“Ah!” I replied, thinking quickly, “...But would it not be possible to sail just to Patmos? The wind will be behind us and my... friends would like to see the churches.”
“Thistichos, ochi. Unfortunately, no. No sailing today. Bring the young ladies, they will like to dance with us.” His friends nodded judiciously, as if that idea had just occurred to them. It was about as convincing as the Munich agreement.
“After all,” he continued, “...You aren’t in a hurry are you? You are on holiday. It is not as if you are a professional captain... that would be illegal, hah ha ha!”
He laughed to show how ridiculous such an idea would be, and then gave me a grin like an enamelled bear-trap and topped up my glass again. I smiled to signify gracious acceptance of defeat and tossed off my tsipouro. It made a good gesture, and also gave me a bit more courage to face Dr D with the news that the mysteries of the Cave of the Apocalypse were going to have to remain that way for another day.
He wasn’t pleased. He was sitting at the chart table measuring distances, and as I broke the news to him... at least, the part about the weather restriction; I didn’t chose to bother him with any discussions on the legality of my status... he pursed his lips, looked down at the chart, and severely positioned all the rulers, pencils and books in neat patterns whilst he listened to my explanation. It appeared that he had a touch of C.D.O.2
“And why can’t we sail?” he enquired analytically.
I confess that I lied, but only with the noblest intentions. My function as a charter skipper, as I saw it, was to be the conduit through which he passed to pleasurable experiences, and I was doubtful whether I would improve his day to any meaningful degree by saying ‘because the port policeman and his friends want to get your daughters drunk and dance with them, and probably your missus too’; so I said, “Strong weather warning.”
Harbour-masters or the coastguard could indeed issue an apagorevtiko, which translates roughly as ‘a forbidding’, which prohibited vessels going to sea. It wasn’t always total; often captains could sail on their own responsibility, but the policeman had not given us that option. He also had not signed me onto the crew list. Officially, we could not leave.
“But,” Dr Deering reasoned, “tomorrow’s forecast is exactly the same. Why can’t we sail today? Or will he stop us tomorrow as well?”
I do so love being piggy-in-the-middle. In common with most people in his situation, Dr Deering did not seem to appreciate that convincing me was as useless as convincing the town hall cat.
“I don’t think he’ll stop us tomorrow,” I replied, and then instead of adding, ‘because I think he’s going to have a hangover’, I tried to put the best gloss on it that I could.
“The town has rather kindly invited us to the panagyri... it is the feast of the local saint. They are interesting folk-culture events... traditional music and dancing, local food and handicraft, and such like.”
Such a festival, known as a glendi, does indeed start culturally, but they tend to get somewhat more Dionysian fairly rapidly. Keeping that to myself, I stressed the cultural aspects which would precede the wassail because I was sure that would appeal to the family’s apparently rather serious appetites. Or perhaps I should say, the parent’s rather serious appetites, because from the corner of my eye I could see the two daughters perking up remarkably at the mention of dancing. It was also egging the pudding somewhat to say that the town had invited us, but I thought it might incline them to accept rather than appear impolite.
“Well, I think it sounds delightful!” enthused Mrs D, to my relief. So we went to the glendi.
* * *
It started at the church, and it didn’t start well. The little building was already full to bursting, so there was no opportunity to examine the icons or frescoes, to Dr D’s dismay. We were kept outside the church with the village menfolk, most of whom preferred to remain in the open air and engage in spirited conversation. The singing was melodic and unexpectedly accomplished for such a small community, but unfortunately was relayed to the listeners outside by a particularly execrable loudspeaker system which howled and rasped, at times, like a soul in torment going through a liquidiser. To converse over this racket the men naturally had to shout, and it was pretty much a cacophony even before the bells got going.
After that, the local dignitaries all took it in turns to make speeches... I don’t suppose this is different in villages in any culture; those who make their way up the organisational ladder love to orate, but if they were any good at it at all they would have progressed beyond village politics. It is a pit of mediocrity from which there is no escape... turgid text delivered in mumbles with abysmal timing, punctuated by blessed lulls as the microphone drifts away from the speaker and then by harsh bellows or outraged screeches as it is brought back. And ever and anon, the hideous uncertainty of never knowing whether the fifth page which was just turned on the speakers notepad is the merciful last, or merely the end of the introduction; or, indeed, how many more assistant deputy vice-busybodies have yet to eat the air.
Through this we all stood more or less stoically. Dr and Mrs D seemed mildly restless, but the girls and I were in much deeper agony. Periodically the dapper port policeman, who stood just outside the church with two ordinary policemen, would turn around and smile at me, as though to say “If I’ve got to sit through this, you can bloody well have some too!” I smiled back and tried not to make it too obvious that I was wishing him in the pit of nether hell.
In fact, when I am bored to tears in speeches, churches, meetings or wherever, I have a self-preservation technique: I block out the sound and start running through Shakespearian soliloquies in my head. That evening I was Macbeth and, had that port policemen but known it, for about an hour he was the King of Scotland.
But eventually it ended, as all good things must. Now came the procession, the icon of the saint being solemnly escorted up and down the street by the priests and the three men in uniform. Some followed in the train, others stood to provide the audience. A pleasing proportion of one to the other was achieved, apparently entirely by chance. The icon was rehoused in the church, and the music began.
Now, I like Greece. It would not be going too far to say that I love the country. I certainly love its people. I have a deep regard for its history, its customs, and its values. And I like its music and dancing too... but I could wish that they would occasionally change the record.
The first twenty minutes of a Greek dance are very fine indeed. The costumes, wherever they are from in the country, are magnificent, and the grace of the dancers is enchanting. The music is fascinating; a wild, harsh mix of melody and cacophony which speaks eloquently of contrasts, of the juxtaposition of civilisation with a pagan past, of a land which has spent centuries at the crossroads of opposed cultures. The tunes are old; very, very old. And forgive me for suggesting it, but frankly, after the first half-hour, it’s time for a new one!
The problem is, to my untutored ear at least, they all sound the same. In western culture, dance music tends to have a central theme from which it wanders away and, usually, later returns. Most traditional Greek dance music is the same phrase, over and over. By the time they start the second one I am starting to look hunted, and by the onset of the fourth I feel as if my dentist is approaching the job through the back of my head instead of the front.
Sadly, it is the same with the dancing... the grace and coordination fascinate me at the outset, but after a while, it is, after all, just people going around and around in a circle for twenty minutes. To an unchanging tune. There are wilder dances to be sure, dances with heel-slapping and jumping, with acrobatics and swirling partners, but they don’t seem to occur at the local glendies. One gets a series of monotonously similar dances executed to monotonously similar tunes, first performed by the kids, then the older kids, then the big kids, and then by various local dance societies, and then the guest dancers. Round and round they go, always the same way it seems, and it can go on for hours a
nd hours.
Possibly my problem with this lies in the perspective. Greek dancing, it seems to me, is certainly a celebration of national traditions but also, I feel, an expression of the dancer’s feelings more than an entertainment. Perhaps it isn’t really intended as a spectator sport. Or perhaps it is just me, because many others seem to enjoy it... Dr D seemed engrossed, and was busy with his camera; but his daughters appeared somewhat jaded by the fourth set, and as for Mrs D... well, she spoke well of it, but methought she did protest too much.
Having found the drinks table I was suffering as stoically as I could, and then I blessedly fell in with the island’s doctor, who was happy to talk to me in French about the massacre of Psara. At least, I think it was the massacre of Psara, but with the strength of the tsipouro, the background noise and my French being what it is, he might equally well have been telling me about his technique for performing appendectomies with a fly-mow. It took my mind off the dancing, however, so I was enjoying the exchange when Dr D interrupted us.
“Have you seen the girls?” he asked with a slightly accusatory edge to his voice and a meaningful glance at the glass in my hand.
I had not, felt inexplicably guilty about the fact, and fought back with a manful, and mendacious, “I saw them standing behind you just a few moments ago.”
He tutted and started doing gopher impressions as he sought out the fruit of his loins. I made an ostentatious show of looking in another direction, and after some fruitless scanning of the crowd I suddenly spotted them exactly where I should have looked in the first place... at the end of the dance-line, firmly attached to either side of a white uniform.
I prodded the peeved parent, wordlessly indicated his springing offspring, and re-engaged in my conversation. As I did so, the dance-line rotated sufficiently to allow me to see the middle; and there, in all her glory, with the hem of her long, narrow skirt carelessly tucked into her waistband to free her rather attractive legs, danced Mrs D, eyes and teeth flashing with pleasure as she received instructions from a couple of fishermen. Her husband clearly didn’t know what to do about this, so I handed him a glass of tsipouro. He was so far out of his comfort-zone that he drank it.
Remarkable stuff, tsipouro. I doubt if it took it more than a couple of hours to transform that primly civilised academic into an exultant, scarlet-faced Neanderthal who bested two brawny fishermen at arm-wrestling outside the kafeneion... a conquest watched with delighted incredulity by his wife and younger daughter. I dare say they related the event to the older daughter later, because she was an even earlier convert to the charms of tsipouro and, having retrieved her almost unconscious from the solicitous care of one of the younger fishermen, I had carried her off fireman’s style. By the time her father came to his triumph, she was already laid out in the saloon of the boat like Kirk Douglas in the final scene of The Vikings. Until early evening her mother made regular checks on her daughter’s welfare, but after that it was left to me to keep an eye on the heir to the Deering overdraft as Mrs D changed into a rather less restricting skirt and abandoned her maternal duties in favour of dancing ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ style until she had exhausted several partners half her age.
* * *
It was a fragile group who assembled for breakfast the next morning, one which, quite literally, did not know what had hit it. I don’t suppose there was a lot of experience of dealing with blinding hangovers in that family, and I was rather touched by the way they whimpered and tried to help one other... it put me in mind of a litter of new-born pups when their mum goes out for a pee. When I prescribed gallons of sweet tea, toast, and a swim they obeyed with the blind zeal of Prussian guardsmen and showed the most touching appreciation of my solicitude. When I offered to delay the departure to Patmos until the afternoon, they looked at me as if I had just invented a cure for cancer.
The port police beast was made of sterner stuff... he was as dapper, as cheery, and as languidly assured as the previous day. He was also as good as his word, entering me into the crew list without even a smirk, and politely asked if I would be leaving immediately.
“This afternoon, I think...” I replied airily, “my friends want to go to the beach and look around a bit more.”
His smile reflected off the opposite wall.
“You see!” he said with that gargantuan self-confidence which Greek men are so lavishly imbued with, “I told you they would like Fourni!”
* * *
Seven days later I waved the Deerings goodbye at Hellenikon Airport and headed down to the Plum Pudding Club en route to the hydrofoil back to Poros. As I nursed a cold draft beer and waited for Shergar to finish fixing a gin palace’s anchor winch and join me, I reflected on the very pleasant sail we had enjoyed from Patmos. The girls had been relaxed and chirpy, Mrs D bubbly and pleasant, and even Dr D had been civility itself. He had accepted my renewed suggestion not to go south, and we had a night in Ornos Bay on the south side of Mykonos and then anchored overnight at Delos before day-hopping through Syros, Kythnos and Kea. By keeping the wind mostly on the beam we enjoyed fast, exciting passages, and compensated for the lost Church of a Hundred Doors in Paros by visiting the cathedrals of Ermoupolis, the golden beaches of west Syros as immortalised in the song Frangosyriani, the hot baths of Loutra and the lion of Kea.3
I puzzled over Dr Deering’s sudden acquiescence, and after a while decided that it was a man thing... he had, of course, been somewhat crestfallen at having to call in a skipper, and in retrospect I suspected that my patronising ‘there-there-it’s-all-right-now-Julian-will-make-it-better’ approach had probably made him mad enough to eviscerate me with the jam-spoon. In all probability, we would have clashed all the way through the Aegean, but for the fortunate opportunity offered by the licentious fishermen of Fourni for him to display his manly prowess at the arm-wrestling table. Once the lion had roared, however, and the pride had heard him, all was well again. I made a mental memo in neon... when skippering, the man of the party is likely to feel challenged: Take note and give him some opportunity to shine.
*
Two days later, relaxing over a long, exquisite lunch in The Snailery, I took a refreshing mouthful from my icy glass, opened a fax from Rory, and promptly sprayed the paper with cold beer.
‘Congrats! Deerings delighted- have booked 10 days September & want you to skipper. 5% booking commission to you if accept. Itinerary to include 2 days Santorini, Naxos and Church of a Hundred Doors, Paros.’
Dr D, it appeared, had rather more of a sense of humour, and was not so easily diverted, as I had supposed!
CHAPTER TWELVE
SWAN-SONG
In which we meet a real working ship... and an idle one... a Ton of trouble... the Meltemi... problems with summer wind... a call to duty... paperwork... Swanning around... mechanical perfidy... Shergar shows his metal... we prevail... a recipe for a disaster... a summons... an arrival.
A large tug used to live in Poros in those days. She was a salvage tug which lurked there waiting for some unfortunate vessel to have a breakdown or a collision in the busy waters at the mouth of the Saronic; and that tug never slept. Her name was Fengari, which meant ‘the moon’, and it was appropriate for, even in the darkest hours of night, the porthole of her radio room shone out like an honest man in Parliament as the airwaves were greedily sieved for bad news.
When that news arrived, the Fengari erupted into a roil of activity in her determination to be the first to the casualty, and her behaviour then was less than considerate, for, with a salvage in prospect, Fengari considered, ‘decorum’ was something that happened to apples.
When something of interest emerged out of the radio, Fengari’s master, heedless of waking the whole town, pulled his whistle-cord and didn’t let it go until all his crew were on board. As the last man galloped, half clothed and awake, up her long stern gangway it would be pulled in even with him still on it, and the last lines slipped. The ship would clank and froth her way off the quay, and then, contemptuous of permissio
n to sail or speed limits in the channel, she would select the most direct route to the ‘shout’, ploughing east down the straits or west along the bay, and disappear.
Anything between a day and a week later she would slip back into her berth, and the longer her absence, the smugger she looked on her return. Anything more than three days, and she exuded self-satisfaction like a crocodile in an empty hippo enclosure. She would then apologise insincerely for any disruption, uncomplainingly pay any fine imposed for her antisocial behaviour and resume her sentry duty.
Poros did not resent this cavalier behaviour. In fact, the town took a slightly masochistic pride in the disruption. Above all, it was a seafaring community, and such a vital, virile connection with the vagaries of marine life was part of the fabric of the place.
Fengari was well known to me, not least because she had damned nearly trampled me underfoot during a couple of her impromptu departures, and I was well-used to her high-bowed, chalky shape sitting at the northern extremity of the ferry quay; so, when I entered from the west one day early in August, it took me a moment to realise that there were now two high, white bows on the wall.
At first I thought I was seeing double... a constant worry, given the lifestyle... but it was early in the day and I had passed a quiet night, so I conjectured that another... possibly (and I experienced a frisson of anticipation at the thought) a rival... tug had arrived. That theory also crumbled as I got closer, however, when I saw that the newcomer’s main-deck was not open, as a tug’s must be, but rather appeared to have what looked like a tenement on top of it. And she reminded me of something.
She was painted white with dark-green trim lines on her rubbing-strake and funnel, and her name, Swan, in the same forest-green on the bow. Something over fifty metres in length, with a rather old-fashioned upright stem, her forecastle was strangely high and long for her size. It eventually rose to a neat little enclosed bridge and then dipped back to forecastle level to accommodate a business-like funnel. The forward half of her was as seaworthy a craft as a mariner’s heart could desire, but at the funnel the delight turned to dismay. From about amidships there rose a slab-like block of cabins, decorated with external galleries and stairs, which resembled nothing so much as a hijacked, twin-storey American motel. This edifice almost reached the stern, finally sinking gracelessly to a small, open poop for a few feet until the vessel ended in a flat transom hung with a large bathing platform. The accommodation did not flow with the line of the vessel, and looked almost temporary.
The Trojan Walrus Page 26