Penny recalled the thousands of words that Gerry Durrell had committed to the page, capturing the essence of this miraculous island, as well as the exquisite jewel of a book, Prosperou’s Cell – Corfu as remembered and captured by Larry Durrell.
The trip to Kalami and the White House, Larry’s home, would be a special moment. Of all the villas, perhaps partly because it was now the most accessible, that was where she could see herself. It would also most likely feature Dimitris, when she booked her place on the Antiopi.
Before that, though, she would visit the Daffodil Yellow Villa near Kontokali. The pilgrimage had become, without her really noticing, as much – if not more – about people than places. The people who had lived there before and the people she was spending time with now. Times past influencing times yet to come.
Her food arrived, the shrimp delicately arranged, its aroma intoxicating. Delicious.
She noticed the waiters pull some tables together as though expecting a large party, and settled back in her chair to see who arrived.
She heard them before she saw them. A man’s voice, loud and confident, rose above the chatter of the group. ‘Alicia, I have never seen you lose. I, for one, will never place a bet against you, whether it’s the outcome of a tennis match or whether or not your Greek Adonis turns up for dinner.’
‘David, behave! You all liked him. If he does turn up, it’s to see all of you . . . though why he’d want to, I can’t imagine.’ Alicia walked ahead of her group of friends and gave her name to the restaurant manager. Penny watched as the group of five sat down.
The two men and three women were tanned and smartly dressed, their overall impression casual, but a look created with practised and confident elegance. An attractive bunch, who wouldn’t have looked out of place on a film set or a yacht, she thought; who embodied everything she felt she wasn’t.
Her own prettiness eluded her. She thought her features small, like her stature. Her hair was dark, but hovered indecisively between inky blackness and chestnut. Her hazel eyes were, she conceded, her best feature, but she barely bothered with make-up at home and lived in her dungarees – the wearing of the latter being a sign, according to her friend Lizzie, that she had given up on life.
In a moment of inspiration, Penny decided she might ring Lizzie about Bruce. Despite being busy with her business and two young children, she was invariably kind and wise. Even when her dad had been around, she’d always had a small but perfectly formed group of friends to share confidences and the minutiae of life with. Now different lives and commitments kept them apart.
The failing sunlight was silver now. The lights on the tables burned a little brighter and the shadows softened everything around her. The street was no less busy and the Rex tables were full, inside and out. Laughter rose in welcome waves.
The five at the neighbouring table decided what to eat, their drinks already ordered. One of the women looked around and behind her every minute or so, as though expecting someone. She stood up, placed her hand on the shoulders of the man sitting next to her, and whispered something into his ear. He responded with a laugh, before she walked into the restaurant. They seemed to know each other well, an easy camaraderie visible between them.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ The host was at her side, lifting her empty plate and waiting for her answer.
‘Espresso, parakalo,’ Penny said, happy to stay a while longer and watch the stories playing out at each table. It was easy, when she didn’t know anyone, to imagine their history, why they were here, what their lives were like.
Then suddenly there was someone she did know.
She instinctively pressed herself back against the cool stone on the wall behind her.
Dimitris.
She recognized him as soon as his walk and outline caught her eye. He stopped at the table with the five friends, the lights from the table illuminating their faces. There was much animation and David, the loud man, stood and shook Dimitris by the hand. Alicia, the blonde, returned, appearing from inside the Rex holding a champagne glass.
‘Good to see you. I’m glad you decided to join us.’ She reached out for Dimitris’s hand and as she did so, she bent forward and kissed him on both cheeks.
Alicia sat down and Dimitris took the empty seat next to her. She poured some wine into a glass in front of him and the chatter around the table resumed.
Penny’s coffee arrived and as the waiter left her table she knew before she looked up that she’d been spotted.
She felt his gaze before she looked up and responded immediately with a smile, and mouthed ‘hello’ before she had time to think about it.
He raised his hand and nodded back at her, saying nothing but not looking away either.
Penny smiled again and then looked down at her coffee, trying to create a natural break in the greeting and the eye contact. As she took her first sip of coffee, she heard a familiar voice behind her. ‘Penny, a night out in the big city?’ It was Guy and behind him a small red-haired girl.
‘Hi.’ She was relieved and delighted to see him. In the midst of her awkwardness at Dimitris’s arrival, he was a warm and welcome distraction.
‘This is Faith,’ Guy offered as Penny looked across at the pale, pixie-like girl who hovered behind him. ‘She arrived today. Her friend Dee is somewhere around too. We lost her in one of the icon shops, I think.’
‘Hello, Faith. I’m Penny – another visitor. Is it your first time on Corfu?’
‘First time here, yes. I’ve been to Greece before, with my family, but I’m here with Dee this time.’
‘Well, it’s my first time here too. I hope you end up loving it as much as I do. Are you eating here?’
‘Perhaps later. We have to find Dee and then we’re all going to a bar. Rich might join us. You’re welcome to come if you’ve finished here,’ Guy said kindly, but Penny got the distinct impression that there was already one gooseberry too many on this outing.
‘I’m fine. I’m just going to wander and have a look at the shops, I think,’ Penny said. ‘Good to meet you, Faith.’
She’d barely finished her sentence when Guy called out. ‘Dimitris!’
He made his way over to the table. ‘Kalispera.’ Dimitris shook Guy’s hand, nodded at Penny, then looked at Faith.
Guy made the introductions. ‘Hi.’ Dimitris smiled at Faith.
‘Dimitris has a beautiful yacht, and a visit to Corfu isn’t complete without a trip up the coast,’ Guy gushed. ‘We saw you yesterday, near Mouse Island.’
‘Yes, Penny told me last night,’ Dimitris said and to Penny he made it sound as though they had spent quality time together, when it had been a casual encounter of minutes and small talk.
‘I’m here with the people I took out on Antiopi yesterday,’ he continued, looking behind him to the table where Alicia watched him discreetly, her head turning animatedly towards her friends whenever she felt he looked her way.
‘Great,’ said Guy. ‘We’re off to a bar with Faith’s friend Dee.’
At that moment Dee arrived, breathless, carrying a large plastic bag, her now-redundant sunglasses balanced precariously on her head in the twilight.
‘Here you are,’ she gasped. ‘I got waylaid by a shop – well, several shops if I’m honest. There are so many. It’s heaven.’ Dee stopped for a moment, transported by the memory of so many places to spend her parents’ generous gift of holiday spending money.
Becoming aware that Faith and Guy were now part of a larger group, she introduced herself and asked where they were off to next.
‘The best bar in Corfu Town,’ was Guy’s reply.
‘I must be off too,’ said Penny, ‘but I have to pay the bill first. Lovely to see you all. Enjoy the rest of your evening.’
Walking past Dimitris, she brushed against his arm as she negotiated the space between the tables. Her rucksack hit her calf as she did so.
‘Kalinichta,’ Dimitris called after her as she went into the restaurant to pay. She turned ba
ck to smile, catching out of the corner of her eye a look from Alicia that managed to be simultaneously interested and dismissive.
After paying the bill she waited for a moment until she saw Dimitris diverted by the conversation at the table.
She wanted to slip away quietly, having no desire to be introduced to the people who’d been on Dimitris’s boat. He’d said nothing about spending the evening in Corfu Town earlier, but then why would he? She’d been almost as dismissive of him as he had been of her when they’d first met; all monosyllabic answers and awkwardness.
It was funny, but even though he was not much more than an acquaintance she felt instinctively he wasn’t particularly comfortable with his dinner companions. As she’d noticed before, he looked restless, as though looking for an escape route.
Minutes later she walked on her own through the bustling old town, veering into the smaller streets as quickly as she could, as though she needed to disappear back into her own world again, as she realized she wasn’t ready to be pulled back again into the randomness of sudden introductions and an ever-widening circle of acquaintances.
Her natural instinct was to be curious and concerned about everyone she met and the holiday had brought so many new people into her world so far – people she already cared about. She knew she was fooling herself if she imagined that fewer people in her life would give her any more control about outcomes or the randomness of it at all. Nevertheless, her instinctive need for self-preservation kicked in when she felt herself pulled into the lives of others – lives with too many notes, like a complicated aria.
After a few minutes her pace slowed and her mind began to follow. The mêlée around her brought her back into the silver threads of street after street of moonlight-soaked Corfu Town. Jewellery, turquoise, and mother-of-pearl rings lay in tantalizing rows, next to matching necklaces and earrings. Pots of honey and aromatic herbs jostled for position with olive-wood bowls and carved toy donkeys.
The smells of lemons, thyme, coffee, baking, and honey tempted her as she passed tavernas, cafés, and bars crazily but magically arranged alongside each other.
Above her the high bell tower of St Spyridon’s church, a beacon by night and day, glowed against the blue-black backdrop of the sky.
Ancient and modern dovetailed here with ease. Corfiots had adapted themselves to the hurly-burly of visitors for half of the year, but olive trees, bees, kumquats, and winemakers represented the eternal heart of the island’s produce and purpose.
The road before her swept gently down back towards the bay.
She wondered if she’d bump into Guy and the girls, or Rich on his way to find them. But although faces passed by in a never-ending cavalcade, she saw no one she knew or recognized, now that she was several streets away from the Rex.
Then in front of her she saw a man strolling casually, hands in pockets, blue cotton shirt and pale chinos topped off with a pale straw Panama hat.
The gait, slightly bow-legged and jaunty, was so like her dad’s that for a moment she thought it was him. This had happened once before in the second-hand bookshop in her hometown, where, she’d reasoned, if her dad was going to come back in spirit form at all it would have been a likely and totally fitting location. He’d haunted the shop when he’d still been alive, and her childhood home had positively groaned on both floors with the weight of books.
The man in the hat disappeared before Penny could see his face, and she carried on wending her way slowly, but surely, back to the car.
Chapter 30
The intensive seven-month holiday season involved a whirlwind of meals, deliveries, cleaning, conversations, and crises, large and small, all absorbed with good humour and patience. The seasonal rhythm combined with an expectation and understanding that no two days were the same. At the Athena they invited life in and embraced whatever it brought.
Standing in the kitchen, checking on the stores and about to run the coffee machine through with its first espresso of the day, Tess felt grateful that morning in a way she never had before. It had been difficult to feel that since Georgios’ death. Yet every time she looked at Theo there was an overwhelming sense of being blessed, as he was the link that meant Georgios remained with her; Spiro too.
They were a team.
Her mobile vibrated in her pocket. A text from Nic. He’d return from Athens that evening. So, hopefully he’d still be able to take Theo to the olive mill on Wednesday. Theo missed him when he left, and for the first time, Tess realized that so did she.
She admitted to herself, reluctantly, that when he had mentioned his colleague was a woman, she’d felt a physical reaction, a falling sensation in her stomach. Why would it have been fine if it had been a man he was going to see? Why should it matter to her? She hadn’t wanted to look as though she was prying, but she wondered if he was flying off to help Melina. Melina had come up in conversation before, regarding the end-of-year ball in May. Nic usually came home before that took place and actively avoided the annual social event. But this year he’d stayed on for it, and Melina had been the name mentioned; the colleague who his other university friends had tried, once again, to pair him off with.
Visions of Nic dancing with this mystery woman now pushed their way into Tess’s mind, where they stayed and simmered gently.
Yes, they were used to the months he was away in Athens, so a day away from Corfu was nothing really. But in her mind, he was theirs for the summer, another important connection to Georgios, his friend from childhood.
Thinking about his call yesterday morning to say he couldn’t be with Theo that day had delivered an impact, Tess now knew, beyond the disappointment that Theo would feel.
Nic was a good man, a tad eccentric, difficult to read, and quiet to the point of introversion sometimes, but utterly consistent in his reassuring support of her, Theo, Spiro, and the Athena.
There was, she thought, no one better to rely on at a time of crisis.
No one.
As the smell of the coffee floated in the air, it brought Tess back into the room and the moment. She was surprised and not a little alarmed to feel her eyes fill up, her vision becoming blurred. She pressed her palms under each eye and then looked up.
Theo and Spiro walked up the lane from the apartments, stopping every few yards to look in a crevasse in the wall for a lizard or two.
Gratitude overwhelmed her again, even though deep down an absence made its presence felt.
Whether inspired by seeing Dimitris in town earlier with a group that included an attractive blonde woman, or a need to complete unfinished business, Penny had finally made up her mind that she would respond to Bruce’s messages when she got back to the apartment that night. Rightly or wrongly, she felt she owed him that. Things were never, she reasoned, black and white. The truth was found in shades of grey. It had been easier to think of all the darker things about their time together in order to cope with the decision to leave.
Her mind had not changed and she had no idea why he had suddenly decided to get in touch, but a reply to his message was the grown-up response.
She made it brief, but friendly.
‘Hello Bruce, this is Penny. I’ve just received your messages. I’m away at the moment as you guessed and won’t be back for a while yet, so I’m sorry, but we won’t be home at the same time. I hope everything’s going well in Italy. I imagine the weather, food, and wine are fabulous. Anyway, take care and I hope you have a good holiday.’
Her hand trembled as she put the mobile down and stared at the familiar and comforting view from her apartment. Starlight, interrupted by the red winking lights of a passing plane, framed the outline of the mountains. The sea gleamed like mercury. The ever-present cicadas sounded in the vivid darkness like a memory from another time, the soundtrack of a Corfu night that had played for centuries, never changing its tone or tune.
Sitting on their veranda at the Daffodil Yellow Villa more than eighty years earlier, the Durrells would have heard the same chorus, been entranced
and delighted by the fireflies as Penny was now. The heat stored in the stone and ground from the day escaped into the night air and carried the fragrance of lemons, sea, and fallen rose petals.
She read quietly, the light from her bedside lamp casting a distorted shadow on the wall. From the description of faded yellow walls and green shutters, to the lemon and orange trees of a Venetian mansion, how poignantly, with the simplest of words arranged in magical order on the page, had Gerry Durrell captured his second home here. And tomorrow she would try and find it.
Yes, she’d done the right thing in her neutral response to Bruce. Hopefully that was the end of whatever it had been.
So why did she find herself wracked with uncertainty and unsettled the following morning? The source of her discomfort was, she admitted reluctantly to herself, Dimitris.
Every time they met, she felt a connection there, although she really knew no more about him than when he’d first walked over to the table to ask her about her trip to Kalami.
It was also true that for days she’d tried hard not to acknowledge the attraction, trying not to act on any feelings or impulses that might arise, whatever they were.
But when she’d seen Dimitris last night in Corfu Town being greeted by the beautiful blonde woman, she’d felt something in the pit of her stomach – a deep sadness, a dragging sensation, like the loss of something before it had even begun.
The most disconcerting and frightening thing about this development was the self-discovery that she could be reached and touched. After months of emotional isolation, nursing her grief as though it was a life raft, she’d believed herself impervious to the experiences and relationships open to everyone else. Clearly that was not the case.
Whether this was a welcome discovery remained to be seen.
For all Dimitris’s air of quiet strength and strong physical presence, she sensed a sadness, a wariness not dissimilar to her own.
But today she wanted to be back on track and that meant taking the coast road north, travelling past Corfu Town and on towards Kontokali and the Daffodil Yellow Villa, which was also close to the house used for the TV series.
Looking for the Durrells Page 14