In which the heat is on... Greeks coping with Dog Days... the eternal flame... and how to put it out... how to enjoy Pserimos... briefly to Amorgos... collecting tortoises... familiar paths... disreputation... a trysting we shall go... and quickly come home again... the sage counsel of Dr Manolis... poor recompense.
The year was beginning to advance into summer by now, and in those days before climate change Greece used to get very, very hot indeed about the middle of June. Temperatures would soar into the low- or even mid-forties, and at the first mention of kavsona, or heat wave, the country took on a siege mentality.
There was very little air conditioning in private houses, most relying on thick walls and window-shutters to keep the heat out. Even without access to weather forecasts one knew when the sun was coming... the streets filled with people carrying large fans; fans which, with the certainty of people who knew that they had seen the last cloud in May and would not feel rain until at least September, they mounted in the open air with no concern about weatherproofing. Some of the kafeneions erected enormous, oscillating fans with water-nozzles attached, which blasted a fine mist across the clientele... I stayed clear of those; it was cooling, to be sure, but seemed to me the best imaginable way of catching legionnaire’s disease, and it felt like being backed-into by a hovercraft.
Direct sunlight was detested. People walked on the shaded side of the street. If forced into the sun they accelerated and held any impromptu sun protection over their heads... briefcases, shopping-bags, newspapers, cardboard boxes, even buckets. In their gardens, vines which covered many pergolas were not yet sufficiently in bloom to provide complete shadow. To supply the want, the most ingenious sunshades were deployed... bed sheets, old sails, lorry tarpaulins, bamboo fencing... as the normally house-proud Greeks abandoned order and neatness entirely in their fervour to avoid the sun. On the waterfront in Poros there was one house that had a military parachute which hung from a balcony, making the place look like a scene out of The Longest Day. Finally, as the heat began to peak, the authorities would sent the school kids home and open the air-conditioned schools for old folks.
The anatomy of a hot day was very precisely regulated. Work began early. Business and trade was well in hand by eight o’clock, and the housewives swept, washed and whitewashed energetically. The afternoon meal was often prepared in a personalised tapsi, or baking tray, and the kids could be seen taking these to the bakery to be cooked in their oven… even the blistering heat of June will not induce most Greeks to forgo a substantial yevma, or midday meal, but only a madman would create heat in his own house.
By about ten o’clock the sun began to bite, and activity slackened. Most deliveries, the re-stocking of shops, bars and restaurants was now complete, and the fishermen had sold the night’s catch, washed down their boats, and were spending the proceeds in the kafeneion. Doors and shutters, opened to admit the cool of the morning, slammed shut as the heat rose. Awnings were rolled down, water was sprayed around the courtyards, and people scuttled along the shady side of the road to complete their business in town as early as possible.
By midday the Greeks were only to be seen at their place of work or under a shady awning, and by two p.m. all indigenous life-forms disappeared. From then until the sun sank in the west, most people stayed inside or retreated around their houses, keeping in the deepest shade.
After the midday meal came the mesimerino, the midday siesta which fell heavily across the land, stopping it like a careless princess’s kingdom in a fairytale. Traffic and all music ceased. Dogs and cats evaporated, livestock stood stone-still under the trees. Only the insects thrived... the chirp of the crickets and the rasp of the cicadas crescendoed as the temperature peaked.
Not until the shadows lengthened did the enchantment break. The first activity would be housewives spraying water around their courtyards and balconies to lay the dust and temper the heat; then the workers returned to their toil and the more fortunate went to the beach, there to float contentedly in the cooling sea under enormous, wide-brimmed sun hats. At the end of the quay in Poros lay a set of steps into the sea were all the old ladies of the town used to cool off in the evening. Utterly impervious to the procession of ferries, hydrofoils, yachts and motor boats passing just metres away from them, they floated contentedly under their prophylactic headgear, looking like large mushrooms growing in a paddy-field.
All this was in the towns, of course... the beaches were hives of activity. Tourists were here for the sun and they indulged to satiety, swimming, water-sporting, eating and drinking, and laying themselves out in the blasting rays, as if attempting to one-up the pork they had just had for lunch.
I was somewhat surprised to find how well I handled this warmth. As a seaman I was tolerant of abnormal heat, and could put up with almost any extreme for however long it took; but I didn’t usually like high temperatures. I found myself, however, positively enjoying this blast-furnace weather in a way that I never had done in, say, Singapore, or the Persian Gulf.
I think it was the dryness of the heat... there was very little humidity, even in the early hours, and the warmth seemed somehow therapeutic. I would borrow a motorbike and go up into the forests of Poros, or Lemonodassos, or Aegina, breathing deep the pervading scent of pine sap and feeling the wholesome blast of heat radiated from the rocks as I passed them. I seemed to feel it reaching my bones. At times I could feel every individual hair in my nose singeing when I inhaled, which I had only ever felt before in a sauna.
I loved to swim, and to feel the salt drying on my body. I never sunbathe... that requires patience and the ability to do nothing, qualities which I have never possessed or aspired to... but I was perfectly happy to work in the heat of the day and feel the sun on my skin that way. The Greeks thought I was deranged. I liked their heat. They didn’t.
* * *
The locals and I may have disagreed about many of the effects of the high temperatures, but on one aspect of it we were in complete accord. Only a loony likes a forest fire.
The land was drying out quickly now, flowers dying and grass bleaching so that, day by day, the greenery was changing to the colour of straw. Baked dry and turned to tinder by the heat of June, the land was ready to blaze at the merest spark and lumbering red-and-yellow firefighting aircraft were now routine features of the otherwise pristine blue sky. Despite the regularity with which their distinctive tractor-engine growl was heard, they never failed to turn the head of every Greek.
Fire was a universal fear, and when the fire planes were seen or heard all conversation would cease as everyone made his own assessment... were they alone, and thus hopefully just patrolling, or were they in company, which usually meant they were heading for a fire? If together, were they heading upwind? This might mean that the fire could be moving towards the watcher. Or were they going downwind, where the fire would move away? Could smoke be seen?
All too frequently the ’planes could be seen working nearby. They were Canadair seaplanes which loaded firefighting water by scooping from the sea, and very often the calm waters of the Bay of Poros would be used for loading the aircraft. The port police boat would clear vessels out of the area whilst the ungainly aircraft banked in over the Methana isthmus and lowered themselves gingerly to the surface.
One quickly learned to spot the veteran crews, who remained fully in flight and merely skimmed the sea with their loading scoops, lifting smoothly back into the air again after about thirty seconds half-enveloped in spray. The less experienced landed completely, their aircraft settling deep in the water and throwing up a great moustache of bow wave; then they taxied fast to fill their tanks before opening their engines with an angry bellow and waddling awkwardly back into the air. Even someone who knew nothing of aircraft could discern the difference in their performance between the almost insouciant banking as they came in empty and the earnest, straightforward effort of heaving their heavy bellies aloft.
Sometimes I was close enough to the fire to watch the aircraft at the point of release, and here too one got a stark reminder of the weight they were carrying. There was usually high ground which served as a height reference, and it was clear to see how the ’planes leapt higher as the cloud of water spewed out behind them.
There was a fascination in watching them work, of course, and many of the foreign visitors treated the spectacle of aircraft skimming the water to load up and then dropping their loads as an entertainment, and at times even expressed disappointment when the fire was out and the ‘show’ ended. It said a lot for the forbearance of the Greeks, whose houses, families, communities, orchards and livelihood were at risk, that I never saw any of them react negatively to this thoughtless behaviour.
One day that summer I was passing Methana when the fire planes were working a fire perilously close to the harbour at the southern edge of the town. The flatter land close to the sea had been mostly extinguished, and one could see that the fire engines had moved in to deal with the last scattered areas of flame; but Methana is a volcano, so the slopes quickly become sheer but are also fertile. There was a lot of greenery even on the steepest surfaces, and the fire was still going strongly in areas where the aircraft could not pass close enough above to water-bomb it effectively, and where no fire-engine could go. I thought there was no way to prevent it burning the whole face of the mountain, until I saw a fire plane bumbling in from seaward towards the filthy, orange face of the fire.
The aircraft clattered close over my head, trailing faint twin tails of dirty-blue exhaust from its engines, so slow that it seemed to hang in the air and so close that I could see lines of rivets in the hull and a few leaking traces of water from its scoop. Its red-and-yellow colour scheme was muted, grimed with dust and smoke; patches of bare aluminium showed here and there, the engines were stained with streaks of exhaust. The air shuddered to the clatter of bizarrely industrial sounding engines... these always remind me more of a bulldozer with a dodgy silencer than aero engines. The aircraft looked and sounded like a flying tractor; battered, over-worked, about as aeronautical as a blacksmith’s back yard, but it also looked earnest, implacable and indestructible. I was irresistibly reminded of Henry V and his ‘warriors for the working day’
I watched where the ’plane was going in puzzlement at first, and then with a growing sense of alarm, for it seemed to be flying obliquely towards the cliff, rising slowly as it went. It was almost the same height as the fire and, as it got closer and closer to the roiling smoke and clutching flames, I had a dreadful thought that the controls had failed, and that the aircraft was going to smash into that blazing rock-face. Then, at the last moment, it banked steeply and began to turn, and seconds later, in amazement, I watched as the cloud of water exploded out of the ’plane’s belly and flew sideways under the impetus of the turn to spread out over the face of the rock. I saw the flames recoil, the dirty smoke turn to grey steam, and the aircraft, still banking steeply as it cleared the mountain, sink back to the sea to collect another load.
I saw two ’planes dump probably ten loads of water on that mountain in the same fashion that afternoon, and I remember thinking that anyone who treasured images of the Greeks as inept or indolent could learn a lot from the spectacle.
I also remember, very sadly, an occasion when a fire plane crashed at the end of a long day fighting enormous fires in the Peloponnese. The lament for the crew was nationwide, and powerful. Every television channel, every newspaper carried the news as a headline, editorial and feature; everyone knew the names of the dead flyers. It felt as if the entire country had lost a pair of beloved cousins. It was a deeply moving tribute, and I thought it a revealing comment both on the fear of fire and the unity of the nation.
* * *
Pserimos was an island I had not so far visited, so when tasked to bring back a catamaran from thence I went with double willingness: both to discover and also to take a little respite in the rather cooler temperatures of the Aegean.
The voyage there, on a large, old English Channel ferry, was not a lot of fun... it took about fifteen hours for the venerable hulk to make the two-hundred-odd miles from Piraeus to Kos, and at this time of year the overcrowding was starting to get beyond a joke. In addition, the wind had fallen uncharacteristically quiet, and at times the light airs carried the exhaust fumes forward at exactly the same speed as the ship, driving everyone from the decks.
From Kos I caught a day-trip caïque, a rather splendid yellow-and-varnish affair with an enormous, carved eagle in front of the wheel, to Pserimos. I arrived mid-morning, and my catamaran was due in the evening.
Pserimos is a small island lying between Kos and Kalymnos, and barely four miles from the Turkish coast. The caïque deposited me in the main harbour... although calling anything so small a ‘main’ harbour is possibly the worst descriptive phrase since ‘civil servant’... and I can’t say that I was overwhelmed. The beach was, however... in fact, I didn’t even know there was a beach until a large lady went for a swim. The entire tourist population of the Dodecanese appeared to be engaged in a competition to see how many people could fit on one foreshore, and the tavernas were so packed that I had to sit on the wall to drink my beer; so, cursing the Guinness Book of Records, I wandered away from the sea, found a quieter, local kafeneion, and spent the afternoon cat-napping over a book.
Descending to the port again at about six in the evening, I was astounded by the change. The noisy arse of the last day-trip boat was just disappearing round the corner, and the only people on the beach were busily raking it clean for the morrow. The tavernas had a pleasant quota of customers, just enough to give a little atmosphere. The little bay looked south-west to a lowering sun framed between the flanks of Kos and Kalymnos, the odd fishing boat puttered idly, and the place could not have been more tranquil or delightful.
A catamaran, which I presumed to be mine, could be seen miles out to sea, so I took a half-kilo of wine in a taverna and spent an hour thoroughly enjoying this delightful little Aegean backwater. I also absorbed an important lesson which I am happy to share with you now: The lesson is... if you like traditional and peaceful surroundings, stay in Pserimos, and visit Kalymnos and Kos by day, NOT the other way around!
The boat, when she finally arrived, was a rather odd looking craft about thirty feet long with the mast set well aft, and she rejoiced in the name of Mon Goose. My only experience with catamarans to that point had been sailing Hobie Cats in Australia and Honolulu, and I had been hoping for some of the same sort of exhilaration from the current voyage, but I realised as she came to anchor that I was probably going to be disappointed: Mon Goose was privately owned, and she was so loaded with stuff that she sat at the anchorage looking like Steptoe’s yard at high tide. Bicycles, barbeques, spare anchors, dinghies, outboard-motors, fuel-cans and even a shopping-trolley were festooned about her decks, and she sat in the water in a solid, determined way which tended to suggest that her interior was probably much the same.
The aquatic pack-rats who part-owned this raft were a genial couple, he broad Lancashire and she equally profoundly Northern Irish, and they were heading back to England for their daughter’s wedding. My task was to take their pride-and-joy back to Poros, where another set of the boat’s co-owners would expect her in about three days.
‘Oh, good,’ I thought: ‘So there’s no hurry... just sixty miles a day, on my own, with no wind, in a boat with the hydrodynamics of an ice-berg.’ And then I found out about the engine... a single thirty horse-power unit which acted on a ‘leg’... a propeller which was lifted out of the water when not in use. I had heard that many catamarans are not too good at sailing close to the wind, and I suspected that this one wouldn’t be able to motor to windward either; it was going to be like pushing a haystack through treacle with a cocktail-muddler.
“Yer shoulda sin ‘er in Biscay!” exulted her proud owner. “Eleven knots, she wur deuin’!”
I managed to smother my retort, which was that I didn’t think she could do eleven knots even if she sailed over Niagara Falls.
Blind as the proud owners may have been to the true nature of their boat, however, but they were hospitality personified and made me embarrassingly welcome for the night. Madame laboured mightily in the red-hot galley to produce for us enormous plates of sausage-and-mash with Bisto gravy. The potatoes were further enriched with cheese, onion and butter, a concoction which she called ‘Champ’, and pronounced to be a great favourite in Ulster. Quite possibly it is, with the freshness of the North Atlantic whistling through your letterbox, but in the baking remnants of a windless June day in the Aegean it was like trying to eat an anvil. The couple’s good will, however, was so palpable that I did it the best justice I could, whilst my nose wrinkled under the caress of the delicate scent of fresh fish grilling in the tavernas. Then they made me a bed in a forward cabin. Mrs Mon Goose asked me if I was warm enough, and offered me a blanket, forsooth! I was amazed that she didn’t offer to tuck me in.
I got rid of them late morning, driven almost to violence by their kindly “Oh, Ah know what I ’aven’t shown yer...” and “Feel free t’elp yerself from’t larder.” Finally, they climbed onto the day-tripper, and I raced back to Mon Goose and hoiked the anchor up before they could swim back to tell me how the can-opener worked. It was sixty-odd miles to Katapola in Amorgos, and I had already lost about six hours.
I should have had a good northerly wind on the beam, but there wasn’t a breath of wind to help me. The engine would rev no higher than twenty-two hundred RPM, and Mon Goose barely managed five knots.
It was just getting light again as I came in to Katapola. I had been up all night, and spent two hours of that with my head in the engine compartment, cleaning the fuel filter and bleeding the fuel system. The maximum RPM of the engine had steadily fallen until, at sixteen hundred revs and with the engine beginning to overheat, I knew that I had to do something. The fuel filter looked as if it had last been cleaned shortly after the conversion from coal, and the wildlife I evicted from the water strainer would have stocked a respectable aquarium.
That done, the engine perked up enormously, reaching a little over three thousand revs; but unfortunately, her prop wasn’t deep enough in the water, and all I did at full throttle was aerate the ocean. We compromised at about two thousand eight hundred, when the boat managed about six knots, and that, I figured, was all I could hope for.
In Katapola I had breakfast with the drunks and night-owls at the all-night cafe, and watched the day dawn on that remarkable, high and craggy island. Amorgos is your true Cycladic isle, mountainous and remote, fringed with some incredible beaches and garlanded with tortuous roads which cling to precipices and peaks as they loop and swirl from one white, cubic village to another. I would love to have stayed a day, but the stern duty of a skipper demanded sacrifice. Putting all thought of personal indulgence from me, I managed to button hole the fuel truck nice and early. Then I set off to the ferry office.
On the way, I met Charlie and a lady-friend. Aquafrolic was in town, and I stopped for a quick coffee and a catch-up.
“Can’t stay long,” I warned, “I’ve got to get going again.”
“You look loike you’m needin’ some sleep, moi lad!” protested Charlie.
“I’ll get it on the way.”
“You got any crew?” he asked, peering at Mon Goose for any other signs of life.
“Not yet,” I replied, “I’m just going for a tortoise.”
“Tortoise?” Charlie and his lady looked at me with sudden concern, and I hastened to assured them that I hadn’t gone doolalli with the heat. I was not talking about the proverbially slow, reptilian kind of tortoise, the kind which looks like a Cornish pasty with legs. There are plenty of those in Greece too, but the sort of tortoise I was after was a girl with a backpack.
* * *
‘Tortoises’ crawled all over Greece, and in those days they were predominantly female. Enormous packs, which eclipsed their owners so effectively that, from behind, they looked like nylon bags with shapely legs, were to be seen queuing for ferries and busses, tramping in and out of towns, and waiting at airports. For breakfast they congregated around the cheapest bakeries, and for other meals they sought out souvlaki-joints. In the afternoon they slept under trees at the beach. In the evening they looked for shower facilities, often making do with the beach wash-offs, or bathed in streams. At night they often sat around in the parks, the town squares, or returned to the beaches, where they drank retsina and played guitars. Sometimes they took the cheaper pension accommodations on offer, frequently they slept on over-night ferries to the next island, and in high summer many slept rough. On popular islands, like Santorini, Mykonos and Paros, there were people who had given up drinking after seeing a stampede of luggage sweeping majestically across the harbour front.
According to my fairly thorough observations, there were three grades of tortoise. The lowest was a Grade Three, and this was a part-time tortoise, a ‘wannabe’. The first characteristic of a Grade Three was the newness of the pack... it would be still bright, with few scuff-marks. In many cases a Grade Three might not even be a real backpack at all, merely a suitcase or grip with shoulder-straps. Grade Threes were only capable of short periods disconnected from society, and they clinked as they walked because their packs were full of cosmetics and labour-saving devices which needed plugging-in to civilisation frequently. Grade Threes had hairdos, and only roughed it between hostels or pensions. They wore trainers, carried stereos, called their parents twice a week, and possessed dated return airline tickets. They generally didn’t tortoise for more than a month at a time.
Grade Twos were sterner stuff. A Grade Two tortoise was an independent beast, capable of washing its hair in the sea and roughing it for up to a fortnight at a time. The pack told its own story, faded, scuffed and stained, and often spattered with brag-flags and badges advertising where it had been and where it came from. These bags did not clink, unless they had cooking utensils strapped to the outside. They had useful attachments such as rain-covers, or sleeping mats.
Grade Twos brushed their hair straight and tied it back in a pony-tail. They wore hiking boots, some carried musical instruments, and they might stay out most of the summer; but their stay was finite; they eked out their pennies skilfully, and went home when the money ran out. They acknowledged the existence of family by sending a postcard once a week, and usually only called home for birthdays; but they knew that somewhere, if they really needed it, there was a credit card which would fly them home.
Grade Two Tortoises could sleep rough, but they looked for a laundrette once a fortnight, and you could still see the outline of a hair-dryer somewhere in the pack.
No such effeminacies... if that is a real word... were to be found on a Grade One Tortoise, however. Grade Ones were hard women. Boadicea would have minded her P’s and Q’s around a Grade One.
A Grade One Tortoise was a resolute, self-sufficient, self-assured and self-sustaining professional traveller of experience and resource. The Grade One pack was tough and utilitarian, with locks on every pocket, waterproofed and worn high on the back. It was not adorned with boastful stickers or national symbols... the pack itself proclaimed its provenance, and the prime-mover usually considered herself a Citizen of the World. Grade Ones bathed in the sea, rinsed off with a bottle of water, and dripped dry; they washed clothes in streams or whenever a kindly soul offered facilities; they acknowledged no support system, slept rough without a thought, and when the weather became intolerable they simply moved on to somewhere more clement.
Many Grade Ones cultivated skills with which they could earn a living on the road, and some of these were predictably feminine... hair dressing, jewellery making, bar tending, fortune telling, music making, fruit picking; but Grade Ones didn’t go much on stereotypes and I also met mechanics, paramedics, offshore-workers, a helicopter pilot, dog trainers, and a good few capable boat crew. I think quite a few of them taught survival techniques to the SAS.
* * *
I found my tortoises sitting by the ferry ticket office, waiting for it to open. Three of them, Grade Two-C’s by my estimation... newly promoted from Grade Three, with slightly faded genuine back packs and still displaying traces of styling in their hair. Their stickers proclaimed them to be Swiss, and their brag-flags suggested that they had travelled thus far via France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey.
The process of engaging my crew was expeditious, to say the least. I asked where they were going; they said Piraeus, because they wanted to go to Epidavros. I asked how much the ferry ticket was; they said three thousand drachs. I told them that I could take them as far as Poros on a boat for free, and from there they could get a bus to Epidavros for a hundred drachs; they shouldered their packs and fell in line behind me.
I suppose that it was about five minutes after leaving Charlie’s boat that I passed it going the other way with my three chelonians. The look on his face made my week. I bought some grub at the supermarket and we left straight away.
I was a bit grimy after my night in the engine room, so I motored out of the harbour, stopped to jump over the side and scrubbed up a bit, and then I headed Mon Goose for the distant shape of Irakleia. I set the auto-pilot.
“Just before we hit that island, or if any other boat comes close, or if the engine alarm sounds, wake me up. Don’t touch anything”, I said, and with that I collapsed on the saloon couch and l instantly fell unconscious.
I awoke in some confusion on an unfamiliar couch, with a hand on my shoulder, and a strange, smiling and rather lovely face bending over me. There was singing. There were also bare breasts, large ones. I had been very deeply asleep, and it took me rather longer than it should have to orientate myself.
“Ve are almost at ze island,” said the large, naked breasts. Or possibly it was the smiling face.
I emerged into the sunlight to a cheerful rendition of ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’. My crew were very comfortably installed, it seemed. They had stripped down to bikini bottoms, found a few beers and one had a guitar fired-up. The sea about us was still flat and benign, the engine purred smoothly, Skinnousa was to starboard and the wedge-shape of Irakleia was close ahead, just where I had hoped it would be. I have woken up in worse circumstances.
They were called Herta, Gerta and Berta... well, actually, they probably weren’t, but it was something like that... and they were an attractive bunch, each in a very different way. Herta was slim, fair and could drive a guitar. Gerta, plump and dark, had an angelic voice. Berta was statuesque. And, of course, had talking breasts. They offered me a cold beer, and all of a sudden I couldn’t quite see why I was in such a hurry to get to Poros.
“Let’s go into Irakleia for lunch” I suggested. So we did.
I was welcomed back at the goat and spaghetti restaurant with open arms, and the fact that I had left with one girl and come back with three was the subject of many raised eyebrows and ‘Po, po, PO’s’. I felt quite the king, sitting like a local under the huge tree in the restaurant forecourt, holding forth to my old acquaintances and my new acolytes.
They didn’t have any goat-spaghetti on the go this time, so we just had a meat poikilia and a few cans of wine. After a couple of hours we simply moved on again.
We cleared the harbour and headed west-north-west towards Sifnos with a fresh stock of cold beer, and I thought, as Gerta put some sun-block on my shoulders and asked me to do the same for her, what a wonderful life this was: dropping in at familiar islands, meeting friends old and new, lunch here, dinner there, a tortoise or two, a guitar to sing along with, and I was actually being paid for this. Even without being surrounded by naked breasts, I would have had few complaints.
By early evening, I had, however, noticed one thing about my nereids; all their songs seemed to be spiritual ones. At first I barely noticed, and then I supposed that they were simply popular guitar melodies, but as ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore was followed by Oh You’ll Never Go To Heaven, Morning Has Broken, Amazing Grace and the like, it eventually dawned on me that there was a religious thread. As far as I could understand their Switzerdeutsch, their German songs were spiritual too. Even the secular songs they knew were hearty, healthy wholesome numbers like The Happy Wanderer, and nothing even slightly risqué. Eventually, emboldened by the evening beers, I mentioned this, and those three pretty girls, sitting almost naked with their beers, informed me that this was a valedictory holiday, as they were going to enter a holy order together when they returned home.
“Ve vill gif ourselves to Gott,” smiled Berta.
“Does he really need all three of you?” I demanded, possibly a little petulantly. That amused them, but they seemed to think he did.
By nine o’clock that night we were just north of Sifnos and making excellent time, so I decided that we would stop for a late dinner in Serifos... on consideration, I bore my crew no malice for preferring spiritual to earthly pleasures, which I thought pretty noble of me... and my reward for such altruism was rich indeed; for, as we crossed from Sifnos to Serifos over a glass-flat sea, the water alongside Mon Goose suddenly flashed streaks of ice-green and blue. The dolphins I had seen with Clemmie were with us again, and this time they were illuminated by some of the most magnificent bio-luminescence I had ever seen.
Blessing the auto-pilot, we all piled up forward to watch the playful mammals race past our bows, curve back and come again, trailing phosphorescence from their flanks and fins as they wove and dodged each other. The girls almost cried with joy as the sleek backs broke the surface so close that we could feel the spray of their exhalations on our skin.
Anchored in Serifos, we swam to a beach taverna where the girls continued to chatter excitedly about the dolphins over dinner. The restaurant took a relaxed view of dripping wet people in swimsuits turning up for dinner at midnight, making no comment other than the rather practically suggestion that we dried our money on a nearby lamp.
We swam back, got under way again at about three A.M., took it in turns to sleep through the morning, and a little after midday we were anchored close to Poros near Bourtzi Island, which was rather more inviting than the day of my encounter with the Wild Man. There we swam and the girls had a wash before going in to Poros, and so we were all frolicking mother-naked in the cockpit, passing the shower-hose and the shampoo around, when a large boat passed close by; in its stern I saw Yiorgaki, he of the boatful of playful lesbians, giving me a particularly exasperated stare as his respectable, elderly clients looked pointedly elsewhere.
Later I walked the girls up to the ferry quay, where we had a farewell drink and a salad at George’s Cafe. Then I received a huge kiss from each one, and put them on a varkaki, the taxi-boat to Galatas. Half of Poros, of course, had seen this little display, and this was no accident.
Walking back to tidy up Mon Goose I found Gina and Andrea having a drink at Stavros’ cafe, and joined them.
“So, who were the ladies?” they asked me archly. I shrugged.
“Picked ’em up in Amorgos. Just crew for the trip, so I could get some kip.”
“Oh, yeah? Just crew? Yiorgaki, says you were all butt-naked and chucking water at each other!”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “They were apprentice nuns.”
Andrea snorted ouzo down her nose, and Gina said, “Yeah! Right!”
A few minutes later, Yiorgaki himself walked past. This time he shouted, “Thees man is veeery beeeg LUCKY bastard!”
As I had fully intended, no-one believed a word I had said. My reputation was safe for a while.
* * *
About the beginning of July I finally found myself at liberty for a few days in Poros. Mucky Duck was again mine, as I had just delivered her back from another excursion, this time to the Ionian. I had three days before setting off to Corfu to bring another boat down to the Saronic... three whole days, on a holiday island which I knew well, and a boat at my command. Fully intending to make hay whilst the sun shone, I repaired immediately to the Jungle Bar.
I am a pub- or cafe-lover rather than a bar-fly, as a rule. I like conversation rather than music, people watching more than dancing; but needs must. Noisy disco bars are no sort of pleasure to a musical diplodocus like me, but it was becoming quite obvious from the lack of approachable ladies in my habitual haunts that, if I was ever to be kissed again, I would have to try the rhythm method; and if, in the pursuit of romance, I occasionally had to embrace pop culture, then the Jungle Bar was an establishment I could tolerate. In fact, in a Stockholm syndrome sort of a way, I almost came to enjoy it after a time.
The Jungle lay far down the South Quay of Poros and was somewhat less purile than most of the bars. It avoided the most egregious of disco tunes... no-one met anyone at the candy store, no salutations were offered to silver linings, the velocity of summer loving passed entirely without comment and people could look elsewhere for assistance spelling ‘disco’. Most importantly, Stathis, who acted as the DJ, was a sparing as possible with Lionel Ritchie. From my point of view, this was utterly critical.
‘Helloooooo, is it meeeee you’re looking foooooor?’
‘Indeed it is!’ said Julian, as he levelled the flamethrower...
I didn’t avoid this sort of music because I didn’t like it myself... anyone who has dealt regularly with Nigerian port authorities or Suez Canal bum-boatmen can put up with almost any amount of incessant, repetitive acoustic violence... but rather because I didn’t think I could communicate with someone who did.
Stathis was a frustrated heavy metal headbanger, but he knew his clientele wanted rhythm and he managed to supply it in a manner which he found just barely acceptable, eking out the essential disco numbers with heavier stuff which increased in frequency as the evening progressed. I didn’t exactly come to like it, but I did develop quite a tolerance, especially since it seemed to attract a clientele which I thought I might have an outside chance of doing business with. On the evening in question I struck pay dirt at about ten p.m.
Hèloise was French, and looked it. She had all the usual womanly features... hair, arms, legs, curves... in pleasing proportion and style, and no doubt I could describe them if I put my mind to it; but her immortally imprinted and defining feature was her mouth, which was wide with charmingly bowed and rounded lips permanently elevated at the corners in a gentle, mischievous, pouty smile. Coupled with her slightly hooded dark eyes, that enigmatic mouth gave her a teasing, amused, mysterious character that fascinated and enthralled. You could have put that mouth on the face of a camel chewing rotten cabbage and I’d still have wanted to kiss it.
She was simply, elegantly dressed in a blouse and short, tight skirt, her collar was worn wide open to frame and emphasise a graceful neck, and any cosmetics that might have been in use were discrete about their business. She couldn’t have looked more French if she had been wearing a Phrygian cap, carrying a tricolour and leading musketeers over the barricades of a revolting arrondissement with her left boob hanging out.
I introduced myself as a ‘Rosbif’,1 which amused her straight away. She had an elfin, Audrey Hepburn charm which utterly enslaved me, and a droll sense of humour which found apparently endless contentment in my whimsical French.2
To my utter delight, Hèloise was only too delighted to escape from the music, and what cared I if it was only so that she could listen more attentively to my linguistic howlers? She was gorgeous, and fun, and I was prepared to make any end of an ass of myself if it kept me in her company. I would have juggled hedgehogs to make her laugh.
We found a comfortable seat in one of the kafeneions, where I managed to delight her with the combination of tsipouro and vanilla ice cream... an inspired blend... and when she leaned forward earnestly in her chair, her chin cupped in her palms, giggling at my jokes, she made me feel that I was the luckiest chap alive.
The moon swam high over Dharditsa, and the surface of the bay sparkled under its silver caress. The mountains around the bay showed clear in the moonlight and the residual heat of the day was a balm. The ambience was perfect for my nefarious purposes, and I was mentally shuffling through a number of carefully prepared ‘spontaneous’ suggestions which, hopefully, would entice this bewitching creature to a more discrete venue. They all seemed hopelessly cheesy and utterly transparent, however, and translating them into my sort of French would in any case probably render them either incomprehensible or offensive. But the French are skilled in these matters, and I have often found them tolerant and supportive of Rosbifs when they struggle to be romantic†. When it became evident that my fecklessness was going to ruin the night if left unchecked, Hèloise gently took my hand between both of hers, looked straight at me and purred, in English with an accent as sweet as an angel’s blessing, “Tonight Ah will like to sweem naked.”
Taken completely off balance by her straightforwardness, I degenerated into drooling idiocy and asked her, quiet seriously, “Have you got your costume with you?”
Fortunately, she thought this was the wittiest thing she had ever head. She threw back her head, accentuating the slim delicacy of her neck, and emitted a throaty, sexy peal of laughter which instantly earned me the undying hatred of every heterosexual man within earshot. Then she peered briefly down into the open neck of her loose blouse, plucking it forward with both hands and pursing those lovely lips as if considering the matter, and chuckled, “Ah seenk Ah ’ave everysing Ah need!”
My wits returned. The entire pantheon of Olympus appeared to be on my side tonight... not only were my companion and the conditions perfect, but Mucky Duck was lying at the end of the quay, and I knew that Spiros would not object if I borrowed her for seductive purposes. Like most Greeks, he was an incurable romantic, and would instantly forgive such a liberty. And if, with a boat at my command and such idyllic conditions in such a beautiful place, I could not woo this lovely, spirited girl, then it was probably of Darwinian importance to human development that my genes should be banned from the pool.
“Would you like to take the boat? We can go to a bay.”
Her eyes glistened.
“You ’ave a boat? Formidable! Ça sera parfait!”
And so, shortly later, we puttered out of the east end of the channel to pass close to the little fortification on Bourtzi Island. There, finding the sea benign and a gentle northerly wind blowing, I decided on a whim to run down to Tselevinia and anchor in the aquarium-clear water behind Spathi island.
Mucky Duck sailed well enough on just the genoa so I killed the engine and we chattered happily as the Aegean chuckled under the forefoot. The mountains slipped past our starboard side. Hèloise took the wheel, and I sat close to enjoy her perfume and show her how to get the best out of the boat.
I suppose it was about two o’clock in the morning when we sailed into Spathi, where I was delighted to find only one other yacht. We ghosted through the anchorage under sail, disdaining to shatter the peace with the engine, and the gentle ripple of water around the bow merged with the shushing of wavelets on the shore and the intermittent whooping of a scops owl. I anchored us right down at the west end of the little passage, a discrete distance from the other vessel.
I dropped the swimming ladder on the transom, and turned to find Hèloise stepping out of her skirt, utterly composed and without an iota of self-consciousness. She slipped off her knickers with a delightful wriggle, and tossed them at me with a naughty chortle; next she carefully unbuttoned her blouse and removed it slowly. She held it in front of herself, and looked thoughtfully at it for a moment; then she struck a pose. Resting her left hand casually on the enthralling curve of her hip she transferred her weight onto her left leg, giving full definition to her waist and thigh. Her head turned sideways with the chin down, the eyes up and that private half-smile, and she looked at that blouse as if saying goodbye to a beloved but difficult child she was anticipating having a rest from. Then she drew the blouse away to her right, her wrist cocked back and her little finger extended, and followed it with her eyes as she revealed herself to me. For a moment she froze like that, apparently concentrating on the blouse, and for a fleeting instant I shared my cockpit not with Gallic flesh-and-blood but with the alabaster perfection of Ancient Greece, an image worthy of Phidias. I had never seen anything so graceful in all my life. Then she dropped the garment, looked at me sidelong, nodded in apparent acceptance of my stunned, wordless homage, gave me a cheeky grin, and plunged headfirst into the blue-black water.
Her pale, graceful flanks sparkled with bright flashes of bio-luminescence, and I stood mesmerised by the scissoring rhythms of her body as she drove herself adroitly through the sparkling sea.
My mind... what there was of it still at my own command, at any rate... was peripherally aware that a chap of any understanding at all now needed to display equal style and poise. But somehow, communications between the brain and the outlying regions couldn’t quite get on the same bicycle that evening. I was only wearing shorts and a shirt, but I felt like a mummy trying to get out of its windings, and when I did finally succeed I managed to hit the water like a windmill toppling off a dyke. I surfaced facing completely the wrong way, with Hèloise’s delighted, ringing laughter challenging the immensity of the ocean and the sky directly behind me.
I dived again, driving myself deep, found the indistinct translucence of her body above me and rose slowly to surface again face to face. We trod water for a moment, then our hands met. I pulled her gently to me, and put my arms around her.
She head butted me sharply, and let out a piercing scream.
I recoiled in horror. The scream cleft the peace of the night, rebounded from the rocks and echoed on and on forever, bouncing from the cliffs to the island and back. My mind churned with terrible thoughts... had I somehow hurt her? Had I misread the welcoming signs? Was this... black thought indeed, but things had seemed rather too good to be true... some form of entrapment? And would that bloody scream never die? I didn’t know whether to help her or stay the hell away, and I also craned my neck to see if the other boat had taken any notice.
It seemed to take an age, but really it was only seconds before Hèloise swam towards me again. Initially I backed off, but she was almost weeping apologies.
“Pardonnez moi! Oh, mon pauvre... non, non, not your fault… oh! C’est agonie! S’il t’plait, je doit monter. Je dois sortir… oh, oh!”
She was obviously in considerable pain, and my thought... my discreditably relieved thought... was that she had been stung by a jelly-fish. I took her hand, drew her quickly to the bathing ladder, and cursed the fates as I thought how much I would have enjoyed watching her rise from the sea in any other circumstances.
When I followed her into the cockpit I found her standing, dancing from one foot to the other in great agitation, and in answer to my questions she turned away from me, indicating her back. The moonlight made the problem instantly clear... her buttocks were starkly pale against the darker shade of her back. She was terribly sunburned.
I laid her face down on a towel on the cockpit bench, got a torch and took a look. She was bien cuit from the waist to the nape of her neck, and on her shoulders the skin had blistered. No bloody wonder she had been leaning forward in her chair at the kafeneion... it now seemed unlikely to have been due to my personal magnetism.
Some of the blisters were open, which I must have done when I put my arms around her, and obviously the salt water was causing her a lot of pain. She was quiet now, but quite rigid and she lay on her elbows with her fingers in her mouth and eyes closed.
I opened a fresh bottle of mineral water and did my best to irrigate the open wounds clear of salt, which apparently gave her some relief. Then I opened the medical box, where I was relieved to find a number of sterile dressings and some painkillers. I put a towel in the ice-box to cool, then administered two tablets to try to ease the pain. I gently dressed the open wounds with the cool sterile dressings, and covered the rest of her back with the cold towel to try to take the heat out of her skin... I could feel it radiating, and when I put the cold towel on, as gently as I could, Hèloise exhaled so sharply that I thought for a moment it was the towel sizzling. Then I started the engine, hoiked up the anchor, and gave Mucky Duck’s game little Perkins engine the spanking of its life as I raced back to Poros. I was concerned about infection getting into the open blisters
All the way back Hèloise apologised, fully aware of how high my hopes had been raised and touchingly remorseful for my abyssal disappointment. She confessed she had felt ‘a leetle sore’ after her day in a canoe, but had thought it would go away. I moored Mucky Duck on the North Quay and helped the poor girl to dress and walk her to the naval base, where there was a doctor on duty.
“You are so sure I need zee docteur?” She asked. “Eet ees feeling a leetle better now... ees it so bad?”
“Yes, it is,” I assured her. “I am a Rosbif, remember? So are you. I know one when I see one.”
The doctor on duty was one Dr Manolis, whom I had already met when assisting one of Spiro’s clients. On that occasion he had seemed a very charming and soothing sort, and so I was glad to find him here now; but I soon changed my mind. Our first encounter had been just after his mid-morning ouzo. Freshly disturbed to deal with self-inflicted injuries in the early hours he was not quite such a tolerant creature, and as he dressed Hèloise’s wounds he muttered discontentedly. His tone was soothing and did not distress Hèloise, but his words were stilettos and my Greek was unfortunately good enough to understand quite a lot of it.
“Gamoti illithea! Val’ tin sta malaka karvouna, yiati ochi? ” he crooned in a soothing, reassuring tone. “Fucking idiot! Put her on the bloody barbeque, why don’t you? She doesn’t need medicine, she needs mustard and a bloody salad! What were you after? A fuck or a pork chop?”
A truly sensitive doctor might have asked me to leave the room whilst a lady patient was naked under his care, but Manolis was only just warming to his theme and I suppose he assumed we were an item, so he was quite happy to keep me where I could be an effective butt for his censure. Hèloise seemed to think the combination of his deceptively soothing tone and my presence comforting, so I sighed and put up with him ranting at me, constantly and in the most gentle voice, for not taking better care of my girlfriends.
This, of course, was hideously unjust... I hadn’t even met Hèloise until after the sun had set... but when an aggrieved Greek is in advice-giving mode you might as well try to reverse Niagara as reason with him. I stoically endured his castigation for ignorance of solar puissance, lack of education, general stupidity, wilful destruction of the Greek tourist industry and for blatant being a foreigner. His nurse, a pimply young national serviceman, had to leave the room after a while, and could be heard giggling round by the lavatories.
Finally Dr Manolis covered Hèloise with a gown, sat her the wrong way round in a chair so that she could lean forward onto the backrest, and connected her to a saline drip.
“Does the lady speak English?” he asked.
I said she was French. He raised an eyebrow, and asked me in Greek, “Is that why you did this to her? Wasn’t Waterloo enough?”
He then switched effortlessly into excellent French, and told her she could go home when the drip was empty. He scribbled a prescription, told her to drink plenty of water, to stay out of the sun, and away from idiots. With that, he went emphatically back to bed.
I took my wounded conquest back to her room at Kanali, and spent the rest of the day popping in to check that she was alright. That evening we ventured as far as the restaurant opposite her apartment and then I walked her chastely back to her door. Before she bad me goodnight, Hèloise gripped my shirt-front in her fists and, drawing my face down to hers, went earnestly to work on me with that soft, sweet mouth. The long, profound and eloquent kiss was one of the most amazing I ever knew; and all it did was torture me with the knowledge of the far greater delights I had been denied by faithless, fickle fate.
The next morning I borrowed a little motorbike and took my Gallic goddess and her bag to the Flying Dolphin... about four minutes of tantalising torment as she put her arms around my waist3 and laid her cheek and breasts against my back. Then, with one more kiss, she went home to Normandy.
My sole consolation from the whole affair was a postcard from Villedieu-Les-Poeles about a fortnight later on which Hèloise had recorded her apologies and eternal thanks to ‘un vrai gentilhomme Anglais’.
Gentleman? That was one misapprehension I fully intended to correct whenever we met again... but of course, we never did. Nuns and Nons. Oh, how those Gods must have laughed!