by Polly Samson
Cato needs drops put in his eyes and ears. Now his eyes are unglued he gazes up at us from a box at the foot of our bed, as love-struck as Titania waking from her dream. We stand there soppy as new parents over a crib.
Though it’s hard to tear ourselves away, we leave him with a mashed sardine and catch the tail-end of the candle-bearers solemnly intoning as they wind through the lanes from the monastery with the Admiral’s heart in its casket.
We foreigners gather at the tables in front of Katsikas and across the alley at Tassos. Many splendid yachts have been shoehorned into the harbour and there are uniformed stewards and tables on decks laid with silver service and napery.
Marianne and Leonard arrive with the baby in his pram. Demetri and Carolyn look on a little anxiously as their toddler enthusiastically lifts out baby Axel and totters around with him in her arms like a doll.
Behind the waterfront a small fire is being lit and, as the brushwood is set crackling, Charmian grasps Shane’s hands and mine and leads us towards it.
‘This one’s very much for the women,’ she’s saying. ‘You see how they’ve all brought their May Day wreaths from their doors? Ours fell to pieces or was plundered, as usual, or we would have brought it and cast it to the flames.’
The women start dancing around the fire, singing and throwing their dried flowers to the pyre. They have coins sewn on to their bodices and ribbons wound through their hair. Children are wetting their hair from a bucket and jumping through the flames and the women spin around faster, holding hands, while the men in their waistcoats slap out time with their palms and boots.
Back at the table, Big Grace is helping George to a refill. ‘Saint John’s fire: it’s a final bugger off to winter and disease,’ he tells her. ‘Oh, brother. I should bloody jump through it myself,’ he says.
Grace lays her beringed hand over his. ‘I’d advise you to do no such thing, my dear. You’ve played with quite enough fire for one lifetime …’ She looks pointedly at Charmian coming back out of breath and laughing, gripping Boo’s hand and shouting to Shane to take off her skirt in case it catches alight.
The town-crier is ringing his bell and everyone starts for the mouth of the harbour to watch the re-enactment. There’s cannon-fire, a megaphone, and Lefteris the baker in patriotic attire with flaming torch is being rowed out to a wooden boat that’s been stuffed to the gunnels with petrol and gunpowder. When Lefteris throws the torch he has to dive into the sea to escape the blast.
The streets become wild with firecrackers, everyone has stories of boys losing fingers and eyes; and men old enough to know better, with every cell of their bodies fizzing with arson, light fuses and run, and the high walls ring with explosions, every one of them making me shriek. Jimmy pulls me into Grafos’s taverna where platters of fried squid and stuffed peppers are already being served to smartly dressed Greek families but there isn’t a table for us.
Outside, beneath the ficus trees, Charmian is in the centre of a group. ‘Hey, what’s all this I’m hearing about George’s drugs being plundered?’ Big Grace is demanding to know.
Charmian stops laughing. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t think how else to get some antibiotics into the poor little blighter.’ The way Grace looks at us, we might have been mangy cats ourselves, though her general expression tends to bad smell, except when she’s talking to George about violence and war in the Old Testament.
‘Bloody wasting my medicine …’ George growls at us.
‘Oh, darling, they found the poor thing suffocating in a bag on a rubbish heap.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to do. To just throw a cat away like it’s any old household rubbish,’ Ruth Sriber says. ‘But I swear the cat population doubles every time we come here.’
Chuck and Gordon turn their chairs from the adjoining table where they’ve made claim to a recently arrived Beat professor of poetry, an Italian-American with the wide troubled smile of a clown.
‘Yia sou, Gregory, it’s good to see you here again,’ Charmian says as he jumps up to greet her. ‘We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye last year. The last I saw of you was just after sunrise, at Palamidas boatyard, and I called out but you seemed to be in some sort of a deep trance …’
I overhear George moan to Grace: ‘As usual my wife’s got more faggots around her feet than Joan of bloody Arc.’
‘Oh my God, but they never stop breeding.’ Gordon is still on about the cats. ‘Do you remember that time Jean-Claude Maurice couldn’t stand the sight of all the starving pussies any longer and he went to the pharmacy and got sleeping pills which he mashed up in food …’
At the mention of Jean-Claude’s name George stops talking and the air starts to crackle around him.
Chuck hasn’t noticed and takes up the story. ‘And then, because I happened to turn up to look at his paintings—’
Gordon interrupts. ‘To look at his paintings, you say?’
‘Mmmmm hmmmm. Obviously that divine body was on display too,’ Chuck replies, fluttering his hands to denote perfection. ‘Anyway, there were all these cats and kittens lying about and Jean-Claude was scooping them up with tears running down his face while he did it. Said he didn’t know if they were dead or sleeping. When he had filled the sack I went with him to the cliff. He put in two big rocks and by the way he was carrying on I thought he might hurl himself off after them.’
‘Bloody should have done.’ George can’t seem to help himself and Big Grace asks in an urgent and audible whisper, ‘What is the situation with the Frenchman this year? I take it he’s not here?’
‘Nature Boy has been and gone, thank Christ …’ George replies.
Charmian hasn’t yet caught on to the change in the weather. She’s too busy leaning down to hear whatever it is this Gregory is telling her.
George points a prosecuting finger straight at his wife. ‘Yes, Nature Boy’s departed but look at her now. Like a fucking great praying mantis …’
I almost choke on a mouthful of wine as Big Grace joins in. ‘She’s barely spoken to me since I got here. I’ve been wondering if I’ve offended her somehow, but I guess it’s always been men who turn her on, and not women like me.’ She throws a suffering glance Charmian’s way.
I can’t let her get away with it. ‘I’m not a man,’ I say. ‘And she always has plenty of time for me, and for my mother before me.’
Charmian seems to have caught the tailwind and snaps to attention.
‘Oh yes, my wife likes playing mother to little Ricky here,’ George announces, swaying and clearing his throat. Charmian flinches. He raises the volume. ‘Yeah, well there’s a bloody special reason for that, isn’t there, Charm?’
Charmian has lost the colour from her face, apart from her eyes which are astonishingly green. She reaches to steady herself on the back of Gregory Corso’s chair.
‘Don’t you dare, George,’ she hisses.
Again he clears his throat and she lurches to silence him, her hand raised to slap his face. Big Grace springs from her seat. Maybe I imagine that she snarls.
Charmian lets her hand fall and turns on her heel.
‘Yeah, off she goes like Lady bloody Macbeth …’ George jeers as she flees with a napkin pressed to her face.
‘Don’t worry, darling. Little Ricky of Bayswater is the only one letting a cat out of a bag today,’ he hollers after her.
Eighteen
There’s something of the exclusive club about the writers’ community and we’re a little nervous the first time we arrive at Chuck and Gordon’s. I’m all dressed up in one of the petticoats that Magda has started to sell behind Lagoudera, the bodice patterned with dye made from beetroots and onions and ruffled with lace she’s dipped in a tub of Indian tea. Jimmy wears his one and only tie loosely knotted, his best poem in the pocket of his trousers.
The rooms of Gordon Merrick’s house are like something from a magazine, with perfectly placed rugs and paintings and exotic objets he and Chuck have collec
ted on their travels. Through an archway lies a tantalising glimpse of warm polished boards and a lamp beside a velvet-canopied day bed, rose-coloured cushions, an entire glowing wall of leather-bound books. We barely linger, lured on by the scent of roasting lamb and rosemary, and in the courtyard Chuck trots over in his colourful shirt, demanding I twirl because he knows Magda made my dress.
Jimmy checks his pocket, yet again, for the dog-eared copy of Ambit with his dystopian poem on page eleven.
‘I can’t possibly read in front of Gregory Corso,’ he says, like he is some sort of mouse who’s been granted an audience with the king. According to him the clown-faced American is famous and has hung out with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and almost caused a riot with the Beats in Paris. We’re each of us shy for our own reasons. I am so much younger than anyone else here.
Chuck’s chestnut beard is neatly trimmed to a point and he dances around us with a jug of fresh mint julep, swooping us to Gordon who stands by the grill in his Maxim’s de Paris apron, spatula in hand. Jimmy asks if he’s read much of Corso’s work and the way Gordon inclines his head makes me realise that he must be slightly deaf. He smells of exotic oils, cocks his hand to his ear and moves closer to Jimmy. He has zero interest in me.
I’m relieved to see Charmian and George standing together. She’s in a fresh cotton blouse with blue and yellow dots, and he’s his usual bushfire of gossip and gasping and coughing.
His arm is around her waist and Charmian rests her head on his shoulder while he takes centre stage. There’s Göran, a brooding poet called Klaus, the playwright Ken and Janis with their sweet child, Leonard and Marianne. There are lanterns hanging from the trees. The widow Polymnia moves among us with bite-sized pastries of cheese and spinach and cocktail sausages on sticks.
‘Ah, Polymnia is like a mother to the boys,’ Charmian says, watching the widow, whose pinafore hangs from the vast dado of her bosom. I can see how Chuck might be described as a boy, being so small and lively, but not Gordon who looks semi-embalmed.
Polymnia is clucking around Greg Corso, serving him from a bowl of aubergine dip. I like the look of Corso; there’s mischief in that worn, torn, old, young face. Charmian says that he’d been on the streets as a kid and spent his youth in Clinton state prison. ‘It’s a tremendously upsetting story,’ she says. ‘But it was in prison that he found Shelley and that’s when he started to write …’
‘Quite typical Chuck and Gordon behaviour, I reckon, to suck up to the famous beatnik and invite only the published writers of the island,’ George says, speaking perfectly audibly from the side of his mouth.
‘Oh pfft, George. It is good of them to invite us, that’s all,’ Marianne replies, and adds with a giggle, ‘After all, what is it you think I have published?’
‘You qualify because of Axel,’ George says. ‘Any news, by the way?’ And when Marianne shakes her head Leonard mutters darkly under his breath.
George waves his glass around, indicating everyone.
‘Seems a bit rough to exclude Paddy Greer, poor sod, but please don’t think I’m so bloody rude that I criticise our hosts, in fact I’m very much in favour.’ He raises the glass in salute to Chuck and Gordon. ‘This way we’re shot of the bloody decadents for a night,’ he says and downs his drink to fuel his oncoming tirade.
‘Oh George, please …’ Charmian says, as he starts to gather pace.
‘They come to me sticking one hand out for a favour and with the other they’re thumbing their noses because they think I write commercial shit. Meanwhile, the Ruskies aren’t taking too kindly to being lied to by a president over the bloody U-2, we could be on the brink of atomic war, but does any of that ever enter their pleasure-seeking little noggins as they hop like bloody fleas from bed to bed?’
Leonard narrows his eyes at him through the smoke of a newly lit cigarette. I’m still angry with George for his cruelty to Charmian the other night. For once I find my tongue. ‘Why does it have to be a crime for a young person to spend some time, if they can afford to do so, just living somewhere peaceful for a while? Who are we hurting? I can’t say either of my parents made being in the rat race seem that appealing. And do you really think it would make a jot of difference if I joined a march to ban the bomb? I don’t see what harm I’m doing just dreaming a while or why I make you so angry …’
George couldn’t look more taken aback if Gordon’s cat had suddenly spoken. He starts cursing and letting go at me with a great torrent about how he’s pouring with sweat over the keys of his typewriter while everyone else is siesta-ing and playing around. His ranting is muddled in with stuff about the American spy plane, so anyone might think it was all my fault that guy has been caught red-handed by the Russians.
Charmian raises her voice above his, ‘George, I really think you might lay off for one night …’ but still he rages until Leonard leaps in and by force of pure charisma makes him stop.
‘If we assume the role of melancholy too enthusiastically, we lose a great deal of life …’ he starts while George growls, ‘There won’t be any life if there’s an atomic war.’ Leonard bows his head and continues, ‘Yes, there are things to protest against and things to hate but there are a vast range of things to enjoy,’ and he looks up and lets a warm smile settle on Marianne, ‘beginning with our bodies and ending with ideas … If we refuse those or if we disdain them, then we are just as guilty as those who live complacently.’
George’s entire face is harrumphing. ‘Tell me that still feels like the truth once you’ve tried to write your novel through the crazy season,’ and he grumbles on until, at last, Marianne distracts him by reaching up to plant a kiss on his cheek.
‘What a grumpy old moose you are tonight, George,’ she says as he lurches off for a refill and Charmian accompanies Greg Corso on Kyria Polymnia’s tour of Gordon’s house.
‘Little dumpling is with my neighbour’s daughter,’ Marianne says when I ask and for a moment she looks downcast and reaches for Leonard’s hand. ‘I haven’t left him before but sometimes I want to be free to join in.’
George returns and immediately starts mocking Gordon’s novels whilst simultaneously recommending Leonard read one.
‘I learnt everything I know about queer sex from his manuscripts,’ he says. ‘You know The Strumpet Wind was on the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks? I’m sure Gordy’s told you that himself by now … Sixteen damn weeks!’
The wine flows. Chuck brings out the gramophone and plays Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers while we eat at the petal-strewn table. The lamb is melting; Gordon claims he’s been turning and basting it for five hours, though I hear Charmian snort and say to George, ‘We all know it’s old Polymnia does the cooking.’
Greg Corso is sitting in a high carved chair at the head of the table, his face one broad smile, like a pixie-emperor on his throne. To his right Charmian, both of them talking so intently they barely find a moment to eat. From across the table I hear them quoting Keats and they match each other drink for drink. He’s telling her about a dream he’s had where he’s a prisoner in Red China and has to stack a jar containing an atom bomb on a shelf or die on the end of a bayonet. ‘So I stacked it and got caught in my infamous action by a million flashbulbs … What can it mean?’
Leonard seems as enthralled by the poet as Jimmy, though unlike Jimmy he isn’t awed into silence. He keeps leaning across Marianne to ask about the scene, about protest and performance, bop and cut-ups, about this poet they all find so impossibly interesting called Allen Ginsberg.
Charmian is following their conversation, and several times they speak over her when she tries to join in.
‘It’s all very well, but where are the women’s voices?’ she manages when, as luck would have it, both men simultaneously need to draw breath. ‘Why are there no female Beat poets?’
‘There are female Beats,’ Corso says with a fist to the table. ‘The trouble is their families have had them all locked up in institutions where they give them ele
ctric shocks.’
Later I wonder if he isn’t a bit of a show-off as he starts to riff about running on the Beat platform for President. Leonard plays along and they list all the people who’d vote him in: the Beats, the jazz musicians, the pot-smokers, the Italians, delivery boys and girls, poets, painters, dancers, photographers, architects, students, professors.
‘Even though I’ve had two felonies I’d be voted in,’ Corso continues. ‘America is essentially a Dadaistic country. Could you imagine anything more Dada than me as President?’
George catches the end of their skit. ‘So what you going to do about bloody Russia when you’re in command?’ he growls.
‘I’d go to Khrushchev with a stick of marijuana and together we’d lie down and listen to Bach as though we were dead to the world,’ Corso replies.
After dinner Chuck ushers us to the top terrace where we sink among low cushions. There’s a small stage that he’s constructed, swathed with tasselled red silk rugs. There are sticky honey cakes and proper pastry forks and Polymnia brings a tray of coffee served in delicate blue Sèvres cups and a bottle of French cognac. Corso reaches for the bottle, uncorks it and drinks deeply straight from its neck.
Leonard bets Jimmy he can’t do a handstand while maintaining the lotus position. Corso takes up the challenge but even with Charmian holding his knees he tumbles into the cushions. Before everything gets too rowdy Chuck leaps on to the stage and claps his hands. A kerosene lamp with a goose-neck stand lights the glow of pride as he speaks of the studio that wants to make a film of The Strumpet Wind.
‘So this, my island friends, is to be adieu, for now,’ he says with a curtsy and holds out a hand for Gordon.
Gordon has discarded his chef’s apron. He steps on to the stage, his silk shirt unbuttoned. ‘And now, because it’s my party and I get to show off first, I’m going to be reading to you from something new. The novel’s to be called The Lord Won’t Mind,’ he says, adding with a smirk: ‘Great title, huh?’