After Bridgette and Andrew left the island, I felt like a tourniquet had been loosened round my neck. I threw back my head and laughed into the hot dry wind of the Meltemi, no longer fearful of its ravaging force. In the first two weeks I swam with dolphins off the coast of Koufonisia, scraped my knees up the cliffs on Papas mountain and got spiked by sea urchins on the reefs off Naxos. The scars, wrinkles and sunspots I’d been obsessed about three months earlier became badges of honour, bearing testimony to my journey, defiant salutations to the sheer joy of living.
My road to liberation wasn’t entirely pothole-free. One day at the market I became aware of an acrid smell following me around and I nearly fainted when I realised it was coming from my armpits. At home I held my arms aloft in the breeze as Mina Foy’s manifesto flapped accusingly at me from the fridge. Five minutes later I was ransacking the cupboards upstairs in search of a razor. We all had our limitations and in my book, B.O. was one act of feminism too far.
My spineless reversion to fuzz-free pits was nothing compared to the gutless performance I delivered the following day when Andrew blocked my credit cards. He’d been trying to make contact for days, but after I’d drop my phone in the bath, I’d been reduced to email and Skype on the villa’s Wifi. Since I was barely home and didn’t particularly want to speak Andrew anyway, I had kind of gone off-grid.
I found out at the worst possible moment about the block on my cards because I was in a phone shop in Naxos at the time, trying to purchase a new bloody mobile. After a confusing hour speaking pidgin Greek to an irritable salesman, we finally did the deal only to discover at the eleventh hour that I couldn’t pay for it. I ended up having to buy a cheap pay-as-you-go that took about ten years to text. God it was hard work being poor. The same applied to the villa. Andrew wanted to cancel the lease but I had become accustomed to luxury and felt peeved that I was expected to give up my two bathrooms.
I had about two thousand pounds to my name and that was wrapped up in a Halifax savings account that required four weeks’ notice of withdrawal. A housekeeping standing order went into my account at the beginning of each month but the majority of Andrew’s salary and our paltry savings were all in accounts registered under his name. It served me right. In the early years of our marriage he’d asked me to go into our branch and have my name added to our joint accounts but I was too lazy. Why bother when he could take care of everything and I’d have him to blame later when it all went wrong?
After raging down the phone at him like a demented woman for fifteen minutes, I finally capitulated to his cash-for-counselling offer and agreed to go back to London in the autumn for intensive couple’s therapy. In exchange he agreed to reinstate my cards and FedEx me a new smartphone to replace my pay-as-you-go.
I did feel a bit cheap (no counselling in the world was ever going to fix our disastrous relationship) but he’d forced me into a corner by making me destitute. Urian said he would support me financially until the divorce came through but that was hardly a solution was it?
Later I rang Kate who’d assured me I’d done the right thing.
‘You’ve got to come home and face the music sooner or later. September seems as good a time as any.’
‘I have no intention of going back to him, you know.’
‘I’d garrotte you if you did.’
‘Am I bad for giving him false hope?’
‘NO! He’s bad for using money to control you.’
‘But he earned the money.’
‘It was a partnership with both of you taking on different roles.’
‘My role was to have the children.’
Kate went silent for a moment.
‘Fay, you must stop punishing yourself like this. Lots of couples don’t have children.’
‘Still, it kind of undermines your equal contributions argument.’
‘Hell no. If Andrew had hired a cleaner, cook and housekeeper to run his life for him he’d be forking out in the region of twenty thousand a year. Have you ever thought of that?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Tim once got shirty with me about money so I bought an invoice book from WH Smith and began invoicing him each month. He soon shut up.’
I smiled. Dear Kate. Why couldn’t I be more like her?
‘You still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Andrew knew what he was getting into when he got married. He’s a big boy. You are equal to him in the eyes of the law, no matter how little you think of yourself. He can’t just cut you off like this. It just proves what a fuckwit he really is.’
‘What if he won’t let me go?’
‘For God’s sake listen to yourself. Slavery was abolished in the nineteenth century.’
She was right. I just needed to tough it out and not be intimidated. Later that day I received an email saying he’d booked a ticket home for me on the 1st of September and I had until then to work through my midlife crisis.
If hurting me was your goal, Fay, you’ve succeeded. Consider me suitably remonstrated and humbled, but please for God’s sake come home. Our friends in Chelsea keep asking where you are, but you’ll be pleased to know I’ve been discreet about the facts concerning your meltdown. I’ve told them you developed severe Paranasal Sinusitis which is a condition that prevents flying for up to four weeks. Don’t worry, I checked my facts online. This should buy you enough time to sort through whatever is going on in that confused head of yours. The fact that you have not moved in with the goat herder but kept the villa (at great expense) has given me some hope that the marriage is salvageable, although God knows, my patience is wearing thin.
It was classic Andrew. Paranasal Sinusitis. Unbelievable! My decision not to move in with Urian was in no way related to any confused notion about saving our marriage. The truth was, I had no idea what the future held for Urian and me. I was in love with him, but I didn’t just want to fall from the arms of one man into the arms of another.
Even though Goat’s Neck now officially belonged to us, I said Urian could stay on as long as he needed whilst his sister was so ill and he was sorting his business out. Meanwhile I planned to keep the villa on to give me a bit of headspace while I came to terms with the divorce. He travelled regularly from Athens to be with me but soon the summer would be over and he’d have to head back to the mainland for good.
I didn’t think I was ready to follow him. All my life I had been defined by men: my father, Andrew, now Urian. This time I was determined to develop some independence.
As it turns out, standing on my own two feet was harder than I thought. It involved actually being independent, as opposed to merely saying it. While Andrew held the purse strings, I was his to command. He started playing games with my monthly expenses by cancelling the regular standing order into my account and changing it to weekly cash deposits that varied in generosity according to his mood. Often he’d ‘forget’ to pay altogether and wait for the call of supplication that kept the angry red umbilical cord connecting us throbbing. I’d wait till I was down to my final ten euros, living off aubergine and okra, before finally picking up the phone and punching out his number. Usually he forced me to leave two or three sycophantic messages before he’d respond.
Kate said it just confirmed what a fascist pig he was and insisted I appoint a lawyer. Her friend Izzy turned out to be an embittered man-eating Amazonian, but she certainly knew her stuff. Within twenty-four hours I’d hired a lawyer in Harrogate called Fothergill who said he’d get the ball rolling. This was real progress, I thought to myself. I was finally taking control of my life. By the time I returned from getting my ID documents certified in Naxos, Andrew had heard about the lawyer, and all my possessions were piled in a heap outside the villa.
The landlord, Gerasimos, looked sheepish.
‘I am sorry Missus Fay. Your husband, he cut the lease.’
‘But how? I renewed the lease till September.’
‘To make renew you must make more than this paper. You must make transfer of the monies in the bank.’
‘But Andrew said he did it two weeks ago.’
‘You husband no make.’
‘The shit.’
‘Neh. Neh. He sheet,’ he agreed sagely before pocketing the key and leaving me on the doorstep with my Damier Azur cosmetic case upside down in the dust. I needed Gudrun.
Two hours and two bottles of raki later, she gave it to me straight between the eyes.
‘Ja, you women throw yourself at ze feet of men and then grumble when they stomp all over you.’
She clasped me by the shoulders and gave me a shake.
‘No one can be independent while expecting another to pay. This is ze mechanics by which all ze domination in ze world works. Look at Europe.’
I groaned.
‘Not Europe again.’
‘Greece held out its hand like a child wanting all ze sweeties Europe could give, now Europe will fuck it up the arse.’
‘Charming,’ I slurred.
‘Just like your fuckhead husband.’
I stood up drunkenly.
‘That’s why I love you, Gudrun. You always make me feel so much better.’
She smiled. ‘You wanna feel better? Get a fucking job. In the meantime, you can come crash with me at Livadi. My tent is big enough for two.’
‘A tent!’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t sleep in a tent. I hate bugs.’
‘Bugs? What bugs?’
‘I’ve only slept in a tent once before. On my Duke of Edinburgh award. And my teacher shouted at me for bringing a blow-up mattress.’
‘Ha ha. A blow-up mattress. Ha ha.’
‘I’ve got a delicate constitution.’
‘You’re a princess. That is ze problem, Fay. A princess. Ha ha.’
‘Maybe I should just go and stay at Urian’s for a bit.’
‘Straight into the arms of another man to look after you!’
‘Just temporarily, while I make another plan.’
‘Ja. Sure,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Just temporarily.’
As it turns out my sojourn at Goat’s Neck was just about as temporary as it could be. While we were loading the pickup, Andrew was having the locks changed. We got back to find three henchmen nailing a squatting order to the front door.
I was as incensed as it was humanly possible to be. I petitioned the magistrate, the police commissioner, the department of justice. They all said the same thing: without my name on the deeds I had no proof of ownership and would have to wait for the divorce court to settle things.
My anger grew inside me like the Meltemi, whipping through my soul and battering at the doors. So this is how it was. While Urian stoically moved our things into his cousin’s garret, I paced the length of Livadi fuming at the injustice of it. Politicians, bankers, despotic husbands, they were all the same, just like Gudrun said. Bully boys who ruled the world while the meek got screwed over. Well, I was fed up with being the meek.
By the time Gudrun came to find me later I was spitting with proletariat rage. What she told me next would put a flame to my fury.
Evangelos had been arrested for tax evasion.
Two policemen had come from the mainland and taken him away in handcuffs. Sofia was beside herself and Kikis had been shut down.
All night we ranted on about the injustice of it until, by dawn, we’d come up with a plan. Well, it wasn’t much of plan really. More of a loud bellow of indignation. We were going to Athens to protest. It wouldn’t get Evangelos out of jail, but at least we’d vent our wrath. The meek were about to get noisy.