Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

The skin of the yoghurt yields slightly to the edge of my spoon, thick and delicious with a dollop of honey from Mikhailis Christopolous’s bees, a whole comb in a big jar on our windowsill, shining with the amber light of a local man’s approval.

Jimmy’s day starts later than mine but no less picturesquely. He comes yawning and stretching from our room. He wears only a small yellow towel, wrapped at his hips. He knows I watch him and pulls a few Mr Universe poses as he bends to the pump handle. It takes around half an hour to get the day’s water from our cistern and up to the tank and it goes with a satisfying slosh and a thump. Jimmy’s arms work like pistons, his shoulder blades stand proud of the slender curve of his back. It’s this harmony of proportion that gives him the easy tumble and turn of an acrobat, and a surprising strength. He stops for a moment to rake back his hair, catches a drop of sweat on the tip of his tongue. Before he bends once again to the pump he flashes at me with the towel.

Soon enough the smell of frying fills our kitchen. A dozen eggs spit in the iron pan that Bobby tilts over the charcoal. For the moment we’ve all given up on the kerosene stove that took off Edie’s eyelashes. Janey squeals from the privy. Someone has blocked it again. Edie shimmies about in one of Bobby’s striped shirts, making a pot of tisane with leaves from the mountain. They’re all talking about last night’s poker, about the American boys who are either flukes or cheats and, gripping their heads, cursing the mastika they downed while I lay dreaming.

Edie’s so slim you could probably fit three of her into Bobby’s shirt. In fact, we all appear gamine beside him. Sometimes I think Bobby looks like a different species. On Hydra his great shoulders bring us the sweet water from the wells and he eats a proper breakfast to fuel the climb. He’d manage twelve eggs on his own, I reckon.

Trudy has stayed the night. She perches by the window and blinks at the day. Her hair is all copper filaments, her face spattered with freckles. She’s dressed in the same pale blue shirt and trousers she was wearing when she arrived. She’s given up on ever being reunited with her luggage.

‘Don’t forget about my party,’ she reminds us. ‘We’re not letting anyone in who doesn’t bother about the dress code.’ Trudy is forever without things. She has no swimsuit, no books, no footwear suitable for hiking. And, she informs us now, she has no Boston grandmother’s Dior gown to wear on her twenty-first as intended. As a consequence she has decided that we must all fashion party-wear from items found on the island.

Edie hugs herself through Bobby’s shirt as some sort of clever design blossoms. ‘Come on,’ says Janey, hands on hips. ‘Share.’ Both Edie and Janey studied costume in London, they’re at an advantage. ‘Hey, baby J,’ Edie says. ‘Let’s make Trudy a fabulous birthday gown,’ and when Janey agrees Trudy leaps up and hugs them both.

Bobby grumps that he’ll buy something from Tzimmy, the crippled sponge-diver, who sells dead men’s clothes at the port. Janey wrinkles her nose. Jimmy’s idea seems the best to me. ‘We can paint on sacks,’ he says as Trudy spies a flash of bright blue through the window and the smile is wiped from her face.

‘How the hell does he know I’m here?’

Jean-Claude Maurice stands at the open door, in an unbuttoned shirt of cobalt-blue silk. ‘There is no point in me making a class at Tombazi if you do not come,’ he tells Trudy with a sullen pout. He twiddles with his earring while he waits. His tan looks deep-grained, like a much-polished old handbag. He is old. Thirty-five at the very least. I shudder as he takes Trudy’s hand and leads her the back way, every step the satyr with his gold hair and springy brown legs.

We have fresh bread from the bakery, two rings, studded all over with sesame. Bobby slides the fry-up from the pan and we tear at the bread and scoop and dab up the eggs and tomatoes. Trudy and Jean-Claude are framed in the window as across the hill to the art school they go, his tiny shorts and explosive laugh, her Venetian hair flaming.

‘So the pervy old French painter has tracked down our Titian maiden,’ Bobby says. ‘Of course he wants to paint her naked.’

‘Yeah, and knowing Jean-Claude she’ll succumb…’ I say and when he shoots me a puzzled frown I remind him about Charmian’s book. ‘It just goes to show what a good writer she is. You know, she pretty well has him pinned to the page, don’t you think?’

Bobby still hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about. Jimmy has jackknifed himself in the window recess with a well-thumbed Mervyn Peake that’s been doing the rounds. He looks across as Bobby cracks our three remaining eggs into the pan.

‘It’s quite obvious Jean-Claude is the model for Jacques in the book,’ Jimmy says. ‘You know, the French existentialist who comes to the island and seduces everyone…?’

Bobby jumps from a burst of spitting fat. ‘I never read her book,’ he says, and Jimmy and I exchange astonished looks.

‘Well, that seems spectacularly un-nosey of you,’ I say.

Bobby talks to the frying pan, he’s furious with it. ‘Not everyone is as fascinated by our raddled old neighbour as you seem to be. I don’t know how you can stand to spend so much time with those oldsters all bitching away about each other and so drunk they can barely stagger home.’ Bobby’s big jaw is set against me for reasons I can’t fathom, his cheeks are reddening. He stabs at the eggs with his spatula, breaks a yolk. Jimmy takes refuge in Gormenghast .

‘Well, that’s gratitude. If it wasn’t for our “raddled old neighbour” we wouldn’t be here now,’ I reply. ‘And anyway, I like them, I like being around a proper family and…’ I find I can’t go on. The word ‘family’ has done for me and the room has started to swim. I go to the door and gulp at sweet sunshine. I sweep my eyes across folds of pine and tumbledown terraces and up to the bronzed mountains and the sky. I don’t want to be crying any more.

This is an island that holds you steady in its lap, its mountains solid as shoulders. I fold myself in, cleave to it, while behind me Bobby carries on ranting. Beneath the school I can make out the corner of Charmian and George’s terrace, Hydriot flag flying. ‘I just don’t get the attraction. That George banging on like he’s Hemingway. Who the hell are the Kuomintang anyway? As for those know-it-all children—’

I don’t want to hear it and spin around to tell him so. ‘Besides, I want to find out what Charmian knows. Bobby, do you really have no interest in our mother?’

‘Oh Erica, stop!’ He bats me away with his spatula. ‘You plague that woman like a mosquito with your questions. I can tell that you irritate the hell out of her. And so what if our mother had a secret admirer? Maybe she was a high-class tart and we just didn’t notice. But I’ll tell you what. I. don’t. care. I keep telling you, family is a terrible construct. We’d all be better off without it.’

Jimmy drops his book and springs between us, gives Bobby’s arm a tug. ‘Come on, grumpy old donkey. Get your yoke across those shoulders and once you’ve got the water you and I should attempt that trek up to Episkopi,’ he says, patting him on the back.

I race Edie and Janey down the steps, clutching our straw hats to our heads, beach bags bouncing at our hips. That Trudy makes too much of her lost luggage. In reality we’re all wearing very little anyway. Edie’s dress is a scrap of white cotton, worn thin and torn at the front so it looks in danger of slipping from her shoulders.

We pass old women sitting on their stoops.

‘ Yia sou , Kyria Katerina; yia sou , Kyria Maria,’ we cry.