A Theatre for Dreamers

by Polly Samson

  The Nereida was crowded with memories: Jimmy, my brother, Trudy, Jean-Claude Maurice, jostling one after the other through my ouzo-clouded mind. I fell into a stupor, a welcome relief after many nights of sleepless warfare with my husband, woke with the bells of Poros, someone shouting dockside. I climbed to the top deck where the diesel fumes were as strong as I remembered.

  The month was July and I was glad of my sunglasses, could feel the sting of sun and salt on my bare arms. I was growing ever more exhilarated, and fearful, my stomach lurching as the island’s first rocky shoulder swept into view. I clung to the rail, suspended between the dazzle of sea and unbroken blue sky. The boat turned and there it was! Hey presto, the sudden flourish, conjured from bare rock by the gods and lit by the sun. A theatre for dreamers. The trick worked every time. The white houses, the crescent harbour: it took a moment to believe it was real. My heart lifted and I wished for wings so that I might fly the rest of the way.

  I went soaring for the mountains of bold stone, for the town they held in their lap. My eighteen-year-old self was still there, and I let my eyes trace her footsteps through the pines to the monastery and on, climbing to the peak of Mount Eros, with the cold sweat of night on her skin and Charmian’s deafening silence. I drifted over the hills, silver with olive groves heading for the groove between the rocks of her favourite valley, looked for the grand house of the artist Ghikas to get my bearings and found in its place a burnt-out wreck. What on earth had happened? Apart from Ghikas’s blackened arches, all was as I remembered. Spires, cupolas, windmills, the beautiful ruins, sun and sea spangling the grey stone of formal mansions with gold coins, the best seats in the house. I could see people in the wings, at the naval school and on the rocks at Spilia, splashing and diving, bright caiques, cannons lined up along the walls. I watched a boy leap from the lip of the cave and longed for my son.

  I bounded down the steps with my holdall as the port drew close, impatient to leap ashore. The fishing boats waited at the mole, flags were flying at the quay, blue and white pennants looping the harbour front, café tables, awnings, bells clamouring, donkeys, men with wooden carts. I drank it in, almost drowned in it.

  I wanted to be the first to set foot on the island, as I had ten years before, but two military policemen held me back, told me to start a line. One of them took out a clipboard and asked me for my name, which spoilt the moment.

  I made it down the gangplank on shaking legs, almost sick with stage fright. New dramas were unfolding around me in several languages: family reunions, groups of backpackers greeting one another; one particular boy kissing his girl brought on a wave of nostalgia and loneliness so powerful I almost cried out. The policemen were taking everyone’s names, the donkey-boys jostling, the smell of donkey shit, the flagstones beneath my feet not gleaming as pink as I remembered. A gang of blond ragamuffins came flying past, a boy pursued by two little girls and a younger tot, all brandishing wooden swords. They were shouting and clanking, strung around with battle-dress made from flattened tin cans. The blondest boy, who looked only a little older than my son, swerved and crashed against the picket fence to get away from the others. One of the policemen spun around to admonish him but he was a fleet-footed sprite and was off, brown limbs flying. The other children had run out of steam, their armour clanking, the smallest boy calling his name. ‘Axel! Stop! Wait for us! Axel!’

  I kept my eyes fixed on the child in his glinting carapace. He doubled back through the marketplace and, panting, joined a queue for ice cream halfway along the waterfront. I was out of breath. The taste of the creamy foulis flavour that Costas used to make came to my mouth but, instead of Costas’s wooden handcart, the ice cream was from a humming freezer plugged into what had been the chandler’s and now sold cigarettes and fading postcards.

  The boy had his back to me, peering with one of the girls through the misted glass top. I dropped my bag, found my breath. He turned around when I said his name, and beneath the blond mop he had an anxious little face, but he was beautifully, luminously, unmistakably, her son.

  ‘You were just the most darling baby, the last time I saw you,’ I said while his eyes remained solemn and loaded with suspicion. ‘Axel? Marianne’s son?’ He nodded, left me with the top of his head to look at. I told him who I was, opened my purse. ‘Here, let me treat you.’

  Still he didn’t look up or smile. ‘You can buy us ice-lollies if you like, lady, but I don’t know you from a donkey,’ he said and the girl jabbed him with her sword and told him not to be rude and yes please. She was an appealing child with freckles and wise grey eyes. She pointed across the alleyway, at the chattering groups beneath the caramel awnings of Tassos Kafeneo.

  ‘His mum’s over there. They’ve been arguing all morning about whether to have a church service for their old friend who died.’ She lowered her lashes and stuck out her bottom lip.

  ‘Oh dear, how sad. Was it someone from Hydra?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘He used to live here but he didn’t believe in God.’ Her lip started to quiver. ‘I’m sad too because he was funny but I was only little when they went away.’

  ‘Liar,’ Axel said. ‘I’m older than you and I don’t remember him one bit.’

  I crushed a drachma into each of their hands, leaving them bickering, and went where the girl pointed, towards Marianne who was huddled with two other women, surrounded by cats. She wore a sundress with a print of pineapples, a matching scarf in her hair.

  I called out her name. The other women turned around to see who had shouted; there was wine on the table. Her sunglasses were large; she was smoking a Greek cigarette.

  She lowered the sunglasses; there were bags beneath her eyes.

  ‘Remember? Summer 1960?’ I had to prompt her with my name.

  ‘Sweet, pretty Erica from London?’ At last she smiled. She scrambled to her feet to hug me and we swayed in each other’s arms. Her perfume was strong – like something from a headshop, I thought. Not a smell I associated with her. We sat facing each other, clasping hands, but didn’t find words, beyond sighing, as we tried to read each other’s story.

  ‘I didn’t even think to write, what with Leonard becoming so famous. I thought you moved to New York?’ I said.

  She shrugged and smiled. ‘Pfft. I’ve been living here, there and everywhere but it’s summer now, and nowhere feels as much like home as Hydra.’

  She introduced Lily and Olivia, the mothers of Axel’s ragamuffin friends. Lily was Russian and wore long earrings. Olivia was younger, in a hippy dress and many bangles.

  ‘I didn’t expect there would even be a foreign colony, what with all this,’ I said, eyeing a pair of uniformed officers who were patrolling the port with guns in their belts.

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ Marianne shrugged. ‘At least the ferries run on time and the rubbish is cleared from the streets. It’s different on an island; everyone has to get on and it hasn’t stopped the tourists from coming.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a drag to have to keep reporting to the police station,’ Olivia said, bangles rattling as she slid her arm around the back of Marianne’s chair. Marianne leant forward and poured me a glass of wine. Lily swallowed the remains of hers, said it was her turn to round up the kids and feed them. Two young men joined us, pulled up chairs. Bill had a beard and twinkling eyes and Jean-Marc an unlit roll-up stuck to his lip that waggled when he talked.

  ‘Baby, it’s so hot. Let’s go swim,’ Olivia said, as the men ordered beers and set up a backgammon board. She put her feet on the chair that Lily had vacated and sat jingling and fanning herself while Marianne and I talked. When I glanced down I saw that Marianne had a matching string of silver bells around one of her own ankles. I told her about my son. Marianne clapped her hands, delighted for me that I had a child, asked me about his father. Olivia said she’d like to give me a healing. I looked past her to the mole, to the familiar business of the port, the men and the barge bringing goods from Ermioni, the donkeys uncomplaining, couples strolling t
owards Kamini arm in arm, and back to Marianne’s dear, kind face.

  ‘My heart lifted as soon as all this came into view, I dreamt about it so often. I’ve been dreaming about coming back here since the day I left. If it wasn’t for my boy in London, I think I’d never leave again.’

  Marianne shrugged, gave me a sad sort of a smile. ‘It was better when you were here before. It’s not like that now. We were innocent children. The drugs hadn’t started screwing with everyone’s minds …’ The policemen were passing again; she glanced across at them and grinned. ‘But hey, we still have plenty of fun. The difference these guys make is we’ve hidden all the dope and we tend not to party in public. Oh, and do not even think about swimming nude like you used to, Erica.’

  Olivia said she’d seen a young German get punched in the face for it at Spilia. ‘Even in this heat we can only be naked in the privacy of our own homes – right, Marianne?’ she said, coiling her arm around her friend’s neck.

  Olivia was either very drunk or very stoned. She hooked down the strap of Marianne’s sundress to work her thumbs into her shoulder while Marianne asked me what had gone wrong with my husband. I gave her the short version. I’d fallen pregnant and married my boss. He was talented. The balance of power was skewed out of my favour from the start. ‘I think it’s taken me ten years to discover that I’m not the gardenia and little sandwich on my man’s desk sort of a person,’ I said, rather clumsily, because I hated talking about myself and wanted to steer the conversation back to her and Leonard.

  She wriggled herself free of Olivia, adjusted her strap. ‘Oh, Erica. What times we had. It was such a summer, like a rollercoaster, but you know, Leonard hypnotised me. As you know, I’d have done anything for him …’

  ‘Yeah, baby, you’ve turned more blind eyes than there are in a peacock’s fan,’ Olivia said but Marianne was still talking.

  ‘It’s all got a bit messed up since I lost our little baby and we’ve both grown battle-weary. But tell me, do you reckon he was happy with me then? Sometimes I think I only imagined it.’

  Olivia groaned, put her hands to her ears. ‘Hush, my little Nordic troll, I don’t think I can stand another long soliloquy about Leonard.’ She grabbed her basket, said she’d meet us at the beach.

  ‘You were so beautiful together, and everything around you was golden,’ I said, to make Marianne smile, and because it was true. ‘I was so jealous. I used to think of all the candles he lit for you, the way he looked at you, how tender he was with little Axel. When I left Hydra I thought about you often, the way you lived your life. It’s what I dreamt of for myself.’

  Olivia turned back to me, making gagging noises. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get her started about the damn song,’ she said and she affectionately booped the end of Marianne’s nose while Marianne flapped her hands at her to be off.

  Of course I knew which song she meant. I’d listened to it many times, but Leonard was nothing if not enigmatic. ‘Well, it does seem kind of sour at the end …’ I started to say.

  Marianne silenced me, still flapping a hand. ‘I don’t think it’s even about me, really. He’d been playing it for years and it was called “Come on, Marianne”, which gives the song a different meaning if you listen to the words, but some other act already had a record with that name so he changed it. Pfft,’ she said. ‘“Bird on the Wire” is the best one he wrote for me because it is more honest.’ I noticed tears in her eyes. ‘Pfft,’ she said again, as though they were meaningless. ‘Leonard doesn’t want to have babies with me, so there it is.’

  I shook my head. ‘Oh, Marianne, I’m sorry.’

  She fought her tears, attempted a smile. ‘It’s OK. Seeing you like this has made me remember how sweet it used to be. Too bad. He’s found himself a nice Jewish mare now …’ She checked herself, apologised for sounding bitter. ‘The last time he was here he gave me such a bad shock.’

  She was pulling a small gold key that she wore around her neck back and forth along its chain while she spoke. A present from Leonard. The key to his heart, she told me with a sniff.

  ‘What sort of shock?’ I prompted.

  ‘He’d already had that woman in our house, but hey, who was I to complain about that? But that day it was like looking into the face of a ghost,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen him wrecked many times over the years, exhausted, empty, hallucinating. It was all of that but he’s never scared me before. When he walked off the boat I looked into his eyes and they were dead as the fish in that crate over there,’ she said, and threw her hands to her mouth. ‘Forgive me going on. We all got a bit tipsy this morning because of the terrible news. It’s George who is dead, poor soul,’ and the tears that had been wobbling spilled from her eyes.

  ‘George Johnston?’ It was absurd; surely he’d be along at any moment. I looked across the alley to Katsikas, longing for ten years to have fallen away, expecting him to be there, throwing down a brandy and roaring with laughter at his own story, making a toast, a cheque in the mail more potent than anything he could get at the pharmacy, his eyes tender with love. Calling her ‘Cliftie’. Chinking his glass to hers.

  But Marianne was nodding and dabbing her eyes. ‘The TB finally did for him,’ she said. ‘We’ve been here since Lily got the call. I suppose it’s only right we got drunk in his memory.’

  I thought of his swagger, his gunslinger’s grin. ‘Oh God. Poor Charmian. Has anyone spoken to her?’

  Marianne blanched. Held up her hands. ‘Hey. You mean, you don’t know?’ Her mouth fell open.

  I shook my head. ‘What?’

  She picked up the bottle and refilled my glass. ‘Drink,’ she said.

  ‘Oh God, what?’

  Again she gestured for me to drink. I took a gulp.

  ‘Charmian’s dead,’ she said. ‘She killed herself last summer.’

  There was the hotel, the front desk, checking in, rickety stairs to my room. I had a glass of water in my hands. The room was sweltering. I could smell my own sweat. I cranked open the shutters to the balcony, threw myself on to the bed and let the great torrent of disbelief wash over me.

  I tried to picture it, forced myself to make it real. Charmian, menopausal, lonely and despairing, George’s hatred too much to bear. Drunk, naturally. A bottle on the table, the glass in her hand half-empty. I could imagine her laughing bleakly while she wrote out the Keats. They were George’s sleeping pills, Marianne told me. A full prescription and the doctor said she had ceased without pain on the stroke of midnight, just as she promised him she would in her suicide note.

  I unpacked my holdall, placed a picture of my son beside my bed, stared at it for I don’t know how long. I was thinking about the last time I’d seen her, calling her back to me on the pavement outside the Star and Garter and the rain that was starting to fall. Not many women could endure the pain of losing a child, she told me as we stood, drunk and unsteady, about to embrace for the final time. Did she imagine the same wasn’t true the other way around? It was hard to believe she’d inflict such unendurable pain upon her children. I went down the hall to splash my face with water, overcome with sudden rage and a need to escape.

  There were throngs of tourists; the shops selling jewellery, sandals, sponges; the smell of frying fish too much for my stomach. My feet found their own way to Voulgaris Street and up the steps towards my old house, drawn on by a horrified fascination at just how painful I could make this. I was out of breath as I rounded the final twist, and there it was, with its windows shuttered and barred, the tips of almond trees just visible above the terrace wall. My heart was pounding. It seemed impossible that I had once run up and down these steps several times a day. I turned and looked across the familiar view, vandalised now by criss-crossing lines of wires scrawling all the way from the port, jumping out at me like graffiti. I sat down and put my face in my hands. There was cat shit all the way up the steps. I could hear buzzing flies and noticed the crucified remains of a rat among the roots of a fig tree, discarded cans in the dusty oleander bu
shes.

  I remembered now. It was Marianne walked me back to the hotel, dealt with Sofia on the front desk, saw me to my room, poured me the water. She sat me down, like a dumbfounded child, on the edge of the bed while she knelt and unlaced my plimsolls. She told me Charmian’s suicide had been on the eve of publication of George’s new novel. Once again he had shamed her but this time he’d lain the blame for his oncoming death from tuberculosis on the stress of loving her.

  ‘It got very ugly between them here at the end; it seems like none of the marriages can survive Hydra,’ Marianne said. ‘To tell you the truth, the whole island couldn’t wait to see the back of the Johnstons. George was a skeleton, Charmian told anyone who would listen that he wouldn’t fuck her any more, for a long time she was madly in love with my friend Tony. They were drunk all the time, there were public fights, Leonard and Demetri used to have to carry George home.’ She showed me a scar, a small crescent above her top lip. ‘This is from when he threw a bowl of yoghurt at Charmian and a shard bounced up and cut my face.

  ‘They stayed too long,’ she said and I sat there numbly while she told me what she knew of the children. Martin wrote for a newspaper in Sydney. Can you believe Shane’s married? Jason was living in the countryside with his cousins. That a light as bright as Charmian could snuff itself out seemed impossible. Marianne left me crying, said she’d see me on the beach. As soon as she was gone I started to laugh. It seemed like the bleakest cosmic joke that I should hear of Charmian’s death as a sort of postscript to George’s, and on the day I finally made it back to the island of my dreams.

  I was a fool to think of returning. The sun was beating and I needed water but, slave to an impulse a decade out of date, I kept climbing. The steps wound on, past ruins with rickety scaffolding, drilling and hammering, strings of donkeys loaded with pallets of bricks; thirst turning the spit in my mouth to paste.