A Theatre for Dreamers

by Polly Samson

  Walking bent over makes it easier to climb the steps but my mouth is filling with acid drool. I spin around, willing myself not to vomit, and look for the cure beyond the jagged orange geometry of roof and wall, but the vastness of the sea’s glitter hurts my eyes and the bruise-coloured folds of the mainland look like they’re made out of lumps of my brother’s old plasticine. I think of him looking at me from the mattress, his eyes without light. I reshoulder the ice. The weight of his misery almost makes me buckle.

  Of course, Edie and Janey have now joined the ranks of those who must be left to sleep. Beauty sleep, I think, with the tide of bitter water rising once more. On this island of painters, how come not a single person ever asks me to sit for them? Edie and Janey are in constant demand up at the art school, earning a few drachmas, sometimes posing late into the night. Disrobing and lying around comes naturally as breathing to the pair of them. I swallow hard, tell myself I only care that they still do their share of the tasks. The church bells are too loud, discordant, like children banging wooden spoons on saucepans; the ice a clammy cold burden.

  There’s no sign of Bobby or the girls when I get back. Jimmy has lit the Primus and is waiting for the coffee to boil. He’s absently walking up and down in his shorts and yellow T-shirt, biting into an apple and reading Charmian’s Simone de Beauvoir book. He puts the book down when he sees me, holds the apple between his strong teeth and unropes me from the ice. He soaks some pieces of sponge and leads me outside to the shadiest part of the terrace. ‘Poor baby,’ he says as he lowers me to the mats. He presses the icy water to my hot face, shushes me.

  ‘Bobby’s OK,’ he says. ‘Give him time. At least there’s plenty of that here.’

  He fetches hot coffee sweetened with NouNou and peels me some oranges. We talk about Marianne; it feels vital that I hear him condemn Axel, and he duly agrees, but says he’s read Axel’s book about the Sahara and it’s quite possible the man is a genius. ‘She’ll be all right, pretty woman like that,’ he says, and winks and taps his nose as though he knows something I don’t.

  All this kindness just makes it worse to think about Bobby upstairs, so miserable alone on that mattress, and no mother to run to. Jimmy takes my head into his lap and strokes the hair from my temples.

  Sad thoughts wash over me. I think of the first time I saw Marianne, her white shawl and baby, a radiant Madonna with her dashing husband at the tiller, the red and white boat. I replay my visit to her house with Charmian. Marianne on her hands and knees, making the stones and wires of Axel’s mobile spin and bob, ‘Clever pappa,’ the rope that he’d tied between her rocking chair and the cradle, a bowl of radishes that lay waiting, each one carved into a rose. I see her bleeding feet, her ruined blouse, Axel kissing Patricia. For once Jimmy is content to sit still. I open my eyes and look up at him. The sun is filtered through the almond tree and his eyes glint as gold as my mother’s eighteen-carat wedding ring. ‘Tell me you’ll never be cruel,’ I say and he sits there and rakes back my hair until I fall asleep.

  I am cured by my sleep beneath the old almond tree and the sweet slices of melon that Jimmy brings when I wake. The songs of the cicadas seem romantic once again. The promise of the afternoon, just the two of us on the beach at Plakes, is restorative, as is aspirin. It’s as though the morning has broken anew as we pack our bathing suits and towels into my basket.

  The ferry is due in half an hour. Jimmy is expecting a letter from a friend of a friend of a literary agent and if he’s lucky a cheque from his mother. I still live in hope of some word from my father.

  ‘You’ll have to write to him, to ask permission to marry me,’ I say, as we smooch to the radio.

  ‘I’d better find out what sort of a dowry he’s offering first.’ Jimmy tickles my ear and I push away the thought that Mum’s post-office savings won’t last forever as Brenda Lee sings of sweet nothin’s.

  The blazing bougainvillea, the whitewash, the noonday sun. It’s too much for our eyes. I’ve filched Edie’s Jackie Kennedy sunglasses; Jimmy looks like Jean-Paul Belmondo in his Wayfarers.

  We arrive at Katsikas hand in hand, order sardines. ‘Good morning, dewy youths,’ Charmian says with a throaty chuckle and I feel bad that I let Jimmy talk me out of The Second Sex. Instead he’s given me his collection of Sartre’s stories. ‘He’s the better writer.’ Intimacy has a vampish woman on the cover but at least it’s pleasingly slim.

  She picks up my book and turns to the first story.

  Leonard smiles when he sees it.

  ‘I suppose you read it in the original French,’ Jimmy says, and I see a brief flare in his eyes that might be envy as Leonard inclines his head in affirmation and strikes a match for his cigarette. Though not boastful, Leonard gives off an unmistakable air of a man who has always been there before you. He possesses that old-soul thing of wisdom more ancient than his body and his face. He also has beautiful Lena beside him. She takes the cigarette from his lips, puts it between her own. Yesterday Lena was a painter from Sweden, fresh from the ferry; today they seem acquainted well enough for her to be wearing his amber komboloi as a bracelet.

  Charmian unsuccessfully stifles a snort as she reads out loud from the Sartre. ‘A woman doesn’t have a right to spoil her life for some impotent,’ and puts her hand to her mouth as George hoves into view. She closes the covers, regains her composure. ‘These are terribly good. I remember this title story “Intimacy” especially. Some of what I was so incoherently saying last night about choices and freedom is debated marvellously well in this story. Do read it, Erica.’

  ‘Well, that was some bloody evening,’ George is saying as he comes from the cigarette shop. Overnight he seems to have gained in stature. He’s a good head taller than anyone else and walks like a gunslinger, a cigarette pasted to his under-hung lip. Charmian calls to Nikos Katsikas to bring him a drink.

  ‘I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there, George,’ she says. She lowers her voice to include only me and Jimmy, widens her eyes. ‘We had quite a scene after you left. Axel turned up and wanted to fight George. And once George had seen him off I almost had to tie Marianne down to stop her running after him. I dread to think what that maniac’s capable of doing when he’s in one of his rages. Patricia’s left the island, thank Christ, but to think Marianne could’ve married Sam Barclay and sailed the world on that splendid boat of his.’

  Patricia has left the island. That is good news. I look around me, at the tables and their chattering groups, a hundred dramas unfolding. I love this time of day with everyone here, the chink of coffee cups and sudden bursts of laughter, the familiar cats, even the donkeys seem to gossip amid the traffic of working men, trundling carts, the stalls of fish and pyramids of fruit, the women with their baskets. There’s lightness, hope, good humour, beneath the noonday sun, a frisky air of anticipation at who or what might drift ashore. There are so many more awnings now than when we first arrived. Dark blue ones, and stripes, and beneath them tables stretching all the way to the ferry dock where any of our wildest dreams might disembark.

  Panayiotis has brought his pretty young wife with him to drink cold orangeade and Charmian trots over to ask after her mother’s health while Jimmy engages Panayiotis in an excitable conversation about catching a shark which involves more miming than words. Panayiotis’s wife has her white headscarf crossed at the chin in the traditional Greek way, but her eyes are as carefully painted as any teenage girl. She laughs behind her hands as Jimmy gets carried away doing his shark impression.

  A plump woman in a voluminous blue shirt-waister is being led across the harbour on a sagging donkey with blue reins. She holds a blue parasol at a haughty angle, but her steed lets her down with a dump right in front of us and her donkey-boy has to go back with his shovel. George is struggling not to laugh. ‘Good to have you back, Katerina,’ he calls and she waves to him before clapping her hands at the boy to hurry.

  ‘Everything blue in her house, every pot, jug, even the linen, all blue a
gainst the evil eye,’ he says and hacks away coughing and laughing telling us a story. Apparently Marc Chagall had the cheek to fill two pages of her visitors’ book. ‘She was incensed, ripped them out and threw them on the fire, didn’t have a clue who he was because she only had eyes for Princess bloody Margaret and assumed the doodling little foreigner was a lackey from the boat Her Royal Highness sailed in on.’

  All around me people are chattering, as though every trouble has faded and disappeared with the moon. George’s sunny good mood is barely dulled by the sight of a near-naked Jean-Claude Maurice. Jean-Claude has sensibly chosen a spot three coffee houses along. He has his feet on the chequered plastic tablecloth and his gaze flicks quick as a lizard’s tongue from Trudy, who wears a crown of yellow marguerites in her red hair, to a German girl blancmanging out of a playsuit towards him from a yacht.

  George picks up my Sartre stories, grunts and turns to Leonard. ‘I take it that popinjay over there has bored you shitless with his pointless bloody tales of hanging around at Les Deux Magots with the author. I try not to let it affect my reading of his texts,’ he says and Leonard splutters into his coffee. George plays around, maligning Jean-Claude until his own laughter is overtaken by coughing and his handkerchief.

  Leonard shoots a glance at Jean-Claude and returns to the book of stories that everyone but me appears to have read.

  ‘The thing about Sartre is that he’s never lost his mind. He represents a wonderful Talmudic sense of human possibility, but I know he’s never going to say, “And then the room turned to gold.” He’ll say, “The room turned to shit.”’ He leans across to offer a bang to George’s back, continues: ‘But the room sometimes does turn to gold and, unless you mention that, your philosophy is incomplete.’ He looks at me from beneath his sixpenny cap and when I don’t respond gives me an awkward smile and returns to Lena’s conversation with Göran, despite it being in Swedish.

  Charmian watches George stuff away his handkerchief and pours him a glass of water. George waves it away and lights a cigarette. Sofia brings the sardines and the cats follow every forkful with orphan eyes.

  For once George has an appetite and he picks at Jimmy’s ambitions to be a writer in much the same way as he takes to the fish on his plate.

  Jimmy says, ‘Let me show you some pages,’ and his eyes are as hungry as the cats’.

  Charmian smiles at him, as one might at a child who charmingly believes in fairies. ‘So many of the young people who come here to write and paint end up frittering their talent away. That is, if they have any talent to fritter.’

  Jimmy hardens his jaw. ‘I have talent,’ he says. ‘And I get more work done here than I ever did in London.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to wrestle with the muses on their home turf you’d better be good and don’t be surprised if you come away with a bloody nose,’ George says, and a look passes between him and Charmian that speaks of a thousand old bruises.

  The stage is emptying as people trail off to the post office or back to their houses or to the rocks, to seek inspiration or love or to swim.

  Jimmy and I buy bread, wine and peaches and a pat of goat’s cheese. The sun is beating and we detour to the pharmacy for sun cream. Inside Rafalias’s the blue glass bottles are ranged on carved wooden cabinets, beneath a Venetian ceiling. A plaster bust of Hippocrates demands silence. We see Marianne and Axel stride past the door in matching blue-striped shirts, the sun in their hair and the little white dog trotting behind. Marianne laughs at something Axel says, and buries her cheek in his shoulder. Axel is carrying a window frame, his hands wrapped in bandages. In several places the pale-green painted wood is broken and splintered, jags of glass wink from old putty. Marianne clutches a wrecked chair beneath her arm. We walk behind them through the lanes to Francisco’s workroom. They don’t stop talking all the way.

  Fourteen

  The Vespers are ringing. The island grows mellow in the evening sun. Though I usually go barefoot, I’m wearing sandals and, instead of my shorts, the Capris that I’ve recently had Archonda take in so they fit like a second skin. I’ve washed and rinsed my hair with well water and my skin is glossy with olive oil. I’ve given more thought than usual to my clothes. My Aertex shirt I washed and ironed especially and I’ve helped myself to Edie’s shell-pink lipstick. It isn’t without shame that the prospect of finally meeting mad Axel Jensen thrills me.

  I climb to the top road, up the twisting steps that rise between ever more tumbledown houses, some lots marked only by rubble and boulders clad in vines, occasionally a brave bread oven or a chimney left standing where nature reigns. Crumbling stone walls host fig trees and passion fruit, sudden clear vistas to the sea, wild squashes and capers, a family of kittens. The low sun burnishes every tuft and seed head softest gold and releases the scent of night jasmine. From above, a donkey is playing its violin of a face at me and I clamber up the loose wall to its tether and scratch all the places it tells me are itching.

  It’s Marianne I’m visiting, not him – at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Marianne mentioned a woman who might sell me some leaves for a tea to cure Bobby’s depression and I’ve spent all day making a little dancing Dutchman for baby Axel. It’s electrifying to think of big Axel’s eyes on me; there was something about the way he held Patricia when he kissed her that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Her long hair falling, her body fluid in his arms, as though she were fainting and dissolving with desire. I will have to try not to touch him. I might get a shock.

  I hope baby Axel Joachim will like the dancing Dutchman. I cut it from card and Bobby let me use his paints for a red, green and black harlequin’s costume. I jointed him with knots and threads, and put a bead on the end of the cord that makes him jig, like Mum used to do for us. Bobby only grunted when I showed him but I think it’s pretty good.

  I can hear voices from the terrace while I’m still climbing the path through the trees and almost turn back due to shyness, but the little white dog shoots out of the gate barking and giving me away.

  Lamps have been brought outside, insects buzz in the haze, the sun has left a sky streaked with purple welts. Marianne sits motionless in her rocking chair, the others positioned like handmaidens or nurses, Charmian talking, Nancy stroking Marianne’s hand. Patrick Greer is stooped over administering wine.

  A woman in an emerald silk tunic comes shushing the dog with baby Axel Joachim in her arms. ‘Hi, you! I’ve seen you before,’ she says, rocking the baby to and fro while he pulls at her necklace. ‘You and your English crowd. But why do you never come and have fun at the marine club?’ The baby is tugging a chunk of her carved jade pendant to his mouth and I recognise her as Magda, the Czech woman who charged Jimmy a fortune for two beers at Lagoudera. Magda’s perfume is strong enough to be heady. She is chatting about all the famous people who have sailed in to dance at the bar. ‘Henry Fonda, Princess Margaret, Melina Mercouri …’

  Patrick Greer lurches over with the bottle. He’s wagging his schoolmaster’s finger at Magda to interrupt. ‘It’s that Babis Mores taking pictures of all the starlets for the society columns. Oh dear Jesus, that’s what they come here for; I’m telling you, it’s obscene. Babis’s camera. To be is to be seen. And now your damned nightclub and its loudspeakers are destroying this place.’

  ‘Oh never mind,’ I say, hiding the baby’s present behind my back. ‘Maybe I’d better return tomorrow.’

  Magda snatches the glass that Patrick is offering to me. If it weren’t for the baby I think she might throw it at him.

  ‘This island needs tourism and I need to feed my son,’ she says, jiggling the baby who whinges louder as she untangles his fingers from her necklace.

  Charmian gives Marianne’s arm a small shake. ‘I think the little man needs his bed,’ she says, but Marianne gives no indication of having heard her. She’s flopped into the rocker as though she’s been flung there.

  Magda is glaring at Patrick and such irritated jiggling is not working on the
baby, who has left a dark trail on her emerald silk breast. I reach to take him. His cheeks are reddened with spit and he is gnawing at his fist.

  Charmian sweeps a lamp from the table. ‘Poor little blighter. Teething and hungry and tired all at the same time.’ She motions for me to follow her inside. ‘Let’s see what we can do. I don’t think Marianne’s in any fit state.’

  The room bears few scars of recent battle. A ring of fresh vine leaves wreathes the water jar. Yards of lace catch the breeze at the missing window. Charmian’s lantern makes water pitchers of flowers dance across the walls and we see that the bookshelves are now almost empty of books, an arrangement of broken pottery and icons lies behind a brushwood broom, a guitar that had been hanging at the foot of the stairs is gone. The moon is a ghostly face through the lace veils of the empty window frame. Charmian lights the stove and sets a pan of water to boil.

  I don’t seem to be any better than Magda at comforting poor Axel Joachim. Charmian takes him and almost immediately his crying subsides and he lays his head to her bosom. She looks so soft in the lamplight with the baby in her arms. Some sort of lovely music is playing in her head that makes her sway her hips as she finds the bottle and the teat and drops them in the water.

  She’s dancing with the baby and fixing his milk, shaking a drop on to her wrist which sets him clamouring, and at the same time talking to me. ‘It’s all been terribly emotional for poor Marianne. Lots of tears as he sailed away, though she’s the one who told him to bugger off. Now she seems to be in some sort of a trance.’

  I follow her upstairs. ‘Seriously. Axel’s upped and left her?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He pushed her until she had no choice, really. It was pretty awful at the dock, the baby screaming blue bloody murder and Marianne falling to her knees, every inch of her begging the bastard to stay while all the time she was yelling at him to go. He was keen to get the wind in his sails, I’ll tell you that. This way he can always say it was she who sent him away. She says he may sail back to Oslo.’