The making of a captain... complacence... heads you lose... down to the sea... the marring of a captain... Iraklis finds a chief mate... Hydra... waiters, another digression... the misrepresentation of Shergar... dinner under the plane-tree... a musical soirée... I am content.
The first consideration was to teach Shergar to park a boat, and with only one afternoon to accomplish that feat I set about it in the most basic and brutal way. He already knew the boat technically, because Spiros had a management agreement with the English owners, and Shergar had been given a few weeks work to dry-dock and paint her, give the engine a complete service and sort out the ‘to do’ list which charter boats accumulate; and sailing was not critical, because the boat couldn’t. I just needed to teach him how not to crash it in harbours.
Firstly, I separated him from the rest of the team… it was bad enough that he was getting my lousy advice without it being contradicted by other lousy advice. Then we leapt aboard Molto Allegro and headed round to the North Quay where, over the course of the afternoon, I battered a few nautical basics into Shergar’s eminently terrestrial grey matter.
Going forward and backward he soon picked up... Molto had a steering wheel, and this was not too strange to him; he loved carving the still water in a turn and since steering a boat astern requires it to have a bit of speed, that appealed to his racy nature too. In very short order, our new Columbus was confidently turning and reversing in the open, obstacle-free water in front of the ageing destroyer at the naval base.
Next I tried to enforce upon him the most unnatural art of moving very, very slowly… the staple safeguard of the inexperienced boater, but which Shergar was genetically incapable of conceptualising. It was as if he had been mauled by an accelerator in infancy, so that he now had a visceral aversion to throttles of any sort and, wherever he saw one, he simply had to push it as far away from him as possible. Otherwise what was the point of the confounded thing? Decelerating was something Shergar only did with flashing lights in his rear-view mirror, and even then only when there was no narrow side-road close ahead, so the compromise we reached on the issue of slow speed was of United Nations-scale uselessness. Giving that up as a bad job, I progressed to parking.
The Mediterranean moor (by which I mean the recognised way of parking a boat between Gibraltar and Suez, and not the sultry chap you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry) requires the anchor to be let go some way from the quay. The boat is then reversed towards the land, paying out chain as she goes; ideally she will then be stopped just as she reaches the quay and some sprightly crew-member or a helpful passerby ties the stern end to whatever can be found ashore… bollards, trees, discarded boat engines, taverna pergolas, fishermen… and finally the anchor chain is tensioned to leave the yacht securely held between anchor and shore, comfortably clear of the dock. All very simple with an empty quay on a calm day, but empty quays are rare in Greece and they coincide with calm days about as often as pigs are given clearance for take-off at Heathrow. To cope with the usual crowded waterfront in a cross-wind requires a degree of coordination which is not often instilled in a complete greenhorn in a single afternoon; so I showed Shergar the basics and then taught him ‘the fall-back plan’... an inelegant but effective remedy which involves anchoring clear of the quay, rowing ashore with a long rope in a dinghy, and then pulling one’s argosy in with the winches. Shergar, having not the least sensitivity with regard to his nautical prowess, was perfectly content with this.
By sunset, we were smugly pleased with our progress, but aching from the experience... Shergar and I shared a sense of humour and a taste for the ridiculous which made us a dangerous pair. Once we started extracting the absurd in any situation or idea, we simply fed off each other until we both ended up a giggling pile of dysfunctional body-parts in the nearest corner. A whole afternoon together had battered our thoracic musculature (such as it was) like a bout with a heavyweight boxer.
We completed the training of Shergar by retiring to George’s Cafe, where I swiftly précised the entirety of nautical lore and law into two digestible pieces of advice: The International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea1 were abbreviated to ‘keep right,’ and as far as sailing was concerned I was just a little more comprehensive.
“Keep an eye on me. If I put a sail up, you put the same sail up the same amount. No less, and definitely no more. If I let it out, let yours out. If I pull mine in, you do the same. To trim sails, get the boat on course. Then let the sails out until they flap, and then pull them in until it just stops.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“You’ll do fine!” I assured him, and we both dissolved into a fit of the giggles.
Spiros turned up at this point, bringing with him a pantingly keen Pretty Panzer who was even more radiantly happy than usual at her inclusion in the Poros yachting scene, and openly carnivorous at the prospect of sailing with me. Alerted by a pout which would have alarmed a grouper, I ducked out of an attempted embrace and ‘accidentally’ obstructed her advance with a chair whilst I looked for an excuse to escape. Spiros! I buttonholed him, and drew him to one side, as though to have a private word. And I couldn’t think of a private word to have, so I said the first thing that came into my head... which, in fact, had been in my head all afternoon.
“Spiro,” I whispered conspiratorially, “I’ve been thinking. Shergar doesn’t know anything about sailing. He’s bound to cock something up somewhere along the line. Wouldn’t it be better to put some of the kids on his boat? They’ll be partying... they won’t care how he drives. But the lecturers won’t be fooled, and they’re the chaps who organise the whole trip.”
A look of concerned astonishment came over his face, the sort of look General Custer might have given as he said, “How many?”
“What? No, no, I can’t do that... no-one else wants to sail with the lecturers!” Spiros looked at me as if I was a complete idiot, and the penny finally noticed the signpost saying ‘down’. Of course not! The skippers all wanted to be near the girls... Spiros couldn’t find anyone to look after a pack of staid, dusty old lecturers without making it worthwhile some other way. I don’t doubt that he had serious misgivings about Shergar captaining the expedition leaders, but not so serious that he was actually prepared to pay someone to do it. Shergar’s time was already being paid for by the Molto’s owners in far away England. Spiros was just going to rely on his silver tongue to mitigate any fallout.
* * *
Dawn in Poros. Rising in the last moments of night, I made coffee and took it onto the veranda overlooking the Poros channel to watch the eastern sky turn its coat from union blue to confederate grey. Then the begonia glow of dawn ignited the high ridge above Belesi and the blaze of light gradually flowed down the hillside, filling the east end of the strait. Muted voices and the occasional clink of cup on saucer drifted up from the waterfront below me; the dockside stirred. There was a tinny clash as an aluminium gangway was moved, a few motorbikes rasped and then, with a rumble and a popping of exhausts, the Delfini Express backed off the quay and headed for Piraeus. The growl of her engines faded until the calm of the morning was again broken only by the sawing and coughing of the mules which collect the garbage daily in the narrow lanes at the top of the town.
I washed my cup, showered, threw the last items into my toilet bag, and closed my grip. Kyria Fotini was already sweeping the avli2 as I descended, and she bade me a very fond kalises anemes, or ‘fair winds’, as I let myself out of the gate. As I walked down through the town, grip over my shoulder and sunglasses taming the already-brilliant light at the end of the harbour, I felt enormous self-satisfaction. Several people greeted me on my way, already recognisable faces although not, as yet, names. The winding little paths, with their impeccable whitewash, were by now familiar and my step was sure. The brilliance of the morning sky, the dazzling chalky walls, the riot of colour which cascaded from every window-box and flower-pot all delighted me. What possible need had I of worn-out tankers and ungrateful employers if I could make a living like this?
Emerging confidently from the labyrinth at the side of Petros’ cafe I took an ouzo and a small mezé of cheese and olives, simply because it was so definitely the thing to do in this seafaring town; as I sipped the ouzo, and took a profound private pleasure in stripping the olive-pits as efficiently as any man to the Mediterranean born, I exchanged grave nods with Petros’ other seagoing clientele, which in one respect or another was pretty much all of them. The grip at my feet formed a bond previously absent; for now I too was a Mediterranean sailor, on his way down to the sea. Smugly savouring this new sense of comradeship, I exchanged a few knowing words about the weather with my peers, and casually let it be known that I was taking out ‘the big boat.’
“Ah, neh?3 The BIG boat!” they all acknowledged, and nodded significantly to their neighbours. One or two of them raised their glasses to me.
Having indulged myself with my Band of Brothers, I ambled down the dock, pausing to confer my gracious benediction on the fishermen’s catches as they sold them direct from their boats, and to exchange greetings with other waterfront characters. Finally my regal progress ended outside a restaurant where Iraklis was moored alongside, her high hull presenting a large step up from the quay. I slung my bag over her railing, purloined a restaurant chair to stand on- another source of contentment, as one needed to be an intimate of the waterfront to know that this was quite acceptable behaviour provided that you patronised the restaurant from time to time… and swung myself up into my kingdom.
As I sat at the wheel and gazed complacently around, the first hydrofoil from Porto Heli grumbled into the channel. The boat bucked gently and plucked at her moorings… she seemed as eager as me to cast off the idleness of winter and feel the first of the summer miles washing past her keel. I had a sense of purpose, of nobility, of place, of independence, of aspirations high above the grimy imperatives of the life of the common man. In fact, I think pride and narcissism had inflated my chest to almost the size of my stomach when Spiros passed by with a cheery, “Good morning! Oh... I forgot... the forward toilet is blocked... but it’s OK, you’ve got an hour or so to clear it before they arrive...”
The skipper who cheerfully greeted his boisterous charges at the ferry pier about ninety minutes later was one with slightly fewer misconceptions of the romance of commercial yachting, a little less self-esteem, and a strong whiff of antiseptic soap about him.
* * *
They were a bouncy lot, my archaeolonauts. We herded them all into George’s Cafe where Spiros made a charmingly charismatic welcome speech… during which I noticed that he suddenly developed a rather engaging Greek accent whilst he set out his stall as the genial and genuine Hellenic host… and introduced the boats and the skippers. There then followed a cheerfully anarchic mêlée as the kids sorted themselves out according to the crew-mates, yacht and captain they liked the look of.
I shortly found myself patiently shepherding a platoon of dancing, chattering magpies past the souvenir shops towards the boat, where I simply said “This is my bed. The rest are first come, first served...” and was then rather pleasantly trampled by a good-natured phalanx of predominantly female body-parts. When I had enjoyed this to a point barely on the respectable side of perversion I left them to sort themselves out, and returned to the cockpit... a cockpit now inhabited by a very hyper Pretty Panzer, who was suddenly rather more conspicuous than she had been during my travails with the toilet. I figured that I now at least knew how far she wasn’t prepared to go to get her man.
Eventually I mustered them all into Petros’ cafe, and tried to make sense of the names and nationalities. I found I had two couples and eight young ladies, originating from places as mutually remote as Iceland and Okinawa. English was more or less the lingua franca, although an Italian boy and his Czech girlfriend didn’t seem to have any language in common with anyone, including each other. The boys both looked a little soft, with a strong hint of mum’s cooking still about them, but the girls were pretty much how I had imagined young archaeologists would be...a healthy, practical looking lot for the most part; somewhat earnest, inclined to be analytical, and highly inquisitive.
I was a (fairly) young, single and single-minded man, and so the equality-conscious reader will perhaps forgive the fact that, through the diminishing effects of the years, I have retained rather more detail about the girls than the boys. To the latter I was perfectly indifferent, but as regards the former I was highly delighted with my haul. Before me appeared a very pleasing selection of international womanhood; fit, intelligent and homely looking lasses with outdoor complexions not always found in students. There was one outstanding beauty amongst them; the Icelandic girl, who had some of the most delicate facial features I had ever seen; high cheeks, a sharp little nose and elfin lips, set off with silver-blond shoulder-length hair and the ice-grey eyes of a wolf. Her figure was equally mesmeric, and her character was delightfully open and warm. It was fortunate indeed that she had one flaw which brought her down to a level at which a mere mortal could interact with her…her name sounded like a wolverine eating porridge. My instant and no doubt lamentably sexist first thought when I met her was that she must be truly committed to archaeology,4 because there ought to have been any number of modelling agencies willing to shovel dollars through her window with a fork-lift.
As we got introduced, and I concentrated desperately on trying to create aides-memoires to help me remember everyone’s name, I heard Shergar addressing his team at a nearby table.
“No, honest!” He grinned, “I haven’t a clue. I’m just going to follow Julian.”
I winced, but his four earnest passengers chuckled contentedly; and then, as Shergar disappeared out of earshot to get more beer, I heard the confident rumble of a trans-Atlantic accent say “British understatement!” and her confederates tapped their noses and nodded knowingly.
* * *
We left the dock at about one o’clock. I had some notion of giving everyone something to do and making it a bit of a lesson, but no-one seemed very much interested in my ideas. The boys had both withdrawn into private cabins with their partners, and the rest of the girls were preoccupied with staking their claim to lockers, with unpacking and, to my amazement and delight, with changing into bikinis. It was a sunny day, to be sure, but the air was not really warm and if you stood in a shadow you soon felt it. I was wearing an open body-warmer over my shorts and cotton shirt, and most Greeks still had their overcoats and felt trousers on; but the northern element of my crew, which was most of them, were nothing daunted and the Icelandress, or whatever the correct term for them is, declared that she felt positively summery.
I trotted a few yards down the dock to help Shergar off the quay. This was no great challenge for him, as Molto was berthed with her stern to the dock. I let the ropes go, and he just headed straight out into the channel... and turned the wrong way, towards Methana. The rest of the flotilla was going to Hydra, and so when Shergar glanced back at me I gave my thumb a covert jerk the other way. He nodded imperceptibly, and a moment later I heard his voice booming over the water;
“We’ll just go up this way a bit first, so that you can get a good look at the clock tower. Then I’ll come back and follow Julian, because I haven’t a clue where we’re going!”
A ripple of contented laughter bubbled out of his crew. I shook my head at the insanity of it, giggled helplessly and hurried back to Iraklis.
We would have got away clean, had it not been for PeePee who, in her lunatic enthusiasm, cast off the lines of the boat ahead as well as ours. This resulted in me doing some rather rapid commuting up and down the deck to make sure she got them secured properly again. By this time, though, almost all of my crew were stretched out on deck in the sun. My migrations took on the nature of a hurdles race through a busy mortuary.
Having re-secured the other boat, PeePee made a wholehearted but elephantine leap for Iraklis and missed by about a metre. I ended up with my arms around her shoulder blades, hanging on for grim death as she thrashed about in a galvanic attempt to get a leg as high as the toe-rail... bikinied, fleshy and coated in sun-tan oil, it was like trying to hang onto a Teflon-coated hippo in an earthquake. My passengers lived scrupulously up to their name, observing with keen interest and doing nothing whatever to help as the now unsecured Iraklis drifted slowly astern towards Captain Yeorgios’ fishing boat.
Fortunately, assistance was at hand. Blatchley’s first law of nautical recreation is, ‘the competence of the manoeuvre is in inverse proportion to the number of people watching it.’ Half the waterfront folk of Poros, in particular the ones I had accidentally managed to tell that I was sailing ‘the big boat’ today, were in the vicinity to watch me leave, and the sudden abundance of bikinis had done nothing to diminish the audience either; a substantial throng was therefore available and very willingly grabbed hold of railings and shrouds to hold the boat and reduce her impact on Captain Yeorgios’ newly-painted stem. Then a couple of grinning fishermen gave PeePee’s ample posterior portion a shrewd hoick and she flew over the rail with a squeak of protest... propelled, I suspect, as much by indignation as force.
Regaining the wheel, I manoeuvred Iraklis out of the confined berth… it was a nice little bit of driving, if I do say so myself, but of course when you do something right, no-one notices. My reputation had already been established by preceding events, and a non-event was not going to change it.... especially since most of the crowd which had observed my inelegant departure were already on their way to the cafe to have a good chuckle about it, and the remainder were still bellowing advice. Ruefully, I turned into the channel, and just as my stern gland began to unclench the world suddenly became full of Shergar, roaring back out of nowhere with a huge grin on his face and an enormous bow wave under Molto’s stem. I slammed my engine astern so hard that I almost broke the throttle-lever; black smoke erupted from under the counter as Iraklis’ mighty eighty horse-power engine souflléed the harbour, and she stopped almost dead. Shergar crossed my bow with a cheery wave and a comfortable half-inch to spare. Had the bewitchingly vulpine eyes of Bjørk Someonesdottir not appeared in front of mine at that moment, he might have learned a thing or two about his IQ and parentage.
Sweating at the scalp and whistling to create an impression of imperturbability, I headed east down the strait, and consoled myself that, although I had performed ignominiously in front of about half of the people of Poros whom I most wished to impress, I could at least be grateful that O Geros and Megali were already out of the channel and had not witnessed our departure. As the senior local sailors, theirs was the censure I feared the most.
* * *
Hydra, pronounced ‘ee-thra’, is a mere twelve nautical miles from Poros; a distance which a yacht can generally cover in just over two hours with a fair wind, or under engine if the day is calm. The wind that greeted us as we passed Bourtzi, a charming little fortified islet in the eastern approach to Poros, was a light north-easterly... enough to move us at three, or possibly four, knots at best. I decided to sail, however, because of Spiros’ strictures about fuel consumption and also because I had this odd perception in the unexplored space between my ears that folks who had hired a sailing boat might actually want to sail.5 So I swallowed a cup of hot tar and got nautical.
It was fairly evident from the inertia during our departure from Poros that most of the crew were at best ambivalent about boats, and they had so far shown no inclination for physical activity. I decided to make sailing an optional activity.
“Anyone who is interested in sailing, come and join me in the cockpit.”
I wasn’t trampled in the rush. The inevitable Pretty Panzer, fully recovered from her indignities and keen as ever, galumphed aft from the mast, and I had one other taker; a square-featured, stocky, curly-haired brunette with a cheeky grin who rose vertically out of the main hatch like a Polaris missile leaving it’s silo.
“Oh, rathER!” She enthused in public-school English, and vaulted over the coaming into the cockpit with all the decorum and daintiness of an SAS trooper dropping in at the Iranian embassy.
“Ready, willing and able, what, Skip!”
She stood beaming and keen, blue eyes sparkling, button-nosed, apple-cheeked and shapely, attractive in the curvy, substantial sort of way that does not get into the fashion magazines, playing an imaginary piano with her fingers in anticipation of something to do. I groaned inwardly. A hearty Hooray-Henry type... the sort of girl farmed out to the Pony Club from the age of six, who can bare knuckle-box an inflamed stallion at puberty and crush a carthorse into submission with her thighs before she can vote. I had an immediate mental picture of a highly impractical creature of immense strength and enthusiasm but little sagacity tearing the clews out of Iraklis’ weary old sails.
“OK, great. Er... it’s Chloe, isn’t it?”
“Clemmie, ectually. Short for ‘Clytemnestra’... never forgive my ruddy Pater for that, what?” she bubbled.
Clytemnestra. It would be! Absolutely NO jokes, Julian!
“Right Clemmie... er... ever done any sailing before?”
‘Please, Gods, let her say no!’ I prayed... the last thing I needed was a Solent yellow-wellie who was going to say, “That’s not the way we did it on the Hamble!” to everything... because I am a self-taught sailor, and I have not the foggiest idea how anything is done on the Hamble. Well, outside the Rising Sun, that is.
“Well, just a little bit, don’cher know?”
Grieving inwardly that, out of all the demure and elegant specimens of young womanhood on board, it was only these two gung-ho Amazons who apparently had the slightest interest in anything I might be able to teach them, I fixed a cheery smile on my phiz and led them through the steps of hoisting the main sail.
Tip-toeing as discretely as possible through the tangle of body-parts which strewed the deck, I gave a clear, step-by-step commentary… halyard up… not too tight, no vertical wrinkles at the luff. Reef-lines and topping-lift eased. Outhaul tension checked. Kicker lightly tensioned. All this was attentively followed by PeePee and Clemmie, and might as well have been a speech by the President of the European Commission6 as far as anyone else was concerned.
Returning to the cockpit, I trimmed the track and main sheet with similar sagacious observations, and then turned slightly off the wind so that Iraklis heeled gently to starboard as the light south-easterly breeze filled the mainsail. It seemed I could just about lay a course to Tselevinia, perhaps having to make one tack, but that would do me just fine. I stopped the engine and, instructing Clemmie to let go the furling line and PeePee to heave in the sheet, started to roll out the genoa.
PeePee, in her eagerness, made a complete pig’s ear of it. First she wound the sheet round the winch-barrel the wrong way three separate times... a situation exacerbated by a combination of her tendency to forget her English under stress, and my unaccountable failure to remember, in the heat of the moment, that the German for ‘clockwise’ is Im Uhrzeigersinn.
When she did finally get it right, PeePee tried to make up for lost time and face by unleashing her full upper-body strength combined with an almighty pump of her formidable thighs in a titanic heave… the experience of her previous effort with the rope wound backwards obviously left her expecting a similar resistance on the sheet, but the now correctly loaded winch spun easily and the genoa was rippling gently in the breeze without wind in it. There was no weight on the rope at all. PeePee took off across the cockpit like a long-jumper in reverse, just as Iraklis rolled to port on a wave. Under the twin influences of her fearsome quadriceps and the yacht’s momentum she crossed the cockpit quicker than I can tell, shredding the air with flailing appendages. Her enormous impetus carried her clean over the bench, and she landed doubled-up, in an undignified half-reclined posture on the deck beside the cockpit, with her elbows over the middle lifeline, her knees next to her ears, and her sweet but highly puzzled face peering uncertainly out of a chasm of cleavage.
Before I could get around the wheel to correct things, the purposeful figure of Clemmie stepped into the breach. With barely a glance to either side, she stripped the line off the winch again. I started to tell her that it was perfectly OK as it was, and then shut up as I saw that it had developed a riding-turn, which Clemmie cleared as deftly as she had identified it. Then, with three cobra-strikes of her right wrist, she flicked the sheet thrice around the winch and, giving it an expert pull, set it screaming as it recovered the slack. At the instant that the load came on, Clemmie leaned easily back on the rope and tensioned it with perfect timing; then, in a move so fluid that it disgraced waterfalls, she scooped a winch-handle out of its pocket and slapped it into the winch. With a series of powerful but elegantly choreographed strokes of her arm, she then brought the genoa smoothly in until it formed a lovely curve a perfect four inches from the spreader.
Clemmie subjected the weary old sail to a critical look and, muttering to no-one in particular, “Track back a bit,” she nimbly adjusted the tension of the foot of the sail. Then she stepped back, whipped the winch-handle back into its pocket with the panache of a Hollywood gunslinger holstering his smoking Colt, coiled the free end of the sheet onto the side-deck, loaded the windward winch ready for tacking, and gazed around with a look of complacent competence.
Iraklis was heeling easily and bubbling away on the port tack towards Tselevinia, PeePee was still in her recumbent posture looking as if she was only waiting for someone to say ‘push’ before giving birth, and I had finally managed to close my mouth.
“And the ‘little bit of sailing’ was where, exactly, Clemmie?” I enquired
She grinned wolfishly.
“Oh, between Sydney and Hobart. At Cowes. And a few times around Fastnet and back.”
A minute before I had had her neatly docketed as a useless, effete rich-bitch, and was wishing that Iraklis had a chief mate; now I was wondering whether she had the right captain. What on earth is the point in having stereotypes if people won’t conform to them?
* * *
The Grave-Robber’s course lay southwards about three hours lazy sailing to the bijou port of Hydra, with a pause for lunch and a swim in a bay where every fold of the sandy seabed showed clearly through three fathoms of sparkling crystal. The water was still pretty cold, but that didn’t deter our young clientele.
Hydra is a wonderful first destination for a charter, being a delightful port at the end of a short but interesting sail through wonderful scenery. There are narrow passages to negotiate and large ships to encounter. There is a castle and some monasteries to look at, and towering mountains, misty islands and shimmering horizons to romance over, and there are a couple of well-frequented but never the less charming swimming-bays to lurk-and-lunch in. Possibly most important of all, there is A Corner To Be Turned.
This latter is a very significant point, because a mere five-and-a-half miles south-east of Poros one rounds Tselevinia, closing out the verdant, forested, pine-scented slopes of the Saronic Gulf and opening into the arid, terracotta magnificence of the craggy Eastern Argolic. Between the precipices of Hydra and the vertiginous south face of Dokos are scattered the barren rocks and spires of numerous islets, all tinted various earthenware shades, and these stud a sea which radiates an almost electric blue glow wherever the sun has not turned it to coruscating spangles of white-gold. The contrast is marked, and fosters a sense that the voyage is going somewhere, that enormous progress has already been made, that this is merely the first in a succession of sensory delights.
The town of Hydra plays its part in this drama to perfection. A direct approach from Tselevinia to the harbour brings one first to a fortified outcrop which bristles with cannon under the vivid red, white and blue of the Hydra flag. Whilst the attention is on this feature, and the windmill-strewn cliffs above it, the town seemingly sucks in its belly to lurk the better out of sight, metaphorically holding a silencing finger to its lips. Then, as the yacht rounds the corner, it leaps out with a loud ‘BOO!’ The crew, moments before quite entranced by the towering rocks and the fortifications, are now completely overwhelmed by the abrupt manifestation of an entire fairy-story town.
Grey stone, sand-stone, whitewash, mandarin roof-tiles, ornate campanile, bright flags and softly faded awnings of all hues sweep up into the sky; beneath soaring, craggy peaks, the hillsides are carpeted with stylish little townhouses, studded here and there with imposing mansions and white monasteries. Cannon seem to poke out of every wall. The houses are closely packed around the three steep sides of the port, so that to me they resemble the audience in an ancient theatre, rainbow-hued and leaning earnestly forward to enjoy the performance below them... and a performance there often is, for the port of Hydra is small and busy. The skipper needs confidence here, and a spot of luck doesn’t come amiss either.
I managed to get in reasonably early, and baggsied a place on the North Quay, which I would have managed to get into easily if only the crew had not tried to help. Clemmie handled the anchor very nicely; the problem was the rest of them. PeePee was being over-earnest with the ropes, half of the others were getting in everyone’s way whilst taking photographs, and the remainder suddenly decided to take an interest in things nautical. In their eagerness to grab hold of other boats, these latter provided me with about two dozen appendages to worry about as they reached out with hands, legs, etcetera. The fact that most of them were rather pleasantly-shaped and very scantily-clad appendages didn’t help my concentration much either.7
On our anarchic way to the quay we had an entirely unnecessary contretemps with another charter-boat. This was due to me shouting myself hoarse at people to put boat-hooks down and keep their extremities inside the railings when I should have been steering; but the boat we hit was well-fendered and crewed by some very charming, competent Dutch people who fended us off and held Iraklis whilst I tried to get her tied up to the wall. This wasn’t going too well when Pan materialised at the opportune moment to take our ropes.
Pan, the waterman of Hydra and already an acquaintance of mine, fitted into the extrovert Hydra waterfront panorama perfectly... which is to say, he was about as inconspicuous as a hippo in a hamster-cage. With hair half way down his back and a spade-beard covering his chest to the third shirt button, a sartorial taste which brings to mind a suitcase after an air-disaster, a bass voice that can command bulls and a personality so cheerfully forceful that it can be enjoyed from the mainland, Pan is not a man who ‘arrives’ or ‘appears.’ Rather, he manifests himself, as he did now. One of his conversational Bashan bellows, combined with his startling appearance and magnetic presence, controlled the girls in a way that my five minutes of ranting had not come close to achieving. Having restored order, he nimbly secured our stern-lines and settled the passerelle on the quay with a deftness which hinted of sorcery. Then I abandoned Iraklis, leaving Clemmie in charge, and set off with Pan to get Molto Allegro tied up.
Throughout the trip, Shergar had, by dint of his masterful engine, kept his anchor a faithful thirty metres from my rear-cleavage. To this point he had done very well indeed, for a beginner, but to ask him to park (or even turn around) in Hydra was taking it too far. I hastily whispered the situation into Pan’s ear… or rather, into the thicket of hair which I presumed concealed his ear… and moments later we were afloat in Pan’s wonderfully shapely little red work-boat. Shergar simply dropped his anchor when I told him, and then we took his stern-line ashore, Pan standing in the stern and leaning forward on his oars in the style of a gondolier. In no time at all Molto was tied up about three boats along from Iraklis, and with none of the commotion which had attended my berthing.
The sun was about to dip out of the bowl of the harbour, so I made a quick arrangement with Pan to fill up my water early in the morning, and told my crew that they could shower as much as they liked, but only until the water stopped coming out of the taps. Then I accepted the offer of a sundowner with the tolerant Dutch crew before heading to the cafe for the evening rendezvous.
Just as I got seated at the Corner Kafeneion, the taller of the two American lecturers who were sailing with Shergar breasted determinedly through the nearby mule-rank, scanned the terrace, and surged through the chairs to my table. The very definition of purposefulness in khaki utilities, with a wide-brimmed hat and a jaw broader than his forehead, he looked as if he had a full-length drawing of Indiana Jones in his dressing room, and studied it daily.
“Jew mhaind if ah set wuth yew uh whaaal,” he said, and when I had translated this from Profound Alabaman into contemporary English I inserted a question-mark at the end of it and smiled my assent.
“Most welcome!”
It was a waste of breath. He was already collapsing his six foot frame into the chair next to mine.
“Whutcha drenk’n?”
I said a cold beer would not be unwelcome, and he set about calling a waiter.
“Wader! Wader!” He semaphored wildly, and bobbed up and down like a prairie dog, head swivelling after anything dressed in black and white. Sadly, most of the waiters then in view belonged to the adjacent cafes, so he got no satisfaction; but in any case this is not the way to attract a Greek waiter, as anyone with experience of the country will tell you. They are not summoned, they must be stalked, with technique and guile; and, as in the pursuit of all wary and elusive creatures, the hunter must know his quarry. Oh, dear, I’m off again...
* * *
Greek waiters are very often highly skilled at their profession, especially in up-market cafes. The best of them rarely use a notepad, no matter how large the order, and the menu is never referred to for the price. Our man knows his bill of fare intimately, can explain any item in a useful selection of languages and often makes excellent suggestions when the client misapprehends, or if his indecision is wasting valuable time. He is entertainingly adept at manoeuvring enormous trays through the dynamic bustle of a crowded terrace and often presents his wares with a pleasing display of showmanship, which may include the one-handed opening of beers, the juggling of bottles or glasses, or simply a smooth flourish as he pours drinks.
From his professional handling of glasses, bottles, ashtrays and the like, one gets the impression that he went to a waiter school (he probably did; most towns have them in the local technical college) and he is proud of his profession. But he is a Greek before he is a waiter, and he is even more proud of that. He is no-one’s inferior… he is smart, polite, welcoming, and will be energetic in setting up your table to suit your party, but he is always your equal, and that air of deference expected in good cafes in other lands is not to be found. The Greek waiter will come when his time allows, he will give priority to his regular customers, he will take the time he needs to do his job without apology,8 and that includes a few moments to make conversation with his valued clients. You can’t deflect him when he is engaged in something else, so flapping your hand in his face as he passes is useless, and you can’t shout or whistle at him across the tables, because he is not your dog. And when he doesn’t want to see something, he could ignore a crocodile... even if it was in the bath with him!
This ability of Greek waiters to fail to notice clients when they chose is one of the remarkable phenomena of the country, as iconic as Doric columns on a headland above a sun-drenched cobalt sea. His eyes may appear to be riveted to your very breast, but no amount of semaphore or calisthenics will evince the least flicker of an eye-lid. He can make what appears to be the most thorough scan of his tables, during which his pupils track directly across your face, and not respond to any level of attention-seeking activity short of a clown on a trampoline.
His hearing is equally selective... as The Bard has it, ‘Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud’. And he can be just as unobtainable even when receiving payment… several times in my early days in Greece I muttered ferociously ‘OK, I’ll get up and leave... then he’ll soon give me some attention, the swine!’ He never did. All I ever got for my pains was an increasingly guilty feeling as I walked away, and after twenty fruitless yards a humiliating walk back to my seat.9 On one occasion I ran off to deal with a problem on the boat and ended up having to leave the port. I went back to pay about a week later, which the waiter appeared to consider entirely satisfactory. He knew exactly what I owed, gave me a grave nod and counted out my change without any comment.
Foreigners attempt to be polite to overcome this blindness…when entreaties in their own tongue cannot prevail, they learn Greek. Unfortunately, the native English-speaker tends to translate directly from ‘excuse me’ to the Greek sygnomi. This means the same, but a Greek will use it only when apologising… which, it must be remarked, is not a common national pastime. Greeks simply aren’t that self-effacing; and they don’t expect you to be, either. Many foreigners who have spent some time in Greece have come to believe that sygnomi really means ‘ignore me’.
The word you should use is parakaló…‘please’. But use it just the once... the waiter will have registered it, and repeating it will only harm your cause. He’ll be with you as soon as his personal schedule allows. Even better, give a discrete signal, such a single raised finger, as he performs his reaction-less scan. Don’t expect a response, but if you are then cool about it he will probably materialise behind your shoulder before too long; and if he doesn’t, then even throwing plates won’t change things.
Mostly it is best just to be as relaxed as everyone else in the kafeneion, but if you really, desperately need to pay and be gone just count up the bill, leave it on the table with a small tip, and give the waiter a wave as you leave. He’ll generally just give you a wave back.
On the day in question, Billy-Bob’s† aerobics had doubtless put us at the bottom of the list and our expectancy of being served would probably have been sometime in the early hours of the next day had Pan not made one of his abrupt materialisations. He, of course, commanded instant attention; but Billy-Bob seemed to think it was his performance which had done the trick and appeared a little mollified.
As we chatted for a few minutes, looking, I suppose, like Indiana Jones having a drink with Father Christmas and his apprentice, I regarded Billy-Bob somewhat guardedly… people who drink fresh orange juice at six in the evening are not a species I can claim to have extensive experience of, but he seemed pretty intense and I assumed he had something (probably Shergar) on his mind. I wasn’t wrong.
Pan, spotting a massive gin palace approaching the outer mole, left with his customary abruptness. Barely had his neon shorts left his chair than Billy-Bob set down his glass firmly, gave me the eyeball and laid his fore-arm purposefully on the table.
“Nauw, lookee here; this guy Shergar... has he ever been on a boat in his goddam laaaife?”
I adopted an expression of extreme bewilderment.
“Shergar? Why?”
“He’s ayuctin’ laike he ain’t never seen a boat. Ah meyun, he’s a naice guy, but he don’t seem to know whar he’s goin’ or how t’git thar! Seyez he needs to stay near yeu so that he knows whut t’do!”
I allowed my expression to clear and change into a grin.
“Ah, I see. He’s up to that old game again, is he?”
“An’ jes whut gay-um wud thayut be?”
“Oh, he’s a bit embarrassed about telling you who he is... a bit of British understatement.”
“So, he knows whut he’s about?”
I leaned conspiratorially across the table.
“Shergar,” I said quietly, “is an Olympian. A gold medalist.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie... there is a go-kart track at Olympia, and Shergar had several medals for winning races there.
“He’s rather shy about it, though,” I added, “and he has a very dry sense of humour.”
Billy-Bob sat back and laughed.
“Jee-yuz! The guy’s behavin’ laike he don’t know sheeyut! So he’s OK?”
“Take it from me,” I said. “Molto Allegro is in very good hands.”
Looked at in a constructive way this was almost true... Shergar had wonderful hands. It was just unfortunate that they were the hands of a mechanic and racing-driver, not a sailor.
* * *
The whole flotilla enjoyed a rambunctious ‘welcome’ meal that evening. It was eaten under a massive plane-tree in a square so perfectly whitewashed and so quaintly furnished that it looked like a decoration on an iced cake. A yellow light oozed from the strings of lamps overhead, creating a bowl of golden-warm conviviality ringed by the purple-blue shadows of the dimly-lit, narrow lanes. In this refulgent haven our young charges regaled themselves on moussaka, dholmadhakia10, keftedakia† and Greek salads whilst kanatas of cool rosé wine went the rounds, and cheerful black and white waiters swirled and smiled. The gardens of the Hydriots were concealed behind high walls, but the floral scents which filled the air were eloquent testimony to their luxuriance. To complete the ambience there was, seated under the tree, what looked like a moustache with legs wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap and twanging popular Greek airs on a bouzouki... Frangosyriani, followed by Dirlada, Who Pays The Ferryman, Zorba’s Dance and Never On A Sunday; then back to the beginning. The kids loved it.
When all the food was eaten and the kanatas ceased to arrive, Xanthos and Yeorgaki deftly guided the youngsters towards a disco high up over the edge of the town, sufficiently far removed that we couldn’t hear the screams, and the rest of the skippers retired to the Pirate Bar in the port to relax for an hour or two. Then we went back to our boats to be available in case anyone came back and did anything silly.
As I waited, I admired Spiros’s organisational skills; the food and drink had been emphatically traditional, and the setting had been a choice of genius. It had been undoubtedly touristy… it was only a wonder Anthony Quinn himself hadn’t danced Syrtaki through the middle of it… but none the worse for that. Yet despite being a distinct success, the meal had been a budget event… salad, meat-balls, vine-leaves, moussaka and some wine; no beer, grilled meat or fish… tasty, traditionally Greek, and it wouldn’t have cost much. In addition, I don’t doubt that the gratitude of the disco-owner further defrayed Spiros’s expenses. He had me working for him for half-rate, PeePee was doing the job just for experience, Shergar was being paid by someone else and some of the skippers had probably paid Spiros for the privilege of attending... and I hadn’t seen a client frown all evening. The man really was a genius!
There were a few shenanigans on the other boats when the future of archaeology began to traipse back from the disco, and I did help fish two promising academic careers out of the water further down the quay, but my gang came back decorously enough; boisterous, but not stotius. They got settled into the cockpit, then Clemmie produced, from gawd-knows-where, a violin and began playing wonderful, racy, sparkling gypsy-sounding folk music. In between, I became involved in some strenuous folk-singing, and the bubble of conviviality echoed around the darkening little arena of the port.
As the town closed down for the night, I kept a wary eye on the dock and the other boats for any sign of complaint about the noise, but all that happened was a number of people came down to the sea-wall and took a seat to enjoy the violin, and the boats around nodded serenely without objection. Shergar and Pan joined us at a late hour, and streaks of crimson were beginning to slice the sky beyond the battlements as we finally heave-ho-and-a-rumbelowed our way down the companionway steps.
* * *
Next morning I awoke relatively early, courtesy of an enterprising Hydra cat which decided to try his luck in the galley and mistook me as a footpath from the hatch to the promising remains of a sandwich on the work-top. Even the fuss of Moggy’s eviction did not rouse anyone else, however, and all was still in the boat.
It looked like one of those cinema scenes from the inside of a submarine, when the exhausted crew are sleeping off a jolly good depth-charging… clothes and half-unpacked bags lay on tables and the floor, artefacts littered every surface. Legs and arms lolled out of cots, and the ‘clop-clop’ of water against the hull was overlaid by a deep, steady susurrus of relaxed breathing.
I was going to make myself some coffee, but even without looking closely it was apparent that the general standard of nightwear wasn’t high, and what there was of it was not all where it should have been. The cabin looked like someone had gassed a nudist colony. It seemed a bit voyeuristic to hang around, and so, muttering to myself, “It is a far better thing I do than I have ever done,” I trotted ashore for a coffee in Tassos’ cafe.
I sat in that cafe in a state of quiet contentment. It was mid-morning already, and the quayside was teeming. Mules brayed, boats jostled, people swarmed. Wafts of coffee, bacon and eggs, baking bread, mule and donkey by-products and boat-exhaust ebbed and flowed over a constant scent of pine. In this vehicle-free11 environment the chatter and clatter of conversation and eating utensils is like plain-chant sung to the metronomic clopping of mule-hooves. Scantily-clad tourists and elegant socialites mingled with the locals in their heavier working-wear, the former boasting early sun-burn, and the latter gravely contemplating the world over a selection of magnificent moustaches… for Hydra was moustachioed on an almost Cretan scale, with styles ranging from the Gallic Spiked through the Revolutionary Extravaganza to the ‘This-Cat-Is-Delicious’ schools of facial hair. The butcher looked like one of those early scuba-divers, with two enormous tubes coming over his shoulders to meet under his nose.†
As I sat over my yoghurt and melon I took in the kaleidoscopic, pungent, vibrant, all-function workout for the senses that is Hydra and had the greatest sense of satisfaction with the almost involuntary turn my life had taken. This, I thought, I could put up with for a while.