Needless to say, sex education at such an establishment consisted of advice to take cold showers and reading the swiftly-removed and often contradictory information available in the toilet cubicles. The only thing I thought I knew about sex was that it was as tiring as a ten-mile run, which wasn’t much of an encouragement for an indifferent athlete like me.
The result of these events was to send me through childhood and puberty isolated from popular culture, sporting in solitary splendour, musing on Richard III, quoting Shakespeare, whistling The Pastoral Symphony, and singing Schiller’s Ode to Joy in German. As for girls… they were like reptiles, in that I had seen them, in carefully controlled conditions, and I understood that they occurred naturally, were necessary, and that some were quite beautiful; but I had little idea how to approach one in safety. They were mysterious creatures whose language I could not speak, and I was so deeply ignorant of their physiology that my sole awareness was a vague impression that, once a month, they had to go to places called ‘sanitary towers’.
It was in this condition of painful ignorance and ineptitude that I went to sea, thus entering a chauvinistic male world where every day of the week was lived like Saturday evening at the rugby club. The Blatchley who landed in Greece in 1985 was worthy of at least an honourable mention at any barbarian ravishing competition, but when it came to seduction a sloth probably had more chance of getting laid in the ostrich enclosure than I had on a Greek beach.
I have earlier remarked on the innately competitive nature of the waterfront world, and this put me under some pressure to nurture my paralia ‘persona’, which was an image created out of perceptions of my proficiency in two distinct disciplines; my sailing ability, and my social performance. As far as sailing went I was hitting all targets, maintaining boats, doing a lot of miles, sailing in some hard weather at times, and generally being Captain Courageous. Socially, however, my CV was incomplete. Compulsively gregarious, I kept myself noisily in evidence but my lack of a consort was eventually going to be remarked upon.
Most of the other skippers and boatie-people I knew seemed to have extremely active social calendars. One friend of mine, a South American gentleman, was so busy in this respect that by early June he had to move house because Alimos Marina had become untenable. Another young Adonis of the Aegean, over whose identity I think a complete veil must be drawn, was once placed in a desperate predicament when he entered a harbour with a female companion only to find, waving from the quay, another lady who had arrived earlier than expected. Taking immediate action, he apologetically dumped the incumbent into the middle of the harbour and motored away to collect the new arrival. I can absolutely vouch for the truth of this, because I was fifty metres behind him and had the thankless task of picking the discarded lady up... it was like trying to rescue a beehive.
So, that was the situation. Everyone else was happily splashing around in the gene-pool, and I was sitting on the side with a verruca. For my reputation as much as my self-gratification, therefore, action was required.
* * *
On the face of it, I could not have been in a better place for romance. The northward advance of the sun brought beauty and nubility to Greece in swarms, and female tourists outnumbered males by about three to one. One would have thought that any man alive and possessed of teeth and hair would have been plucked off the stem like grain before locusts; but my grasshopper lifestyle, my disdain for disco tunes, my club-footed dancing, and my alienation from anything resembling current fashion apparently made me an Untouchable. The lovely creatures swept in herds across the landscape, but when they reached me they parted smoothly and flowed past without so much as a caress. It seemed that I was esteemed as a companion, but unconsidered as a swain. I do not say that there were no young ladies who can love a chap of earthy pleasures and pseudo-classical pretensions; I merely assert that they did not take holidays in Greece that spring, and as I continued to prowl the Aegean littoral on the lookout for a compatible mate I felt increasingly like the last dodo.
There was, of course, one cast-iron prospect: PeePee, who had been unable to close the deal with her Canadian prospect, still lurked around every corner, but her intentions remained possessive and procreational. What I had in mind was a series of romantic dalliances with willowy nymphs, not perpetuity with a maternal pile-driver. Whenever I saw her alone, I climbed trees to keep out of her way. However, with this single exception, I was now ready to consider almost any application, even, as Billy the Bard so eloquently had it, ‘Be she as foul as was Florentius’ love... with as many diseases as two-and-fifty horses’. (There. You see the problem?)
One evening I was at George’s Cafe in Poros when a skipper I knew asked me to join him with a group of ladies. Frankly, I didn’t much like the chap but I was prepared to prostitute myself for the sake of an introduction... the ladies he had acquired were just a trifle elephants, and I was hopeful that one of them might not be averse to another one. I shelved my objections to Chris the Charismatically Challenged and slithered on over.
It quickly became obvious that Chris was taking advantage of his wife’s absence to indulge a whim for adultery; and it also became evident that the target of his affections was the golden girl of the group, a lady who quickly dispelled any enlightened thought about blondes being unfairly represented in popular culture. A refrigerator could have given her 20 IQ points and still beaten her comprehensively completing The Beano crossword. But she was evidently Chris’s drinking vessel of infused herbs, which neither surprised nor concerned me.
I was left with a choice of two ladies, one apparently dying of malnutrition and the other so covered in tattoos that she could have stripped naked and laid an ambush in the Louvre. They were nice legs, though, so I gave it my best shot. This transpired to be one Trish, an English actress. (Out of work, naturally.)
Of Trish’s tattoos, apparently the ones on her arms were the result of a recent theatrical performance, and were temporary. (Fortunately, or she would have been limited to roles in productions about Hell’s Angels or the Maori Wars.) The only indelible one was a fantastic face which peered behind her over the belt of her jeans… it turned out to be a dragon tattooed across her back, but at first I took it to be a crocodile looking out of the crack of her arse. On balance, I liked that.
Our conversation proceeded most satisfactorily, with the rapid discovery of a mutual love of Shakespeare (what a pleasure to speak of The Bard with an interlocutor who did not think I was talking about a fishing-rod manufacturer) and moved with encouraging despatch to the tickling-each-others-palm stage… I confess a very real attraction grew on me. However, just as things seemed to be progressing magnificently, she suddenly broke down completely and out came the story. Her husband had dumped her for her best friend a few weeks previously. The rest of the night was spent walking and talking on the beach, trying to dry the tears.
Trish left for England the next day, leaving me very sure that I wanted to see her again, whenever she felt able to do so. She said she’d call... but, as Hamlet has it, the rest was silence. I went ruefully back to work.
* * *
Of course, cheerful memoires such as this modest tome must have at least some happy endings. One day, when I was in the boatyard in Aegina collecting a yacht, Spiros called me urgently.
“Can you get back to Poros tonight? I have two tour operators coming from Sweden this evening. They are interested in a skippered flotilla, four or five boats. I need you to meet them tonight, take them to dinner, and then tomorrow take them out for a couple of days, to show them some of the ports and bays. And if that all goes well, then you’ll be the lead-skipper for the first flotilla, if you like.”
I did like, and I liked even more that evening when I was introduced to Karlotta & Inge, who turned out to be eminently and charmingly feminine.
Karlotta was a handsome and somewhat Olympian lady, tall and full-figured, with an eternal smile and clouds of black hair so capricious that it seemed to re-style itself every time th
e wind changed. Inge was an elf, a delightful Scandinavian elf, blue-eyed and petite beneath a blonde page-boy coiffeur. Both had a lively sense of humour, and they spoke that faultless, accent-less, pristine, advanced English which can never be imitated by an Englishman, even at the ‘old’ BBC. They were vivacious, absolutely delightful and not one iota diminished in my admiration by the probability that they were both about a decade older than me.
Naturally, one had to be professional. For all I knew these ladies were married, or in relationships. They were travelling on business, and I had no grounds to think that either of them was interested in romance. They were also, of course, potential clients... both for Spiros and myself. One could not take liberties in such a situation. I did not, therefore, make the adolescent mistake of falling in love with both Karlotta and Inge immediately... I considered the matter maturely, with care and objectivity, for at least a couple of minutes.
I dined them at the Delfini, a favourite taverna set half way up the broad steps which lead from the South Quay up to the main square. The tables were set out in a narrow alley, immaculately whitewashed and overhung with jasmine and bougainvillea. Being on the steps, even the Greeks did not ride motorbikes in the area, so there was no unwelcome noise to pollute the homely, relaxing murmur of conversation, the tinkle of cutlery and the plinking of the ubiquitous ‘usual suspects’ Greek tunes. Brightly-lit boutiques lined the steps, tourists passed up and down, the wine was crisp and satisfying, and the food was as good as anywhere in town. It was a wonderful evening, full of light, and laughter, and bright eyes.
In the cool of the following morning I collected a large bag of prawns, caught close to the nearby island of Angistri and so fresh that some were still moving, and some decent white wine from the market before meeting my Swedessess at Petro’s. After watching them deal enthusiastically with melon, yoghurt and honey I piled our bags aboard Mucky Duck, which had returned from her excursion in the Dodecanese.
We had a bit of a schedule to keep if we intended to see as much of the proposed flotilla itinerary as possible in two and a half days, so I motored fast in the morning calm to Hydra. Here I put the ladies ashore for about an hour, so that they could get a quick taste of the place.
As soon as they returned we pushed on to Pondikonisi Island at the west end of Hydra. I anchored the boat, in immaculate, glass-clear water over a rocky bottom, and let the ladies snorkel with the fish, which they did in true Scandinavian style, stripping naked without the least self-consciousness. I busied myself preparing an early lunch to limit the drool. They didn’t dress for lunch, but there at least I could pretend to be slavering over the prawns.
They didn’t see any reason to dress again for the sail over to the Peloponnesian coast, either. I left Pondikonisi just after midday, and we picked up the Bouka Doura wind from the sou’-sou’-east as soon as we cleared the end of Hydra. Mucky Duck loved a close-reach, and we turned a ruler-straight furrow through the rocky islets around Trikeri and then across the open sea to Kiparissi. As always, the wind slowly increased through the afternoon, the ladies shrieking with delighted protest as the weather bow whipped spray across their naked hides. Now, it is not the intention of the author to turn this book into a prurient exposition of erotic ephemera... a Fifty Grades of Spray... and so I shall leave the reader to imagine for themselves the effects of cool spray on naked breasts and bare skin, and thus also, indirectly, on said author; but by the time we arrived in Kiparissi I was having trouble seeing straight.
Enervated by their day on the water, my passengers were positively bubbling with enthusiasm in Kiparissi. We went to my favourite little restaurant Klimateria, which had no menus and served any meal you liked so long as you wanted small fish followed by a pork chop with salad. The wine went down like water, and both of the ladies were becoming very tactile. Unless I was as mad as a box of frogs, love was definitely in the air... so much so, in fact, that I started to have some anxieties about how I should break the bad news to the unsuccessful applicant. I need not have worried... it was done for me.
Returning to the boat, Karlotta stripped again, gave me a big smile, and went for a shower. I busied myself making industrial strength G-and-Ts. Next a naked Inge slipped out of her cabin and into the shower. Funny, I thought... I didn’t see Karlotta come out. She must have been quick.
Then the giggling started.
Love was indeed in the air. Specifically, in the air in the shower, and, as custom demands, there was a happy ending. But not for me... I was surplus to requirements, so I went for a beer.
After two more days of watching unprotected Swedes cavorting all over the boat, and two more nights drinking on my own to give them a bit of privacy, I arrived back in Poros where I was informed, by Mary at the Jungle Bar, that Trish, the tattooed actress, had come back and had been waiting three days for me. She had just left on the evening ferry.
* * *
I wasn’t the only one to fall into the gender-assumptions error. Yiorgaki, one of the skippers from the Grave-Robber, tied up next to me in Aegina one Saturday evening, fresh out of Alimos Marina on a big Atlantic 55 boat absolutely heaving with gorgeous women. It looked like someone had bought a job-lot of unemployed cheerleaders, the boat was wriggling with attractive limbs and scraps of material stretched tightly over the most interesting shapes. Yiorgaki looked like the cat who not only got the cream but inherited the dairy to boot. Whilst his crew were getting ready for the evening, he sat on the cabin-top and chatted with me. Between his legs was a bathroom window, in which I simply could not help noticing one of his goddesses combing her hair.
“Po, po, po!” He exulted delightedly; “Po po PO!!!” He put down his beer and used both hands to delineate in the air a figure which Mae West would have considered Rubinesque.
“You see?” he crowed, in a hoarse whisper, “You see them? Kouklakia! Dolls! Twelve of them!”
“Shhh!” I admonished him... the combing in the window below him had slowed to a crawl, and the head was tilting as if listening. She might have been, but Yiorgaki wasn’t.
“Ten days we have, ten days!” He exulted. “And no mens! I gonna get one of thems for sure!” He winked hideously. “Maybe two, heh?”
My eyes flickered up the mast. From one yard-arm flew several national flags... Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and American.
From the other flew a rainbow flag.
I almost laughed out loud, he was so smugly sure of himself.
“What’s that flag up there?” I asked innocently, pointing out the seven kaleidoscopic bars undulating lazily in the breeze. At that moment, the head in the bathroom between his legs turned and frantically motioned me to silence, one palm waving in negation whilst the other hand laid a finger on lips pouting a silent ‘shhh!’.
Yiorgaki looked up for a few minutes, and shrugged.
“Dunno,” he admitted carelessly. “One of those South American places, innit?
“That’s it!” I agreed, and the head in the window gave me a wink and blew me a kiss.
Yiorgaki disappeared to take a shower shortly after, just about managing to pack himself and his self-satisfaction into his tiny cabin in the bows of the boat. When he had gone, the girl who had been in the window appeared and spoke with a broad Aussie accent.
“Thanks, Mate!” she purred, “...He’s been trippin’ over his tongue all day. Y’won’t tell him, will ya? This is going to be SOOOO much fun!”
I gave her a wink and she responded with a thumbs-up.
“Dinkum!” she said, which delighted me: I had never actually heard an Aussie say ‘dinkum’ before.
“Your name isn’t Shiela, is it?” I asked.
She laughed. “Na, it’s Bruce!”
We both laughed.
About two weeks later, I was walking past Stavros’ kafeneion in Poros when I met Yiorgaki coming the other way. He did not acknowledge me by so much as a flicker, but turning to the astounded Stavros and his clients announced, in a ringing voice which reached the peaks of
Poros and echoed back from the Peloponnesian shore, “This man is a veeery BEEEG bastard!”
So, that worked out very nicely!
* * *
Green Dragon was not an easy boat to sail. As modern as this morning, she was light, beamy and so insubstantial that, when I looked in the cockpit lockers on the side where the sun was shining, I could see the water-level through the fibreglass of her hull. Going downwind she skied fast but skittishly, and going upwind she bounced off every short Mediterranean wave and either stopped dead or fell off to leeward. I didn’t like her one little bit, but charterers did... she had three double cabins, each with an en suite shower and head, a big saloon, an enormous cockpit and she looked flashy. The other thing her charterers apparently liked was Kos, so to Kos I went. There wasn’t anyone available to go with me, but Green Dragon boasted an auto-pilot so Spiros and I greedily split the wage for the crew between us and I went on my own.
I don’t really enjoy sailing alone. I am too gregarious by nature for one thing, and for another, I tend to make very different decisions when there is only myself to consider; decisions which I wouldn’t be comfortable making under scrutiny. Left to my own devices I become rather experimental and I have frequently been left feeling very glad that there is no-one else around to watch me cleaning egg off my face. I am on record as having admitted, frequently, that I do not sail alone because I end up in bad company.
Despite recognising my unsuitability for solo sailing, however, I was willing enough to take Green Dragon, a boat I did not esteem, the two hundred-odd miles to Kos, for money. Many of my decisions are influenced by what one might call the fluidity of the situation, and this was yet another example; but for once the liquid in question wasn’t alcohol, but rather testosterone.
The Trojan Walrus Page 16