by Polly Samson
Edie’s so slim you could probably fit three of her into Bobby’s shirt. In fact, we all appear gamine beside him. Sometimes I think Bobby looks like a different species. On Hydra his great shoulders bring us the sweet water from the wells and he eats a proper breakfast to fuel the climb. He’d manage twelve eggs on his own, I reckon.
Trudy has stayed the night. She perches by the window and blinks at the day. Her hair is all copper filaments, her face spattered with freckles. She’s dressed in the same pale blue shirt and trousers she was wearing when she arrived. She’s given up on ever being reunited with her luggage.
‘Don’t forget about my party,’ she reminds us. ‘We’re not letting anyone in who doesn’t bother about the dress code.’ Trudy is forever without things. She has no swimsuit, no books, no footwear suitable for hiking. And, she informs us now, she has no Boston grandmother’s Dior gown to wear on her twenty-first as intended. As a consequence she has decided that we must all fashion party-wear from items found on the island.
Edie hugs herself through Bobby’s shirt as some sort of clever design blossoms. ‘Come on,’ says Janey, hands on hips. ‘Share.’ Both Edie and Janey studied costume in London, they’re at an advantage. ‘Hey, baby J,’ Edie says. ‘Let’s make Trudy a fabulous birthday gown,’ and when Janey agrees Trudy leaps up and hugs them both.
Bobby grumps that he’ll buy something from Tzimmy, the crippled sponge-diver, who sells dead men’s clothes at the port. Janey wrinkles her nose. Jimmy’s idea seems the best to me. ‘We can paint on sacks,’ he says as Trudy spies a flash of bright blue through the window and the smile is wiped from her face.
‘How the hell does he know I’m here?’
Jean-Claude Maurice stands at the open door, in an unbuttoned shirt of cobalt-blue silk. ‘There is no point in me making a class at Tombazi if you do not come,’ he tells Trudy with a sullen pout. He twiddles with his earring while he waits. His tan looks deep-grained, like a much-polished old handbag. He is old. Thirty-five at the very least. I shudder as he takes Trudy’s hand and leads her the back way, every step the satyr with his gold hair and springy brown legs.
We have fresh bread from the bakery, two rings, studded all over with sesame. Bobby slides the fry-up from the pan and we tear at the bread and scoop and dab up the eggs and tomatoes. Trudy and Jean-Claude are framed in the window as across the hill to the art school they go, his tiny shorts and explosive laugh, her Venetian hair flaming.
‘So the pervy old French painter has tracked down our Titian maiden,’ Bobby says. ‘Of course he wants to paint her naked.’
‘Yeah, and knowing Jean-Claude she’ll succumb …’ I say and when he shoots me a puzzled frown I remind him about Charmian’s book. ‘It just goes to show what a good writer she is. You know, she pretty well has him pinned to the page, don’t you think?’
Bobby still hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about. Jimmy has jackknifed himself in the window recess with a well-thumbed Mervyn Peake that’s been doing the rounds. He looks across as Bobby cracks our three remaining eggs into the pan.
‘It’s quite obvious Jean-Claude is the model for Jacques in the book,’ Jimmy says. ‘You know, the French existentialist who comes to the island and seduces everyone …?’
Bobby jumps from a burst of spitting fat. ‘I never read her book,’ he says, and Jimmy and I exchange astonished looks.
‘Well, that seems spectacularly un-nosey of you,’ I say.
Bobby talks to the frying pan, he’s furious with it. ‘Not everyone is as fascinated by our raddled old neighbour as you seem to be. I don’t know how you can stand to spend so much time with those oldsters all bitching away about each other and so drunk they can barely stagger home.’ Bobby’s big jaw is set against me for reasons I can’t fathom, his cheeks are reddening. He stabs at the eggs with his spatula, breaks a yolk. Jimmy takes refuge in Gormenghast.
‘Well, that’s gratitude. If it wasn’t for our “raddled old neighbour” we wouldn’t be here now,’ I reply. ‘And anyway, I like them, I like being around a proper family and …’ I find I can’t go on. The word ‘family’ has done for me and the room has started to swim. I go to the door and gulp at sweet sunshine. I sweep my eyes across folds of pine and tumbledown terraces and up to the bronzed mountains and the sky. I don’t want to be crying any more.
This is an island that holds you steady in its lap, its mountains solid as shoulders. I fold myself in, cleave to it, while behind me Bobby carries on ranting. Beneath the school I can make out the corner of Charmian and George’s terrace, Hydriot flag flying. ‘I just don’t get the attraction. That George banging on like he’s Hemingway. Who the hell are the Kuomintang anyway? As for those know-it-all children—’
I don’t want to hear it and spin around to tell him so. ‘Besides, I want to find out what Charmian knows. Bobby, do you really have no interest in our mother?’
‘Oh Erica, stop!’ He bats me away with his spatula. ‘You plague that woman like a mosquito with your questions. I can tell that you irritate the hell out of her. And so what if our mother had a secret admirer? Maybe she was a high-class tart and we just didn’t notice. But I’ll tell you what. I. don’t. care. I keep telling you, family is a terrible construct. We’d all be better off without it.’
Jimmy drops his book and springs between us, gives Bobby’s arm a tug. ‘Come on, grumpy old donkey. Get your yoke across those shoulders and once you’ve got the water you and I should attempt that trek up to Episkopi,’ he says, patting him on the back.
I race Edie and Janey down the steps, clutching our straw hats to our heads, beach bags bouncing at our hips. That Trudy makes too much of her lost luggage. In reality we’re all wearing very little anyway. Edie’s dress is a scrap of white cotton, worn thin and torn at the front so it looks in danger of slipping from her shoulders.
We pass old women sitting on their stoops.
‘Yia sou, Kyria Katerina; yia sou, Kyria Maria,’ we cry.
‘Sss, sss,’ they reply without raising their eyes from their embroidery. The light shines through Edie’s dress. She skips down the steps and the fishermen coming towards us will see straight away that she is naked beneath it.
She and Janey veer off at the clock towards the slaughterhouse on their mission for fancy-dress materials, leaving me asking boatmen for sacks, which isn’t easy without the Greek words.
‘Efcharistó, Niko!’ Nikos Katsikas takes me to his brother Andonis at the back of the store; there’s a pile of old grain sacks he can let me have. Charmian is at her usual table, waving to me with a hand that’s already occupied with her glass and a cigarette. Leonard raises his cap. He sits so close to Charmian that occasionally the broad brim of her straw hat throws a shadow across his face. The tables are all full of foreigners now. Every day more and more, the day-trippers from Athens but also people like us who can live for a year in the sun on what it’d cost us for a month in a dingy bedsit at home.
There’s a new man in George and Charmian’s group, Scandinavian by the look of him, with sombre eyes and a soft-lipped smile.
‘Meet Göran Tunström,’ Charmian says, waving a hand towards him. She’s in full flow, the others bend to her drift, though she remains erect and so queenly I could almost curtsy. Göran and Leonard are exchanging books with their names on the dust jackets; each tries to outdo the other in self-effacement until Charmian claps her hands at them to stop. Leonard is saying, ‘Whenever I hear that a guy writes poetry I feel close to him. You know, I understand the folly.’
I would join them but Bobby’s words are still jangling. Am I really nothing but an annoying mosquito?
Eight
Tomorrow is May Day and Axel Jensen will sail Ikarus into the port with Marianne and their baby. Leonard will be drinking coffee at George and Charmian’s table. The little sloop will cut a dash past the fat-bottomed caiques and Marianne will lower her face to adjust a white shawl and to shield the baby from the sun. Everyone will be watching, but perhaps none so intently as Leo
nard. ‘What a beautiful Holy Trinity,’ he’ll say. And Charmian will arch her brows at George and say, ‘Let us pray.’
Tonight the stage is set for a more ancient drama, rooted in Greek tradition. All day the girls and young women of the village have been gathering flowers from the hills. They walk past us in pairs in black skirts with swinging baskets, shoes ringing on the cobbles. The young women’s arms are covered, the girls wear black-buttoned smocks, headscarves wound around neat dark faces, their pretty blouses modestly arranged in stark contrast to our casual display of burnt skin and sea-salted hair.
This evening has been born from one of those murmuring sundowns, our bodies molten as the sea and the sky turned to honey. We’ve been dipping and diving and drying off in the sun all afternoon. The night-scented jasmine is soporific as a lullaby.
We drape ourselves around a couple of tables outside Katsikas. Edie and Janey are wrapped in Indian print sarongs tied in a knot at the shoulder, the boys all have unbuttoned shirts. I’m wearing shorts, my gingham swimsuit and ponytail crusty with salt. We’re all barefoot. We can’t even remember whose turn it is to cook, but everyone’s here, gathering at tables, and tonight an entire shoal of red barbounia has met Sofia’s charcoal grill at the back of the store.
There’s a couple of bouzouki players seated beneath the wine barrels, already tucking in. Young fishermen wear clean white shirts.
‘There’ll be dancing later,’ Charmian says and her eyes shine. ‘Watch Panayiotis, he has the grace of Nijinsky when he’s hit the grog,’ she adds, pointing out one of the fishermen, and she waves to Ntoylis Skordaras who sits in the window with an accordion folded at his feet. It’s a public holiday tomorrow and the local women wait indoors as usual. Only the men of the village will have hangovers by morning.
We’re as hungry as toddlers after a good long nap. We eat squid and octopus now like we grew up on it, pick fish from bones, use bread to wipe our plates clean.
Kyria Anastasia from the bakery hurries by with her twin girls. Charmian jumps up, urges me to follow. The girls stare at my salty bare legs. Kyria Anastasia chatters in Greek as she shows Charmian bunches of flowering herbs and branches that they’ve gathered. One of the girls shyly hands Charmian some blue mountain flowers, the other some stalks of pale green oats.
‘You should get on the right side of Kyria Anastasia,’ Charmian says as we head back to the tables. ‘I’ve told her you’re my god-daughter. It’s a blessing if you can get them to pop your dinner in the bakery oven. A bit of meat, even a stringy old hen, and a few vegetables can be made splendid if it gets the slow-cook, a bit of seasoning, a slosh of wine. Just get it there any morning with your name on the tin and ask nicely.’ The lump in my throat is almost unbearable. ‘It’s the best way, simple and tasty,’ she says and I have to swallow hard before thanking her.
George pulls out a chair. She arranges the flowers in the water jug, but looks so sad while she’s doing it she might be tending a grave.
‘These are to celebrate the victory of the summer against winter,’ she says. ‘Tonight’s the night the women and girls will be at home making wreaths because it’s May Day tomorrow when everyone celebrates the blooming of nature and the birth of summer.’
‘Meanwhile all the blokes are out in the taverns getting a bootful,’ George says as he pours the wine. ‘But these are pre-Christian traditions and there’s a day off for the workers.’ He raises his glass, ‘I’m all for workers, so here’s to them,’ and downs it in one gulp.
‘Maios is the goddess of fertility,’ Charmian says, arranging the green stems among the spiky blue flowers.
George refills his glass and raises it once more. ‘And with Maios we celebrate the victory of life over death,’ he says.
Charmian sloshes wine to her own glass, ‘Yes, I’ll drink to that,’ and clinks it to his. ‘And to you, George.’ She pauses a moment with her glass in the air, and their eyes lock. ‘To better times ahead.’ When she turns away her eyes are bright with tears. ‘This winter we didn’t know that he would make it, so I’m all for giving thanks,’ she says and lays a hand across his. He draws her face to his shoulder and rests his cheek on the top of her head.
Jimmy and the others have pulled their chairs up to Göran’s table and I can hear snorts of laughter. ‘Skål’, ‘Yamas’, ‘Cheers’.
I’m transfixed by Charmian and George, the way her head fits his shoulder, the side of his face her head. I imagine them asleep like this, brain to brain, heart to heart, two souls moulded as one in warm clay.
I must’ve been staring because Charmian returns to our conversation with a blink and a nervous laugh, tells me of the young island girls who will rise before the sun and walk to the wells with their flowers.
‘It’s a slightly different ceremony in other parts of Greece but here they’ll fill the flower vases with the “water of silence” from the sweet wells and return to their homes without uttering a word,’ she says.
For reasons I can’t fathom, Jimmy and Bobby are now doing handstands on the flagstones while the others clap and call out. ‘Someone should fill their vases with the water of silence,’ I say. Jimmy’s walking on his hands, his body bent like a scorpion coming in for the sting, and they cheer him ever closer to the harbour’s edge.
George grimaces. ‘That poet of yours should join the bloody circus.’
Charmian sighs, continues. ‘Later, they’ll wash using the same water and make a wreath from the flowers which they’ll keep on the door until Midsummer’s Day. It’s one of the few remaining festivals that isn’t associated with the orthodoxy,’ she says.
‘Gosh, that’s lovely …’ I picture myself as a silent somnambulist, a flowing white gown, my arms laden with virginal blooms. ‘Maybe I should climb to the wells before dawn,’ I say, ‘I like that idea,’ and Charmian gives me a fond smile that seems to say, ‘That’s my girl,’ and George calls for more wine.
Charmian is talking about Kalymnos again, with the wistful air of one recalling another lifetime, though it’s only been five years since they were there. She speaks softly, dreamily, of villagers climbing through the mist to the peak of the island. Like silent pilgrims they ascend and with their vessels of water they wait for the sun. ‘Can you imagine, Erica? Shepherds, sponge-divers, fishermen all ranged together at the top of the mountain with their fistfuls of asphodel held aloft, all worshipping Apollo …’
The lights flicker on and off three times along the port. Fifteen minutes until the generators are cut. Women call for their children from side streets, a flurry of men trundle heaped wooden carts along the waterfront, fish-boxes are hurriedly stacked at the mole for the night boats. There’s only the faintest sliver of a moon in the west and the art students take off for the Tombazi Mansion before the island is plunged into darkness.
George gazes at her, ‘Oh darling, yes. It was lovely. If only my lungs weren’t bloody buggered I’d climb Eros with you tonight,’ and again Charmian looks like she might cry.
We move inside for the light and crowd around six tables facing the players in the back room.
Charmian is still in her dream. ‘And once Apollo has risen from the sea, it’s the silent descent and your house blessed for a year by the flowers you bring back from the mountain for a wreath … oh, how alive our ancestors were, and even the first few years here we all kept it up.’ She looks downcast once more, pulls a few strands of hair across her face. ‘We used to climb Mount Eros, a great gang of us. Now, even my children have given up joining in.’
The lamps are lit with small blue flames and one of the bouzouki players starts to strum. I grab my opportunity. ‘I’ll come with you,’ I say, though the idea of such a long climb is horrific. ‘Please say yes, I’d really love to.’
‘Goodness, Erica, what a little pagan you are,’ Charmian says.
‘What a top idea,’ says George, rubbing his hands.
‘I suppose I do have much to thank the gods for, and it’s always nice to have company …’ Charmian
looks at George with laughing eyes. ‘Oh, why not?’ she says, making butterflies whirl in my stomach.
I drink more wine. The air is thick with smoke and the smell of aniseed and garlic and cooking fish. Some of us join in as village men rap their knuckles in time to the bouzoukis, the night waiter runs back and forth and Andonis is up and down the ladder refilling jugs from the barrels. Jimmy dances the tsambikas with the fishermen; at each end of the line a white handkerchief flutters. As the music grows faster he attempts to keep pace with their nimble feet and the look of concentration on his face makes me scream with laughter.
Edie and Janey haul Bobby to the floor and Charmian calls out, ‘Hey, any of you lazy toads fancy a hike up Mount Eros tonight?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding. It’s miles,’ Bobby says.
Janey pulls a face at the others. ‘I’ve got a splinter in my heel that won’t come out.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity,’ Charmian says with a sudden wicked flare. ‘Our Canadian friend will be so disappointed.’
It’s four in the morning; the night has turned moonless. We meet at the wells with our duffels and flasks. Leonard brings bread, some wine in straw caskets. There’s music from goat bells above the dark houses. Charmian has a tartan rug thrown over one shoulder. She and Leonard both wear proper walking boots.
Janey appears to have forgotten all about her splinter as she and Edie dance between the mulberry trees. They wear matching white turtlenecks with black scarves wound around faces as innocent as nuns. Jimmy sits on a low wall peeling an orange he’s taken from a tree in the square.
‘Well done, you lot. I’m glad you’ve got blankets. It can get chilly in the early hours at the summit,’ Charmian says.
Leonard pulls up the collar of his jacket and shivers. Smiling, she shows him the spare rug in her knapsack. Leonard winds the well handle and she bends to fill two battered tin canteens with water from the bucket, takes my flask and fills it too, still talking to him over her shoulder.