An unjustifiable but heartfelt digression on Greek light, visibility and ancient mariners... Ayios Yeorgios, and musings on the utility of rocks... High Noon in the Plum Pudding Club... Choras... Serifos by night... Sifnos by day... the consequences of dolphins... Irakleia... boiling old goats, the desirability of... anemos-ity and indecency... sweet sorrow.
About half way between the Peloponnese coast at Poros and the chain of islands which mark the western edge of the Cyclades1 is a high, rocky island called Ayios Yeorgios, or Saint George. Scarcity of fresh water and the lack of safe access means that it is uninhabited, apart from a large flock of very hairy, horny goats; another of hairy, horny sheep; and... briefly, on very calm days... a hairy (and let us charitably infer no more) goatherd; yet despite the lack of facilities or society, Ayios Yeorgios is a most valuable chunk of rock. I feel a digression coming on.
* * *
The air in Greece is famed for its clarity. The Artist’s Light, they call it; and indeed there are days when one can see a hundred miles if one can get high enough... I have seen Mykonos from the heights behind Galatas, which is almost ninety miles. But those days occur mostly in the winter, or in the later autumn and early spring. When the weather gets warmer, the visibility drops dramatically as a gentle haze invades the atmosphere.
This is in no way like fog, mist or pollution... well, not once you get out of Athens, anyway. The sky still radiates pure blue, the few clouds are perfectly defined. Nothing hinders the cataract of radiant heat crashing onto the dry rocks from a blast-furnace sun overhead. When close in with the land, the large buzzards can clearly be seen wheeling lazily high on the crags over the harbours. It is close to the horizon that the air becomes less distinct... not unpleasantly so; it is a rather warming diffusion of light which enhances the colours and softens the features. In summer, this haze turns the Aegean into a magnificent impressionists’ canvas, giving the islands and mountains an ethereal quality. You might think of it as excellent value for Monet.
Yet however this haze enhances the scenic qualities, however it delights the artist and the visitor, it can be a bit of a pest for sailors. The only time you can clearly see where you are going is the winter, when the weather can be very rough and pretty chilly. As the conditions become calmer and more congenial for sailing, the horizontal visibility drops away until, by the heat of early summer, a large island can sometimes only be seen at six or seven miles; even less on occasion.
All this barely matters today, since almost every boat has a satellite-navigator, but in 1985 very few yachts had them and even commercial ships had the old orbital satellite systems which sometimes left them without a fix for hours at a time. If you couldn’t see the next island, you needed to proceed on dead-reckoning,2 extending your course from the last-known position by estimating speed, drift and leeway whilst wondering vaguely where it was going to lead you.
Dead-reckoning is an imprecise science even for modern vessels, which have current atlases, tidal charts, reasonably reliable compasses and speed-logs; but no such luxuries assisted the Ancients, of course, as they forged the earliest maritime trade routes through these waters, or launched the odd thousand-ship excursion necessary for retrieving ladies of questionable virtue from the Trojan side of the tracks.
The Ancient Greek navigators had nothing but their eyeballs, and the direction of the sun to guide them... they hadn’t even developed maps. It was strictly daylight navigation only when they crossed any open water, with one eye firmly fixed on the nearest shelter at all times. In fact, the difficulties these chaps faced are now enshrined in one of our most cherished axioms, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” It did indeed launch them... ancient navigators were so wary of the sea that they pulled their ships ashore when they weren’t using them; and, since they didn’t have very good anchors either, that included most nights when they went to sleep.
Contrary to the popular belief in The North that the Mediterranean is a benign lake, it is in fact a capricious, giddy-headed schizophrenic; and to people who were still slightly behind the eight-ball with regard to physics and thermodynamics the Aegean’s moods were so inexplicably fickle that a quirky, bored and irascible God stirring up the sea with a big fork was probably the most logical idea the Ancient Greeks could have come up with.3
So the Ancient’s dilemma, still familiar to yachtsmen until quite recently, was a dichotomy. The good weather and long days for daylight navigation occur in summer, when the visibility is often rather poor. And this, coming finally to the kernel of this latest outrageous digression, is why Ayios Yeorgios is esteemed far more than its barren inaccessibility would suggest.
The island is a great sentinel in the middle of the forty-something miles of otherwise empty sea between the Argo-Saronic islands and the Cyclades, a way-point at which the half-blind navigator can either renew his confidence in himself and his calculations or, alternatively, put his affairs in order. By the time the Peloponnese side fades from view, Ayios Yeorgios is just appearing. By the time it fades astern, there will usually be only a short time before the Cyclades come into view. With a lighthouse at each end to guide the night-time voyager, Ayios Yeorgios stands, like a great traffic policeman on eternal overtime, pointing the way from the marinas of Athens to the islands for yachtsman and dividing commercial ships left into Piraeus or right to the north Aegean, Dardanelles and Black Sea.
Clemmie and I, contentedly navigating with the sextant, had no essential need of Agios Yeorgios, and so I apologise for the above digression and can only mitigate my sin by asserting that the island did serve as a check on our celestial fixes, which helped to give my pupil early confidence, and that therefore, like countless sailors before us, we smiled our acknowledgements as Mucky Duck sailed slowly past its triangular southern peak.
* * *
Mucky Duck was a modern forty-foot Gib-Sea sloop which I had acquired by Machiavellian means. In need of a boat for a week or so, and feeling that I also needed to re-assert myself after having been duped into taking Iraklis on the Grave-Robber, I had done a deal with Spiros.
I was already designated to take Mucky Duck from Alimos to the port of Pythagorion in Samos, a large island hard against the Turkish coast, to start a charter just before Orthodox Easter. Samos is right next to Kusadasi, which is the Turkish port adjacent to the ancient city of Ephesus; and that was where Clemmie had to be in about ten days’ time. So, knowing that Spiros wasn’t going to pay me much for the Grave-Robber, and wasn’t going to do even that until it suited him, I cornered him in a Piraeus waterfront shebeen called the Plum Pudding Club and made him a proposal.
My suggestion was that, in lieu of half of the wages owing to me from the Grave-Robber, I should set off with Mucky Duck early, and take my time about the journey. The owner of the boat was in Western Australia (whose state emblem, the black swan, inspired ‘Mucky Duck’, which is evidently what passes for wit in those parts) so he wouldn’t know where the boat was. I didn’t say a word about Clemmie, but rather let Spiros think that I would be improving my chartering curriculum vitae by reconnoitring ports and bays, the better to delight his clients. I would then prepare the boat for charter and stay to hand it over to the clients in Pythagorian at no extra charge.
Spiros bargained back at me, of course... this is simply Greek. You always haggle, no matter what. It is expected; it is ingrained. For a Greek, accepting a deal without an argument is like breathing in and forgetting to exhale... it is an entirely automatic reaction. Hagglers are not resented, but rather admired... astute foreigners soon learn that they may be very well liked, but they will never be truly respected if they don’t bargain effectively.
“But Julian!” he expostulated, “I only owe you for four days... you are asking me for a free nine day charter for two days’ pay!”
“You owe me for five days, and you weren’t going to pay me anyway; so the rest is interest.”
“Good Gods, how much interest are you charging?”
“As much as it takes! Come on, Spiro... it saves you money, and doesn’t cost you anything. And I’ll be able to do a better job with your next clients. I’ll also do some tidying up on the boat... rope work, that sort of thing, so the owner is getting a deal too.”
“Well, do the delivery for free too, then. Then I don’t have to deduct the delivery from the owner’s charter income.”
I didn’t think an owner almost ten thousand miles away was ever going to know very much about how or when his boat got to Samos, and I had my doubts whether his rebate was robust enough to survive so daunting a journey; so I grinned my disagreement.
“Tell you what; I’ll take the delivery fee, based on two days sailing and two travelling, but I won’t charge for cleaning the boat and handing her over. You fill her up with fuel, and give me enough to put fifty litres in her after the trip... I’ll cover any extra, plus water, and I’ll leave her full at hand-over of course. And you pay my ferry fare back.”
“Thirty litres of fuel. You wouldn’t need more for a straight delivery. And the owner wants electric shower-pumps putting in, and the fresh water pump needs changing... you do that on the way, for free. And I will pay you for the fuel and delivery when you get back to Poros.”
“I think I had already guessed that!” I grinned.
We shook on it, and my soul soared.
“Oh, by the way,” I added casually, “It’s best to have some crew for a long trip... when you fix the papers could you please put this name on the crew list?”
I gave him Clemmie’s name and passport number scribbled on a ferry ticket. His eyes rolled up and he invoked the wrath of the Gods4 on me as he realised he had possessed the advantage in the argument all along. But a deal is a deal; he wryly did as he had agreed, muttering darkly that he was sure I had some Greek blood in me somewhere, and I contentedly sailed Mucky Duck down to Poros that evening to pick up Clemmie and my gear. The next morning at four o’clock we were heading out of Poros leaving a deliberately vague idea of our itinerary behind... just in case Spiros had any bright ideas, like taking some paying passengers, or doing a charter on the way.
The wages of sin, in this particular case, were well worth the effort. Mucky Duck was a good sailing boat of the modern type, two or three years old and in fine condition. She was a Gib-Sea 402, a very reasonable compromise between the older, classical style of boat and the new high-volume types which were taking over the market. She had the wide-beam hull which was now ubiquitous for new charter- boats and a big, broad, comfortable cockpit. Down below there were two double cabins aft, a large vee-berth cabin forward, and a big saloon. We found her a good performer under sail. Because she belonged to an Australian she had an enormous fridge, a cruising chute for going downwind and a ‘Bimini’... a canvas sun cover over the helmsman’s position, which was a very rare feature in Greece at that time. If we had hired her, she would probably have cost a thousand pounds per week in high season.
As Mucky Duck nodded lazily past Ayios Yeorgios, Clemmie and I basked mother-naked in the midday heat, delighted with our fortunes and just about as contented as the human condition is disposed to be.
* * *
The cool of the evening saw us entering Livadhi harbour on the island of Serifos. It had been an almost perfect day... the wind for most of the daylight hours had been a steady, warmish southerly force three, which had kept us moving at about four and a half knots on a close-reach. There had been some light, high skeins of cloud through which the sun had shone without much dilution, so that the middle hours of the day had been agreeably toasty. Lunch had been a poem... I had managed to get a couple of crayfish from a friendly Poros fisherman, and Petros had filled two of the five-litre, handled bottles the Greeks call ‘damzans’5 with his crisp, fruity rosé wine for the trip.
The sea had not been too skittish, allowing me to teach Clemmie the rather strange swaying motion which is necessary when using a sextant. This is a lateral rocking motion which causes the sun to move in a curve across the horizon, allowing the observer to take the measurement at the lowest point of the arc; teaching how to do this is most easily done by grabbing the trainee’s shoulders and physically imparting the motion, so instructing a naked member of the opposite sex can rarely be anything other than enormous fun... such fun, indeed, that it would probably have led to some extra-curricular activities if Mucky Duck had only had an auto-pilot, but sadly that was one refinement she lacked. We got second prize, however; by late afternoon, a delighted Clemmie had managed three fairly accurate position-lines all on her own.
Serifos is a roughly round island, rocky and high, with whorls of ancient terracing looping around the intricately folded hillsides. The main port of Livadhi is on the south-east corner, a deep bay in the shape of a reversed letter ‘R’ cutting over a mile into the island, with a ferry quay forming the central indent and a great sweep of beach around its head. Once upon a time minerals were mined here, and there are several ruined loading gantries around the shores; but now there is only tourism, and the week before Easter the port was still mostly closed and shuttered. We moored Mucky Duck at the yacht-quay and, after a quick look at the dusty, closed-up restaurants and shops around the bay, we took the bus to the chora.
There is a ‘chora’6 on almost every central Aegean island, the main and usually highest village. It may have another name as well, sometimes that of the island itself, but the thing that makes it the ‘chora’ is height, protection and predominance over other settlements on the isle. Here, often in hopelessly inaccessible places, you will find the Dimarxeio, or town hall; the main (and probably only) bank; the post-office; and generally the school. Of the island’s official entities only the police and port police will be down by the ferry quay, where most of their business is and where there is room to park their Toyobishi Dumpsters.
Aegean Island Greeks of old lived largely from the sea, for these are not fertile islands, like those of the Argo-Saronic. The Cyclades, with the notable exception of Naxos, are craggy and windswept, magnificent in their starkness, with few uncultivated trees and little pasture. Some vines, olives and crops are grown on terraces or in sheltered areas near the sea, but island people developed mainly as fishermen, traders, merchants, and seamen. It made sense to live by the shore, where the work was and where the lower land was more sheltered and easily farmed. It made no sense at all to live on top of a mountain, far from the workplaces of the community and exposed to the frequent strong winds; but there the choras are... perched high on beetling crags, accessed by serpentine roads painstakingly quarried out of solid rock, a testament to immense labour. For centuries the people of the islands have descended to work, and every evening they have climbed back up the mountain again; there to cook, eat, recreate and sleep high above the world, where the winter chill is keen and the wind screeches more than two hundred days a year. The reason for this retreat from the sheltered lowlands and the sea, of course, was piracy. And I’m off on a tangent again.
* * *
The Eastern Mediterranean of Medieval and Renaissance times was not a good place in which to live by the seaside. Seafaring marauders, all with a keen understanding of ships and the sea, could be found in almost every waterside community; often they traded or buccaneered alternately, as opportunity allowed. Piracy had been a threat to the Venetians, who had used their maritime might to control it somewhat; but the Ottomans pushed the Venetians back, and the Ottoman Empire never really understood sea-power. Commercialism and seafaring were pursuits below the dignity of an Ottoman, whose only real function in life was supposed to be waging war or high politics, so the Sultans left all the pecuniary stuff to their subject Arab and Christian populations. So long as a reasonable amount of tax came in they were free to get on with. And get on with it they did.
The entire north African shore was Ottoman in name only for most of the time... sometimes the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman government, would throw its toys out of the harem and brutally execute a bolshie Bey who had gone a bit too far; but generally they were too busy trying to extend the Empire into Europe, fighting the Knights of Saint John or sneaking into the seraglio, and the local Pasha would be left to his own devices. The Egyptians and Algerians were particularly active sea-raiders... names such as Barbarossa became feared, and the Barbary pirates were a force into the early nineteenth century... and Corsicans, Sardinians and Sicilians all played a part. The Greeks themselves were also notable pirates when opportunity arose,7 and whilst one island might not prey on its immediate neighbours there certainly were fratricidal raids against distant Greek populations. Settlements were not only robbed, there was also a ready market for slaves on the Barbary Coast.
The Ottomans didn’t really care about this... their trade was mostly conducted by their subjects, so they suffered little direct loss. And in their outlying provinces the ruling Pashas were behind a lot of the piracy in any case, so what came around went around. It was only individuals who suffered, and there was no relief to be had... even if the Ottomans had wanted to stop it, their control of the Pashas was rarely more than nominal, and their inefficient naval forces were far too ungainly and inept to prevail against the skilled, ferocious corsairs in their fast-sailing galleys and xebecs.
The only protection from this rapine for an islander was therefore to live high up, with narrow streets to aid defence, where you could see who was approaching and, if necessary, run the other way. It wasn’t, in fact, often necessary to run; ill-disciplined corsair crews were not much inclined to climb massive hills and assault alerted, desperate people in narrow alleyways. The mere existence of the chora was usually sufficient deterrent.
Thus centuries of necessity made the chora the place where the islanders lived; and now in the modern age when local piracy is a no longer even a memory and the beaches are the source of most of the islands wealth, ancient custom still takes the population back up the hill to the chora at night.
* * *
In Serifos we climbed up and up through the narrow lanes, between buildings of biblical simplicity. Somewhat less than half of the houses seemed to be occupied... front doors were open in many, and stable-type half-doors were common. Despite a chill in the air old folks sat outside on the spindly, rush-seated Greek chairs, talking quietly. Not one of them failed to welcome us as we went by, and almost all used the greeting xáirete.8
It seemed impertinent to gaze unbidden into these open doorways, but returning the courtly greetings gave us the excuse to snatch fleeting impressions of the interiors of the iconic cube-dwellings. Some doors had linen or beaded screens providing some measure of privacy, but most were not curtained.
The interiors were simplistic to the point of being Spartan... a trendy architect would call them ‘minimalist’ or some such neological guff. We glimpsed flag-stone floors, with occasionally a rug but no carpets, and plain, plastered walls; unadorned chairs and tables, sometimes varnished but often painted in bright primary colours; some wood-burning stoves, and a few simple electric hot-plates or gas-rings. There seemed to be many old-fashioned enamel oven-dishes. Beds were made up in living rooms in several houses, and the walls were sparsely hung with icons, photographs, simple plate racks, and lace. Lace seemed to be the only frippery in these austere homes fashioned almost into the rock.
Apart from the cooking arrangements, the only definitively twentieth century appliances I saw were light bulbs, rather dated transistor radios and the occasional refrigerator. There was the impression of pristine cleanliness and the pride of the inhabitants was evident in the carefully maintained whitewash within and without, in the bright colours and in the sheen of the floors.
Dinner in the square by the town hall was pleasant, and we had a drink or two in a bar near the bus-stop before we realised that we had misread the time-table... we were reading the times for the Easter weekend. The bus had already finished for the night, and when I asked if there was a taxi the bartender said yes, certainly... in June. So we set out walking under a half moon.
It is probably five or six kilometres to the port, maybe more the way the road winds, but we didn’t really care. We chatted and chuckled, held hands at times, and enjoyed the panoramic view of the bay and distant lights on the adjacent island of Sinfos. We would probably have burst into song once we left the houses behind, but suddenly lights flared behind us and a great air-horn nearly blasted us off the road. The bus screeched to a halt, and a grinning face beckoned us in.
Apparently the driver had been having a drink after work, and someone had told him we were walking down, so he had come especially to get us... unspeakably nice of him, but he was in a hurry to get back to his friends and the way he went down that road quickly had me wondering how many drinks he had in fact managed to consume before hearing of our plight. I gripped the rail in front of me until I almost bent it. The driver heaved the wheel back and forth with great, dramatic arcs of muscular forearms as he bellowed his undying commitment to Olympiakos and Leeds United over his shoulder. Clemmie started out holding me, but soon decided I wasn’t firm enough and shifted her grip to the rail; I meanwhile braced my foot against the seat on the opposite side to prevent us both being flung into the aisle on right-handers.
The bus dumped us by the quay. The driver did his duty to the community by accepting our fares, which wouldn’t even have paid for the rubber he had lost off the tyres in his waterfall descent. Then he solemnly handed out two tickets and the change, declined to accept a tip, and roared back up the hill. We stood on the quay watching the lights weaving up into the night, the crescendo and clash of uphill gear changes still audible faintly in the still air and the blare of the horn reaching us a few seconds after the bus turned each corner.
We ended the night with a final glass at the single taverna open on the beach, very satisfied with life and thinking how wonderful the bay of Livadhi must be on a hot summers evening, with music spilling out of the numerous tavernas and the tables on the sand under the flame-trees.
* * *
Next morning found us motoring south-east. We had wanted to see the island of Naxos, which is unique in the Cyclades for its forestation and fertility. Clemmie, whose expensive education had inevitably included a hogshead or two of mythology, had gleefully informed me of the policy of Phaedra and her Maenads with regard to men on that island9, but I am sure that it was really the weather report from the port police which dissuaded me from visiting. Some strong southerlies were forecast in about two days’ time, and the pilot book was not enthusiastic about the safety of the harbour, so I decided to drop in to Sifnos and then duck underneath Paros and Naxos to take a look at Irakleia, which faced north and looked like a great place to hide from a southerly. Then we could head north-east for Samos via Dhonoussa if the southerly was not too strong, or hide for a while if it blew a belter.
We tied up in sleepy Kamares, the main port of Sifnos, for a few hours and took lunch in the village of Artemonas, which is a short, stiff walk above the chora, Appolonia. From the terrace of our restaurant a stunning tableaux of islands lay before us... Dhespotico, Anti-Paros, Paros and Naxos stacked neatly one behind another; below them Irakleia and Skhinoussa; and far away to the south the fuzzy humps of Folegandros, Sikinos and Ios. The thought that all this lay at our whim and pleasure was almost too much to bear; and we experienced a bitter-sweet conflict of emotions, the joy of such freedom and choice countered by a deep regret that our time was so limited.
We loved Artemonas, with its whitewashed purity and panoramic views in every direction. It sits on the crest of the island, open in places to the east as described and also to the west, with views to Serifos and Milos. We would happily have lingered but, like children at Christmas, we simply had to open the next present before playing with the first. In barely three hours we were back aboard Mucky Duck, setting our cruising chute to a soft northerly.
As soon as the water began to chuckle under our bow, a lazy school of dolphins appeared and flickered effortlessly under the forefoot. Great, grey creatures, over two metres long and as clear as could be in the pellucid water, they rolled sideways and returned our enchanted gaze with that slight hook to their mouths that dolphins have, and which so resembles the loving but slightly smug smile of a parent who has got the better of a wily child. Every rippling muscle, every mark, every scar on their bodies and every notch on their fins, even the pupils of their eyes could be made out in the crystalline, cobalt sea. When they left, we dropped the sails on deck and left Mucky Duck to her own devices for a while... no-one of any sentiment at all could possibly have done anything else.
We passed that evening anchored in beautiful Dhespotico. I bought a large, fresh fagri, a red bream type of fish, from a fisherman, and whilst I grilled the delicious, firm, flaky white flesh over a fire on the beach Clemmie played her wild, romantic folk tunes and the sun sank behind Sifnos. No amount of money could possibly have given us more than we already had... except time.
* * *
The next day dawned under a sulky sky, a grizzled canopy which exuded discontent like a child which has five sprouts to eat before it can have its ice cream. We set off eastwards using the engine and wearing rather more clothing. The cloud put paid to astro-navigation, so we did a bit of chart-work to mitigate the tedium of motoring under the miserable clag; but after an hour or so the promised south wind began to set in and we got some sails up.
By the time we reached Irakleia, we felt more as if we had landed in a different continent by aeroplane rather than travelled a short distance by boat. The grey, blustery showers, the increasingly miasmic visibility and the deserted appearance of Irakleia seemed a hemisphere away from the radiance, clarity and amiability of Sifnos twenty-four hours before.
The harbour at Irakleia is roughly square, with a sandy beach across the southern side and short quay partly closing the northern one. Yachts usually make fast on the inside of the quay, facing south towards the beach; but with a southerly of unknown strength forecast I decided to use the north side, effectively tying up on the outside of the harbour. There was, for a change, method in my madness.
I was already aware of the funny things that wind does when it hits an Aegean island. It goes up the windward side all well-behaved, as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth, but what it gets up to at the top I simply don’t know... perhaps it is tired and cross after the climb, or maybe it holds a trade union meeting, or something. Possibly it absorbs from its contact with the land the characteristics of the Greeks themselves, and it is merely reckless enthusiasm which compels it to behave like a harum-scarum kid on a skateboard. Whatever the reason, it comes down the other side in a series of powerful squalls which the Greeks call spilliades; tumultuous gusts that howl like a banshee and batter the bejaysus out of anything in their way.10 Knowing this, I snugged Mucky Duck down on the outer northern side of the quay next to the ferry-ramp, where the wind would hold us off the jetty and the weight of these spilliades would be taken on our stern-lines.
The crew of the only other yacht in the harbour, early charterers with an Italian flag at the crosstrees and conventionally moored inside the mole, watched these proceedings with veiled incredulity. They were a stylish group, two couples of probably forty or so. The men were senatorial, distinguished, edged with silver types, and the women were svelte, long-limbed and elegant. Their grooming was universally superior. They were utterly unreserved and friendly, but entirely monoglotal.
In loud, slow Italian, and with many gestures, they earnestly tried to explain to me that the harbour had an inside and an outside, and for people of style there could be but one choice. In English For The Unimproved Foreigner, laced with a few attempts at something which I thought might be Italian but obviously wasn’t, I tried to tell them that they would shortly be on the windward side of the quay praying for their anchor to hold; but we could find no common tongue. I tried my schoolboy French, my war movie German and my Central American dock-rat Spanish, whilst Clemmie tried in Latin (what else?); but by no means could we make them understand that a) they weren’t in a good place, and more importantly b) that I wasn’t a loony. We parted from each other smiling broadly, making no sudden gestures, both parties keeping their hands visible and making all possible soothing, amicable gestures to appease the dangerous nutters on the opposite side of the quay.
Irakleia was a very quiet little island... apparently, less than a hundred people lived there during the winter. The port boasted a wonderfully soft, sandy beach under shady trees, a small shop and two tavernas, both of which offered, at this very early part of the season, not very much at all. There was considerable consternation at our arrival. Fridges were thrown open to display no more than potatoes, olives, cheese and the odd tomato.
My nascent Greek was not up to the voluble explanations which accompanied this out-turning of the cupboards and so, by means of eldritch screams up and down the beach, a teenager was summoned to interpret. We were offered fresh fish, and the much-vaunted local goat... but would we please order now, as someone had to go to the chora to get it?
We allowed ourselves to be talked into ordering yido-makaronada, goat-meat with spaghetti... heaven knows why; we must have been in an enquiring frame of mind... and then settled down with a bottle of Naxian wine whilst a clattering old pick-up truck was sent for our supper.
It seemed hours before it was ready, but we were quite happy sitting under a great tree in a courtyard, chatting and practising our Greek with the kids. The adults kept coming to apologise for the wait, and the children enthusiastically told us how worth waiting for it was... people came from Naxos, from Santorini, from Athens even, for Mum’s yido-makaronada.
I suppose we had sort of expected the meat to be in a sauce, but the name turned out to be scrupulously correct, and what we got was a soup-bowl full of goat and spaghetti, with just a hint of clear juice at the bottom of the bowl. It seemed the meat had simply been boiled, and there wasn’t much likelihood that it was kid, or anything young and succulent, either; the flesh had a sinewy, coarse-grained appearance that suggested a draught-animal beyond economical repair. From irregular chunks of the greyish meat protruded splintered ends of substantial bone, and dotted here and there were lumps of yellowy fat. It looked like something you might find stuck on the front of your car after speeding through a sanctuary for elderly warthogs.
The smiling, obliging proprietors assembled in an expectant line to watch us enjoy this culinary pearl, and only the compulsion not to give offence to what looked like four generations of the proud family gave us the courage to try it. And do you know, a pearl it was!
The spaghetti, we later found, had been prepared in the water used for boiling the goat, and had a delicately gamey flavour very nicely spiced with rosemary. The meat itself was tasty, juicy and as soft as butter. Second helpings were offered and accepted. Boiled superannuated goat with spaghetti... try it sometime!
* * *
Overnight the wind picked up just as forecast, and we awoke to the tinkling of the halyards inside the mast, a low humming in the rigging, and the occasional sharp heeling of Mucky Duck as a gust struck her spars. Smugly secure with our stern to the weather, we snuggled under the duvet and enjoyed being safe in port in a blow... it is a wonderful feeling for a sailor, to be cosily contemplating a leisurely breakfast and an idle day in the taverna when a different decision might have meant being out in the dawn, moving to a safe place, lashing things down and generally combating the elements.
I ruefully lamented the fact that, in accordance with my first law of nautical recreation, nobody was around to appreciate my omniscience. Clemmie told me to quit moaning and make the coffee. We then engaged in a wonderful little wrestling and tickling match to determine who was going to quit the pink, rosy ambience of the duvet and put the kettle on, during the course of which we discovered to our surprise that we didn’t really want coffee all that much anyway, and continued the wrestling and tickling for the sheer fun of it. And then, at frankly a most inopportune moment, there was a horrendous grating close by. An instant later Mucky Duck took a great lurch to one side, and I came perilously close to suffering what is hopefully a very rare form of whiplash.
I shall spare the sensitive reader a graphic description of the next few moments; suffice it to say that I deserted Clemmie in the most boorish manner by virtually traversing her north face and base-jumping off her head. Tumbling naked and disoriented into the cabin, I then spent the next few moments like the dog in the dilemma of being equidistant from two bones. With fear for the boat in my heart, nautical contingencies in my head and every other organ of my body still in the service of Eros, I performed a headless-chicken impression of Oscar winning standard between the hatch way and a desperate search for clothes. It wasn’t made any better by a babble of panicky voices outside and another few lurches at critical moments.
I picked things up, changed my mind, put them down, lost them. At one point I got my substantial thigh stuck tight in a pair of Clemmie’s knickers... nothing kinky, I merely mistook them for underpants... and at another I found myself staring indecisively at a left foot sandal and a right foot rubber boot. Eventually I found a pair of swimming shorts, heaved them on with great difficulty... they appeared to cling to my legs like rubber... and following a prodigious struggle with the main hatchway I erupted into the cockpit through a shotgun blast of storm-driven raindrops.
The Italian boat was pressed up against Mucky Duck’s port side, with her bows towards the quay and canted sharply so that her stern was across our stem. A regular succession of violent gusts of wind pressed her bow to starboard, and she should have just blown away and gone clear; however, her anchor was hooked over our stern-line so that her front end was firmly attached. Something similar had evidently occurred at her back end too, as that was also held tightly against us. The side of the Italian boat was hard against Mucky Duck’s un-fendered port bow, and four howling, frantic people in matching day glow foul weather gear were desperately trying to hold the two boats apart whilst forcing fenders down between them. This was an utterly dispiriting business for them, as there was no way under the sun that they were going to manage to compress the fenders sufficiently to force them between the upper edges of the two decks; and they were up to the usual nonsense of pushing as hard as they could on life lines and stanchions.
I bellowed at them to stop that before they broke something and, doing my best to ignore the assault of the ferocious elements on my naked torso, I ran forward with a fender taken from the other side. This I dropped to sea level, let it float between the boats and then hauled it upwards so that it wedged itself between the hulls from underneath. A couple of mighty heaves jammed it so tightly into the narrowing gap from below that the hulls were held a few inches apart. I dragged another one in there from the other end, and told everyone to take a breather. This the Italians evidently misunderstood, as they immediately commenced a massive argument.
Clemmie appeared next to me at this point and took in the situation with keen interest, looking as fetching as ever with a twinkle in her bright eyes, a quirky smile and her curly, dark hair positively Medusan in the anarchy of the gale. Her bare, shapely legs protruded below her waterproof jacket, terminating ludicrously in a pair of cut-off green farmer’s wellies.
We watched avidly as the two women on the other boat got stuck into their men folk like reapers into a wheat field. I got the impression that this was merely the first instalment of a fulsome and remorseless remonstration for broken fingernails and spoiled hairdos; and there was none of the screeched, semi-articulate loss for words which these affairs often engender, either. Both ladies appeared to be powerfully coherent, their scorn-laden phrases clearly enunciated and forcefully projected without deviation, hesitation or repetition so far as we could tell. The men defended themselves with passion. Jaws were thrust forward, arms flew about without quite making contact... it was all rather like a third-rate kung-fu film.
At any other time I would have poured a drink and sat down to enjoy the show; however, at gale strength and laced with light rain even the mild south wind was cold enough to begin to bite, and I reluctantly interrupted.
I made a couple of half-hearted efforts to interrupt them, but passions were flying fairly high and nothing remotely polite made any headway. And then I remembered a bit of dock-Italian I had heard stevedores using during a difficult cargo operation in Trieste some years before. I decided to give that a try.
“Basta, Stronzo!” I cried, with all my not inconsiderable vocal power. It was probably registered by seismic monitoring stations around the area... but all it accomplished was to enrage the Italian men,* who now turned on me. Until, that is, the blonder of the two Italian ladies bested my effort with a penetrating “Tacere, vecchia pentola a pressione!†”
This had the effect I had totally failed to achieve, and she turned from her startled and speechless men folk, saying to me sweetly, “’Scuzi, Signor!”
I was in charge. Wonderful. Now what was I going to do? I took a look at the situation.
Driven away from the windward side of the quay by the ferocious gusts off the island, the Italians had presumably tried to move around to the lee side next to us, and I supposed that they had decided to lay a stern anchor and moor bows to the weather... a sensible thought, but one which gave a dreadful premonition that the entanglement at their stern might well involve their anchor-rope, my anchor chain, and/or a propeller. Dimly aware that something was still very wrong with my shorts, I made my way forward and peered over the bow... the Italian’s rudder was over my anchor chain, and in the clear but agitated water I thought I could see a loop of their anchor line around my chain and back into their propeller.
We quickly got some lines ashore from the Italian’s bow, and then one of the men donned his snorkelling gear and cut the anchor-rope free from their propeller. This done, the other boat drifted away from Mucky Duck and lay to the wind. We knotted the two ends of the anchor-rope together again, pulled hard to make sure that their anchor was holding, and presently had them conventionally moored. Peace was declared, universal good will broke out, Clemmie brought me a fleece jacket, and one of the Italian ladies handed round small glasses of grappa.
Whilst the other lady prepared magnificently aromatic Italian coffee for us all, I trotted ashore to deal with their anchor, which was still over our stern-line; and as I did so I realised what was wrong with my shorts... in my haste to get on deck, I had put them on back-to-front. I ignored the matter temporarily and concentrated on the other boat’s anchor, which I supposed they had left hanging from the roller whilst moving around from the inside of the harbour. It had hooked over our rope when they approached the quay. I didn’t want to slack our moorings in this wind, and I couldn’t be bothered rigging another line, so I slipped a rope around the head of the anchor with a boat hook, asked the Italians to slack the chain a little, and lifted the anchor onto the quay.
I was quite enjoying the attention of everyone as I performed this manly feat, and I posed a moment as Clemmie took a photograph. She still has it, I believe... it captures my open-mouthed expression at the very moment when the abused shorts finally gave up the ghost, and preserves me for all posterity, virtually naked from the waist down apart from a boot on my right foot and a sandal on my left. The keenest of observers, with patience and concentration, may just be able to make out The Pride of the Blatchleys making a very successful job of hiding from the inclement elements, and Clemmie’s lace-frothed knickers still gartering my extravagant thigh.
* * *
We left Irakleia early the next morning with a cool but exhilarating north-westerly force five over our shoulder and raced eastwards under Skinoussa towards Amorgos, fortifying ourselves against the temperature and flying spray with occasional drams of fiery, invigorating Italian grappa. We also bore with us some Limoncello liqueur, both bottles insistently bestowed by the Italians after a boisterous evening of mutual incomprehension and mirth in the taverna. Lacking the means to discuss anything other than everyone’s profound satisfaction at having witnessed my inaugural efforts at indecent exposure we had just laughed, drank incomprehensible toasts, brutally murdered some opera, and then basked in bonhomie whilst Clemmie’s violin filled the house to capacity. By the end of the evening they seemed to have bussed most of the islanders in from the chora and we finally parted in the wee hours, feeling like honorary Irakleians and Freemen of the city of Firenze too boot.
I thought, as we fizzed across a rolling, grey sea and Clemmie stole a few more minutes sleep in the pilot-berth, how very easy it would have been to get angry about the Italian’s mismanaged manoeuvring; and what a pleasurable experience we would have missed if we had done so. A confirmation for my Second Law of Nautical Recreation… one meets a better class of people in collisions.
* * *
Evening. A cafe table on a picture-postcard harbour front, and a view across a narrow strip of water towards a rocky, rising landscape. Clemmie and I sat strangely upright in our easy chairs, unusually quiet as we toyed with our evening G-and-Ts. For the first time since we had met there was a constraint between us. Both of us were painfully aware that the repartee had dried up, and the silence had none of the companionable tranquillity which normally marked any hiatus in our conversation. Neither of us dared mention it.
It was a pensive silence, full of reminiscence and introspection, pregnant with unspoken thoughts; for the harbour front on which we sat was Pythagorion, on the south-east side of Samos. The land rising a short distance across the straits was in Turkey, the start of a new continent, and the last thing we had done before ordering our drinks was to book a taxi driver for five o’clock in the morning to take Clemmie to the ferry port in Vathi. I was staying in Greece to hand over Mucky Duck, and Clemmie was leaving me, Greece and Europe to continue her archaeological studies.
Even my insensitive temperament recognised that the moment bristled with opportunities to say something really crass. Our relationship had been born out of camaraderie, not romance; our intimacy had developed as a simple extension of friendship, begotten out of badinage and carried on in the same teasing vein with the unspoken and mutual expectation of a brief, sub-emotional tryst. No involvement, no commitments, just healthy physical fun which provided the crowning condiment in a delicious banquet of companionable experiences. We were jocular about our relationship, mocked each other about our respective social origins, and jested that living together was a mere matter of logistical convenience. It was always a finite thing. We spoke easily about it.
We weren’t speaking about it now, however. The imminence of our separation made me suddenly starkly aware that I was going to miss this girl, possibly more than I’d ever missed anyone, and it seemed to me that Clemmie had realised this and didn’t want any last minute emotional nonsense. She had in front of her a career which would require her to travel freely; she was younger than me and a hell of a lot better looking. She couldn’t follow her own vocation and me, and she wasn’t interested in giving up her own worthy ambitions to become an asset to help me enjoy my life; not even if she did share any of the feelings I was now belatedly discovering.
Mutually preoccupied, both of us searched cluelessly for a neutral subject of conversation. Periodically there were farcical outbursts where we both tried to speak at once, deferred to each other and fell silent again with nothing said. When we did speak, we uttered inane blether, neutral, uncontroversial and pointless. Mostly we pretended to be absorbed in the scenery, and just let the awkward silence have its way.
As we watched the dusk fall and lights begin to twinkle on the Turkish coast, all I could think of was what a perfect time this would be for a soliloquy. I’m rather fond of The Bard and, lacking anything original to say, I searched my memory for an appropriate quote; something witty or comic to defuse the tension. But The Bard was treacherous that night, and all that came to mind, over and over, was a gentleman of Verona intoning, “What joy is joy, if Sylvia be not by?”
Clemmie declined another G-and-T, so we moved to a restaurant and poked some food around our plates for a while; then we went to bed early and lay there in the dark for what seemed like ages, both quite aware that the other was wide awake.
Eventually we must have slept, because the alarm woke us in the early hours. Clemmie dressed quickly. I got up and, too stupid even to make her a farewell cup of coffee, stood clueless and useless as she threw the last few items in her backpack. The purr of a car engine announced that the confounded taxi driver was true to his hour. Clemmie gave me a sisterly hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was absolutely the last chance to say something, and Blatchley will never, at the last, remain silent; so I cleared my throat and, with a nervously hoarse tenor which belied my bantering words, I said, “Well, enjoy your grave-robbing. I don’t suppose I can persuade you to stay and do my ironing and child bearing?”
She froze for an instant, and then turned to me and took me gently by the ear lobes.
“Sorry, Skip,” she said softly, “No can do. You are awfully sweet, but I couldn’t dilute the bloodline... my family hasn’t had an oik in the gene-pool for centuries!”
“Quite right too!” I said, with what flippancy I could muster, “Your elitism does you credit! Well, you have a good time, Clemmie. Dig up a pot for me, would you?”
“You’d only break it, you ox! I’ll look for a sword, or a bloody great big axe... that’s more your style!” Then she hugged me, and kissed me very gently on the lips.
As she climbed out of the hatch, I realised that she had left tears on my cheek.