandmother’s recipe for meatballs. Her pot plants cropped well. Leonard gives thanks to Demeter for this munificence and Marianne giggles, ‘Well, it is a special occasion,’ and we fall silent as Leonard starts to sing his first song of the night.
I’m suffused in a haze, blissful. I float on a rug between Edie and Janey and let them baby me. The sea shushes the shore and the moon shimmers in a spectral halo a mile wide. Fire licks night to a swirling vortex of leaping flame and ironstone shadow, whirling cinders, moon-silvered waves, stars. I am cosseted within this dreamy circle, like a sleepy, milk-fed child listening to the grown-ups chatting beside the fire.
There’s a melancholic note setting in as talk turns once again to autumn.
‘I hate having to accept that we’ve lost our spirit,’ Charmian is saying. ‘And that we might never find it, nor indeed find our way back.’ But Didy’s not having it, telling her to simply buck up. ‘A change is as good as a rest and if you’re to be in England you couldn’t wish for a more fairy-tale setting than Charity Farm. You’ll see.’
I’ve been party to much handwringing by Charmian, and tears, at the house by the well since Didy made them her offer of swapping houses for a year. A farmhouse in a picturesque Cotswolds village ‘nothing younger than Jacobean’, an excellent grammar school a bus ride away, proper medical care, an easy train to London and the coffers of Fleet Street – of course it makes sense.
‘A bloody life raft,’ George called it while they to-ed and fro-ed and she paced and wept and then one morning Billy Collins tipped the scales with an enthusiastic letter about a party for George’s novel.
For me her departure is whatever is the opposite of a life raft. It leaves me adrift. I can’t imagine life on the island without her any more than I can will a dream. I’m scared that I’ll wither and die without the nourishment of those hectic meals at her table, the quick-fire banter and intr
igue, the sudden tears and laughter, the family jokes and dramas, the wise counsel. I’ll even miss George’s teasing. I sniffle into the sleeve of her cardigan and am assailed by its smoky cinnamon scent. A wave washes over me, big as grief and so strong I almost beg her to take me with them, but I know she’d recoil if faced with the depth of my hunger.
Didy is well aware that Charmian’s resolve could spring back at any moment. She handles her with care, soothes her with reason.
‘Quite apart from George’s condition, it’s the perfect moment to see what can be done about Martin’s schooling,’ she’s saying. ‘He’s sure to get every scholarship going …’
‘I know, I know.’
I sit cross-legged with my head on Edie’s shoulder, my eyes blurry with sorrow as I watch them through the flames. Charmian surprises George with a peck on the cheek as she reaches for the bottle. ‘As long as my husband doesn’t get so lionised by his newspaper chums that his head won’t fit through the farmhouse door,’ she says, topping up Didy’s drink and her own.
George waves his empty beaker. ‘If you think I like going back there cap in bloody hand, you must be crazy, woman.’
She hands him the bottle and rolls her eyes at Didy. ‘And Billy Collins has tremendous plans to have him hobnobbing with all the right sort of literary types, isn’t that so, darling? I just hope he doesn’t have to spend too many nights in town while I wait at home with the children in my pinny …’
Didy has been on the island long enough to sense dangerous currents. She taps her beaker to Charmian’s. ‘But, my dear, isn’t your own novel coming out in England this autumn too?’
‘Oh that,’ Charmian says. ‘My publisher calls it “a sprightly little tale”. I’m not holding my breath. No, what we have to do is everything we can to ensure Closer to the Sun is the tremendous smash Billy Collins believes it will be. Our future depends on it and George jolly well deserves a bestseller.’
