by Chloe Rayban
We were both dead tired after the journey. We’d been up at five that morning in order to catch the plane. Mum took one glance at the unlit and perilous-looking steps that led down to the harbour below and said:
‘We don’t want much. Just an omelette will do.’
So he served us reluctantly. We sat at a table with a greasy oilcloth on it. The oilcloth was grudgingly covered by a paper tablecloth which was held in place by a long stretch of what looked like knicker elastic. He wasn’t up to much as a waiter – he just slammed the plates down on the table and refused to cook me chips although they were on offer, chalked up on the board which served as a menu. I wondered if he was always in such a bad mood.
When we’d finished our meal I was still hungry.
‘Ask him if he’s got a yogurt or something,’ suggested Mum.
So I went to the kitchen to ask. When he opened the fridge, I saw it was jam-packed. He had plenty of food. He just couldn’t be bothered to cook it. That’s when Mum called him ‘the Old Rogue’. And the name kind of stuck.
There wasn’t a lot to choose from by way of entertainment after dinner. Not even enough light to read by. We had the choice of either sitting and looking at the view on the left of the terrace or the view on the right. Both were equally dark. So we went to bed. Outside, I could hear the thumps and clatter of the tables being cleared. And then the lights went out on the terrace and silence descended on the place – total silence. God this place was bo-ring!
Was it an earthquake? Was it a landslide? God knows what it was! The shock had woken me and I was sitting bolt upright.
‘What on earth was that?’
Mum was awake and dressed, perched on the bed opposite looking equally stunned.
‘No idea.’
The last of the landslide was followed by a deep, guttural chug-chug-chug which echoed through the room. Mum went out to investigate.
A minute or so later she returned. ‘It’s OK. It’s only a dredger.’
‘A what?’
They must be doing some work on the harbour. Making it deeper or something. It’s a rusty old thing – amazing they’ve kept it going.’
‘Sounds healthy enough to me. How long d’you think it’ll keep that racket up?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you get up? It’s a lovely morning.’
‘In a minute.’
I turned over and tried to get back to sleep on the rock-hard mattress. My pillow felt as if it was made of concrete. My right ear was flattened and sore. I doubted whether it would ever regain its normal shape.
I was just dropping off when it happened again. Another deafening landslip of gravel cancelled out any further attempt at sleep, so I climbed out of bed and stomped over to the bathroom. You could hardly call it a bathroom, it was about the size of an airplane lavatory. I paused in the doorway… Hang on. Where was the shower?
‘Mu-um?’
‘What?’ She was rubbing sunscreen into her legs.
‘I thought the Old Rogue said we had a shower.’
‘We have. The tap’s under the towel thingy.’
I went back into the bathroom. On closer inspection, I discovered that the ‘shower’ was just a rusty sort of sprinkler sticking out of the ceiling. When I turned the tap on, water gushed out all over the loo, all over the basin and then drained away through an evil-looking hole in the floor. And what’s more – the water was stone cold.
‘Yuuukkk!’ I said as I climbed out of the icy flood and found a dry bit of floor to towel myself down on. ‘That was just about the most gruesome experience I’ve had in my entire life.’
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ said Mum. ‘You find showers like that all over the islands. Labour-saving – it washes down the bathroom too.’
‘I think it’s disgusting.’
‘Oh Lucy, don’t be such a killjoy. It’s lovely outside. He’s laid breakfast on the terrace. What do you want? Tea or coffee?’
‘Tea, I suppose. And orange juice.’ I’d had a Greek coffee at the airport. The cup was half-full of muddy-tasting dregs.
‘See you out there, then.’
When I emerged into the sunlight, Mum was already seated at a table in the shade making the best of the ‘breakfast’. We each had a plate with couple of slices of dry white bread, a sliver of margarine and some red jam. When Mum asked for orange juice, we were each presented with a Fanta.
‘Well I suppose we can’t expect much at the price we’re paying,’ said Mum when the Old Rogue was out of earshot.
‘Now you can see why we’re the only ones staying here,’ I remarked grimly.
Anyway, after the guy had made it clear that breakfast was over by swabbing down the table all around us, we decided to spend the morning exploring. Armed with swimming things and suntan lotion, a book for Mum and my Walkman, we set off in search of a decent beach.
The nearest beach was in the long bay lying to the right of the headland. But the sand was an unwelcoming black colour and you could see by looking down from the terrace that there was a wide band of weed along the shore which you’d have to swim through to get to open water.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said to Mum.
‘But it’s nice and close.’
‘Nice! Imagine what could be lurking in that weed. Crabs or jellyfish or sea urchins.’
At the mention of sea urchins, Mum agreed. I’d trodden on one once and had all these little prickles stuck in my foot which had to be taken out one by one with Mum’s tweezers. It was agony.
‘What about the harbour?’ I suggested.
‘Let’s go down and see.’
So we tried the bay on the left. A flight of rough irregular steps wove its way down through some poor little tumble-down houses. At the bottom there was a pathetic fringe of shingle edged by some rotting fishermen’s shacks. Nets were stretched out on the tarry stones to dry. The air smelt of weed and gently decaying fish.
‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful!’ said Mum brightly. ‘Look Lucy, real fishermen!’
I looked. Some rather depressed-looking whiskery Greeks were sitting barefoot on the beach mending nets.
‘Look at their boats! Oh, it’s all so unspoilt.’
I thought the place could do with a bit of spoiling actually, but I didn’t comment. I suppose the boats were pretty. They were a fading weathered sea-blue, like those trendy kitchen cabinets you get in Ikea – but this weathering was obviously genuine. One of the fishermen was rowing his boat out to sea. He stood up in it and rowed in the direction he was going, leaning forward on the oars in a really weird way.
‘We can’t swim here, it’s all fishy and tarry,’ I pointed out. My new sandals were rubbing a blister on my foot and it was already really hot. I was longing for a swim.
‘There’s probably a beach in the next bay,’ said Mum. ‘We just need to clamber over those rocks.’
The rocks were dark and evil-looking and I didn’t hold out much hope of there being a nice white sand beach the other side. But I clambered after Mum anyway. It took about half an hour to get round to the next bay. And once we got there, predictably enough, we found there was yet another headland to negotiate. I was lagging behind and my blister was rubbed red and raw.
When, at last, we rounded the further point, I could see that there were only more jagged rocks. To top it all, this bay wasn’t as sheltered as the fishing harbour – the sea looked dark and angry as it lashed against the rocks. It didn’t even look safe to swim in.
I was getting really fed up. The Greek sea Dad had described to me was calm, blue, crystal clear – so clear, he said, you could see fish swimming beneath you, twenty metres down.
Mum was up ahead of me, trying to see round into the bay beyond. I tried shouting to catch her attention but my voice was lost in the sound of the sea.
I sat down crossly on a rock and took my sandal off to examine the damage. The blister was throbbing. I dabbled my foot in the water to cool it.
‘Lucy! Come on!’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ I shouted back.
‘What?’
She turned and started picking her way back over the rocks. ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m hot and I’m thirsty and I’ve got a humungous blister,’ I shouted.
Mum joined me on my rock. ‘It doesn’t look very inviting, does it?’
‘No.’
‘But having come so far…’
‘Look. Anyone in their right mind can see there’s no way there’s going to be a decent beach anywhere round here.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe we should go back.’
‘At last!’
I climbed to my feet and tried to ease my foot back into my sandal, but it was too painful.
‘Oh Mu-um! I don’t believe this!’
‘What is it?’
‘Tar. I’ve got it all over my new shorts.’
‘Oh Lucy.’
‘Oh Lucy’ – it was the way she said it. Mum had her tired voice on. I could tell she was really fed up too. We made our way back over the sun-baked rocks. I was forced to limp with one sandal on and one foot bare, and I could feel the sole of my bare foot practically griddling on the hot stone.
‘I think we should treat ourselves to a really nice lunch to make-up,’ said Mum, trying to cheer me up in the most obvious way as the harbour came into view once again.
The ‘restaurant’ the taverna owner had mentioned was nothing but a few blue-washed tables and chairs set out in a sloping lopsided way on the beach. The whole place was salt-encrusted and fishy, and by the look of it, salmonella was generally the dish of the day.
But by the time we reached it, I was past caring about food. I just sank down gratefully on one of their rickety rush chairs.
‘All I want is a drink,’ I said.
‘Oh Lucy.’
‘Well, do you seriously want to eat here?’
‘There isn’t anywhere else. Not without climbing up all those steps again.’
I just sat on my chair not speaking. By all rights, I should be stopping off somewhere glamorous with Migs and Louisa – somewhere clean and civilised, sitting at a café in Venice maybe, eating a nice squidgy slice of pizza, with loads of dark and gorgeous Italian boys chatting us up.
‘Well, the dredger’s stopped anyway,’ said Mum.
‘I thought something was missing.’
‘Oh come on Lucy, what are you going to have?’
I sighed. ‘What’s the choice?’
‘Umm…’ Mum peered at the menu, which was all in Greek.
‘I bet it’ll be fish, fish, fish or fish.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with fish.’
‘I loathe fish, as well you know.’
‘You used to love fish fingers.’
‘That was ages ago.’
‘I think we’ll have to go into the kitchen and choose,’ said Mum, after a minute or so. ‘They won’t mind, everyone does that in Greece.’
The kitchen was dark after the bright sunlight outside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I found I was face to face with a glass-fronted fridge.
I was right, the choice was fish. There were loads of them, all shapes and sizes, staring back at me. This fish wasn’t cut up into neat white rectangles like it was back home. And it didn’t have batter or breadcrumbs on it. It had heads on, and tails on, and looked as if, ever so recently, it had been swimming around alive and well, unaware that the day’s swim was going to come to such a nasty end.
There was a large lady in a witch dress standing behind the fridge, grinning at us. A gold tooth gleamed in the darkness.
‘I don’t fancy anything if you don’t mind,’ I said with a grimace.
‘Oh Lucy. Don’t be such a wimp, darling, it looks simply delicious. It’s probably just come out of the sea.’
‘Can’t I have chips?’
‘Only chips? Well, if you must. But we didn’t have much to eat last night.’
‘Chips’ll be fine.’
So I had chips and a Coke and Mum had fish and some wine. We sat at a table in the shade not far from the water’s edge. I think the wine must’ve been pretty strong because after a glass or so, Mum kept going on about what a brilliant place it was. She came out with all this ‘unspoilt’ stuff again and droned on and on about how we were getting back to the ‘real Greece’ and how time stood still in this kind of place. It was all that ‘alternative lifestyle’ nonsense that Dad sometimes came out with. I reckon the olds had been brainwashed with it when they were young.
All I could see was that we were sitting on a grotty beach that had several centuries of discarded fishbones and rotting fish heads mixed in among the pebbles. And that there were feral-looking cats hanging around which seemed horribly mangy and possibly rabid. And that the sea looked weedy and oily and fishy and had bits floating in it …
‘Oh look at those children. It must be paradise for them here. It’s like going right back to nature…’ said Mum, absent-mindedly filling her glass again.
I looked. A couple of unhealthily chubby little boys were wading in the rust brown sea. They had a plastic bag with them and they were emptying it into the water a few metres out. A load of bloody-looking fish guts fell from the bag. As they did so, a shoal of tiny fish surrounded them and the water boiled around their legs as the younger fish eagerly devoured the remains of their elders. The boys squealed with delight and tried to catch them with their fingers.
‘Yeah, what’s that phrase? Nature raw in tooth and claw?’ I agreed.
The trek back up the steps to the taverna seemed to go on forever. By the time we reached the top, we were both hot and cross and headachy.
‘Bags first in the shower,’ I said.
‘Don’t be long then. I think I’m going to melt.’
I turned the shower on and nothing happened. When I tried to flush the loo it made a hollow cranking noise and no water came out.
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s the final straw. I’m not staying here any longer.’ I was near to tears.
‘Oh Lucy. Don’t tell me the water’s off.’
‘Try for yourself.’
I lay down on my bed as Mum tried a range of clanking and cranking, but she had no more luck than me.
‘See?’
She sat down on her bed. ‘Do you really hate it here?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Well, I suppose it is a bit primitive…’
‘Primitive! It’s positively Stone Age. I’m hot and I’ve got a headache and there isn’t even any water.’
‘Maybe we should have looked further.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And I really wanted us to enjoy this holiday…’
‘So did I!’
‘I know that next year you’ll be off somewhere with your friends… It could be our last together…’
‘I know, I know…’
‘Listen. If you absolutely hate it here, we could move on…’
‘But you keep saying you really like it.’
‘Not if you’re not happy…’
‘Well, it is a bit cut off…’
‘I suppose I could get on a bus this afternoon and have a look round. There must be other places.’
‘Nowhere could be worse than this.’
‘Well, we could be nearer to a decent beach.’
‘Want me to come with you?’
‘No point in us both going out in this heat. You rest that headache, get a plaster on your blister. Have a sleep.’
‘Thanks Mum.’
Chapter Three
It was cool in the room. The shutters had been closed all morning to keep the sun out. I lay back and shut my eyes. I heard Mum bustling around the room, collecting her things. As she went out through the door she said: ‘Oh, and Lucy – don’t go out in the sun again. Not till after four. It’s scorching. You’ll get burned.’
‘Mmmm. OK. Bye.’
I lay gazing into the semi-darkness, chasing the tiny squigg
les you get in your eyes as they darted back and forth across the gloom. They’re stray cells apparently, being washed back and forth over the eye. I’m fascinated by all that stuff. Mum calls it gruesome. She’s not exactly scientific. I reckon her science education must’ve ended with the life-cycle of the frog. When I told her I wanted to be a vet she nearly freaked out. She claimed I’d got the whole idea from some series I’d seen on the telly and it would wear off. But it is what I want to do – really badly.
My head had stopped throbbing. I listened to the noises outside. The dredger must’ve knocked off for the day and I could now hear all the other sounds of the village. Hens somewhere not too far off. And a donkey braying in the distance – a long cascade of eeyores, like mad hysterical laughter. Then the soft sound of the wings of pigeons as they landed on the roof and started scrabbling and cooing.
I was starting to feel bored. What a waste of all that sunlight out there. I climbed off the bed and went to the door. It wasn’t that hot. Mum was just being over-protective, as usual.
My shorts were hanging on the balcony rail. I could at least try and get the tar off. There was a pump in the vineyard – maybe that worked. I took the shorts and some soap and went and cranked the handle. Sure enough, a gush of water came out.
The shorts were brand new from Gap. They were the first pair of shorts I’d ever had which didn’t make my bottom look big. I’d been really pleased with them. But after five minutes or so of scrubbing with the soap, I’d made the tarry marks bigger and darker, if anything.
‘What you doin’?’
I jumped. The Old Rogue was standing with his hands on his hips watching me, frowning. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be in his vineyard.
‘There’s no water in the bathroom. I was trying to get these marks off.’
He held out a hand. ‘Let me see?’
He took the shorts and made some tut-tutting noises. Then he carried them over to where he had a can of what looked like kerosene. He slopped some on and rubbed the marks. Then he brought them back to the pump, and with a lot of huffing and puffing, soaped the stains and rinsed them out.
‘See – good – like new,’ he said.