by Polly Samson
Bobby, squatting in front of me, stops trawling. A shout goes up from the table as Jimmy lays down a winning hand and throws himself back against the cushions.
‘You’ve got a cool cat in Jimmy, maybe that’s enough for you for now,’ Bobby says, looking up at me. ‘What do you reckon?’ I try to smile as Jimmy holds up a fistful of drachmas and says, ‘Baby, we’re rich!’
‘There you go,’ Bobby says. ‘Seriously, Erica. You’re a kid. You’re lucky that Mum left you enough not to worry for a while.’
It’s hard to make him understand what I mean, only that I feel like something amorphous, a lump of clay that’s been taken from dank storage but must find its own shape in the sun. I tell him about Mum always saying that the world was my oyster and panicking because inside an oyster would be a terrible place to be. I knew, particularly while she lay dying, that there were things she wanted for me, choices I could make that were different from her own, but as she never found the words it was hard to give any sort of shape to them.
‘I spent all that time while she was in bed. That might have been the time to talk about what I should do with my life, or at least to be honest about her own.’
‘Well, look at all this.’ Bobby gestures to Jimmy and beyond to the sky and the sea. ‘It’s not so bad, is it, doll?’
The sun is beating down on the terrace, the unbroken blue of the sky is at odds with my restlessness. Across the ravine I can hear the children in the playground of the Down School chanting their alpha-beta.
I lower my voice because I don’t want Jimmy to overhear. He and Marty have started a new game. Double or quits. ‘You’re right, Bobby, maybe it’s enough to live somewhere beautiful with someone who is talented. But yesterday, talking to Marianne, and knowing what we do of Axel’s behaviour, well, I don’t know. And now Charmian’s to be exposed as an adulteress by George! Did I tell you that?’
Bobby starts to laugh. ‘Those two women don’t make being a muse look at all amusing, do they?’ And I give him an exasperated kick.
‘Anyway, Charmian’s a man-eater, you can see it in her eyes,’ he says, returning my pretend-kick with a pinch.
I rub my arm. Bobby’s pinches are always less playful than perhaps he intends. I skitter on, eyes smarting.
‘I know you don’t like me talking about all this, but it makes me scared that we didn’t really know Mum, and sometimes I can’t help getting this wobbly feeling, do you know what I mean?’
He grimaces and shakes his head. I start to wish I could find the brakes.
‘It’s like that half-fledged starling we once brought home from Kensington Gardens. Do you remember?’ He sighs, still shaking his head. ‘You and just about everyone else on this island, you’re all flying.’ I gesture to the easels, the boxes of paints, the jars of brushes. ‘I don’t even write anything much any more. I’ve no idea what I should do or if I’ll ever be any good, and sometimes I just wish Mum was here …’
My eyes start to sting. ‘And the starling was always going to die because, for all the worms and whatnot we found, and the teat pipette, only its mother could teach it to fly.’
Bobby is silent. I watch the shadows return to his face and regret spoiling our day. Eventually he stands up and growls at me, ‘I don’t know why you worry. We’re all going up in a giant mushroom cloud anyway,’ and lumbers inside for a beer.
I head down to Johnny Lulu’s for more beer because I happen to know Jimmy drank the last one. It’s the least I can do after snivelling like that. Besides, it’s my turn to cook and Charmian’s friend Creon has promised me a salami. I’m getting good at ferreting out the island’s secret stashes of treats, especially since Jimmy’s been so inspired and it’s so often my turn to sort out a meal.
An old grapevine tumbles over a wall to the street, its leaves young and tender, just begging to be wrapped around meat and spices for dolmades, if only I knew how. Axel and Patricia come towards me, hand in hand, and I take the butcher’s alley, find a shadow and flatten myself to the wall. Patricia’s hair is wet and drips on to the front of her shirt. A tabby cat winds around my shins and I am glad to have an excuse to duck down and stroke it while keeping them in sight.
Patricia is tiny, with a powerful walk. She gesticulates with her free hand, the wet parts of her shirt cling and she isn’t wearing a bra. Axel cleaves so close to her you wouldn’t get a fishing line between them. They look lively together, their conversation urgent.
Patricia stops him just short of the alley. He turns and gathers her hair into a wet bunch.
‘This is where we part company,’ she says and he looks at her for what feels to me an excruciatingly long time. He does not relinquish her hair. She is large-eyed as a child.
He winds the rope of hair around his hand as he speaks. ‘You have no idea how my little wife is torturing me …’ I strain to hear what he’s saying. ‘Tonight she cooks fårikål. Her big black cauldron of mutton and cabbage has been simmering all day on the charcoal. She knows it’s my favourite dish. Every Norwegian man is beckoned by the sorcery in that vapour but tonight I shall hold my nose.’
He laughs like it’s a joke and lets her hair fall. Patricia remains serious, her eyes ever more shimmery. Axel is blond and spry, a man with the looks of a spoilt boy. His collar is neat and his hair springs from a firm side parting, the sort that a nanny would make with a metal comb.
Patricia is gulping back tears. ‘I’ll say it again until you hear me, Axel. You cannot leave your baby son because you’ve met me. You can’t break your life into pieces.’ The tabby cat is pulling at the salami in my basket but I can’t shoo it away without drawing attention to myself.
Axel is shaking his head. ‘But neither can I stay drowning in her passivity,’ he says, and he puts a finger to Patricia’s lips. ‘I will leave them knowing I’m the biggest bastard that ever walked the earth. But leave I shall.’ His voice starts to crack and then he’s got her hair again and he starts kissing her without giving a monkey’s who sees him do it. The tabby cat lashes out as I retrieve my basket and scamper away, cursing and licking blood from the back of my hand, running to Charmian as fast as a child in need of a plaster to its mother.
Eleven
Charmian and George’s house stands solid as a judge where five sets of narrow lanes and steps convene at the town well. As usual there’s a huddle of women in the cobbled square, a parliament dressed all in black, quenching things other than thirst since the well offers only brackish water. Bougainvillea bursts from a pot in the most passionate of pinks beside the front door. I fly through the salon to the cool green of the kitchen where Zoe is rolling out pastry, Booli beside her, brown and naked but for his pants.
‘Is Charmian here?’ I’m panting and Zoe eyes me with alarm. She points to the ladder but makes a cutting motion at her throat. Booli sees her do it and chuckles. I ignore her and tear around to the side door, gallop up the stone steps and through to the hall where Max is slumped. He thumps his tail on the rug while I listen for the sound of the typewriter but hear only tiny bells and pattering feet as a string of donkeys goes by in the street. I leave Max to his longings and climb the narrow wooden steps to the studio.
I run my eyes around the room. No Charmian. Only George slumped at the table with an unlit briar pipe drooping from his mouth. I see the words ‘FUCK VIRGINIA WOOLF’ in bold capitals pinned among the pictures on his corkboard, balls of screwed-up paper at his feet, a world globe grown dusty on the bookcase beside him. George’s fingers have ploughed furrows through his hair. He turns and for an instant his tired eyes light up within their heavy square frames. He pats his knee as though expecting me to sit on it and barks with laughter.
The door to the terrace is wide open and, thank goodness, there she is. She is silhouetted against the light, one hand to the terrace wall as she blows smoke out to sea. She turns when she hears him, comes flying through the door with a wail like a cat with its fur on end.
‘Erica!’
I rock back a step. He
r fury could burn me. A black and white photograph shakes in her hand.
I look from her to the picture she is thrusting towards us. It’s a stark portrait of a small girl, a Chinese waif with round starving eyes beneath a blunt-cut fringe. She’s scrap and bone in a filthy torn dress, like a rag doll that’s been flung into the dirt.
‘What in Christ’s name can you possibly want, Erica?’ I jumble my words – Axel, Patricia – my voice shaking. Charmian flings the photograph to George’s desk.
‘This,’ she says, stabbing her finger at it, ‘only this.’ George buries his head in his hands and, before I’ve had a chance to pull myself together, she picks up a book from the table and cries, ‘It doesn’t help having you standing there gawping at us!’ The book comes flying, pages splaying, and lands with a dusty thump at my feet. She’s still yelling as I stagger away, things like: ‘I’m sick of the way you act around him, when he’s got so much bloody work to do.’ And: ‘Piss off, and don’t come back.’
I’m almost home but here’s Bobby lurching down the steps towards me, two full goatskins of water swinging from the wooden yoke. ‘I gave up waiting for the beer,’ he says. It’s too late to dry my eyes and he gives me a withering look. ‘Whatever now?’ His T-shirt is dark with sweat from carrying the water.
I shoulder the door to the house, too ashamed to tell him what just happened, though Charmian’s roaring is fresh in my ears. I move out of his way to let him pass. The water-skins bump like fat carcasses. I reach into my basket to show him the beer. It received a good shaking-up as I scarpered from Charmian’s and explodes when I open it. I confess only to my eavesdropping and what I overheard Axel say to Patricia. I tell him my tears are for poor Marianne.
Bobby grabs the beer and cuffs the side of my head. He takes a swig and grunts before heaving a water-skin above his shoulder.
‘Why do you always have to get so wound up about something that’s none of your business?’ The water thumps into the Qupi. I want to kick him but daren’t. Instead I escape to my room and bury myself beneath the bedspread.
Out of the dark they come, the stark raving faces, all screaming at me and distorted as melting wax. First Charmian, her eyes burning absinthe. The book flies from her hand and my father comes looming behind her, rage boiling his face – ‘Get out! Go away and don’t come back!’ – and then Bobby led by his uncontrollable fists, Bobby hurling stones while my mother wears a mask of Pan-Cake and lipstick. A pink powder puff explodes on the carpet. Her hands cover my eyes but behind them Charmian jabs at me with her picture and the little Chinese girl lies broken in rags, eyes luminous with hunger.
After a while I’m nothing but a big baby crying for my mother and that’s how Jimmy finds me. Jimmy Jones starts working his magic, pulling away the covers and replacing the nightmare faces with his own, his lips soft and warm with promises. He bounces until the bedsprings are singing and I agree to stop being a misery-guts and go with him to the hills to gather flowers for our headdresses for the party tonight.
Our costumes are not fit for the eyes of the port so we climb the back steps and alleys and across to the Tombazi Mansion with me trying not to let Charmian throw a shadow over everything. The moon shines like a dented shilling above the mountains and Jimmy looks more godlike than earthly beneath his garlands of vines and tiny pomegranates but still he has to chivvy me all the way. He keeps his fingers laced through mine as we climb. I shush him because I don’t want the others to hear of my banishment. Janey and Edie wear duster coats over their outfits, their eyes huge with false lashes. There’s not a chance they’d understand why Charmian matters so much to me. I barely understand it myself.
Bobby leads the way, a makeshift Jason with a bare torso and a pale curly fleece slung over one shoulder. Just before we arrive he pulls me to his chest, calls me ‘doll’ and mumbles that he’s sorry he snapped. I sniff back my tears, catch the reek of the fleece’s original occupant.
‘Tell me I’m not an annoying mosquito,’ I say and he grunts, ‘Only sometimes,’ and pretends to swat me away. I feel a bit better. I don’t think we’ve hugged since we left London.
The pistachio tree in the courtyard of the painting school is hung with paper lanterns, the path to the door lit by jars of candles. The grey and white chequerboard of the grand marbled hall is silky smooth beneath our feet. Some sort of birdman and a black-clad nymph with tulle wings fly past jingling with bells. Someone is bashing away at the piano and Edie and Janey scoot off to find Trudy to present her with her birthday gown.
The room is jumping with shadows and thick with incense. Pushed to the wall is a long table where monastery candles drip into the eye sockets of goat skulls, arranged between plates of food and jugs of wine. Incense burns from nose cavities, red roses bloom along each chalky jaw, mounds of jellies in poisonous reds and greens pulsate and glimmer; there are bowls of little fried squid, trays of tiny dolmades, lamb chops, olives stuffed with anchovies, baskets of bread, and in a great heap at the centre a pyramid of honey cakes sprinkled with candied rose petals. Bobby dives in, sloshes wine to our beakers. At the piano, the ex-paratrooper Charlie Heck starts up a new tune.
Out of the shadows springs a near-naked Jean-Claude Maurice in a paisley loincloth, his bare chest and legs streaked with gold paint, waving a fennel staff in his hand.
‘Look out, it’s Dionysus,’ Jimmy says.
‘More like a rutting old stag,’ Bobby scoffs and I join in their laughter but in truth I can’t pull my eyes from Jean-Claude. Is it true that Charmian had an affair with him? Jean-Claude’s gold paint highlights his muscles. He holds the fennel staff between his white teeth as he dances.
Marty – or Orion, as he insists we call him tonight – breaks in with a bellow. The colossal Texan holds up a dagger and shield, his belt studded with stars. Carl and Frank in bed-sheet togas run in with torches flaming and Charlie strikes up the ‘Happy Birthday’ tune on the piano as the birthday girl makes her entrance.
You would never guess that Trudy’s dress has been made from a faded old awning. From a wide sash the skirt sticks out in stiff pink layers; she sports a large rosette at one shoulder and looks ready to present to the Queen.
We sing to her and while Trudy does a twirl in her debutante gown, her handmaidens stand smirking, shamelessly lit by stolen thunder. They are swathed in nothing more substantial than old fishing nets and glitter. Janey has a modesty slip but Edie has evidently decided to do without. The fishing net gathers and falls in loops and folds; I guess it’s more revealing than even she intended. A few silver fish made of cigarette foils glint from the tips of Edie’s breasts as someone leaps forward to take a picture with a flashgun.
Bobby is scowling. He catches me looking at him and offers me a squid from his plate. It looks like a glistening Medusa beneath its crispy topknot but I’m hungry since the row with Charmian put me off eating earlier. I bite into it and gulp at my wine while Edie starts to move to the music. A gramophone twangs out rock and roll from the windowsill and Trudy’s skirts twirl as Jean-Claude spins her across the floor, though I guess most of us aren’t looking at Trudy at all but at Edie who is swaying her arms in the perfumed air and setting the little fish dancing.
Like a man in a trance with his eyes trained upon her, Leonard breaks away from a group in the corner. Bobby’s hand tightens around his beaker as, with a few deft dance steps, he comes towards her. Leonard’s shirt is open a couple more buttons than usual, but other than that he doesn’t appear to have dressed up.
The look on Bobby’s face I know of old and my heart starts to thump as his knuckles whiten. I whisper to Jimmy, ‘I think Bobby’s about to blow,’ and I scoot right up to Leonard whose hand is already on Edie’s shoulder. He turns and I guess he’s good at reading messages in faces.
He glances at Bobby, nods, and shuffles a step towards me. ‘Take my hand,’ he says, and his is a good hand to hold.
We jive a bit and dance the Madison and he leads me across the floor in a gentlemanly way and
then everyone’s doing the twist because it goes like this and the party spills out to the loggia. We rest our drinks on the carved marble balustrades and thank our lucky stars.
The fat moon gloats in the black glass of the harbour. Soon it will be time for Jimmy to run home and change into something more suitable for fishing. I’m only half-listening to him. He and Leonard and Göran are discussing love poetry but my attention has wandered. Marianne stands alone, filling her glass from a jug of wine. She downs first one and then a second glass. I can see her hand shaking as she pours a third.
She and Axel arrived late to the party, he in a full-length djellaba, she in her orange dress with some sort of jewel swinging at her forehead. I wanted to stop dancing and talk to her, I thought she might be able to explain why Charmian had lost her temper with me, but then it seemed that almost immediately she and Axel were having a shoving-each-other sort of a row and everyone was giving them a wide berth. Now she couldn’t look lonelier, standing at the balustrade looking out across the gulf.
Leonard hasn’t noticed Marianne yet. He’s too busy needling Jimmy, asking why he’s never written me a poem. ‘Women! Any woman acquaintance is worth a poem. Think about it: you find a girl, think she is exciting, but can’t seem to express yourself properly. The easiest way is to write your feelings down on paper.’
A sob sounds from across the arcade and he turns. Like a frightened cat, Marianne’s found the only dark space and is crouched with her face in her hands among a stack of easels.
Leonard pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and holds it out to her. He’s gentle and kind as he coaxes her from the shadows. He removes the glass from her hand and puts it down and remarkably soon has her tears turn to laughter as he dabs at her face. He takes her hand and as they pass I see that the diadem at her forehead is made out of the shell of a crab and sea glass and wire. He puts his jacket across her shoulders. ‘Come on, Marianne,’ he says and bids us all goodnight.