by Sara Alexi
'Ah, well, life at sea is hard,' he says, avoiding the question.
'No, really, what’s wrong with them?'
The last thing he wants to do is come across as an invalid, if he is to woo her.
'Nothing, nothing, just a temporary bit of inflammation. Young things like you would not understand the little aches and pains that come with age, especially when you have had a life as full as mine.' He attempts a sexy smile but a searing pain shoots through his knee and he winces.
'I doubt we have any gap of years between us, Captain.' Marina says. There is a lethargy to her voice.
'You are too kind Marina, you flatter me.'
She is walking too fast for him.
'Now, let's not be running, let us give the Port Police the time they need to do their duty and whilst they do it we can distract ourselves by turning our walk to the kiosk into a little amble.' This speech does not have the desired affect for although she slows her pace, when she turns her face towards him her mouth forms a hard line. 'And fear not,' he adds with intentional pomposity in his voice. 'They know their job and they do it well.' But this does nothing to raise a smile.
He stops where one back street meets the next at a crossroads. There is a shop on the opposite corner. If he can get to that he can use it as an excuse to stop for a moment, but sitting down would be the best option right now, just to take some pressure off for a moment.
The shop sells African art. An identical carving to the one on Demosthene’s desk is displayed in the window. The other pieces are spindly figures of women with exaggerated chests, chin and lips in a very dark wood. He finds it hard to pretend he is interested. The window sill is wide, this he cannot resist and he turns his back on the tourist produce and sits. He catches the flash of a frown on Marina's face in her incomprehension.
'You know we rush about so much in this world that we very rarely take the time just to sit and look.' He rests his feet on their heels and lifting up his toes he curls and uncurls them inside his shapeless deck shoes. It feels good.
'I had a psychiatrist on my boat once, from America, and she said the difference between being on holiday and just a normal day was that when we are on holiday we tend to look up more.' He looks up, 'and taking the time to sit here I can appreciate that bougainvillea.' He jerks his chin up and Marina looks down the street. Spanning the road, strung from first floor balconies is a bougainvillea of the most startling, shocking pink. Saros is festooned with these plants and even though they are to be seen on every street this one is large enough to shake the senses.
Marina is staring at it, her eyes travelling across the road and down its thick stem.
'You think they water it?' she asks.
This is something that has never occurred to him. Maybe they do. Marina is a woman interested in the detail of life. That is a good thing. Maybe she has a garden of her own that he will be enjoying soon.
'You have a garden?' he asks. She begins to walk away so he is forced to stand and continue. It is a little easier.
'I have a courtyard. No bougainvillea, but I do have a very thirsty wisteria.'
'Ah, yes.' He tries to sound knowledgeable but he is not even sure he knows what a wisteria is.
They walk in silence. He tries not to wheeze too loudly.
'If you walked more it would get easier,' Marina states. She is nothing if not straight. Maybe even a little too bold.
'Can you cook?'
'Sorry?'
'I mean, do you enjoy cooking, rather than it being just something you have to do?' Yorgos covers himself.
'Oh, I see. I never really thought of it in those terms. Cooking is like washing, or cleaning. I think I get a satisfaction from cooking for my family, although Rini is a great cook and Petta, he likes to cook once in a while too.'
'Really?' Yorgos blurts out. Marina's head turns to look at him quickly. His exclamation was too much. 'That's a good skill to have,' he mumbles. They have made it to the square. Maybe he will find an excuse to walk back alone. The pain courses down each leg as the blood is pumped and it is too much to continue. He feels very red in the face and he would be a lot happier ingratiating himself to her sitting down. More at ease.
Marina goes to the side of the kiosk and lifts up the public phone there.
The man in the kiosk has already taken down his brand of cigarette, from the stacks that line the inside of his little wooden hut, and placed it on the wooden serving ledge that also accommodates chewing gum, mints in little transparent plastic boxes, packets of biscuits, an army of multicoloured lighters that stand on end in there cut-out cardboard tray and a small jar of olives with a ribbon tied around its lid.
Yorgo’s wallet is worn and the stitching is frayed in several places. He takes it from his pocket with care lest anything fall out. With half an ear he is listening to Marina who seems to be on the phone to someone who is taking care of her shop for her. This suggests to the Capatian that the shop is a serious business and as he looks diagonally though the kiosk’s front window all the way through the side window he can see her face. It is a very pleasant face, which he will not mind waking up to at all.
'And a tin of those wafer chocolate biscuits,' he says to the waiting kiosk man who totals his purchases and asks for the money.
'Are you sure?' Yorgos says, picking up the tin of biscuits and turning it over in his hands to see the price on the bottom. 'Oh I see.' It is very tempting to put them back but with another glance though to Marina he pays the price. A little bit of something sweet to pave the way.
Chapter 15
With her heart full of love for Petta, it is easy to feel sorry for Sam. There is something about him that is almost like looking into a mirror to a time before her dancing butterfly settled into her life. If Sam has a wife, a family, he is a long way from home and heading even further away from England to Casablanca. It must be tearing him apart, and it’s not as if it is just distance, either; he is being hunted by the police and must feel so very, very alone.
He has not fallen asleep. Instead, he is very much awake and he is still looking at her.
‘Why Casablanca?’ Her question comes out softly.
‘I am a mercenary.’ He says it like it is the most normal thing in the world. Irini raises her eyebrow, not sure how shocked she should pretend to be to avoid suspicion. She lets her mouth fall open a fraction, too.
It seems she has judged it right, as he continues. ‘I have contacts there. It is a good place to get my next job.’ He speaks as if the words have nothing to do with him, and some of the spark that was lighting up his eyes grows dark. He slaps at something on his neck.
‘It’s a long way to Casablanca. We will hit Italian or Libyan water first and as far as I know, Greece is on good terms with both. The port police will alert them. Don’t you think Turkey would be safer? Closer. Less friendly?’ Irini offers.
‘I’m trying to avoid too many borders. I have no passport; it was taken.’ He rolls onto his back, his hand to the wound on his side. ‘How long do you think it will be before we leave Greek waters?’
Irini blinks and then closes her eyes at the question and tries to conjure up a map but has no way of knowing any of the distances.
‘I really have no idea. A day, no, more. Two perhaps. There are charts below.’
His hair is sleek against the teak deck and shimmers as he shakes his head slowly. In line of sight behind his head is the mast and then the pulpit at the front of the yacht. The chrome of these railings is reflecting the sun, throwing rays back at them that cut across his profile, blurring his lips and chin. Whatever was irritating his neck returns and he skims it away with his fingers.
‘You want to go back to Casablanca to take another job?’ Irini asks.
‘You mean "why haven’t I changed my plans now I have met you?"‘ Sam scoffs.
Irini does not like the way he turns from friendly to cruel so suddenly. Just as she begins to feel she knows him, he then stabs with his words. He must be very frightened to be so defensive and sh
e cannot help the anger it ignites within her.
But maybe she did expect that to some degree. Their meeting has certainly changed her. The past has become a little more explainable, the events on the streets a little less personal. She certainly feels less removed from people, more normal.
‘Well no, of course not. But maybe you have more to offer the world than you think,’ she defends and he turns back onto his side to look at her.
‘You think?’ He smirks.
‘Yes.’ She leaves the one word to hang there, open and honest.
‘I think that is very easy for you to say from the comfort of your life that is full of love and support.’
‘Love and support will come if you are brave enough to stay still somewhere,’ Irini says, aware that her voice is just slightly sulky.
He laughs. ‘You think your village will open their arms to me, do you? Offer me their friendship and support?’ He laughs again. Irini rolls from her side onto her back, lies still for a minute and then sits up, her arms around her bent knees.
‘I think you are being unkind.’ Her mouth pinches shut; her eyes are slits against the sunlight.
‘I told you I was not a nice man, or did you think you had changed that, too?’ He is playing now, but he is playing on his own at her expense. She is the toy.
‘That is just plain nasty.’
He doesn’t answer her.
‘I think you are scared in case I am right. I think to stay anywhere to find out if you would get support and care is the ultimate fear for you, in case you get rejected all over again,’ Irini says, keeping as much harshness out of her voice as she can, but her jaw tightens when she has finished speaking and she finds she is grasping her knees tighter than is necessary.
‘Which is why I don’t.’ Sam sits up too, resting on his arms behind him.
‘But you could.’ Irini turns to look at him. ‘You could try it once and see what the world thinks of you and if it doesn’t work out, then you could return to Casablanca.’
He looks out to the horizon. She follows his gaze. Somewhere beyond the curve of the earth in that direction is Crete and then Libya.
‘Do you know how many islands there are in Greece?’ Irini asks, but does not wait for an answer. ‘Six thousand, but only a couple of hundred have people on them, and less than a hundred have a lot of people on them.’ She waits for this to sink in.
‘You see what I am saying?’ she asks.
‘You are saying something?’ he answers. He sounds amused.
Letting go of her legs, her knees fall to one side and she turns to face him. The sun’s rays are still glinting off the chrome work at the bow and it creates a halo of light down one side of his face. A dark side and a light side.
‘You can do it.’ Her feet tap, her arms fidget, an excitement runs through her. ‘You can start again, take any island you want, choose a new name, and have a whole new life.’ She smiles. It feels like such a perfect solution. He says nothing. ‘Tell me how you would like it to be if you had a whole new life to invent.’ She can hardly sit still. This is his solution.
With his eyes focussed down on the deck, he draws his feet in towards him, his hands clasping around them.
‘It would be easy,’ she says. ‘We could sail to an island of your choice…’
‘And what about the port police? They are just going to watch me jump off the boat and do nothing about it?’
‘No, you could wait till dark…’
‘You think they would stop watching the boat in the dark? You think they would not be looking for someone jumping in and swimming?’ Sam says.
Irini thinks. ‘Here’s what you could do. You could slip into the water as it grows dark and work your way down a line that we tow behind us and when you are ready to let go, just let go. The port police will be watching the boat and they will not notice you some distance away, swimming quietly to shore.’ She smiles her triumph and holds her arms out, palms up at the simplicity of the solution.
He looks up from the decking and makes eye contact. That sad look is back, and something else that she can only describe to herself as a yearning. But a yearning for what, she cannot tell. A new life maybe?
‘What do you think?’
He shrugs his shoulders.
‘Oh, we are back there, are we, where a life is worth nothing more than a shrug?’ With these words, she looks to the stern. The port police have advanced a little bit closer, but they still pose no immediate threat. How will it all end? Is he to be arrested and put in handcuffs? Why have they not come alongside and done that already?
‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ Sam says unlocking his arms, his posture opening out, the scars on his chest all visible, the thin skin puckering across his stomach and the chords in his neck still tense.
She knows he is talking about her intention to jump. Is he glad because she is still with him on the boat or just glad that he didn’t have to shoot her?
Chapter 16
‘How long before you got married?’ Sam remains seated but stretches upwards until his bandaged midriff pulls taut, reminding him that he needs to heal, and his body retracts, his hand going protectively to his side.
‘Not long. We saw each other in Athens for a couple of weeks, and then he was offered a job on Orino Island, his home village. Well, it wasn’t so much a job as the loan of a taxi-boat with permission to run it as a service. It had all its licences and things, so it just made sense. Petta did that for a year. I got a job at a bar but it didn’t last. The taverna was closed for illegalities, but then it re-opened and I got my job back because someone gave the men with power a big fat bribe, but they closed it again later and by that time, it was summer and all the jobs on the island were taken, so I didn’t work.’
‘How does that answer my question?’ Sam asks but he is smiling. This is his humour.
‘Well, it was because we only had the one job between us that we couldn’t afford to get married. But then, through an extraordinary turn of events, Petta found his birth mama. He’s adopted; she couldn’t keep him. Anyway, he found her and she invited us to the village to live with her. So then. It was then that we got married, in the village. Everyone in the village helped us out. We had tables in the square. It was lovely.’
She turns away from him slightly. He does not fit with these thoughts. That is her life with Petta, and she is not sure that he is welcome there.
Something tickles her arm. Without looking, she rubs it away to find it is Sam’s fingertips, almost hovering over her skin, so light.
‘What?’ she asks.
‘I just wanted to touch you. You know, feel your warmth, the softness, know you are real,’ Sam says. She cannot tell if it is a joke or not so she tuts and frowns in a light-hearted way. It would be better if it was a joke.
‘If I was to sum up being a mercenary in two words,’ he speaks as if it is a secret, ‘I would say Idiots and Cold, hard, metal.’ Irini is about to point out that is four words when he adds, ‘And you are neither an idiot, nor are you cold and hard.’
She swallows. The hairs on her forearm stand on end. Her stomach flips and she twists her tongue on the roof of her mouth, trying to relieve the dryness. She is not sure whether to be afraid or flattered.
‘The army provided no direct support, just a lot of leaflets and telephone numbers, charities, do-gooders.’ His lips curl over the words. ‘After asking the right people, I found that my father had been posted out in the East somewhere. I was discharged without an address to go to and I knew no one. No one at all.’ He is still touching her. He doesn’t speak quickly, but there is an urgency in his voice, as if this is something he needs to tell.
‘I slept under a bridge the first night. Woke up thinking the trucks running overhead were tanks, looked everywhere for my rifle.’ He sniggers, but there is something self-critical in the laugh. Irini frowns and runs her left hand under her short, dark hair at the back. It is wet at the nape of her neck where she has been sweating. Her right arm she does
not move, allowing the tips of his fingers continued contact.
‘Anyway.’ He shifts his position. His finger slides across her skin and his hand wraps around her forearm, his thumb rubbing across the muscle and back. ‘Long story short. Met a man in a pub and he made a joke about joining the foreign legion, so I did.’ This time, his laugh holds only sadness and he dips his head toward her, watching his hand caressing her skin. There are more scars on the back of his neck that she had not noticed before, thin and faded.
‘You know there are forty-eight thousand professional soldiers?’ His words are almost a whisper.
‘Is that what they call mercenaries now?’ Irini does not feel at all comfortable with him bowed before her like this. She needs to either enclose him within her arms and rock him or he needs to sit up.
‘We are the biggest force in some places, outnumbering the countries’ forces. They rely on us.’ With these words comes energy; he does sit up, his back straight, and he lets go of her arm, which tingles with the memory of his touch. ‘It’s an industry that’s worth two billion a year.’
The hard veneer has slipped back over his features. She has lost him again.
‘Green berets, ex S.A.S., SEALS, the elite. Average pay used to be two-hundred-and-fifty to one thousand quid a day. Tax free.’
Irini converts the sum into euros in her head and a little gasp escapes her. ‘But then they realised that instead of the Australians and the Americans and the English, they could use the Chileans, the Filipinos, the Nepalese, and the Bosnians. Those guys will work for twenty quid a day, and they’re happy with it. It kicked the guts out of the industry.’ And, as if to demonstrate, his spine curves and his stomach collapses inward, the bandage around his side crumpling on itself.
His face also sags, the muscles lifeless, dimples gone, mouth formless.
‘I work alongside English guys in their early forties, ex-army, having a mid-life crisis.’ He sniffs and then snorts. ‘That or they are kids who have joined the army at seventeen and done their four years’ military experience so they can join a contract company. The podgy middle-agers are coming to war instead of buying a red sports car and the kids are just looking for the big payouts. Most of them joined the army so young, they don’t really know what civilian life is. Either way, none of them should be there.’