by Polly Samson
The talk of bestsellers and departures has caught Leonard’s attention. Montreal is calling to him. ‘I guess I’ll have to renew my neurotic affiliations at some point,’ he says, swallowing the ache in his voice. A flare from the fire catches his unease in dark shadows and furrows. Marianne hugs her knees to her chest, rests her chin. His eyes are softened by love every time he looks at her. She can join him, she knows that. She pulls her knees tighter, looks into the embers. It’s as though he’s forgotten the existence of her child.
She can’t hide her unhappiness when Didy presses her on how much longer she’ll stay. ‘I have to get Axel’s car back to Scandinavia before the year’s out because I sure don’t have the cash to pay import tax on it,’ she says.
Didy looks like she would horse-whip him if he were present. ‘Can’t he even manage that for himself? Thank the Lord he’s in Athens and not here tonight.’
‘Axel’s banned from driving. He never does anything a little bit. The police were amazed he could still walk a straight line,’ Marianne says and Leonard frowns and moves away to crouch closer to the fire. ‘Besides, if I don’t get his silly car back to Oslo to sell it I don’t know where we find the money for our divorce,’ she says, as Leonard squats poking the flames with a long stick. ‘And of course, there’s Axel Joachim. I don’t want him to forget that he has a mamma,’ she adds. Leonard broods and smokes. Bim crouches down beside him, accepts a toke on the joint.
‘My wife’s deserting me because she’s got herself a nice little earner in London,’ Bim is saying. ‘But I’m not budging from here until my novel is damned well accepted by a publisher.’ He turns to call to Didy over his shoulder. ‘So you’ll have me for the foreseeable.’ And Didy shakes her bracelet: ‘Marvellous!’ Though I can’t say she looks overjoyed at this prospect and neither am I.
Robyn’s job is at Reader’s Digest and she’s excited about it but Bim is talking over her. ‘I mean, why would any right-minded woman choose to stay here and be a moat around my tower?’ he says, standing unsteadily to pass the spliff to Demetri.
‘You talk such rot,’ Robyn says, and tells him to shush.
‘Or, come to that, why stick around and be a tap on my barrel?’ Bim says, swaying and plonking himself down beside her, pointing to his lap. ‘Or a muffler on my horn?’
I look across at Charmian and we both grimace. Bim won’t be shushed.
He has his hand on Robyn’s belly. ‘My wife won’t stick around if I don’t give her a baby. So tell me, Leonard, how do I make that work if I want to be true to the words that roar away inside me demanding to be free?’
‘Oh, brother,’ George says, throwing back his drink. ‘Where to bloody begin.’
Leonard turns his back to the fire and looks across at Marianne. Her eyes are downcast and she’s made herself tiny around her knees. Firelight catches her shins, the apples of her cheeks, glints in her hair. He rubs his palm back and forth along his stubble, before answering Bim.
‘When there are meals on the table, order in the upkeep of the house and harmony, it’s the perfect moment to start some serious work.’ He speaks like an incantation, serious and considered, and returns to Marianne’s side. ‘When there is food on the table, when the candles are lit, when you wash the dishes together, and put the child to bed together. That is order, that is spiritual order, there is no other.’
It feels true and right and heartfelt when he says it. Marianne looks up at him and they both smile.
She lowers her eyes again. Everyone falls silent. The night holds its breath. In a while Leonard, almost casually, tells Marianne that he’ll come with her in the car to Oslo. I glance across as he settles his guitar against his knee and again picks out the bittersweet melody I heard at the shore. All the time he’s playing he can’t tear his eyes from her face, and no wonder. She is radiant with the smile of a saint given leave of execution. The fire dances in her eyes, he plays his guitar. So why do I feel sad?
The purchase of Leonard’s house delays their departure. They finally move in while the workmen are still digging out the floor, and although it’s noisy and chaotic everything looks fresh with new whitewash, all the shutters fixed and painted chalky grey, and a beeswax, linseed and elbow-grease gleam brought to the old wooden boards. Mules cart furniture from Axel’s house: the wicker rocking chair, the carved Russian bed, some rugs, pots and pans. They have a table and chairs from George and Charmian, who also keeps her promise of the flowery iron bed which they paint midnight blue and pile with cushions beneath the lemon trees on the terrace.
The island empties; most of the tavernas close. In the evenings we start to gather inside, our chairs pulled together around Sofia’s charcoal brazier at the back of the store. The circle is tightening. Edie and Janey will leave soon to take up a lease on a shop in Carnaby Street that Janey’s uncle has arranged, Göran can’t wait much longer to be reunited with his girlfriend in Stockholm, the gaggle of Goschens have recently departed for the birth of their new baby, the Greers are on their way to Beirut.
I stay. I brood and dream. I have no offers and no reason to be anywhere but here. There has been no letter from my father. I have no home to return to. An orphan’s tears are at one with this stark and moody landscape of rock and sea and weather. I tell myself my loneliness is romantic, heroic even. The mountains hold me. I gather saffron in their foothills and dye all my clothes yellow. I dream of my mother and wake with the weight of her absence on my chest. She’s given me time to miss her as well as time to dream. When her money runs out I’ll have to find my way back to a bedsit and a job, but until then there’s Cato to think of and I can hardly leave him to starve on the streets.
The clear days are beautiful. I thank her for every one of them. The hills are blanketed with cyclamens, crocuses, tiny green lilies; it’s sunny enough to swim, and at night to sit on the terrace and read a book by moonlight. When it rains I write in my notebook with the music of water cascading from the hills to the cistern.
Leonard and Marianne cling on, one more day, another week, and in the end Charmian and George leave before they do. The island conspires to make their departure as painful as possible by offering up a white and blue morning as dazzling as the Greek flag.
We gather at Katsikas to wave them off, hangovers from last night’s shindig abated by medicinal tsipouro and a special cake made from vintage grape mush that Andonis brings with the muddy sweet coffee. Charmian sits at her usual table in a travelling suit of black gabardine so formal and stiff it might do for a funeral. Her eyes are ringed with shadows and filmy with booze. George leaves her to her final farewells, says there’s something he needs to sort out with their tickets at the Hellenic office.
‘I’m so terribly sorry we haven’t cleared the account,’ Charmian’s saying to Nikos Katsikas who only beams and pours her another brandy for the voyage.
‘Philoxenia, it’s a Greek thing. You must not apologise. You are our friends. Mr George will pay us when you return. This way we know that you will have to come back.’
Marianne arrives with Leonard. She’s been up since the seven o’clock bells, painting some pots for the terrace with a design of blue and ochre flowers inspired by her dear Momo’s dinner service. According to her, the morning was too fine to miss, and she doesn’t look remotely tired, she has a gift for that, despite that we’ve all been carousing at Douskos Taverna until dawn. She and Leonard put the rest of us to shame. They’ve already been swimming and there is paint in her fringe and on her hands, an adorable blue smudge on her cheek. Leonard’s hair is speckled all over with whitewash. Charmian thanks him for last night’s songs. ‘We couldn’t have wished for a better send-off,’ she says and bursts into tears.
Now that Marianne’s moved in with Leonard, Axel’s on the island more often, finishing his novel and awaiting the reappearance of Patricia. This morning his arrival is preceded by the little white dog which chases pigeons at the waterfront and comes unapologetically wagging its tail when he whistles to it.
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br /> Bim lounges beside Leonard as Axel bends to kiss Marianne’s cheek.
‘You guys, this is civilisation; what’s the point of alternatives if you’re not free to leave or take them, eh?’ Bim says as Axel scoops up the squirming dog and places it in Marianne’s arms, and joins in her laughter as it licks her face. ‘Robyn just doesn’t dig it. I mean, it’s a burden to the imagination to have to build a fence to ward off the excitement and titillation of other choices …’ He looks across at me as he says this, making me squirm.
Charmian catches him at it, gives him a sharp ‘tsk’ and he winks at her and says, ‘Tsk? Really? You?’
Charmian gathers herself, and I think how sad it is that her last morning should be tainted by bickering with Bim. Leonard saves the day, says he’ll tell her right away what he thinks. He leans across and takes her hand, steadies her with his eyes. For a moment it’s as though there is no one else present and he speaks to her as slowly and seriously as a priest offering benediction.
‘To really turn your back on all the other possibilities and all the other experiences of love, of passion, ecstasy, and to determine to find it within one embrace is a high and righteous notion – only compatible with the strangest kind of will and most gifted individuals.’
She tries hard not to laugh but her shoulders start to shake as he goes on. ‘Oh, Leonard,’ she silences him, wiping her eyes. ‘I do think everyone makes rather too much of these things. When it comes down to it it’s all about having the same sauce for goose and gander.’
The Nereida appears around the headland. It feels ludicrous to be crying the way I am; it’s not my place to be the chief mourner.
‘Oh, why is George taking so long?’ Charmian cries as we straggle in her wake to the ferry dock. Zoe is waiting with the luggage and Booli who is wailing and burying himself in her bosom. Shane is crying too, trying to snap some final Polaroids of her friends, and Martin’s crouching on the ground with his face in Max’s ruff. I wish they’d miss the boat, change their minds, anything, but find I can’t stand another moment of this painful departure and offer to scoot to the Hellenic office to find George.
The door is open. He is stooping over his suitcase, removing some books. He plonks them on the counter. Two neat stacks in bright orange dust jackets.
Wheezing and hustling. ‘Arrived from the printers just in time. It’s my latest. The whole thing’s set here on the island so I’m thinking you might sell them and we’ll split fifty-fifty.’
‘George, the ferry’s about to dock.’ I’m pulling on his arm as Yiorgis attempts to push the books back across the desk at him.
‘Look, I’m sailing for England, I can’t bloody take them with me anyway.’
I heft up his case. ‘Come on!’ I say. ‘If you really insist on leaving.’
‘Quick, hand me that pen. I’ll sign one to you, Ricky.’
It takes mighty willpower to refuse him. My promise to Charmian hangs in the air. He picks up a copy. Yiorgis hands him a biro.
‘No, thank you, we haven’t got time,’ I say, grabbing his suitcase. I look at the books. Fifteen shillings a copy. ‘I’ll come back and buy them all,’ I say as I fly out of the door.
‘You opening a book store, Ricky?’ George gruffs and I carry on as fast as I can with his heavy suitcase banging my shins and him coughing to keep up.
The port shines pink as a shell in the midday sun. The painted boats creak at their moorings as the ferry draws in; the harbour is scattered with opals.
She stands in a sea of well-wishers, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes. The children board first. I take my turn to hug her. ‘Oh, I do hate to think of you left alone. Do take good care of yourself, Erica,’ she says. ‘And don’t let anyone take advantage of your sweet nature.’
I can barely let her go. ‘Please don’t leave me!’ I want to cry but strangle the words. She hugs me for the longest time. ‘Keep writing,’ she says, but it’s not enough.
‘Good luck!’
‘Bon voyage!’
‘Ha det bra! Ha det moro! Have fun! Enjoy!’
‘Kalo taxidi!’
Leonard has been helping George with the luggage. He grasps Charmian by the waist at the foot of the gangplank. ‘Remember me for my silences,’ he says, kissing her, and she laughs: ‘Between you and my husband I don’t think I ever got a word in.’
Dinos has come down from Episkopi and, though I’ve barely seen him all summer, he stands with me, offers me his good, broad shoulder to cry on.
The family press together on the sun deck, waving. Didy calls up that they must each throw a drachma to the sea, for luck. The ferry deafens everyone with its horn. ‘Do it! It means that you will return to the island,’ she shouts and as the boat pulls away Charmian leans over the rail and sends a handful of coins glittering to the harbour.
Twenty-Eight
I met Charmian again, quite by chance, the following spring. My heart almost burst from my chest as she stepped from the bus, and I cried out, ‘Kalimera!’
In place of the battered straw I’d become so accustomed to on Hydra was a man’s trilby, and beneath it her eyes slanting and dark with make-up. She came towards me, self-consciously stroking the nap of a long suede coat the colour of milky coffee. ‘So deliciously impractical. I have no idea what George was thinking,’ she said, as though we’d last spoken only the other day.
People swarmed from the entrance of Paddington Station and had to step around us as we embraced. ‘You look younger,’ I said, though it wasn’t true, despite that she’d had her teeth fixed.
‘Well, Erica, you look older! Really quite grown up. Is that a permanent wave? Crikey, this is a pleasurable surprise!’ She was a bluster of apologies, for leaving lipstick which she dabbed at with a handkerchief and also for her failure to get in touch. ‘I got your letter and I’ve been meaning to invite you to the farm; it sounds like you’ve been having a horrid time …’ For all her make-up and chic clothing, London light betrayed her. Without her tan she was more drawn than ever, hollowed and harried, fiddling with the clasp of her handbag and chewing her lip.
‘Ah well, I know you’ve been busy,’ I said, keeping my voice light. I didn’t want to scare her away. I’d had a long island winter to think about things and could see that my hunger overwhelmed her, that already there wasn’t enough Charmian to go around.
‘But now, here you are! So, darling, tell me: how long has it been since you left Greece?’
She was delving into the bag which hung open like a jaw from the crook of her arm.
‘It was February,’ I said as she pulled out her cigarettes. ‘A lifetime ago.’ A matter of a few weeks and already the island felt about as real to me as a lovely dream. A fantasia. ‘I left on the day the almond trees came into flower.’
She took my arm and drew me aside to make way for a woman with a pram. ‘It’s so sudden, isn’t it, so airy and pink. And such a glorious portent of spring.’ She glanced at the sky above the buildings, which managed to be both glaring and grey, scowled and told me that she couldn’t wait to go back. ‘I think it’s fair to say that the house swap has been a disaster,’ she said. ‘Now we’re praying for a miracle to get us back to Hydra. George has been given the old “we’ll call you next week” up and down Fleet Street, which as you might imagine has given him quite a knock, especially when it’s from the mouths of those he helped on their way up the ladder.’ She rummaged for her lighter. ‘But enough of my woes – tell me about you. I take it by now you’ve found somewhere more salubrious to live?’
She shook out a cigarette and stuck it between her lips. ‘You’ll be pleased to know that I no longer have a cockroach problem,’ I said, the thought of the secret night scutterings still making me shudder. ‘In fact, in a way, it’s all thanks to your friend Greg Corso …’
‘Why, is he an expert on insect extermination?’
I could feel myself blush, a giggle in my throat. ‘I’ve moved in with my boyfriend!’ I managed to splutter. ‘And it’s b
ecause I told him I knew Corso that he took me on. I mean, there were many applicants with much better qualifications, but he’s big on the Beats so that swung it for me.’
She looked at me and snorted. ‘You applied for a job as a live-in girlfriend?’
I’d forgotten about her brows, the green of her eyes. Goodness, I’d missed talking to her.
‘No, I got the job as his assistant!’ I said. ‘He runs a small press from his front room in Pimlico, mainly poetry. Six quid a week, and living in since it turns out we can’t keep our hands off each other …’ I couldn’t seem to do anything about my silly laughter while I told her about my gallant knight in rumpled corduroy. What a fool I must have seemed. Her cigarette remained unlit. The way she searched my eyes was making my words ever more mangled, flooding me with desire to confide in her but too ashamed to admit that I’d run out of choices, that I didn’t have a penny to my name.
‘Oh, but you’re still just a girl …’ she said, with a troubled frown that brought with it a memory of her kitchen in Hydra, my hands held out for a dusting of flour, Brahms. The music, the way it soared, brought the tears to our eyes when she made me promise her that no man would ever clip my wings.
But that was Hydra, not London. ‘Oh gosh, and I was sorry to hear about your father, about the breakdown,’ she was saying. She pressed me to take her handkerchief, brushed a finger within an inch of my cheek and snatched her hand away.
I took the proffered hankie, blotted my eyes. ‘Someone had to be here. And you know, Bobby wasn’t about to come dashing home from Boston, so there was only me, and by the time I got back from Greece the bailiffs had taken every stick, even the picture frames, and he was catatonic …’ I let it all tumble out and fell into her arms.
The island swam up to meet me. It was spread out beneath the rosy glow of my final morning, high up in Episkopi, a cacophony of goat bells and Cato curled around my feet while Dinos threw open the shutters and called me over. I sat up and gathered myself in the sheet. Dinos stood silhouetted in the square of light. I came to him, surprised at how natural it felt to have him pull me close, to rest my head upon his shoulder. The island managed to make each departure more painful than the last and for me it excelled. Dinos was smiling like he’d produced a rabbit from his hat: the almond trees had bloomed overnight and it looked like the hills had been draped with pink lace.