The House Martin

by William Parker

  Holy shit, it was difficult, though. I didn’t seem to have much idea about how hard it would it be—the dissolution of our little family’s possessions and history—and it took me by surprise. I had to decide to part with things that have been around me all my life, things familiar to me from the old days in Beirut and then all the stuff that came my way from Granny when we persuaded her that it wasn’t safe for her to be alone in her house any longer. Now it’s Pa’s turn, and one day, I suppose, it will be mine—though who the hell’s going to move me around, I’ve no idea.

  With each decision to let something familiar from childhood go, I felt I was delivering a heartless rejection to a near-to-living thing, an object grown unfashionable that wouldn’t sit well in my ‘just-so’ house, like a faithful old servant who’s outgrown his usefulness, become a burden, and is to be disposed of without even the courtesy of a proper explanation or goodbye.

  It put me in mind of something that Mummy once told me as we sat in the car together, waiting for Pa to complete some Saturday morning task in the centre of town. It must have been sometime in a school holiday, not long before her life, and mine, descended into chaos, just a little while before the days when the sherry bottle became her constant companion. We were talking, as we very often did, of the ‘old days’—that’s how we always referred to our lives in Beirut, the still fresh memories already turned to gold. I’d asked her what she thought our old servants, Abdul, Aisha and Miriam, might be doing now that they weren’t looking after us any longer. ‘I don’t know, My Only—I really don’t know, but I think so often of Miriam.’ Then she told me that one of the greatest regrets of her life was her leave-taking of Miriam outside the front of the old house before we drove away forever.

  I remember the scene with a crispness that is quite undiminished. Miriam, in floods of tears, holds open the car door, but it might as well be the door that is holding her, she’s so upset. ‘Goodbye, dear Miriam,’ Mummy says, lowering herself elegantly into the car as she puts out one hand, the other sweeping under her skirt so as not to crease it against the seat. Miriam takes her hand and presses it hard against one wet cheek, and then the other, before covering it with kisses. She’s speechless with grief. Mummy, quite gently but firmly, pulls her hand away. She’s embarrassed. ‘Thank you so very much for all your help with Benjamin. I’m sure he’ll never forget you.’

  ‘Why on earth couldn’t I have put my arms around her and cried with her?’ she said, eyes filling as she fixed her gaze on the parked car in front of us. She was talking to herself as much as to me. ‘I missed her immediately, terribly. It was the unkindest thing I’ve ever done. She must have felt as though I just discarded her—she’d served her purpose, and I was moving on. But she was my best, my sweetest friend in Beirut. We didn’t speak the same language, but somehow I was able to tell her everything, and she understood. She understood everything…’ She was silent for a very long time before she said, very quietly, ‘Do you know, I don’t even have her address?’

  I guess it was some sort of fucked up notion of propriety, of correct British reserve, and bizarre on that account, since she really wasn’t at all like that.

  Mummy’s been around me in these past few weeks of packing up. She spent only a fraction of her life in the house, but three years to an eight-year-old child, the age I was when we moved in, would have seemed like a lifetime.

  The house had been redecorated several times since she’d left us. Pa had seen to that. He’d obviously been restless with her memory but had only half-heartedly tried to erase it, like an artist painting over a work without ever having the nerve to chuck out the canvas and start afresh. He should have moved on years ago, given himself another chance with somebody else. It wouldn’t have been that difficult; he was a good-looking man right up to recent times. But, after she left, he had lived on there for nearly thirty-five years, quite alone once I’d gone too. In some extraordinary way, though, Mummy continued to occupy it in a way that he never did, almost as though he might be there under sufferance, a guest in her house. It retained an essence of her that never faded, even when I last saw it, emptied of all the things that had connected her to the place.

  Friday, 6.00 pm

  I walked over the headland to the beach at Faneromeni this morning.

  I’ve been almost completely alone all day on a two-mile stretch of sandy beach on an enchanted island in Greece. At midday, as I swam back towards the shore, I might have seen a young lad on a distant hillside rounding up goats, and much later, a couple emerged from a car they’d parked outside the tiny church that sits alone right at the water’s edge in the middle of the bay. They could well have been creatures from another world, their figures fuzzy in the midday heat and far enough away so that the muffled sound of their car door slamming didn’t reach me at other end of the beach for four or five seconds.

  I got back just a few minutes ago, and I’m sitting at the little plastic table outside my door at the end of this God-given day. The wind that’s blown all day has died, a half hour thunderstorm has had its moment and gone on its way, and the village has settled into the tranquility of a balmy late afternoon.

  I’ve brewed a cup of tea in a pan since it appears that the use of a kettle and teapot is something that is reserved for the English alone, but that’s not stopping my intense enjoyment of the two Assam teabags, brought from home, that I’ve stirred and coaxed into a rich brown nectar. Charlie Spaniel rests her head on the arch of my foot, eyes blissfully closed as she dozes in the warmth of the late afternoon sun. I’m intimate enough with her and her companion now to have noted the little line of teats under the belly that she presents for a gentle scratch whenever I can be persuaded, but at this rather late stage in our fast moving relationship, I’ve not bothered to give her a name more fitting to a lady. A discarded chocolate wrapper propelled more by a current of warm air than by the dying wind nonchalantly passes by on the path in front of us. Charlie opened one eye for a second to observe its progress, and I’d watched a plan of chase being considered for a moment before it was dismissed. Her eye closed, she’d smacked her lips together and rearranged her head, nestling deeper into the suntanned pillow of my foot, then a reluctant ear had made a half-hearted attempt to point upwards before falling ever so slowly back over my ankle as sleep took hold once again. Whippet hasn’t stirred since he stilled himself after the effusive meeting that had greeted me on my return. He’d retreated to his favourite corner as soon as the excitement began to die down and has been lost to the world ever since.

  I’m happy, really happy. The feeling took hold of me today while I was swimming far out to sea at Faneromeni and has stayed with me; an almost tangible feeling of deep contentment that I don’t think I’ve experienced since I stopped drinking. It fills me with hope. Might this just be the day that everything begins to change—the day when something in my head switches on, or off perhaps—and allows me to become the small cog I am rather than the very centre of my own egocentric universe? Might this be the day when I can begin to say to myself, ‘It doesn’t really matter what life throws at you. Don’t bother wasting time being afraid of nothing?’

  As I’d set off on the road north out of the town this morning, the chill wind I’d noticed while I ate my breakfast was stubbornly refusing to die down, and fierce little waves were slapping against the hulls of the fishing boats moored just a few feet out from the road, forcing them into a frenzied drunken dance as they threw themselves from side to side, while loose bottles and cans clunked noisily back and forth in their holds. I was sublimely alone but for the odd passing car; a man in a uniform driving a blue utilities van sent me up with a jolly salute, and then Felicity—our ‘Shirley Valentine’ travel rep—and her glamorous poet-fisherman husband raced by, she waving enthusiastically while he tooted the horn of their battered dusty open-topped Mercedes. The lad on his red bike that I remembered from the first afternoon nearly felled me as he turned a corner at breakneck
speed, leaning so far into the bend that he was practically horizontal. ‘Careful! Little sod!’ I shouted at his receding back, beginning to raise my right hand into a v-sign before changing my mind and touching my fingers to my smiling lips. Jesus, one small week in paradise, and I’m blowing kisses to a youth I’d want hanged in Clapham!

  Far out of town, I pass a lonely whitewashed farmhouse set among the olive groves where a vine grew over a shaded porch with an infant asleep in a pushchair. He was being watched over by his granny preparing vegetables for dinner, while his mother, granting me a distracted sideways nod, battled against the wind to hang disobedient flapping clothes on a washing line. In the adjacent scrubby fields, sheep with melancholy eyes stopped to stare at me for an instant before lowering their heads, bells clanging, to continue a search for morsels of nourishment among the dried up grass of late summer. Even farther along the road, the shuttered weekend houses of the nouveau riche of Mytelene, wind turbines hissing and solar panels reflecting back the sun into the cloudless sky, stood behind neat walls in oases of carefully tended green grass with blood-red geraniums in terracotta pots on white tiled patios. Huge threatening dogs with mad, angry eyes, impatient to move beyond the confines of their leashes, barked at me from behind ostentatious filigreed gates.

  I walked the whole two-mile length of the deserted beach, singing Italian arias at the top of my voice, with my sandals in my hand, my feet sinking into the wet sand and surf while the wind howled around me and left speckles of white foam on my skin. After pulling on my tee shirt, I paused for a moment’s lonely contemplation and lit a candle in the whitewashed interior of the silent church that smelt of sea salt and candle wax. When I reached the rocks at the far end of the bay, I took off my shorts and swam naked among tough little waves, bantam-weight fighters that playfully slapped and buffeted me, knocking me about as though I might be a child in a playground, trying to keep up with the too rough games of boys a class or two ahead of me. I climbed out of the water giggling at my ineptitude and fell asleep on my unfurled towel, my back to the sun and my toes buried in the sand. I ate my little packed lunch with my eyes fixed on the crisp straight line of the far away horizon where dark blue meets sky blue. Afterwards I swam again, sparring with the waves with a newfound confidence. And then I walked back along the beach, resuming my operatic performance for the delighted audience in my head.

  Before heading for home, I swam again, far out to sea, until the chill of deep water eventually forced me back to dry land. Then, with a towel wrapped tightly around me, I sat on the beach and daydreamed in the weakening late afternoon sunshine. I don’t know whether I shivered from cold or exhilaration.

  I did more than swim with the fishes today. I flew again, like I remember I did in a far away, nearly forgotten childhood. I looked down at the dark seabed a hundred feet below the surface and kept my nerve. I spread my arms out across the water and dared to imagine they might be wings.

  Vast black storm clouds, appearing from nowhere, began to gather far out to sea as I left the beach. Quickening my pace, I half hoped that I might be caught up in the excitement of a drenching thunderstorm.

  It hit land like an invading Ottoman army as I reached the village. I half-heartedly ran towards the shelter of the church and then gave up, laughing to myself as I sat on a bench in the square and surrendered myself to the downpour. A troupe of little girls abandoned an after school game of hopscotch and ran home shouting in mock horror at the flashes of lightening and drum rolls of thunder; women hurried from their houses to snatch clothes from washing lines while others placed pots of geraniums in the way of the rain. A young waiter from the taverna in the square, momentarily stopping to take in the sight of the eccentric, grinning tourist sitting in the downpour, dashed from table to table collecting salt cellars, draping tablecloths over his arms while his white shirt turned transparent in the rain and stuck to his back. It grew dark as night as the winding streets between the houses became brown rivers, and the awnings over the tables in the square bulged, pregnant with the weight of the water.

  And as quickly as it came, it went on its rumbling way, rolling over the mountains inland as the light returned, and the sun broke through again. I waited for a while and then waded through the middle of every brown puddle, stamping on the water with my sandals as though I was a naughty three-year-old with no one to tell me not to.

  I stopped to look at the sad, unloved Turkish hammam just to the side of the church. It’s slowly falling apart; ugly breeze blocks fill the elegantly arched doorway that faces the street. At the far end, the wall has collapsed, and the domed roof now leans precariously towards the centre which is filling with rubbish. Next to it stands an ancient Turkish house; its delicately latticed balcony, built to air the large room beyond with cooling winds from the sea, is beginning to disintegrate and fall into the unkempt garden below. Against the street wall, there’s a long-dry fountain with a Turkish inscription. I took my little guidebook from my backpack and opened it to find out what it might tell me. ‘With this delicious water, he satiated the spirit of those who thirst. Haci Osman Aga, counted among the pious, built this noble good work. The year of the hirja. 1319.’ The Greeks obviously don’t care for these signs of a gentler side of the old Turkish occupiers; there’s too much history here, and not yet enough years in between for ancient injustices to be forgotten. Perhaps, if I come back here in a year or two, there’ll be a bright new house with plumb-straight walls where the commander of the Ottoman castle that overlooks the village once entertained visiting naval captains and their officers with the delights of soap and steam and a vigorous rubdown.

  Monday, 7.30 am

  I’m ready to go. I’ve pulled on my jeans for the first time in a week, and they feel foreign against my sunburned legs grown used to the freedom of shorts. I’ve been up for ages, though I packed last night, of course. I wanted to be absolutely sure I’m not leaving anything behind. I’ve looked under the bed for the umpteenth time and slid open the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe yet again to make sure there’s not a recalcitrant pair of boxers hiding at the very back. When I checked the shower just now I found I’d left my bloody shampoo in there. I hate that. I don’t want to leave anything behind, not even a more than half empty bottle of shower gel. It shows that I’m not really in control of things. Next, it’ll be my passport that disappears because I haven’t pushed it far enough into the pocket of my jacket.

  The bats were still flying around outside while I made my mug of tea over an hour ago. I could see their silent silhouettes as they flew out of the inky-black early morning past the street lamp outside. It’s just beginning to get light now, and in the last few minutes they’ve gone off to hang upside down somewhere till the dark returns. A pigeon coos on the roof, and it won’t be long before all the other birds in the neighbourhood start up. I’ve folded back the shutters above the bed, and now there’s just enough light for me to make out the shape of the two dogs asleep and huddled up together under the plastic table. They’ve quite obviously been there all night long. Perhaps they really don’t belong to anyone.

  There’s a taxi coming for me at 8.00. I found a note from Felicity when I got back from the beach yesterday telling me that I was the only person leaving today, so I’m going alone to the airport. No jolly companions on a minibus. I’m panicked by it. I’ve got it into my head that the taxi driver won’t be able to find the apartments, and I’ve already decided that he won’t be the type to bother with a determined search for me. The taxi service operates from Kalloni which is miles away, so it’s not as though he’s familiar with this place. Even if he’s a diligent, responsible type who’ll bother to ring Felicity’s mobile to enquire about my whereabouts, there’s going to be time wasted before he’s pointed in the right direction. And then it becomes quite possible that I’ll miss my flight. I have a dreadful, crushing certainty that things are going to go wrong.

  I wish I’d arranged with Felicity to meet the t
axi outside her office—that would have made things so much easier. Perhaps I’ll walk down there now, so that when and if the taxi driver gets here and can’t find his way around, he’ll put two and two together and know that I’ve been sensible enough to change our meeting point.

  But then, on the other hand, if I take my case out of the apartment now and go round to the front of the building, I can keep an eye on the road and flag him down from a distance when I see him approaching. There’ll be a pretty good chance he’ll see me, too.

  Oh Christ and Holy shit. Here I go again, doing my usual nonsense.

  So now I wait, sitting on my upended case by the side of the road with the dogs stretched out at my feet. My hands are shaking. There’s five minutes to go before the taxi’s meant to be here. I’m a man of fifty who’s so terrified of something that hasn’t yet happened that I feel as though the ground might open up beneath me and swallow me whole.

  Nothing changes. My sweet day at Faneromeni was a false dawn. All that bollocks yesterday about flying, with joyful singing filling my head. I’m not free; I never have been, and I never will be. Somewhere along life’s way, I’ve taken myself prisoner and thrown away the key to my cell. It’s always going to be like this.

  When the taxi turns the corner of the street and starts a precarious descent towards me with the pebbles of the unmade road scrunching under the braking tyres, I raise a hand to attract the driver’s attention and manage to concoct a laid-back, ‘ah-there-you-are’ type expression followed by an unconcerned little smile of breathtaking dishonesty.