Tales of Persuasion

by Philip Hensher

  It was quite a hot day already, and Florian pulled off his shirt. His skin was not so brilliantly red as yesterday, but still burnt and painful-looking. After the beginning of the hill, he was sweating. There was a gust of animal odour when he pulled his shirt off. Thyme was seized by desire, and by a desire that was not just lust, but a feeling of magnetism, as if he were being pulled towards the weight and substance of this body. The world had disappeared for him. He had to turn away.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Florian said. His expression could not be read, behind the sunglasses.

  ‘I’m supposed to go to my brother’s for lunch,’ Thyme said. ‘But it doesn’t really matter. He just wants me to help out with some guests and probably with the cooking, too.’

  There was a puzzled pause. ‘I really meant – what are you going to do generally?’ Florian said. ‘Are you working here as a summer job? What comes after that?’

  ‘It’s my brother’s shop,’ Thyme said. ‘He can’t be here every day so I look after it for him. What did your mother do with the painting of your father? Is it on the wall at home?’

  Florian laughed. ‘Of course it is on the wall – where did you think she would put it? She likes it. It’s the first thing she shows anyone. She talks about my father a lot and about Antidauros. They liked this island a lot, you know. Me …’ He shook his head.

  ‘You don’t like it so much,’ Thyme said.

  ‘It is a painting by your father,’ Florian said.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Thyme said. ‘I hate some of his paintings and I don’t have any opinion about almost all the others. I can’t even remember seeing that. I remember him working on it. He kept talking about it, about whether he should start up a portrait business. He’s like that – he does one thing and then he thinks he can make his fortune. He was like that the year he managed to grow beans in the patch behind the studio.’

  ‘But he didn’t start a business painting portraits.’

  ‘He’s back where he started now,’ Thyme said. ‘Views of the harbour and teaching people and his own stuff in the winter or in the evenings in the summer, sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Florian said. ‘The painting – it looks like my father, but towards the end, he looks very old and very ill. I sometimes think your father was making, not a joke, but a comment on someone he decided he did not like. What is this hill called, this hill we’re going up?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thyme said. They had climbed out of the town. The sea was expansive and a rich blue beneath them. A donkey in the field by the road swished its tail, taking no notice of them. Thyme felt that he should know the name of the hill, and also the field, and perhaps even the donkey. Everything had a name, but not on this island; it was all how things could be accounted for – the hill, the town, the beach, the road. ‘I don’t know what it’s called.’

  ‘You don’t paint,’ Florian said.

  ‘No,’ Thyme said. ‘No one taught us. My elder brother, my father started to teach him when he was five, but he lost patience and Oak didn’t have any interest. So then he didn’t teach any of us.’

  ‘That is so strange,’ Florian said. ‘Your father not wanting his children to do what he does.’

  ‘It wasn’t really that he didn’t want it,’ Thyme said. ‘It was more that we weren’t really interested and it just didn’t happen. We had some kind of art lessons at the school, but it was really the music teacher showing us slides of Velázquez and talking about them. My pa was always too busy, and he wouldn’t want little kids messing about with his easel and palette, or whatever.’

  ‘But it didn’t happen,’ Florian said. It was as if he had made his mind up about something. ‘Your father – does he want to be famous? I think maybe he wants to have children so they can be his fans, his admirers, and then he can win in life. You know, I never see any of you reading a book, never. So what are you going to do in your life?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thyme said. He could have said that they read books, but against this man there was no resistance.

  ‘The café, the internet café,’ Florian said. ‘Why is it called Drys? Does it mean something?’

  ‘It’s my brother’s name,’ Thyme said. ‘My brother’s name in Greek, I mean. Drys is an oak tree. It was his idea. My brother, Oak, I mean. It’s a nice name for a café. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked why it was called that before. You’re the first.’

  ‘And why is he called Oak? Is that a name in English?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Thyme said. ‘We all have strange names. My parents just thought of them as we came.’

  ‘Drys. I see. You have to do something,’ Florian said. ‘You grow up here, you want to be artistic. Your father is artistic, your mother is artistic, and so everyone thinks you will be artistic. But what is it that you can do on this island? It is very nice for two weeks each year. But to live here, to grow up here, to grow old here, to stay here. And you do not belong. You are English, they all know that. You speak Greek but you are always the son of the painter, the English painter.’

  ‘What do you do?’ Thyme said. He meant in general, what ought a person do in response to this fact of parentage? But Florian took it for the ordinary, the polite question.

  ‘I am managing a coffee shop in Solothurn, which is a town in Switzerland. And it is very nice, a very good job. I like it. I arrive before seven, and the shop opens at seven thirty. We make coffees of very many sorts. People like them. And there are cakes and sandwiches, snacks, and similar things. If you make and sell things that people like, and you understand what it is that they like, then your job is satisfying. I am satisfied with my job. I have learnt a lot working for a multinational company, and one day I am going to go to work for a different multinational company, for more money, in a larger town. There is nothing so wrong with that. My father managed to be proud of me before he died.’

  There was nothing to say to that, except what Thyme’s mother would have said. She had supplied him with responses when a person explained what they did for a living, and the responses were polite, and noncommittal, and spiritually prophylactic; they allowed no contamination of the upper world by commerce, or the words deputy manager, and they did it with politeness and an empty sneer. The way they would respond when the person was out of the room was not so polite. They would talk about them and dwell on the words deputy manager, like ore that might contain gold, turning them over and over with laughter and scrupulous consideration. The upper world would remain uncontaminated. But as Thyme walked, silently, by the side of this man, the density of his physical presence a proof of his decency, and of the life that was opening up before him, that upper world had never been so empty. What was there in his mother’s words, his mother’s manners, the way of life his father had chosen and – Florian was right – had jealously guarded from his children? The island was beautiful. He could see that. He had never looked at it and never let it fall into his mind other than as the place where he lived. But today he was looking at it and finding it beautiful, with the eyes of a visitor who would soon leave it, and the beauty of the place was a guarantee of its emptiness. There was nothing to say in response to Florian, explaining his work. His mother and father had supplied him with no means of responding and finally he said merely, ‘That sounds really nice,’ inadequately and bathetically. Florian looked at him with amusement. They fell into silence.

  At the top of the hill, you could see so far. They scrambled off the road, and up onto what should have been the final tussock but there was another one, and they scrambled up that, to find themselves on what, really, was the peak of the hill. It was a small, flat stretch of sand and stone. In one direction, there was the village; in the other, there was the small settlement where his brother and Charlie had settled. Beyond that, the sea, not framed by land and land’s requirements, but all around them, like an element. It was so blue; more blue than, even, the sky. Down in the village, the air had been nearly still, but up here, the wind was marked a
nd warm. There was the sound, far off, of a motorbike. The smells of the island, of the undergrowth and of wild herbs growing, were all around them. Florian put his arm round Thyme’s shoulders. It was as if he had been doing it for ever. Thyme felt heroic, like a poster of sporting deeds, up there on the top of the hill, but also on the verge of a loss of control. Next to Florian, he was dissolved, cloudlike, insubstantial, and from the top of the hill he could roll or melt or float away. Florian’s arm was a tether on his lightness. He felt that. They stood there for a long time. He could not understand it when a woman came into view. Nobody came up here, and certainly no tourist. Then he remembered it was the mother of Florian, and what they were here to do.

  Florian lowered his arm from Thyme, and, taking the shirt from his waistband, put it on. Perhaps he understood that it was a solemn moment. Thyme knew he should walk away and leave the man with his mother to say goodbye, but he simply could not, and he stood there while the mother spoke in German, musically, almost flirtatiously, to her son. He took a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his cargo shorts, and opened it.

  ‘This is a poem that my father liked,’ he said to Thyme. ‘He wanted it to be read before we emptied – before we scatter – his ashes. It is very nice. But I am going to read it in German.’

  Florian started to read, soberly, without much expression. Ich denke dein/wenn mir der Sonne schimmer/Vom Meere strahlt. His tone was that of a man not used to poetry, with not much display of poetry in him, but who knew that poetry had its place in the world, and would treat it with respect. Thyme understood nothing of what he heard, but he could hear it was a poem, with rhymes, and he could see that Florian’s voice went through it with the music of his accent, a song that belonged to its place of birth and not of this particular invention. He was not embarrassed in the slightest. His mother touched his arm, her two fingers touching his sore forearm, like a shy child, trying to attract attention. Her eyes shone. The poem came to an end, and, like a coda, Florian said, ‘Mama?’ and, leaning down, passed her the casket from her bag. It was an anonymous object, cylindrical in polished steel.

  ‘Zusammen,’ the mother said. Thyme understood nothing, but together Florian and his mother unscrewed the lid of the casket, and together they shook it into the air. Thyme feared that the winds would blow the ashes back into their faces, but Florian had thought of that. They were standing at exactly the right point, facing the right direction, and the ashes blew away from them, into the air and towards the sea. Thyme was part of this farewell, and it was his farewell too. He felt that.

  They had almost reached the hotel when Florian said, ‘I’m very burnt. I feel so sore. Mama dressed me with yoghurt last night, but I need some more.’

  ‘She probably wants to rest now,’ Thyme said, and they said goodbye to Florian’s mother until dinner time. It was three o’clock. There was no point in going to Oak’s for lunch. He would face that fury later, or perhaps not face it at all. He went with Florian through the lobby of the hotel. Anna Matsoukas was behind the desk. She looked up at him, a disapproving presence with a tight-drawn, almost military bun, tapping the lid of her biro on the volume of bookings. He said nothing to her, but just went on with Florian, up the stairs, along the corridor, into his room. Florian went to the little fridge, and took out a tub of yoghurt, unopened. With two or three gestures, unembarrassed and even mechanical, he pulled his shirt over his head, unbuckled his belt and dropped his shorts, kicking his sandals off. Thyme took the tub of yoghurt, and, opening it, scooped out handfuls of the stuff. Florian’s skin was sore and red, but to Thyme smooth and beautiful. He painted Florian’s back, and his hands, as they went over him, lost any sense of separateness. He felt as if he was dissolving into Florian, the sunburnt rough skin and the relaxed play of muscles. There was in Thyme an impersonal lust as he moved over Florian, a hot blaze in the eyes, but also something unique that he felt was like love. The thick neck with its folds and the little ears, sticking out and, on top, encrusted with burn scars; his hands went, laden with yoghurt, over Florian’s face. He could feel the eyes shut, the mouth pursed; gently, he swivelled Florian, and painted his chest. The collarbone, the shoulder seemed loose and relaxed; it was hard to think that Florian was in pain from his burns. Thyme’s hands went over chest and arms, stomach, Florian’s burnt cock and balls, his thighs, calves and even his feet, though his feet were brown and not sore. Florian sat and let him do it. At some point he said, musingly, Ich denke dein. After that, there were no words spoken between them. He was smooth and painted and cured of his pain by Thyme. He could do this for Florian as Florian could do something for him. In the evening they went up together to see the painter and his wife in their house on the hill.

  Rose had had a difficult day. The twins had come home from school crying. Rose knew perfectly well what it was but, in their ten-year-old way, the twins liked to get their story straight before one of them was allowed to tell their mother. Rose had carried on around the kitchen, putting things straight, chopping onions for the dinner tonight – she was making stifado in a big pot, whatever bloody Charlie might have to say about it. In the end, Thistle had come to her, her sister Borage standing behind silently, reproachful, and had said that they never wanted to go back to that school. People there were horrible, they stole your things and they tore up your books and they were going to throw you in the sea and watch you drown. Rose had heard it all before. It was part of growing up on the island, and probably anywhere else at all. It had happened to Oak and it had happened to Thyme, and they were more obvious targets; it had happened to Rosalys and to Juniper. They had all come through it OK. It was probably character-forming. Rose said, ‘Oh dear,’ from time to time, hardly listening to Borage’s explanation, apparently worked out in detail, of how they could be educated at home from books and never have to go to that horrible school ever again. If she listened she knew she would grow exasperated with just one more thing.

  Because this was a time and a day when she could hardly bear to engage with any of it. The bookings for the school were thin to the point of non-existence this year. The Germans who normally came with such largesse were gone. They had heard what the ordinary Greeks thought of their chancellor, and they did not want to be made to feel unwelcome in a country. It wasn’t helpful for Thorpe to say that he didn’t know what the country was that would make them feel welcome, before saying, brilliantly, ‘Germany, probably.’ The fact remained that they weren’t coming. It was last year when someone else had said to Rose that Greece used to be lovely and cheap, but now … It was true, she supposed. It wasn’t just the Germans that weren’t coming; there were few bookings of any sort. The people who complained about Greece being too expensive hadn’t thought that people who lived here would find it expensive too, and more expensive if their main source of money decided on a whim to take it away. If she only had five minutes with those people complaining about the expense, she’d bring it home to them.

  But Thorpe didn’t seem to be taking anything at all seriously. That day, she was supposed to be cooking and preparing an immense stifado. Oak and Charlie had some posh friends from England staying with them in the Winter Palace, as she’d christened their house in Hora. For some reason, Oak had said that they’d bring them over for dinner. She resigned herself to being seen as the picturesque bohemian living up the hill on a Greek island in a muddle of green and purple skirts. She knew that one of them would be certain to ask if they had any dope. Thorpe had said he would help, but had disappeared after breakfast to the studio. He hadn’t been seen since. Around three in the afternoon, just after Oak had phoned to ask in a rage where the bloody hell Thyme was, she’d gone over to see if he wanted anything to eat. She had found him at work in front of an immense canvas, smearing and slashing. The canvas was wild, she had to admit that, but it was one of his winter canvases. It was the sort of thing he worked at when there was no pressure on him. In the store room, there were thirty or forty winter canvases, all exhibited, all unsold. She had asked hi
m, as politely as she knew how, whether the saleable views had all been done by now. The visitors would be here soon, and would want to start buying.

  But Thorpe had said, quite crossly, that he understood where he was going wrong now, that his real painting couldn’t be produced in the gaps between commercial work. The commercial work had got into the bones of his work, the painting he’d only been playing at. He needed to walk away from views, from realistic portraits, from chocolate box, from the quality of light. If he did nothing else but this, he said, gesturing at the huge Twombly exercise, then in a month or two, his work was going to lose that taint. It would get somewhere. He could feel—

  She left the studio, slamming the door, in case he said that he could feel greatness in him. How they were supposed to live through this summer and next winter without any saleable art to sell – with hardly any students for the art school. They were going to have to move, the lot of them, into the flat over the top of Oak’s internet café, or back to England to live with her old mum. She just could not see it. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said now to the twins, still going on about the terrible things that were going to happen to them. ‘Just shut up.’ She devoted all the energy in her body to the vegetables beneath the blade of her knife.

  It was then that the door opened, and Thyme came in. Behind him was a man she didn’t recognize, and she gave what must have been a tired smile.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ she said. ‘You were supposed to go over and help Oak out with lunch for eight.’

  ‘This is Florian,’ Thyme said, making a gesture to bring the man into the kitchen. He was dark, and startlingly red in colour. His face and arms were streaked with some kind of lotion; his eyes an intense blue. She looked at him: there was something familiar about him.

  ‘Are you hoping to get invited to dinner?’ Rose said. ‘There’s fourteen of us, but I expect we can squeeze two more in, if you don’t mind sitting on garden chairs. It’ll be a squash.’