The Trojan Walrus

by Julian Blatchley

  “Ve vill gif ourselves to Gott,” smiled Berta.

  “Does he really need all three of you?” I demanded, possibly a little petulantly. That amused them, but they seemed to think he did.

  By nine o’clock that night we were just north of Sifnos and making excellent time, so I decided that we would stop for a late dinner in Serifos... on consideration, I bore my crew no malice for preferring spiritual to earthly pleasures, which I thought pretty noble of me... and my reward for such altruism was rich indeed; for, as we crossed from Sifnos to Serifos over a glass-flat sea, the water alongside Mon Goose suddenly flashed streaks of ice-green and blue. The dolphins I had seen with Clemmie were with us again, and this time they were illuminated by some of the most magnificent bio-luminescence I had ever seen.

  Blessing the auto-pilot, we all piled up forward to watch the playful mammals race past our bows, curve back and come again, trailing phosphorescence from their flanks and fins as they wove and dodged each other. The girls almost cried with joy as the sleek backs broke the surface so close that we could feel the spray of their exhalations on our skin.

  Anchored in Serifos, we swam to a beach taverna where the girls continued to chatter excitedly about the dolphins over dinner. The restaurant took a relaxed view of dripping wet people in swimsuits turning up for dinner at midnight, making no comment other than the rather practically suggestion that we dried our money on a nearby lamp.

  We swam back, got under way again at about three A.M., took it in turns to sleep through the morning, and a little after midday we were anchored close to Poros near Bourtzi Island, which was rather more inviting than the day of my encounter with the Wild Man. There we swam and the girls had a wash before going in to Poros, and so we were all frolicking mother-naked in the cockpit, passing the shower-hose and the shampoo around, when a large boat passed close by; in its stern I saw Yiorgaki, he of the boatful of playful lesbians, giving me a particularly exasperated stare as his respectable, elderly clients looked pointedly elsewhere.

  Later I walked the girls up to the ferry quay, where we had a farewell drink and a salad at George’s Cafe. Then I received a huge kiss from each one, and put them on a varkaki, the taxi-boat to Galatas. Half of Poros, of course, had seen this little display, and this was no accident.

  Walking back to tidy up Mon Goose I found Gina and Andrea having a drink at Stavros’ cafe, and joined them.

  “So, who were the ladies?” they asked me archly. I shrugged.

  “Picked ’em up in Amorgos. Just crew for the trip, so I could get some kip.”

  “Oh, yeah? Just crew? Yiorgaki, says you were all butt-naked and chucking water at each other!”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “They were apprentice nuns.”

  Andrea snorted ouzo down her nose, and Gina said, “Yeah! Right!”

  A few minutes later, Yiorgaki himself walked past. This time he shouted, “Thees man is veeery beeeg LUCKY bastard!”

  As I had fully intended, no-one believed a word I had said. My reputation was safe for a while.

  * * *

  About the beginning of July I finally found myself at liberty for a few days in Poros. Mucky Duck was again mine, as I had just delivered her back from another excursion, this time to the Ionian. I had three days before setting off to Corfu to bring another boat down to the Saronic... three whole days, on a holiday island which I knew well, and a boat at my command. Fully intending to make hay whilst the sun shone, I repaired immediately to the Jungle Bar.

  I am a pub- or cafe-lover rather than a bar-fly, as a rule. I like conversation rather than music, people watching more than dancing; but needs must. Noisy disco bars are no sort of pleasure to a musical diplodocus like me, but it was becoming quite obvious from the lack of approachable ladies in my habitual haunts that, if I was ever to be kissed again, I would have to try the rhythm method; and if, in the pursuit of romance, I occasionally had to embrace pop culture, then the Jungle Bar was an establishment I could tolerate. In fact, in a Stockholm syndrome sort of a way, I almost came to enjoy it after a time.

  The Jungle lay far down the South Quay of Poros and was somewhat less purile than most of the bars. It avoided the most egregious of disco tunes... no-one met anyone at the candy store, no salutations were offered to silver linings, the velocity of summer loving passed entirely without comment and people could look elsewhere for assistance spelling ‘disco’. Most importantly, Stathis, who acted as the DJ, was a sparing as possible with Lionel Ritchie. From my point of view, this was utterly critical.

  ‘Helloooooo, is it meeeee you’re looking foooooor?’

  ‘Indeed it is!’ said Julian, as he levelled the flamethrower...

  I didn’t avoid this sort of music because I didn’t like it myself... anyone who has dealt regularly with Nigerian port authorities or Suez Canal bum-boatmen can put up with almost any amount of incessant, repetitive acoustic violence... but rather because I didn’t think I could communicate with someone who did.

  Stathis was a frustrated heavy metal headbanger, but he knew his clientele wanted rhythm and he managed to supply it in a manner which he found just barely acceptable, eking out the essential disco numbers with heavier stuff which increased in frequency as the evening progressed. I didn’t exactly come to like it, but I did develop quite a tolerance, especially since it seemed to attract a clientele which I thought I might have an outside chance of doing business with. On the evening in question I struck pay dirt at about ten p.m.

  Hèloise was French, and looked it. She had all the usual womanly features... hair, arms, legs, curves... in pleasing proportion and style, and no doubt I could describe them if I put my mind to it; but her immortally imprinted and defining feature was her mouth, which was wide with charmingly bowed and rounded lips permanently elevated at the corners in a gentle, mischievous, pouty smile. Coupled with her slightly hooded dark eyes, that enigmatic mouth gave her a teasing, amused, mysterious character that fascinated and enthralled. You could have put that mouth on the face of a camel chewing rotten cabbage and I’d still have wanted to kiss it.

  She was simply, elegantly dressed in a blouse and short, tight skirt, her collar was worn wide open to frame and emphasise a graceful neck, and any cosmetics that might have been in use were discrete about their business. She couldn’t have looked more French if she had been wearing a Phrygian cap, carrying a tricolour and leading musketeers over the barricades of a revolting arrondissement with her left boob hanging out.

  I introduced myself as a ‘Rosbif’,1 which amused her straight away. She had an elfin, Audrey Hepburn charm which utterly enslaved me, and a droll sense of humour which found apparently endless contentment in my whimsical French.2

  To my utter delight, Hèloise was only too delighted to escape from the music, and what cared I if it was only so that she could listen more attentively to my linguistic howlers? She was gorgeous, and fun, and I was prepared to make any end of an ass of myself if it kept me in her company. I would have juggled hedgehogs to make her laugh.

  We found a comfortable seat in one of the kafeneions, where I managed to delight her with the combination of tsipouro and vanilla ice cream... an inspired blend... and when she leaned forward earnestly in her chair, her chin cupped in her palms, giggling at my jokes, she made me feel that I was the luckiest chap alive.

  The moon swam high over Dharditsa, and the surface of the bay sparkled under its silver caress. The mountains around the bay showed clear in the moonlight and the residual heat of the day was a balm. The ambience was perfect for my nefarious purposes, and I was mentally shuffling through a number of carefully prepared ‘spontaneous’ suggestions which, hopefully, would entice this bewitching creature to a more discrete venue. They all seemed hopelessly cheesy and utterly transparent, however, and translating them into my sort of French would in any case probably render them either incomprehensible or offensive. But the French are skilled in these matters, and I have often found them tolerant and supportive of Rosbifs when they str
uggle to be romantic†. When it became evident that my fecklessness was going to ruin the night if left unchecked, Hèloise gently took my hand between both of hers, looked straight at me and purred, in English with an accent as sweet as an angel’s blessing, “Tonight Ah will like to sweem naked.”

  Taken completely off balance by her straightforwardness, I degenerated into drooling idiocy and asked her, quiet seriously, “Have you got your costume with you?”

  Fortunately, she thought this was the wittiest thing she had ever head. She threw back her head, accentuating the slim delicacy of her neck, and emitted a throaty, sexy peal of laughter which instantly earned me the undying hatred of every heterosexual man within earshot. Then she peered briefly down into the open neck of her loose blouse, plucking it forward with both hands and pursing those lovely lips as if considering the matter, and chuckled, “Ah seenk Ah ’ave everysing Ah need!”

  My wits returned. The entire pantheon of Olympus appeared to be on my side tonight... not only were my companion and the conditions perfect, but Mucky Duck was lying at the end of the quay, and I knew that Spiros would not object if I borrowed her for seductive purposes. Like most Greeks, he was an incurable romantic, and would instantly forgive such a liberty. And if, with a boat at my command and such idyllic conditions in such a beautiful place, I could not woo this lovely, spirited girl, then it was probably of Darwinian importance to human development that my genes should be banned from the pool.

  “Would you like to take the boat? We can go to a bay.”

  Her eyes glistened.

  “You ’ave a boat? Formidable! Ça sera parfait!”

  And so, shortly later, we puttered out of the east end of the channel to pass close to the little fortification on Bourtzi Island. There, finding the sea benign and a gentle northerly wind blowing, I decided on a whim to run down to Tselevinia and anchor in the aquarium-clear water behind Spathi island.

  Mucky Duck sailed well enough on just the genoa so I killed the engine and we chattered happily as the Aegean chuckled under the forefoot. The mountains slipped past our starboard side. Hèloise took the wheel, and I sat close to enjoy her perfume and show her how to get the best out of the boat.

  I suppose it was about two o’clock in the morning when we sailed into Spathi, where I was delighted to find only one other yacht. We ghosted through the anchorage under sail, disdaining to shatter the peace with the engine, and the gentle ripple of water around the bow merged with the shushing of wavelets on the shore and the intermittent whooping of a scops owl. I anchored us right down at the west end of the little passage, a discrete distance from the other vessel.

  I dropped the swimming ladder on the transom, and turned to find Hèloise stepping out of her skirt, utterly composed and without an iota of self-consciousness. She slipped off her knickers with a delightful wriggle, and tossed them at me with a naughty chortle; next she carefully unbuttoned her blouse and removed it slowly. She held it in front of herself, and looked thoughtfully at it for a moment; then she struck a pose. Resting her left hand casually on the enthralling curve of her hip she transferred her weight onto her left leg, giving full definition to her waist and thigh. Her head turned sideways with the chin down, the eyes up and that private half-smile, and she looked at that blouse as if saying goodbye to a beloved but difficult child she was anticipating having a rest from. Then she drew the blouse away to her right, her wrist cocked back and her little finger extended, and followed it with her eyes as she revealed herself to me. For a moment she froze like that, apparently concentrating on the blouse, and for a fleeting instant I shared my cockpit not with Gallic flesh-and-blood but with the alabaster perfection of Ancient Greece, an image worthy of Phidias. I had never seen anything so graceful in all my life. Then she dropped the garment, looked at me sidelong, nodded in apparent acceptance of my stunned, wordless homage, gave me a cheeky grin, and plunged headfirst into the blue-black water.

  Her pale, graceful flanks sparkled with bright flashes of bio-luminescence, and I stood mesmerised by the scissoring rhythms of her body as she drove herself adroitly through the sparkling sea.

  My mind... what there was of it still at my own command, at any rate... was peripherally aware that a chap of any understanding at all now needed to display equal style and poise. But somehow, communications between the brain and the outlying regions couldn’t quite get on the same bicycle that evening. I was only wearing shorts and a shirt, but I felt like a mummy trying to get out of its windings, and when I did finally succeed I managed to hit the water like a windmill toppling off a dyke. I surfaced facing completely the wrong way, with Hèloise’s delighted, ringing laughter challenging the immensity of the ocean and the sky directly behind me.

  I dived again, driving myself deep, found the indistinct translucence of her body above me and rose slowly to surface again face to face. We trod water for a moment, then our hands met. I pulled her gently to me, and put my arms around her.

  She head butted me sharply, and let out a piercing scream.

  I recoiled in horror. The scream cleft the peace of the night, rebounded from the rocks and echoed on and on forever, bouncing from the cliffs to the island and back. My mind churned with terrible thoughts... had I somehow hurt her? Had I misread the welcoming signs? Was this... black thought indeed, but things had seemed rather too good to be true... some form of entrapment? And would that bloody scream never die? I didn’t know whether to help her or stay the hell away, and I also craned my neck to see if the other boat had taken any notice.

  It seemed to take an age, but really it was only seconds before Hèloise swam towards me again. Initially I backed off, but she was almost weeping apologies.

  “Pardonnez moi! Oh, mon pauvre... non, non, not your fault… oh! C’est agonie! S’il t’plait, je doit monter. Je dois sortir… oh, oh!”

  She was obviously in considerable pain, and my thought... my discreditably relieved thought... was that she had been stung by a jelly-fish. I took her hand, drew her quickly to the bathing ladder, and cursed the fates as I thought how much I would have enjoyed watching her rise from the sea in any other circumstances.

  When I followed her into the cockpit I found her standing, dancing from one foot to the other in great agitation, and in answer to my questions she turned away from me, indicating her back. The moonlight made the problem instantly clear... her buttocks were starkly pale against the darker shade of her back. She was terribly sunburned.

  I laid her face down on a towel on the cockpit bench, got a torch and took a look. She was bien cuit from the waist to the nape of her neck, and on her shoulders the skin had blistered. No bloody wonder she had been leaning forward in her chair at the kafeneion... it now seemed unlikely to have been due to my personal magnetism.

  Some of the blisters were open, which I must have done when I put my arms around her, and obviously the salt water was causing her a lot of pain. She was quiet now, but quite rigid and she lay on her elbows with her fingers in her mouth and eyes closed.

  I opened a fresh bottle of mineral water and did my best to irrigate the open wounds clear of salt, which apparently gave her some relief. Then I opened the medical box, where I was relieved to find a number of sterile dressings and some painkillers. I put a towel in the ice-box to cool, then administered two tablets to try to ease the pain. I gently dressed the open wounds with the cool sterile dressings, and covered the rest of her back with the cold towel to try to take the heat out of her skin... I could feel it radiating, and when I put the cold towel on, as gently as I could, Hèloise exhaled so sharply that I thought for a moment it was the towel sizzling. Then I started the engine, hoiked up the anchor, and gave Mucky Duck’s game little Perkins engine the spanking of its life as I raced back to Poros. I was concerned about infection getting into the open blisters

  All the way back Hèloise apologised, fully aware of how high my hopes had been raised and touchingly remorseful for my abyssal disappointment. She confessed she had felt ‘a leetle sore’ after her day
in a canoe, but had thought it would go away. I moored Mucky Duck on the North Quay and helped the poor girl to dress and walk her to the naval base, where there was a doctor on duty.

  “You are so sure I need zee docteur?” She asked. “Eet ees feeling a leetle better now... ees it so bad?”

  “Yes, it is,” I assured her. “I am a Rosbif, remember? So are you. I know one when I see one.”

  The doctor on duty was one Dr Manolis, whom I had already met when assisting one of Spiro’s clients. On that occasion he had seemed a very charming and soothing sort, and so I was glad to find him here now; but I soon changed my mind. Our first encounter had been just after his mid-morning ouzo. Freshly disturbed to deal with self-inflicted injuries in the early hours he was not quite such a tolerant creature, and as he dressed Hèloise’s wounds he muttered discontentedly. His tone was soothing and did not distress Hèloise, but his words were stilettos and my Greek was unfortunately good enough to understand quite a lot of it.

  “Gamoti illithea! Val’ tin sta malaka karvouna, yiati ochi? ” he crooned in a soothing, reassuring tone. “Fucking idiot! Put her on the bloody barbeque, why don’t you? She doesn’t need medicine, she needs mustard and a bloody salad! What were you after? A fuck or a pork chop?”

  A truly sensitive doctor might have asked me to leave the room whilst a lady patient was naked under his care, but Manolis was only just warming to his theme and I suppose he assumed we were an item, so he was quite happy to keep me where I could be an effective butt for his censure. Hèloise seemed to think the combination of his deceptively soothing tone and my presence comforting, so I sighed and put up with him ranting at me, constantly and in the most gentle voice, for not taking better care of my girlfriends.

  This, of course, was hideously unjust... I hadn’t even met Hèloise until after the sun had set... but when an aggrieved Greek is in advice-giving mode you might as well try to reverse Niagara as reason with him. I stoically endured his castigation for ignorance of solar puissance, lack of education, general stupidity, wilful destruction of the Greek tourist industry and for blatant being a foreigner. His nurse, a pimply young national serviceman, had to leave the room after a while, and could be heard giggling round by the lavatories.