I settled myself at a small table on the far side of the doors that open out onto the veranda, under an awning gently flapping in a warm evening breeze. So, I’ve chosen my taverna—I’ve had a nice dinner; it’ll do me just fine. Once I’m on nodding terms with the proprietor, I’ll stick with it, not bothering to venture farther afield.
It’s quite odd really, knowing how uncertain I am about things, but I’m not really self-conscious about being alone on holiday. I know lots of people are—but it’s just not one of my many, neurotic quirkinesses. I’ve grown used to travelling by myself, quite happily spending the early evening alone on the balcony of an apartment with a book and my iPod for company before venturing out after sunset for something to eat. I’m quite comfortable sitting alone at a table so long as I can bury my face in a book in order to discourage conversation with a stranger. I’ve often been away and realised at the end of my holiday that I’ve not had a real big fat conversation with anyone at all. In the old days, sometimes the most I’d ever utter would be an instruction to some waiter to fetch me yet another half carafe of wine. These days I don’t even do that.
It’s the way I like it—never having to be beholden to a holiday companion’s whims. I do exactly what I please without having to compromise. No waiting while hair is dried before dinner, no endless splitting of bills at the end of each meal, no questions about whether I might have an idea as to whether the moussaka is better at this establishment rather than the one next door, no decisions about whether to go out now or later to replenish the bottled water, and no discussions as to which beach is to be preferred for the day on account of being too sandy or too pebbly, the water too smooth or too rough. I’m free of all that; I do exactly as I choose.
But to be really honest, there’s something else, too. I’ve never been sure that I have the right to inflict the madness of my travel insecurities on other people. I really can’t think that anyone would be able or willing to understand. I’d rather that no one’s witness to such silliness.
I dozed fitfully for only two or three hours last night in my bed at home, waiting for the alarm to rattle me awake; now fatigue has caught up with me, and I’m gloriously sleepy. I’m looking forward to climbing the steep narrow lane edged by white-washed houses, back to the sparse little apartment where I unpacked my things earlier this evening, putting my stamp on the place that’s going to be home for the next week. There are shutters at the large window just above the bed. I’ll close them when I get in—lock out the night and consign myself to dreams till morning, and when I awake, I’ll throw them open and treat myself to a view of the fishing boats bobbing up and down on the blue water in the harbour.
Jesus—I’m here! London in the early hours of this same day might be a month ago, and the trauma of travelling is receding. For a whole week, I can put behind me the ridiculous, paralyzing fears I experience when removing myself from one place to another, forget the endless unbuttoning and unzipping to check for documents, keys, money, and whatever else I always suspect I’ve mislaid somewhere along the way.
God almighty—me and airports. The worrying about being caught in a traffic jam on the way (even with the three hours put aside for the hour-long journey), tickets and euros, passports and window seats, labels for luggage and gates clanging closed because I didn’t realise it was a twenty-minute walk to the departure point, and all the other bollocks. Pure nonsense. The shame of it all.
By far the most painful trick my mind plays on me when I’m in travel panic mode is the rock solid conviction that my luggage has been lost in transit. So there I was this morning at Mytelene airport, my heart thumping in my chest while my eyes searched desperately for the green ribbon I tie around the handle of my case for easy recognition, my mind in freefall panic as it struggled to decide who I might report to after I found myself left behind by my fellow passengers, staring at the empty, motionless carousel, giving up hope of retrieving luggage obviously well on its way to some other far off holiday destination.
Of course, I’d made preparations as I always do for that eventuality. My backpack contains a sort of emergency kit for a week’s holiday with no luggage. My Ventolin inhaler, sun block, toothpaste and brush, Paracetamol in case I’m caught short by a migraine, Diocalm to be on the safe side, cold sore cream, dental glue to guard against a loose veneer, one pair of pants and shorts, a towel and trunks, though I’d be far too distressed without my luggage to even begin to think about swimming. Talk about abandoning oneself to the magic of the moment in the seat of the ancients! No chance. Play it safe. Best be prepared for calamity.
But I wonder if it might be that now I’m here, just beginning to relax, something at last will begin to shift in my mad head, and I’ll dare to be free—free of the obsessive worry about the smallest, most pointless and unimportant of things?
‘Anything else for you, my friend?’ The owner, with his hand on the balcony door and a tea towel thrown insouciantly over his shoulder, speaks perfect English. He’s pulled himself away from a flirtation with two German backpackers to attend to me, now the only other customer. ‘Something to finish with, perhaps?’ he says as he collects the plate that I’ve used bread to wipe clean of the last traces of an excellent moussaka.
‘No, thank you very much. That was really lovely, though. I’ll just have my bill if I may.’ I look down at the plastic tablecloth at the breadcrumbs and three marooned broad beans lost overboard from a side dish, spilled in my enthusiasm to banish the hunger that had engulfed me once it had finally sunk in that I’d safely reached my destination.
‘Thank you, Sir.’
I pull the half empty glass toward me; the bubbles are weakening, and I lift the glass to my lips, gulp down the remains and place it back on the table.
Water. It’s water I drink with my meal these days. I might start with an orange juice, a diet coke or a tomato juice, but then I drink water—sometimes mineral water with a piece of lemon, sometimes straight from the tap, sometimes fizzy with clunking ice cubes.
And it’s at times like this that I’m struck by the enormity of what I’ve done. I’m living a life without alcohol—and I really didn’t know that was in the realm of the possible.
It’s been nearly eighteen months, but the extraordinary novelty of it all seems fresh again in a new place. Another barrier is being crossed—my first holiday abroad since I stopped.
God knows how many evenings in years gone by I’ve spent at a table for one, just like this—overlooking the sea, a busy street or grand square—ordering a bottle and pretending to be taken by surprise when it seems to have emptied itself. How many hundreds of times have I found myself asking for a glass and then another after that, telling myself that my prodigious consumption was no one’s business but my own? How often have I sat at a table like this and wondered how it’s possible for the young lovers opposite to stretch out a miserly half bottle between them and even then to leave an inch or so of red wine at the bottom of a glass? And how many times, at the end of an evening just like this, have I become aware that although I’m the only diner left, it’s absolutely essential that I have yet another nightcap? This, in spite of the obvious impatience of the waiters wanting to go home at the end of a long shift, too polite to ask me to leave and nonplussed that I’ve not seemed to notice the shouted ‘goodnights’ of the departing kitchen staff, the neat row of put-to-bed, polished glasses glinting from behind the darkened bar, and the upended chairs on tables stripped of their cloths.
Q
It was never anywhere near to total chaos, my drinking. I’ve not lost teeth in ill-judged fights, never had to sell my house or wonder where the next penny was coming from; I was never hauled before human resources at work or sent warning letters because of repeated hangover absenteeism. I’ve never woken up on a park bench with the snow settling on my forehead, or, like someone I recently met in AA, gone to a party in Basingstoke and come to in a sleeping bag next to a stranger in th
e Mojave Desert. No friend ever cut me or sent a letter to inform me that my behaviour was beyond the pale and our relationship was at an end. I never had to struggle to keep my hands off a bottle in the early morning, and I wasn’t ever reduced to having to carry the booze around with me because I needed topping up on an hourly basis; I never found myself having to make shamefaced phone calls to friends to find out what I might have said or done the previous evening; I’ve never experienced the shakes so badly that I had to lift a glass with both hands to quivering lips.
No, it wasn’t like that. I’m much too much of a control freak for it to have slipped so far.
But my fall at Charing Cross for some reason was my ‘rock bottom’. It turned out to be, with God’s grace up till now, my last drunken evening. I don’t exactly know why—it wasn’t that much of a mishap. It’s not as though I was mugged that night. I didn’t fall into the river or assault a police officer and find myself in the cells for the night. I suppose I’d just had enough of it, that’s all—a little moment of clarity in the middle of which it occurred to me that unless I did something about it, a path was being mapped out for the rest of my life—nothing would ever happen apart from an endless series of hangovers unsuccessfully treated with the two Paracetamol placed on the sink in the bathroom at the very beginning of each evening, ready to be swallowed in the fug of morning. Quite suddenly, that just wasn’t enough.
There was fearfulness too, the dawning of the idea that I might be setting out on the same path as my mother—my dear, sweet fragile mother who’d so utterly lost her way, slipping in just a few short years into such a state of drunken unreality that she’d found herself alone, living a hopeless life far away from the people who’d loved and cared about her.
Tuesday, 4.00 pm
I doze on the strip of beach that rings this strange little town, still catching up on the sleep I was deprived of by my early morning start yesterday. I’m nearly alone, apart from two funny little dogs and a couple who have settled a little farther down the beach. They waved enthusiastically at me as they passed by ten minutes ago, remembering the camaraderie of our shared journey on the minibus from the airport yesterday afternoon. No one has yet been round to collect the two euros that a sign on the changing hut behind me says is due for the daily rental of my lounger, and it might be that it’s so late in the season that it’s not worth the owner’s bother. There are only two other rather forlorn specimens on the beach, and they may well have been abandoned. The capricious little breeze I awoke to this morning that might be signaling the very beginning of autumn in these parts has given way to a perfect stillness; there’s just the gentlest lapping where the lazy sea meets the beach. Two teenage lads are tearing up and down the lane above the shoreline on what is obviously a brand new motor bike, the one riding pillion holding onto his friend’s waist as though his life depended on it. The engine cuts through the stillness of the afternoon, a rich, gravelly baritone as they approach the village, fading to an almost inaudible buzzing as they zigzag away up the hill, helmets glinting in the sunshine, throwing up a cloud of dust on the road that winds its way south out of the town. A donkey in a dried up field of brown grass on the far side of the road has wandered over to the wire fence, ceasing his braying to give full attention to the new machine as it comes and goes. Now and again the boys stop and disembark, the proud new owner taking a cloth from inside his denim jacket to dust the stridently red metal before standing back to admire the machine with his arms folded.
The noise doesn’t disturb me. I must be already chilling out, slowly letting go. Let the boys enjoy their new toy. It’s not for me to disapprove anyway. I am, after all, an intruder, a guest in their little corner of the world.
I’ve been adopted by the two dogs. They turned up quite uninvited at my apartment this morning just as I got back from my first visit to the town bakery with my croissants, jumping up at me and licking my heels while I attempted to eat breakfast at the little table outside my front door. For a while, I tried to pretend they weren’t there, thinking they might move on if I studiously ignored them. Then I fancied that they amused me a little, and I deigned to stroke them both for a brief second in what for me was frankly a rather unusual gesture, probably brought about by the early morning sunshine, the deliciousness of the freshly baked croissants, and the resultant feeling of being at one with the world. It was a mistake. They’ve been following me around ever since. One of them is a grey, whippet-thin nervous creature with ears that point back as though he’s expecting ill treatment at any time—and perhaps he is—and the other is a sort of King Charles Spaniel affair, small with a luscious long coat and much more indulged looking, though God knows if that’s true, since he seems free to spend all his time with me. He does have a collar, though, unlike his friend. However, I managed to escape from them during my first walk along the southerly coast road, having dropped my slight feeling of indulgence towards them. We’d all set off together, my uninvited companions so close to my feet that I was struggling not to trip over them. I thought they’d get to the edge of town and then lose interest, but I couldn’t have got it more wrong. It was soon apparent that they had every intention of following, wherever I might be going. ‘Off! Off! Shoo!’ I found myself saying while wagging my index finger at them and then pointing at the town, hoping that no one was witness to the scene of the determined dogs making a fool of the self-conscious Englishman. It had no effect whatsoever. Eventually, exasperation overcame my natural diffidence. I stamped my foot petulantly and shouted at them that I’d prefer to be alone, thank you very much, and I hadn’t come all this way to be pursued by two fucking dogs with nothing better to do than ruin a man’s holiday. Whippet immediately slunk off back towards the town, trailing his tail with an air of acceptance that implied that this was the way things usually ended up with most of the visitors they adopted. Charlie followed him, looking quite devastated at the rejection. As I hurried myself along the road, praying that they’d got the message but feeling slightly ashamed at my outburst, I kept turning back to make sure I was no longer being pursued. Charlie was reluctantly making his way back, pausing every now and again to turn around and watch me striding purposefully into the distance, perhaps in the hope that I might change my mind about the ‘being alone’ thing. I felt like a prize shit, though I don’t know why I should bother to feel bad about it when I’m nowhere near to being any sort of a dog lover. But they were both sleeping in the shade cast by the table at my front door when I got back and woke to welcome me enthusiastically, my bad tempered rejection of them put to one side. I suppose I might get used to them—as long as I can dissuade them from accompanying me on my walks.
Q
It’s an odd sort of place I find myself in. I wasn’t sure about it at first—this dusty, dried out, silent village at the end of the world, but I think I might be coming round to it now. I’d asked for quiet, and quiet is what I’ve got.
It was all a very last minute decision to come away. I got it into my head that I deserved a break in the sun before the long winter nights set in, as a reward for the last few months of trauma surrounding Pa’s illness and his move from the old house into the nursing home. I couldn’t have come away any time sooner, and even now, I’m being subjected to powerful pangs of guilt every time I think of having moved him and then left him. He’s only been at Tree Tops for three weeks. But I’ve got to establish quite firmly and as soon as possible, that I’m not totally at his beck and call. That might be a hard lesson for him to learn, and I know it sounds selfish but that’s the way it is. There’s no point my being around him if I’m seething with resentment at the curtailment of the liberty I’ve grown so used to as a resolutely single person.
It’s been utterly exhausting, too. The sale of the house fell through twice, and then things moved so quickly with the third and final lot of buyers—they’d behaved appallingly, threatening to withdraw unless I set a firm, and far too early, date for completion. In the end, that
meant I was left with only two weeks to clear the entire house. I had to do the whole thing myself; Pa’s not in a fit state—either physically or mentally, after the stroke—to have been any help, and I’d had to decide not to ask him his opinion about anything and to just get on with it. It felt horribly grown up—everything being down to me, having to own all the decisions, right or wrong. And it felt horribly grown up not to be drinking.
It would have been so easy to resort to a drink. Thank the fuck I didn’t. I’d still be at it now, sitting around looking at displaced items of furniture in partly empty rooms with a glass in one hand and a corkscrew in the other, crying maudlin tears about not wanting to part with anything. Nothing would have been done, and I’d probably have lost the buyers into the bargain. I’m not sure how far away I was from slipping, but I did start hearing a little voice in my head that hinted in soothing suggestive tones that a little drink now and again would ‘Surely be quite alright because aren’t you really being rather hard on yourself seeing as what you’ve got on your plate at the moment, and don’t you think you might be allowed a little something to get you through the next difficult few weeks and anyway, why not start afresh on this sobriety thing when everything has been well and properly settled—let’s say sometime after Christmas or at the end of Lent, or, what the fuck, at the end of next summer when the whole of this moving and sorting out thing is well in the past and you’re feeling better about life in general, eh?’
It’s part and parcel of a middle-aged life, of course—having to make decisions not just about houses, but also about the aged parents who’d lived in them and can’t manage on their own anymore. Anyway, who’s to care what I decide to do about mere possessions—because that’s what all the anguish was about; it all belongs to me now and who is there to admonish me for my quick-fire decisions about what to keep and what to sell? I’ve no siblings to argue with over the spoils, so it was mere sentimentality that threatened to get in the way. They were things that finally, and for totally practical reasons, had to be let go of, that’s all.
The House Martin Page 16