A spot of harry-roughers... great hydrofoil journeys of the world... malodour-de-mer... techniques for rough weather... what to do when they don’t work... blowing for a tug... how to tow if you can’t do it properly... the bun-fight at the Omega Kappa corral... philotimo... an unlikely explanation accepted... the reward of virtue.
In terms of my reputation I may not have been achieving much on the romantic front, but my Barnacle Billy-ness was about to have an opportunity to exhibit itself.
Lochinvar had been struggling. She was a good-looking boat, a Gib-Sea 106 with a very sweet sheer, and she was a capable sailor; but she was not designed for the bloody-minded conditions we had encountered together over the last two days.
Firstly we had beat thirty-five miles to windward into a relentless north-north-east, driving over steep, short, slamming seas, which are so typical of the Eastern Mediterranean, under a treble-reefed main and half a genoa. That had been rough, and wet, and very tiring; and yet we had made headway, and the exhilaration of bucketing over the ramping, slab-sided, thuggish waves had still held some charm. The astringent spray, the whipping freshness of the air, the profound, cathedral-vaulted, cobalt lustre of the deep, deep sea as we clove into it, combined with the sheer achievement of making progress would be compelling memories long after the aches, the chill, the hunger and the weariness had been forgotten. The second half of the trip, however, was one of those sailing experiences which make one wish that one had lived one’s entire life up a mountain, and bred vampires for a hobby.
The call had come a couple of days earlier, when Spiros had managed to trap me at about four in the morning at the Jungle Bar, where I was just having a last glass with the owners, Stathis and Mary, as they put the shutters up. Mary was mixing the gins as Stathis and I carried two last clients, overcome by their exertions, outside and arranged them comfortably in the municipal flowerbeds to pass the rest of the night. Jingle, jangle.
“Julian! Phone!”
I knew what would happen, but I picked it up anyway. And I said yes. (I always said ‘yes’ in any case, but after a pleasant evening with Dr Tanqueray I would probably have volunteered to take a petrol-tanker to Dunkirk). Then I packed a bag, forestalled a hangover with a heart-attack breakfast at George’s Cafe, and caught the first Flying Dolphin to Monemvasia. It had been blowing a stiff northerly for a week, and Spiros had a boat stuck at the bottom of the Peloponnese. Fifty-five miles, give or take... it would be a bit of a punch to get back, certainly, but all the same I considered it money for old rope. I blithely assured Spiros that I’d have the boat back the following night. I was a pillock.
There was a Flying Dolphin hydrofoil link down to Monemvasia. One had to get to Spetses, change onto another boat which went down to Plaka Leonidhion on the Peloponnese, and then wait for the service from Navplion which touched at Tyros, Plaka, Kiparissi, Gerakas and Monemvasia before it rounded Akra Malea and made its furthest-south in either Neapolis or Gythion. It was an excellent service... sadly now long discontinued... which opened up many wonderful, isolated bucolic havens along the Eastern Peloponnese by making, in a few hours, a trip that, by road, would have taken all day and half of the night; and yet, if there was any weather it was not a voyage for the faint-of-heart. It was even less so for the faint-of-stomach!
Two and a half hours to Leonidion followed by another two to Monemvasia was a long time to sit in a sealed tube which smelled faintly of diesel, especially with the sea that had been kicked up by a week of anemos-ity; for the hydrofoils rolled sluggishly in the quartering seas, stalling on the backs of waves and racing down the fronts, and the ponderous, slow and unpredictable motion had many a passenger intensely occupied trying to re-pack their breakfasts in bags which were neither sufficiently large nor waterproof for the purpose. Blame it on the excesses of the previous night I could and did, but whatever the reason, the fact was that, after a lifetime in boats and ten years at sea professionally, even I was not immune. Monemvasia is a magnificent, towering, vertiginous pillar of ruby-hued rock crowned with the spectacular ruins of a mighty acropolis, but by the time I arrived on the old stone jetty, which juts out of the ancient causeway joining this eminence to the mainland, my eagerness to disembark had nothing whatever to do with enjoying the view.
The apologetic clients who were leaving Lochinvar met me off the hydrofoil and handed over the keys. I cursed them for this consideration, as it meant I had to keep my rebellious digestive system in check whilst I appeared saltily immune for the benefit of the punters. Fortunately, after tailing off into silence as they took horrified stock of the condition of the refugees disembarking from the contraption, they hurried away to cancel their tickets on the afternoon return service and look for a bus.
I proceeded with all despatch to the rather wonderful pizza restaurant under the great rock-face and settled my stomach with a calezone and a flagon or two of icy amber elixir. Then I checked out the boat, had a couple of hours sleep, made a pack of sarnies to last me the night, and set forth to battle the elements.
* * *
Thus it was that I came to be regretting the siren-call of the oceans, and it was all my own fault; firstly, in general, for saying ‘yes’ without due consideration, and secondly, in particular, for the route I had taken. I was coming north to Poros from Monemvasia, at the bottom of the Peloponnesian coast, against a north-north-easterly gale, and it had seemed to me that I might get some respite from the seas if I passed west of Hydra, using that high, rocky island as a breakwater.
Smugly confident in my ‘local knowledge’, I had allowed for the nonsense which Greek wind gets up to whenever it meets a rock and I expected to find, as I sailed into the narrow gap between Hydra and Ermioni, that that the wind would simply turn to follow the Hydra Strait and blow dead against me. However, I suspected the seas would be much higher in the open water east of Hydra, and I took it as the least-worst option. What I had not predicted was that, in the confines of the Hydra Strait, the sea built even higher. It was bad enough beating into that, but then the wind died altogether.
Delivery-skippers in Greece either become adept at making way against the wind, or they give up entirely. People pay to sail downwind, but most of us don’t sail back up unless we are well remunerated for it. Some folks leave their boats at the downwind end of their voyage by pre-arrangement, and some are simply overcome by the elements; but the fact is that boats accumulate downwind and have to be brought back up for the next client. The majority of deliveries are against the wind, and anyone of any brain soon develops a strategy.
Normally when faced with head seas and winds, one either sailed close-hauled or else one flattened the main sail with a reef and motored on a course which just allowed the sail to be kept full. That way a fair, if uncomfortable, speed could be maintained.
Today, however, the wind having died away to leave only the high, spiteful sea, I had been forced to lower the mainsail to prevent it flogging itself to death in the pitching and rolling. All attempts to change course and angle across the seas had failed, because I lost ground as I gained speed. The boat was needed in Poros, so I didn’t want to take shelter until the sea dropped. I had endured most of the night slamming into the detestable and undiminishing chop, unable to prepare a hot meal* and feeling as if I had spent a month on the dodgems.
Lochinvar was game. With resolution and tenacity she slammed and pitched into the chunky, white-maned, anarchic swells which hissed down the Hydra Strait, her engine purring stoically despite being alternately stood on its gearbox or fly-wheel, but she was going nowhere. Every time Lochinvar hit one, her engine had to drive her up a steep hill, which slowed her down; every time the wave passed by, she briefly accelerated and then dug her bows in to the trough behind it, so that her buoyancy almost stopped her dead. It was like playing American football... short sprint, crashing stop. I was thoroughly sick of the business.
Most of the morning I had watched Tselevinia creeping closer, moving no faster than an arthritic tectonic plate, knowing that Poros was just the other side of Dharditsa and that, in a direct line, I was barely six miles from home, shelter, ice-cold beer and my bed, and the relief as I finally nosed into the Tselevinia channel was as palpable as walking under a waterfall. Emerging on the other side of the passage to run north-west to Poros, the boat took the high swell on her starboard side. Rolling her zincs out, but no longer held back by the impact of waves from ahead, Lochinvar swooped over the heaped beam seas and raced towards home. I had already decided on the pepper steak at Mouraghio Taverna and could just about taste that beer.
The seas were, not to mince words, bloody awful. Generated by a full blow in the Aegean they hooked westwards at Cape Sounion and hit the lower Saronic from the east-north-east. As they smashed on the sheer, rocky coast, they created back-waves which radiated out and even a mile from the land these conflicted with the next waves coming in, making them higher and steeper. I reckoned some of them were touching three metres, and I kept a good way offshore, partly to avoid the worst of them and partly to give me time to get sails on in case I had an engine problem.
In the eastern approach to Poros lies an island, Bourtzi. It is a low, rocky dome, perhaps fifteen metres high and two hundred metres long, and it is crowned with a turreted, defensive wall, like a small castle. I was watching it keenly as the thrashing white water all about it clearly showed that the waves were still potent even this far into the entrance. Foam frothed around the island like spittle on a maniac’s lips, and from this an occasional spout of white erupted to reach almost as high as the foot of the walls as the massive energy of the seas vented itself on impassive rock. And then, in that anarchy of tortured seas, I clearly saw a flash of blue which was far too light to be natural.
It took me some moments, in the chaotic, bucking world of Lochinvar’s cockpit, to lay my hands on the binoculars. It took a lot longer to snatch a reliable glimpse of the waters in front of the island, but eventually I had some sort of focus. A moment later I caught a fleeting sight of a coral-blue fishing boat rearing her bow over an advancing comber. A man was clinging to the net-winding gear.
I immediately flung the helm over and headed down towards the island. There was no time to be lost, as the boat seemed to be already perilously close to the rocks. I could only assume that the engine had failed... not even a fisherman, a breed of men who are definitive risk-takers, would conceivably be in that position by choice... and if the boat touched those rocks in such waves she would go to pieces in moments. In that sea there could be no chance for anyone aboard. I needed to get that fellow off, and quickly.
As I roared in, with the waves scooting me forward, I got a long rope out of the locker and attached it firmly to the lifebuoy. I didn’t think there was any chance of getting the fisherman on board directly in such a chaotic sea, so my plan was to stop head-to-weather just by him and recover him over the stern using the lifebuoy and rope. I longed to call for help, but the VHF radio was in the chart-space, and I couldn’t leave the tiller. Anyway, the fishing boat would be on the rocks long before I could even explain the situation, never mind receive any assistance.
The motion became increasingly wild as I neared the rocks, and now the man on the fishing boat could be clearly seen when she rose at the same time as Lochinvar. I recognised him, had seen him on the dock... he was an enormous, dark-skinned, bare-footed, gypsy-ish character, balding with an extravagant comb-over, whose belly spilled with contemptuous ease out of whatever garment he employed to contain it. I assumed he lived on the boat, as he certainly slept on it most nights, and I didn’t know his name but had privately dubbed him The Wild Man of the Sea. Now he clung to the net-winder with one hand and the cabin with the other, looking rapidly from me to the rocks and back.
I swung Lochinvar around, rolling what felt like about forty degrees in the process, and began to edge towards the capering fishing boat. It looked, I noted with alarm, rather sluggish and I had an idea it was already taking in water. I lobbed the lifebuoy right next to the gunwale, and shouted to the fisherman to jump for it. Waves coming in slapped into waves rebounding from the rocks, the spray and dollops of green water flew, and the malevolent deep crunch and rush of waves on the nearby island eclipsed the engine-noise. I had to keep looking at my rev-counter to reassure myself that the engine was still running, and that, consequently, I wasn’t about to die.
I expected the Wild Man to jump for the lifebuoy, but he fished it out with a hook.
‘Fair enough,’ I thought, ‘he probably can’t swim... it is surprising how many traditional seamen can’t. He’ll put it on and then jump.’
But then I saw him untying the lifebuoy from the rope.
I was, I confess, just a trifle irritated by this. It was irrational of me, I admit, especially in light of my constant failure to attract a mate, but I had a touching fondness for life; and I was aware at that mine was currently entirely dependent on the game little engine, so puny that I could not even hear it over the greedy gobbling of the ravening waves, pounding its little alloy heart out down in Lochinvar’s bilges. One hiccup, one bubble in the fuel system, and I would, very briefly, be garnish on the serrated, stony flanks of Bourtzi. I roared at the bloody idiot, telling him to jump, but he blithely ignored me. And then, with a stone in my heart and liquid soap in my intestines, I realised what he was doing.
He was tying the bloody rope to his boat!
Aghast, I howled my disagreement at him. I could see no way under the firmament that Lochinvar could tow that hefty, dead-weight and probably waterlogged boat out of that watery bedlam. But he evidently disagreed. Indeed, he appeared to repose such utopian faith in his salvation that he calmly sat down on the drive-mechanism for the net-winder and gave every indication of taking a well-earned rest.
What was I going to do? Cast him adrift to die? Cursing and blaspheming, I secured my end of the line and started to manoeuvre to take up the strain on the tow.
The trickiest part of towing is taking up the strain on the tow-line. The towed vessel is, initially, stationary and it is easy to put the strain on the line too fast and break it. The best way to get the tow moving is to move to the side, as she will turn more readily than she will move bodily through the water and so there is less resistance to getting her moving. Then, as she begins to turn, it takes less energy to convert a turn into forward motion than it does simply to start pulling a dead-weight. One can come in line and start to pull her with much less chance of breaking the towing gear.
This I began to do now, and it took me some hour-long minutes to crab across and take the strain. These minutes, tense in any case, were made no easier by the roaring and gesticulating of the Wild Man who was defeating even the thunder of inexorable nature in exercising his inalienable Hellenic right to tell me I was doing it all wrong. By the time I had the engine up to full revolutions and pulling directly offshore, I was angry enough... terrified enough, come to that... to have shut him up with an iron bar if I could have reached.
To judge by his language, the Wild Man found my failure to follow his instructions as infuriating as I found his interference; but even if he had known what he was talking about, and even if I could have understood it, I was towing from the stern... this is very difficult, as the towing vessel has great difficulty turning, and the stern is perpetually dragged in the direction of the tow. The tow-line really needs to be connected in the middle of the towing boat. I partly compensated for this by shifting the weight of the tow from one quarter to the other, as required, using a line from the cockpit winches.
After much adjustment, all conducted to the constant litany of contradictory advice and instructions, I ended up heading diagonally away from the island, with the tow secured to the port quarter of Lochinvar, and tried to edge my ménage slowly to the westward and the shelter of the Poros entrance without losing ground back towards the seething cauldron of malevolent energy which raged at the island’s flanks.
The fishing boat had come partly in line and appeared to have stopped her drift towards the rocks, but I could do no more than that. Lochinvar’s engine was about thirty horse-power, if I remember correctly, and completely inadequate for this task. Thinking back, I suspect that it was as much the back-wash of the waves as Lochinvar’s engine that kept the fishing boat off those fatal rocks; and yet, oh so slowly, I began to drag my salvage, inch by excruciating inch, sideways across the rock-face of the island. Every time I looked back I took a marker on the island... a bush, a fold in the rock... and watched the plunging bulk of the fishing boat creep past it. I rode the throttle, trying to damp out the snatches on the tow-line, but on occasion got it wrong. Then the line would snap taut with a ‘twang’ and hum like a harp string; the snatch pulled Lochinvar’s stern round, and my heart stopped for a few minutes as I waited for the line to part. Then, when it didn’t, I had to wrestle us back on course.
We were not moving away from the rocks; on the contrary, in fact, I think we were slowly losing ground towards them. But infinitesimally we were moving sideways, and after what seemed like a decade, I could make out that the stern of the fishing boat had just, marginally, somehow, cleared the end of the island.
Between the island and the channel into Poros there is another outcrop of rock. Being reasonably confident that I could clear this, especially as the seas had subsided somewhat as we got closer in, I managed to turn more towards shelter and then I even rolled out some genoa. Supplemented by the sail, the engine was now moving the heavy fishing boat a little better, and I was heading for the entrance to the port.
And then The Wild Man of the Sea let the bloody rope go!
I stopped my prop, rolled up my genoa, and heaved in the slack line. The Wild Man ignored me completely, and was trying to rig a large, unwieldy pair of oars... a hopeless task, even in the lesser seas at the entrance to the channel. The boat drifted quickly towards the rocks to leeward, where the man himself now might survive but the seas were still capable of destroying the boat. I approached the loony again, and offered him the rope.
He declined.
“Go get my friend!” he roared in Greek. He used áde, which is an impolite imperative for ‘go’, and did not volunteer who his friend was, or where he might be found.
I managed to construct a few terse sentences in Greek which, if they were correct, should have informed him that if he didn’t take the line, he would lose his boat. He played the stoic for a while, until his boat shook with an impact on something below the water; and then, with ill-grace and bad temper, he re-secured the line and I pulled him again offshore.
As soon as I got him inside the blessed calm of the channel, he cast off again and tried to row. Even now he could not make way, but he was safe now... he drifted gently aground on the mud on the Galatas side of the channel, and at that point turned his back emphatically towards me and settled down to watch the mainland. I left him to it. With my keel I couldn’t get near him there anyway, even if he had wanted my help... and he certainly didn’t.
I knew what it had all been about, of course. The fellow was worried that I would claim salvage on his boat.
Greeks have their own ideas about salvage. The basic principle internationally is that a successful salvor, one who has prevented the loss of a vessel and re-delivered it to the owner in a safe place and condition, can claim up to half of the value of the vessel and cargo salvaged. It is a generous award, which is intended to encourage people to do their utmost to save property, and the most commonly used agreement is ‘Lloyds Open Form’. The Greeks, masters of one of the world’s pre-eminent shipping industries and as sharp the scythe of Death in enforcing their rights under maritime law internationally, know this as well as anyone in the world; and yet, they are peculiarly blind to salvage laws when they happen within their own jurisdiction. Within Greece, the universal belief is simply, ‘I saved it, it’s mine!’
There are a lot of things about salvage which everybody in Greece ‘knows’. Most of them have no basis that I am aware in anyone’s maritime law, but that doesn’t matter, because Everybody Knows. There are various theories about towing other boats, such as whose rope is used, or what agreements are made, or where the salvage takes place, which never appeared in any of my shipmasters law courses but which are all solidly established as case-law in the high court of the kafeneion, and they make the complexities of European Legislation look like the Ten Commandments by comparison; but what I can tell you, without any fear of inaccuracy, is that if you get towed by a Greek in Greece you are almost certain to have your boat impounded and the lawyers will be booking their kids into Eton.
This, then, was the reason for the Wild Man’s apparent ingratitude; and, since the boat was almost certainly all he possessed, I considered his position perfectly understandable... well, I did once I had downed a couple of cold beers and wrestled my heart-rate back into double figures.
I totally ignored the whole matter and didn’t mention it to anyone; not out of modesty... this was Poros, and a main road overlooks Bourtzi Island; I did not for one second believe that the drama on the rocks had gone un-noticed, or un-remarked... but simply because I thought that it best became me as a Brit and a professional seaman to say nothing. So I ignored it.
Later in the day I saw the Wild Man being towed off the mud and back to the quay by a water-taxi. Over the next few days, in the mornings, he took up the heavy oars and rowed up the sheltered bay to fish, and in the afternoons he sat morosely contemplating a mediocre catch of tiny fish and his silent engine. He religiously failed to make eye contact when I passed by, I made no initiatives myself, and there the matter rested for a few days, and it was about midday perhaps three days later when the Wild Man cracked.
I was pottering on the dock where, having stopped to chat with some charterers I had met on my peregrinations, our discussions carried us into The Snail’s souvlaki joint for one of those impromptu Poros paralia lunches. The Snail was a wonderful Poros waterfront character, a bear-like maniac with a permanent grin and a truly magical gift for roasting meat. Humorously passionate about absolutely everything he loved, which principally included his family, his nation, his church, his island, fresh local ingredients in his cooking, Olympiakos and Liverpool football clubs, his friends and good whisky, he was largely dismissive of everything else. He ran his souvlatsidiko with a ribald eccentricity which Basil Fawlty would have considered bizarre, exuding bonhomie with Stentorian force.
Retaining his nickname from his schooldays, from whence he also retained his charming wife, The Snail was avuncular to tourists, boisterously offensive to those he loved and darkly menacing to those he did not. When Olympiakos or the Greek national team won, he was not above launching whole stacks of plates over the pavement. His grilled meat was tasty and juicy, and his oven-roasts were so tender that they abandoned the bone at the mere sight of the fork. I gradually found myself spending more time in The Snailery than I did at my own room. As I was simultaneously holding forth to my chartering acquaintances and addressing one of The Snail’s legendary pork chops, there hove into view a desperate crew consisting of The Wild One himself, Big Savvas and a water-taxi driver called Fotis. It was plainly an assembly constituted to air grievances.
The Wild Man, of course, was the injured party. Fotis, I remembered, had spent time in Australia, so he presumably appeared as interpreter. Glancing nervously at Big Savvas’s shovel-sized hands and towering physique, I didn’t even want to think about what his function was! All three had evidently taken nourishment before visiting, for they were somewhat unsteady, universally unkempt and decidedly belligerent. Glancing around, I was dismayed to find that The Snail had disappeared on an errand... probably to have a quick, refreshing glass with the butcher, as was his wont. Pity. I could have done with the support of a fraternally-biased grizzly.
To the discomfort of the people I was sitting with, the Wild Man began to state the case for the plaintiff most forcefully.
“Go on!” He roared. “Take it! Take my boat! Take the food from the mouths of my children! Take the legacy of my father! Take it! Go to the port police and just take it! Why do you torture me? You are an animal, a monster! Why do you do this to me?”
To gain a moment or two to think, I affected to have no idea what he was talking about. I surmised that word had gone around that he had been saved by the English sailor and that, fearing that he would have no defence if I made a salvage claim, he had got stoked up and the angst had overflowed. By his understanding of the law, the boat simply became mine, or he had to pay me the full value.
I was not, of course, in the slightest bit interested in his boat. The thought of salvage had never crossed my mind until I realised why he had been behaving the way he had; but, even if I had been mean enough to try to take his boat, or mad enough to risk alienating the whole waterfront community, I reckoned it wasn’t worth much more than the equivalent weight of firewood anyway. I had helped the guy out, that was enough for me, but if I was to gain anything out of the affair at all, I was perfectly content that it should be the good opinion of the seafaring community. Well, that, and, of course, my skin intact! And since passions were clearly running very high, I obviously had to handle this carefully.
Greek hospitality to the stranger is legendary, but even legends have their limits. The nation, despite the enormous historical and existential presence it has in the world, is still less than two hundred years old, and one hundred and fifty of those years have been spent in struggle. From the achievement of independence in 1831 to the assimilation of the eastern islands from Italy in 1945, Greece has gradually expanded to assimilate those regions where the dominant... almost the only... culture is Greek. War after war, diplomacy and treaties have gradually brought the Ionian Islands, Epirus, Thrace and Salonika, Crete and finally the Dodecanese within her current boundaries. The struggle with Turkey resulted in a population exchange in the 1920s, Muslims being deported east and Greeks expelled from Asia Minor in reply. This is deeply preserved in the national consciousness, and in the Asian influences in the anarchic, melancholy music of Rebetiko.
Even since the settlement of the current borders, Greece has known unusual political upheaval as monarchists, Venizelist republicans, democrats, communists and military dictators succeeded each other. In the 1950s the country suffered a hideous civil war, and the last military government was only overthrown as recently as 1974. The legacy of these struggles and experiences has left Greeks a little insecure, with a keen sense of injustice and an inbred propensity for revolution, and the foreigner makes light of these at his peril. The same qualities which make Greeks spontaneously joyful and generous can just as quickly make them powerfully resentful if the stimulus is there.
Another thing I had learned in my time in the country was the importance of personal respect. People, especially men, have their pride and this is a no-go area. Northern Europeans often don’t understand this well... British people in particular, perhaps because our culture tends to self-deprecation, are apt to underestimate the value of persona... but if you are going to live amongst Greeks then ignoring people’s dignity is not a good way to find positive experiences.
In Greece there is a concept called philotimo, which translates directly as ‘love of honour’, but is in fact very difficult to characterize. It is an indistinct quality, and one can have serious arguments attempting to define it, but it seems to me to be a code of conduct, a way of life. It may be expressed in treatment of others, response under adversity, generosity, manners, deportment, and many other ways. The term may also be used to refer to a person’s pride, in so far as it refers to their relations with others, and, by extension, to the wounding of that pride. Hurting someone’s philotimo has the potential to attract a robust response!
My normal means of deflecting anger is with humour, but any attempt at wit, at this moment, would have been an astoundingly bad idea... these chaps were stoked on booze, inflamed by every injustice since the fall of Constantinople, and sensitive that, by their own beliefs and customs, they were in the wrong. If I misjudged this now, I’d be eating my lunch from a hose-pipe up my bum.
Since my detractors were already hyperbolic, I decided that was the language to speak. Calling on my (considerable!) flair for over-acting, I affected utter perplexity.
“Your boat?” I asked, as if in wonder, “What would I do with your boat?”
Fotis was really quite fluent.
“You think, just because you tow his boat, you have right to take it? It is the boat of his grandfather!” (I could believe that) “It is the boat that feeds his children!” (I was less inclined to believe that... I had never seen him with any children, and he was the sort of chap, to be frank, that one wouldn’t expect to see in the gene-pool unless the chlorination plant was on the blink) “You think, just because you were passing by, that you have the right to take this from him? He not need your help... he is seaman. Son of seaman. He know.”
I raised my hands, palms outward, in pacification.
“I am not going to take his boat. I don’t want his boat.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Fotis, triumphantly, looking around to ensure that this admission had been registered by witnesses. And then his look changed to consternation.
“What?” he demanded.
“I am not going to take his boat. You are talking about salvage money, yes? I don’t want it.”
Fotis was having trouble with this.
“Why?” he eventually asked, in evident amazement.
My reply was delayed as the Wild Man, comprehending that the conversation had taken an unexpected turn, demanded to be updated in Greek. When I finally got my say, I struck a noble pose and said rather pontifically, “I am a seaman. He is a seaman. We are brothers.”
This was translated, and apparently found to have some value. Pursed lips and shrugs indicated that, yes, this might be so, possibly...
“Our enemy is the sea, not each other. We must fight our enemy together. This time, I was able to help you. I do not need money to make me help my brother.”
This was accepted. This was hyperbole, and it was also touching on their core beliefs. I was almost speaking their language now.
“Next time,” I added wickedly, deciding that I had deflected the worst of the ill-feeling, “Perhaps I will be in danger, and my brother will be as generous to me.”
The reaction of the three men to this made it clear that I could expect no such thing. Fotis and the Wild Man started like horses bitten by a snake at the idea, and then looked shifty. Big Savvas, on the other hand, loved it. He roared with laughter and clapped both of his companions hard on the shoulder. Big, big joke! I took care not to smile, but relief flooded through me. If nothing else, I now had the muscle on my side. By keeping my face straight I had, well, kept my face straight! The three of them departed, Savvas perfectly happily and the other two throwing puzzled look over their shoulders as they went.
As far as I was concerned, the matter was closed; but about three days later I was on a boat all on my own, right at the end of the quay. It was a hot afternoon, everyone else was off the streets, and so I was slightly alarmed to see all three men making straight for me. I began edging my hand close to a winch-handle just in case things got ugly, but stopped when I saw the grins on their faces.
The Wild Man was bobbing and smiling like a chap trying to please a child, and Fotis announced grandly that, to thank me for my help, I was invited to the Wild Man’s family home for dinner. There would be, I was informed, his brother’s famous tsipouro and... all expressed reverence and awe at this point... his mother’s famous fish soup.
They came to get me that evening, all three of them. We took ouzo at the Blue Ouzerie near Petros’ cafe and then walked up into the back streets of the town. Rounding the shoulder of the hill we entered the Brinia neighbourhood, very high up and looking west to the sleeping lady, and here entered a yard above and behind a faded, jaded little house. The yard was untidy, littered here and there with fish-boxes and piled nets, but we lifted a tin table and some chairs out onto the track above and seated ourselves to face towards the setting sun. The rocky peak of Sphaeria behind us was fringed with pines which scented the air, and the view was spectacular.
The tsipouro was an acquired taste, being quite the fieriest and most peppery of its kind that I had yet encountered, but Big Savvas had some pieces of octopus on a small grill, and these tempered the unsophisticated liquor somewhat. I was soon happy enough. I listened gravely as the Wild Man explained, through Fotis, the history and provenance of his boat, and particularly of its treasured single-cylinder engine. He then told me, in detail, how he had never really been in danger off Bourtzi Island, and how he would have handled the matter if I had not arrived. I nodded sagely, as one sea brother to another, whilst he explained the virtues of local knowledge.
Fotis then regaled me with accounts of his time in Australia, and Big Savvas retold, from his own viewpoint, some anecdotes from my pig-roast. For my part, I told them of the Lake District mountains where I had been brought up... Patrida, or homeland, is always a subject of interest to Greeks... and explained how I had come to Greece. I did this, as far as my ability allowed, in Greek, which evidently pleased them despite my undoubted mangling of the language. We were a companionable bunch.
Finally a bent, aged lady in a once-black dress which had turned grey with sun and washing appeared in an upstairs window of the house below us and uttered a screech like a banshee who has just had a tax-demand. Big Savvas galloped down to the house and returned with an enormous, battered aluminium pan, climbing with infinite care so as not a drop of the cherished soup should be spilled.
He set it down, and an enormous ladle was used to entirely fill my bowl. Everybody watched as I tried it.
To be honest, my eyes had watered as soon as Savvas took the lid off. It smelled, pungently, of fish... not cooked fish, just fish. The sort of smell you get walking through a fish-market when they have just closed for the day but not yet hosed-down. The soup itself looked like a patch of sea in which a shark had just finished lunch, an opaque, greyish, lack-lustre fluid in which suspicious objects floated, and from which things like fins and bones protruded. I had about as much desire to taste it as I would have had to lick a dustbin clean.
Have courage, I thought, it will be delicious. There are lots of things like this in ethnic cooking... they look and smell repulsive, and taste delicious.
Not, unfortunately, in this case. If did not stretch credulity too far, I would assure the reader that it tasted even worse than it looked. Worse even than the Wild Man looked.
Of course, everyone was watching, and so I called again on my aforementioned powers of acting. Yum, yum, congrats to Mum. Delicious. I gradually emptied the bowl, gagging on scales, bones, and things whose texture made me close my usually vivid imagination down with a clang like a tank-hatch slamming shut. Suddenly the toxic tsipouro tasted infinitely better, and I took to imbibing it at a worrisome rate in an attempt to negate the foul, fishy filth.
Finally I managed to finish it, and of course, I said it was delicious, and of course, they gave me more. I’ll tell you one thing... I wouldn’t risk another soup like that to save a passenger liner full of naked, nubile nymphomaniac millionairesses: the next time the Wild Man is stuck on a lee-shore in a gale, and I happen to be the only passerby, he dies!