The Trojan Walrus

by Julian Blatchley

  The crew of the only other yacht in the harbour, early charterers with an Italian flag at the crosstrees and conventionally moored inside the mole, watched these proceedings with veiled incredulity. They were a stylish group, two couples of probably forty or so. The men were senatorial, distinguished, edged with silver types, and the women were svelte, long-limbed and elegant. Their grooming was universally superior. They were utterly unreserved and friendly, but entirely monoglotal.

  In loud, slow Italian, and with many gestures, they earnestly tried to explain to me that the harbour had an inside and an outside, and for people of style there could be but one choice. In English For The Unimproved Foreigner, laced with a few attempts at something which I thought might be Italian but obviously wasn’t, I tried to tell them that they would shortly be on the windward side of the quay praying for their anchor to hold; but we could find no common tongue. I tried my schoolboy French, my war movie German and my Central American dock-rat Spanish, whilst Clemmie tried in Latin (what else?); but by no means could we make them understand that a) they weren’t in a good place, and more importantly b) that I wasn’t a loony. We parted from each other smiling broadly, making no sudden gestures, both parties keeping their hands visible and making all possible soothing, amicable gestures to appease the dangerous nutters on the opposite side of the quay.

  Irakleia was a very quiet little island... apparently, less than a hundred people lived there during the winter. The port boasted a wonderfully soft, sandy beach under shady trees, a small shop and two tavernas, both of which offered, at this very early part of the season, not very much at all. There was considerable consternation at our arrival. Fridges were thrown open to display no more than potatoes, olives, cheese and the odd tomato.

  My nascent Greek was not up to the voluble explanations which accompanied this out-turning of the cupboards and so, by means of eldritch screams up and down the beach, a teenager was summoned to interpret. We were offered fresh fish, and the much-vaunted local goat... but would we please order now, as someone had to go to the chora to get it?

  We allowed ourselves to be talked into ordering yido-makaronada, goat-meat with spaghetti... heaven knows why; we must have been in an enquiring frame of mind... and then settled down with a bottle of Naxian wine whilst a clattering old pick-up truck was sent for our supper.

  It seemed hours before it was ready, but we were quite happy sitting under a great tree in a courtyard, chatting and practising our Greek with the kids. The adults kept coming to apologise for the wait, and the children enthusiastically told us how worth waiting for it was... people came from Naxos, from Santorini, from Athens even, for Mum’s yido-makaronada.

  I suppose we had sort of expected the meat to be in a sauce, but the name turned out to be scrupulously correct, and what we got was a soup-bowl full of goat and spaghetti, with just a hint of clear juice at the bottom of the bowl. It seemed the meat had simply been boiled, and there wasn’t much likelihood that it was kid, or anything young and succulent, either; the flesh had a sinewy, coarse-grained appearance that suggested a draught-animal beyond economical repair. From irregular chunks of the greyish meat protruded splintered ends of substantial bone, and dotted here and there were lumps of yellowy fat. It looked like something you might find stuck on the front of your car after speeding through a sanctuary for elderly warthogs.

  The smiling, obliging proprietors assembled in an expectant line to watch us enjoy this culinary pearl, and only the compulsion not to give offence to what looked like four generations of the proud family gave us the courage to try it. And do you know, a pearl it was!

  The spaghetti, we later found, had been prepared in the water used for boiling the goat, and had a delicately gamey flavour very nicely spiced with rosemary. The meat itself was tasty, juicy and as soft as butter. Second helpings were offered and accepted. Boiled superannuated goat with spaghetti... try it sometime!

  * * *

  Overnight the wind picked up just as forecast, and we awoke to the tinkling of the halyards inside the mast, a low humming in the rigging, and the occasional sharp heeling of Mucky Duck as a gust struck her spars. Smugly secure with our stern to the weather, we snuggled under the duvet and enjoyed being safe in port in a blow... it is a wonderful feeling for a sailor, to be cosily contemplating a leisurely breakfast and an idle day in the taverna when a different decision might have meant being out in the dawn, moving to a safe place, lashing things down and generally combating the elements.

  I ruefully lamented the fact that, in accordance with my first law of nautical recreation, nobody was around to appreciate my omniscience. Clemmie told me to quit moaning and make the coffee. We then engaged in a wonderful little wrestling and tickling match to determine who was going to quit the pink, rosy ambience of the duvet and put the kettle on, during the course of which we discovered to our surprise that we didn’t really want coffee all that much anyway, and continued the wrestling and tickling for the sheer fun of it. And then, at frankly a most inopportune moment, there was a horrendous grating close by. An instant later Mucky Duck took a great lurch to one side, and I came perilously close to suffering what is hopefully a very rare form of whiplash.

  I shall spare the sensitive reader a graphic description of the next few moments; suffice it to say that I deserted Clemmie in the most boorish manner by virtually traversing her north face and base-jumping off her head. Tumbling naked and disoriented into the cabin, I then spent the next few moments like the dog in the dilemma of being equidistant from two bones. With fear for the boat in my heart, nautical contingencies in my head and every other organ of my body still in the service of Eros, I performed a headless-chicken impression of Oscar winning standard between the hatch way and a desperate search for clothes. It wasn’t made any better by a babble of panicky voices outside and another few lurches at critical moments.

  I picked things up, changed my mind, put them down, lost them. At one point I got my substantial thigh stuck tight in a pair of Clemmie’s knickers... nothing kinky, I merely mistook them for underpants... and at another I found myself staring indecisively at a left foot sandal and a right foot rubber boot. Eventually I found a pair of swimming shorts, heaved them on with great difficulty... they appeared to cling to my legs like rubber... and following a prodigious struggle with the main hatchway I erupted into the cockpit through a shotgun blast of storm-driven raindrops.

  The Italian boat was pressed up against Mucky Duck’s port side, with her bows towards the quay and canted sharply so that her stern was across our stem. A regular succession of violent gusts of wind pressed her bow to starboard, and she should have just blown away and gone clear; however, her anchor was hooked over our stern-line so that her front end was firmly attached. Something similar had evidently occurred at her back end too, as that was also held tightly against us. The side of the Italian boat was hard against Mucky Duck’s un-fendered port bow, and four howling, frantic people in matching day glow foul weather gear were desperately trying to hold the two boats apart whilst forcing fenders down between them. This was an utterly dispiriting business for them, as there was no way under the sun that they were going to manage to compress the fenders sufficiently to force them between the upper edges of the two decks; and they were up to the usual nonsense of pushing as hard as they could on life lines and stanchions.

  I bellowed at them to stop that before they broke something and, doing my best to ignore the assault of the ferocious elements on my naked torso, I ran forward with a fender taken from the other side. This I dropped to sea level, let it float between the boats and then hauled it upwards so that it wedged itself between the hulls from underneath. A couple of mighty heaves jammed it so tightly into the narrowing gap from below that the hulls were held a few inches apart. I dragged another one in there from the other end, and told everyone to take a breather. This the Italians evidently misunderstood, as they immediately commenced a massive argument.

  Clemmie appeared next to me at this point and took in the
situation with keen interest, looking as fetching as ever with a twinkle in her bright eyes, a quirky smile and her curly, dark hair positively Medusan in the anarchy of the gale. Her bare, shapely legs protruded below her waterproof jacket, terminating ludicrously in a pair of cut-off green farmer’s wellies.

  We watched avidly as the two women on the other boat got stuck into their men folk like reapers into a wheat field. I got the impression that this was merely the first instalment of a fulsome and remorseless remonstration for broken fingernails and spoiled hairdos; and there was none of the screeched, semi-articulate loss for words which these affairs often engender, either. Both ladies appeared to be powerfully coherent, their scorn-laden phrases clearly enunciated and forcefully projected without deviation, hesitation or repetition so far as we could tell. The men defended themselves with passion. Jaws were thrust forward, arms flew about without quite making contact... it was all rather like a third-rate kung-fu film.

  At any other time I would have poured a drink and sat down to enjoy the show; however, at gale strength and laced with light rain even the mild south wind was cold enough to begin to bite, and I reluctantly interrupted.

  I made a couple of half-hearted efforts to interrupt them, but passions were flying fairly high and nothing remotely polite made any headway. And then I remembered a bit of dock-Italian I had heard stevedores using during a difficult cargo operation in Trieste some years before. I decided to give that a try.

  “Basta, Stronzo!” I cried, with all my not inconsiderable vocal power. It was probably registered by seismic monitoring stations around the area... but all it accomplished was to enrage the Italian men,* who now turned on me. Until, that is, the blonder of the two Italian ladies bested my effort with a penetrating “Tacere, vecchia pentola a pressione!†”

  This had the effect I had totally failed to achieve, and she turned from her startled and speechless men folk, saying to me sweetly, “’Scuzi, Signor!”

  I was in charge. Wonderful. Now what was I going to do? I took a look at the situation.

  Driven away from the windward side of the quay by the ferocious gusts off the island, the Italians had presumably tried to move around to the lee side next to us, and I supposed that they had decided to lay a stern anchor and moor bows to the weather... a sensible thought, but one which gave a dreadful premonition that the entanglement at their stern might well involve their anchor-rope, my anchor chain, and/or a propeller. Dimly aware that something was still very wrong with my shorts, I made my way forward and peered over the bow... the Italian’s rudder was over my anchor chain, and in the clear but agitated water I thought I could see a loop of their anchor line around my chain and back into their propeller.

  We quickly got some lines ashore from the Italian’s bow, and then one of the men donned his snorkelling gear and cut the anchor-rope free from their propeller. This done, the other boat drifted away from Mucky Duck and lay to the wind. We knotted the two ends of the anchor-rope together again, pulled hard to make sure that their anchor was holding, and presently had them conventionally moored. Peace was declared, universal good will broke out, Clemmie brought me a fleece jacket, and one of the Italian ladies handed round small glasses of grappa.

  Whilst the other lady prepared magnificently aromatic Italian coffee for us all, I trotted ashore to deal with their anchor, which was still over our stern-line; and as I did so I realised what was wrong with my shorts... in my haste to get on deck, I had put them on back-to-front. I ignored the matter temporarily and concentrated on the other boat’s anchor, which I supposed they had left hanging from the roller whilst moving around from the inside of the harbour. It had hooked over our rope when they approached the quay. I didn’t want to slack our moorings in this wind, and I couldn’t be bothered rigging another line, so I slipped a rope around the head of the anchor with a boat hook, asked the Italians to slack the chain a little, and lifted the anchor onto the quay.

  I was quite enjoying the attention of everyone as I performed this manly feat, and I posed a moment as Clemmie took a photograph. She still has it, I believe... it captures my open-mouthed expression at the very moment when the abused shorts finally gave up the ghost, and preserves me for all posterity, virtually naked from the waist down apart from a boot on my right foot and a sandal on my left. The keenest of observers, with patience and concentration, may just be able to make out The Pride of the Blatchleys making a very successful job of hiding from the inclement elements, and Clemmie’s lace-frothed knickers still gartering my extravagant thigh.

  * * *

  We left Irakleia early the next morning with a cool but exhilarating north-westerly force five over our shoulder and raced eastwards under Skinoussa towards Amorgos, fortifying ourselves against the temperature and flying spray with occasional drams of fiery, invigorating Italian grappa. We also bore with us some Limoncello liqueur, both bottles insistently bestowed by the Italians after a boisterous evening of mutual incomprehension and mirth in the taverna. Lacking the means to discuss anything other than everyone’s profound satisfaction at having witnessed my inaugural efforts at indecent exposure we had just laughed, drank incomprehensible toasts, brutally murdered some opera, and then basked in bonhomie whilst Clemmie’s violin filled the house to capacity. By the end of the evening they seemed to have bussed most of the islanders in from the chora and we finally parted in the wee hours, feeling like honorary Irakleians and Freemen of the city of Firenze too boot.

  I thought, as we fizzed across a rolling, grey sea and Clemmie stole a few more minutes sleep in the pilot-berth, how very easy it would have been to get angry about the Italian’s mismanaged manoeuvring; and what a pleasurable experience we would have missed if we had done so. A confirmation for my Second Law of Nautical Recreation… one meets a better class of people in collisions.

  * * *

  Evening. A cafe table on a picture-postcard harbour front, and a view across a narrow strip of water towards a rocky, rising landscape. Clemmie and I sat strangely upright in our easy chairs, unusually quiet as we toyed with our evening G-and-Ts. For the first time since we had met there was a constraint between us. Both of us were painfully aware that the repartee had dried up, and the silence had none of the companionable tranquillity which normally marked any hiatus in our conversation. Neither of us dared mention it.

  It was a pensive silence, full of reminiscence and introspection, pregnant with unspoken thoughts; for the harbour front on which we sat was Pythagorion, on the south-east side of Samos. The land rising a short distance across the straits was in Turkey, the start of a new continent, and the last thing we had done before ordering our drinks was to book a taxi driver for five o’clock in the morning to take Clemmie to the ferry port in Vathi. I was staying in Greece to hand over Mucky Duck, and Clemmie was leaving me, Greece and Europe to continue her archaeological studies.

  Even my insensitive temperament recognised that the moment bristled with opportunities to say something really crass. Our relationship had been born out of camaraderie, not romance; our intimacy had developed as a simple extension of friendship, begotten out of badinage and carried on in the same teasing vein with the unspoken and mutual expectation of a brief, sub-emotional tryst. No involvement, no commitments, just healthy physical fun which provided the crowning condiment in a delicious banquet of companionable experiences. We were jocular about our relationship, mocked each other about our respective social origins, and jested that living together was a mere matter of logistical convenience. It was always a finite thing. We spoke easily about it.

  We weren’t speaking about it now, however. The imminence of our separation made me suddenly starkly aware that I was going to miss this girl, possibly more than I’d ever missed anyone, and it seemed to me that Clemmie had realised this and didn’t want any last minute emotional nonsense. She had in front of her a career which would require her to travel freely; she was younger than me and a hell of a lot better looking. She couldn’t follow her own vocation and me, and she wasn�
�t interested in giving up her own worthy ambitions to become an asset to help me enjoy my life; not even if she did share any of the feelings I was now belatedly discovering.

  Mutually preoccupied, both of us searched cluelessly for a neutral subject of conversation. Periodically there were farcical outbursts where we both tried to speak at once, deferred to each other and fell silent again with nothing said. When we did speak, we uttered inane blether, neutral, uncontroversial and pointless. Mostly we pretended to be absorbed in the scenery, and just let the awkward silence have its way.

  As we watched the dusk fall and lights begin to twinkle on the Turkish coast, all I could think of was what a perfect time this would be for a soliloquy. I’m rather fond of The Bard and, lacking anything original to say, I searched my memory for an appropriate quote; something witty or comic to defuse the tension. But The Bard was treacherous that night, and all that came to mind, over and over, was a gentleman of Verona intoning, “What joy is joy, if Sylvia be not by?”

  Clemmie declined another G-and-T, so we moved to a restaurant and poked some food around our plates for a while; then we went to bed early and lay there in the dark for what seemed like ages, both quite aware that the other was wide awake.