by Tamar Hodes
‘I am sorry, Marianne,’ he said. ‘To choose between writing and the woman I love is torture to me. I want you both all the time. I cannot have one without the other.’
He embraced her and she let her head lean against his chest.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, fingering the watch.
‘Oh, I bumped into an old friend in the harbour. Axel and I worked for him on his yacht one year and he gave it to me.’
Leonard’s eyes filled with tears. ‘If you leave me, Marianne, the world will shrivel up and die. Life will be lightless without you.’
‘Of course I will not leave you,’ she said and they kissed long, slowly, to tell him what she felt.
They made love that night, carefully, gently, as if in fear of losing each other. When Leonard kissed her, she felt that they were capable of anything and that nothing would ever destroy their love. With his mouth upon hers with his body in hers, with his words whispered in the depths of her ear, she knew that she always wanted him within her, as deeply and often as possible.
Leaving her to sleep, he took one glance at her: her curved body and closed legs like a beautiful sea-creature washed up on the bed, her skin translucent even in the dark, her hair soft and white like sand, then he returned to his other lover, the one with keys, which pulled him to it with such force that he could not resist. He felt like a man in a storm, wondering which door was better to go through and wanting to enter both.
The next day, Marianne wrote to Sam, asking him to be Axel Joachim’s godfather but returning the watch with the words: Thank you, but I cannot love anyone but Leonard.
xiv
The amphitheatre at Epidavros lay in a bowl at the bottom of a hill. It looked as if a giant had come along in 400 BC, scooped out a huge chunk of earth with his hand, and walked away. The tiered arena could hold fifteen thousand people in its honey-coloured stone.
The party – Marianne and Leonard; George and Charmian; Gordon and Chuck, and Magda – arrived after a long journey. Mikalis and Spyros took them in their boat to a blue and white cäique; then a trip to Napflio, followed by a taxi ride to the amphitheatre. The heat had been stifling and Marianne’s cheeks were burning.
Walking from the taxi to the theatre, Charmian whispered to Marianne: ‘I’m deeply involved with Anthony now. George’s problems mean that he can’t manage it any more.’
Marianne couldn’t help feeling sorry for George who ambled slowly behind them, his coughing always audible. He walked with Leonard and the two men talked about their writing.
‘I’ve finished my novel,’ said George, ‘but I’m struggling to find a title.’
‘What’s it about?’ asked Leonard.
‘My brother Jack.’
‘There you are,’ he laughed. ‘You have it!’
The group shared salad and meats that Marianne had prepared, while waiting for the performance to begin. Magda had brought along black grapes and figs, which struggled to contain their juice within their bulging skins.
‘Did you leave the children their meal, Charm?’ George asked.
‘No, Sevasty’s fucking doing it,’ hissed Charmian. ‘Did you think I would let the children be hungry? And besides, it’s a bit late now to be asking when we’re miles away, isn’t it?’
‘Jeez, steady on, love. You angry again?’
‘It’s always me who has to do everything. Why don’t you prepare the dinner for once and take your fair share of the housework and cooking? Why is it always down to me?’
‘You’re a moody little bitch, aren’t you?’ said George, taking a swig from a bottle of ouzo and coughing so harshly that some of his blood entered the bottle.
‘And you’re living in the past, when women were expected to do everything and men just sat around looking important.’
‘Sounds great to me.’
‘I’m as good a writer as you are, and don’t you forget it,’ she hissed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot: you’ve written nine novels in ten years, have you?’
‘Quality, George, not quantity.’
‘Sorry, are you talking about writing or sex, Charm?’
Yet again, Charmian and George’s arguing was ruining the evening for everyone.
Marianne turned the attention to Gordon. ‘I hear your novel’s doing well?’
‘Yes, there have been some good reviews, but Chuck is now writing as well. He has left the world of dance to concentrate on the written word,’ and the two men smiled warmly at each other.
Before coming to Hydra, Marianne had never known a gay couple but she found them delightful and wished that Charmian and George would learn from them. How wonderful Hydra was, receptive to different kinds of love. She turned to Leonard who was quiet and looked drawn.
As the evening fell, the stage was lit by candles. Marianne sat close to Leonard, enjoying the warmth of his body as they watched the play. Hecuba, the Queen of Troy, was dressed regally in white edged with gold braid, and she commanded the space with her many children. Marianne was so absorbed by the drama that she forgot that she was sitting on bare stone. When Hecuba avenged the murder of her youngest son by stabbing out the eyes of the King of Thrace and killing his sons, the audience gasped. The applause at the end was deafening.
And then they had to make their way back: the taxi ride to Napflio, the cäique and then Mikalis and Spyros’ smaller boat. The sky was black now and the stars merely pricks of light studding its velvety cloth.
Floating along in the boat in the still night, they shared retsina, passing the bottles between them, delighting in its sweetness. Someone else had a few joints and they smoked and drank and spoke in soft voices, respectful of the night. The sound of the water lapping when it could not be seen was calming. Leonard was subdued. Having just finished The Favourite Game, Marianne had hoped that he would recover and spend some time with her and Axel Joachim, swimming, taking picnics, but he was already planning his next novel, Beautiful Losers.
Leonard had told Marianne how he used to lay flowers at the statue of the seventeenth-century saint Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as Lily of the Mohawks, in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York. When she died aged 24, her skin turned white. He had been thinking a lot about this fascinating figure and wanted to write about her, but in a new way. As the boat sailed along the supportive sea and the rest of the group chatted, Leonard was thinking about the plot. This novel would have to be carefully structured. It would centre around a love-triangle and there would be three books, each with a different narrator: Book One, The History of Them All; Book Two, a Letter from F, the friend who may or may not exist, to the narrator; and Book Three, Beautiful Losers: An Epilogue in the Third Person. The book would be shocking, full of wonderful symbolism and imagery. What was the point of replicating something already written? He had to unearth new ground.
By the time they reached Hydra, it was the early hours of the morning. They felt as if the night was wrapping them in its black shawl, enveloping them in its cashmere softness, shielding them from too much reality. The island was still and dormant.
‘Leonard,’ Marianne called and woke him from his reverie. ‘We’re here. Back in Hydra.’
The passengers left the boat and thanked Mikalis and Spyros. As they were gathering their belongings, Leonard said, ‘Marianne, I need to walk alone for a while and think something through.’
She was disappointed but hugged him. As they embraced she felt his bones through his shirt. She strolled home alone.
Back in the house she woke and thanked Kyria Sophia, who had fallen asleep on the settee, and went to check on her son. Beneath the mosquito net, he lay like an angel, his blond hair soft, his head turned to one side, his thumb in his mouth and his breathing gentle and shallow. She could feel the warmth coming from his cot.
Undoing the buttons on her dress, she walked through to Leonard’s study and saw, by his typewriter, pages and pages of typed words. As she read, tears sprang to her eyes. Beneath the sheets were packets of pills, amphetamines.
She had decided early on that in this relationship she did not want the discord that she had had with Axel. But did that mean that she should say nothing, ever?
That night she had a dream. She was walking along a windy harbour and had several pieces of coloured ribbon, which she was trying to hold onto. At the end of each ribbon were the men in her life: her father, her brother, Axel, Leonard, Sam, Axel Joachim. One by one, they could not withstand the wind and had to let go so that, in the end, she was holding empty leads. Marianne woke in a sweat and thought: is that my destiny? To try to hold on to others while they abandon me? She turned to Leonard’s side of the bed. He was still not home.
She was not the only one unable to sleep that night. Not far away, Frieda lay in her bed, thinking about Carl. On the living room sofa, a humped shape in the dark snored softly. Jack was a good man. They argued but he loved her and the children; and she had betrayed him. Over and over. She did not want an unhappy family life for Gideon and Esther. It wasn’t fair on them. She would have to keep Carl as her secret.
And in a sense, although she felt guilty about deceiving Jack, it made it all the more special, like a stash of chocolate truffles hidden away. Each day, she started work early; Carl rose later and could drop by whenever he wanted to. She loved the thrill of it, that in the middle of her painting, he would suddenly appear. It was good of Demi to make no reference to it when Frieda went in to get their bread. Like all the locals, he tolerated the artists’ bohemian behaviour and was even entertained by it. It provided them with work and trade and gave them something to gossip about.
When Carl did arrive, they would close the shutters on the large windows and undress in the striped light. By now, they had made love all around the studio, even in the corners of the room, so that it was covered with their scent, like cats marking their territory.
Carl did not often make references to his many former lovers, but he used what he had learned to guide Frieda slowly. Until she had met Carl, sex had been a disappointment to her and she found herself making excuses to avoid sleeping with Jack, saying she was on her period when she wasn’t or pretending to be asleep when he came to bed. Carl helped her as a tutor helps a student: tenderly, patiently and without making the learner afraid.
Afterwards, they liked to lie naked on the chaise longue and Carl would stroke her hair, now unpinned and free. He said that he loved her, and she found herself, after a while, being able to say the same back. When he felt ready to tackle his own canvases back in his studio, he left, and Frieda chose not to wash in the nearby bathroom but kept herself moist and aroused by the smell of him, hoping to transfer that energy to her work.
It wasn’t just the sex that opened to her a world of pleasure that she had not known existed, but it was Carl’s focus, those deep eyes on her. Whether it was her canvases or her body, he looked without staring as if, for that stretch of time, there was nothing and no-one else. She started to see herself and her work as beautiful and that self-confidence benefitted her work.
When Magda came to her studio one day to buy a painting of a goatherd with her flock, she remarked on how Frieda’s work had improved dramatically since she had arrived on Hydra, the colours bolder, the outlines more defined, the whole painting more confident.
‘It must be the sunlight,’ Magda said.
xv
The morning after the trip to the amphitheatre, Marianne awoke and saw that Leonard was still not in their bed. She wrapped her silk gown around her and went to his study. There was the typewriter, yesterday’s gardenia limp in its glass vase, the typed sheets on the table, strips of amphetamines half-hidden beneath them.
In the kitchen, Kyria Sophia was giving Alex Joachim his warm milk and bread and Marianne bent to cuddle her son. ‘Hello, my little chicken.’
Leonard did not come back until mid-morning when he stumbled in, looking tired, black bags under his eyes, stubble on his face.
‘Where have you been? I was worried about you.’
‘You don’t need to be. I was just thinking.’
‘Really? Who with? What’s her name?’
‘Don’t be silly, Marianne. I need to wash and write,’ and he left for his study.
She made him coffee and stirred honey into yoghurt, his favourite, and put them by the typewriter. She removed yesterday’s dead gardenia and put a fresh bloom in the vase. As the weight of the flowers left her hand, she felt excluded.
He said nothing, mildly irritated by her intrusion, wondered why she hadn’t replaced it earlier rather than disturb him now. He knew that, if he spoke to her this time, it could become a habit. The dark fringe of his hair seemed to her like a curtain, hiding him behind it, leaving her on the outside. She felt hurt by this treatment, as if she was good enough to bring him flowers but not bright enough to understand his ideas.
When he did emerge hours later, he tried to be loving but she was not receptive. She still felt resentful of his earlier treatment of her, she wanted to recover but could not.
Instead, having dressed Axel Joachim in blue shorts and a white T-shirt, she said, ‘We are going to see your daddy now.’
Axel had complained the last few times Marianne had been to visit him that he never saw his son. It was a difficult issue: in theory, Marianne agreed that he had a right to have access to him, but in practice Axel could be moody and volatile and she wanted, more than anything, to make Axel Joachim’s life stable and happy. But today, angry with Leonard, she put the child in his pushchair and wheeled him over to her old house. The gorse bushes were covered in gold blooms and wild white orchids appeared erratically, at the side of the road, their random presence part of their charm.
She felt full of trepidation. When she was a child, all she had dreamed of was a stable, happy family unlike the fragmented one she’d had; and yet here she was, her ex-husband difficult, and her lover not very different. No, that was unfair: much of the time, Leonard was warm and loving to her but recently he had been obsessive about his writing and been so distant, so cold, shutting her and her son out.
Apprehensively, she knocked on the door. Maria opened it and led her onto the terrace where Axel greeted them more warmly than usual.
‘How is my gorgeous boy?’ he asked, holding his arms out to Axel Joachim. The child stared at him as if at a stranger and turned to cuddle his mummy.
‘What about you, Axel? You look brighter.’
‘I am. I think the malaria tablets are working at last and I do feel better.’
‘I’m pleased.’ Marianne was amazed.
Axel smiled, looking so much happier and she wondered what could have affected such a dramatic transition when the door to the terrace opened again. A blonde young woman in a wraparound gown stepped out.
‘Marianne, this is Sonja,’ said Axel.
Back at Leonard’s home he was still tapping away at his typewriter. He had not touched his yoghurt and his coffee was cold, a dark rim staining the cup. The strip of amphetamines was emptier than earlier.
‘Leonard,’ she said softly, ‘you have not eaten or had anything to drink.’
‘I cannot,’ he said, not looking up at her. ‘The angels have told me that I must get on.’
‘Did you remember, Leonard? It’s Norman’s exhibition today?’
But he brushed her away with his hand as if she were a moth.
‘Leave me, Marianne. I have to write.’
Olivia and her husband had given over a large room in their home to Norman for his first ever show: Objets Trouvés. That was the kindness of Olivia: she did what she could to encourage artists.
Norman stood awkwardly in the corner of the room, trapped between excitement and modesty like a fly between two panes of glass. When anyone complimented him on his work or even bought a piece, he blushed and thanked them but could not look them in the eye.
The room was full of his creations: structures made of paper, metal, sticks, tin cans, anything he could find. There was a kind of beauty in his work as if he were making a statement: what yo
u think is just rubbish and only fit to discard, look again. There may be more to waste than you think. Maybe we are the ones at fault in seeing anything as useless.
With a glass of white wine in one hand, and the other steering the pushchair, Marianne walked around the pieces, thinking: maybe it applies to humans, too. We see others as limited, with nothing to offer, but maybe they do. Her life flashed before her: her father, mother, brother, Momo, Sam, Axel, Leonard.
She was gazing at one structure, which looked like a precarious column of paper, metal and cigarette packets, when Magda came over to greet her. Unusually, she was wearing black, but she had so many silver bangles and chunky necklaces on, that the dress became a backdrop to showcase her finery, as if she were a velvet cloth in a jewellery window on which the products were displayed.
‘Isn’t Norman’s work amazing? I so admire him,’ said Magda.
‘Me too. I hope he has some success.’
‘He is so poor that he has a tree trunk in his hovel which he lights when he needs fuel.’
‘Poor man. And he’s so talented. I didn’t know that ugly objects could be made to be so beautiful.’
‘Let’s hope you think the same of my new wine bar. I have restored the old boathouse and it should be open soon.’
‘How lovely.’
‘You look sad today, Marianne. How are you?’
‘Struggling at the moment, Magda. Leonard is very down, obsessed with his new novel, and he hardly has time for Axel Joachim and me.’
‘That must be hard. I read some reviews in the Athens Post of his first novel. They were very favourable.’
‘Yes, it was well received but he wants to do more, be more, than that. And Axel has been very ill and I have tried to help him but now he has a new woman and so I just feel that he uses me and discards me when he likes. A bit like this rubbish,’ and she pointed to the structures on display.
‘Men, they’re impossible. I think Paolo is having another affair. He is going all the time to Athens and staying in the Hilton. He says he has business meetings, but I am not convinced. You give these men your heart and soul, your life, and they destroy it.’