Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

I explain about Jimmy dropping out of law school, about my mum and the savings book and the car, and about how I’m sure Charmian knows more about my mysterious mother than she’s letting on.

‘Sometimes it’s best not to poke the sleeping bear,’ she says and I tell her that my brother would agree. She’s easy to talk to, a good listener, and I find myself unloading my worries about Bobby, his moods and barely restrained violence.

‘He hasn’t been right in the head since we left London,’ I say, and immediately regret it because it seems disloyal.

Marianne thinks he may be depressed and promises to take me to see Kyria Stefania in the hills above Vlychos, who gathers medicinal herbs for miraculous teas that she says work wonders whenever Axel is blue.

I don’t mention that I want to be a writer because she doesn’t ask. It’s Jimmy she wants to know about so I tell her he’s here to see what he can do with his book idea and I boast about the poem he had published in Ambit .

‘Oh, bad luck that he’s a writer,’ she says with a small laugh.

‘What do you mean?’ I start to explain that Jimmy does other things, that he paints, that he’s one of those annoying people who excel at everything, but she continues:

‘Axel says it comes with the job: the woman always ends up in the book. Look at Charmian about to be exposed by whatever it is George has written. And Axel’s last novel is about me; in fact he ends up almost murdering “me” in a jealous rage. Can you imagine having to read stuff like that?’

There is not a trace of outrage while she tells me this; instead a soft glow has settled on her face.

‘And it’s so explicit that Aftenposten refused to review it, so you can guess what sort of things Axel has written. But that hasn’t stopped it being popular and now it’s being translated into all the other languages and being made into a film. And the teenage actress who plays me will be the first Norwegian to show her breasts on the movie-house screen so Axel’s expecting that to cause a scandal when it’s released…’

She rolls over and gently removes a large black ant from the juice bottle and sits up. ‘The director thought I should test for the part but Axel wouldn’t hear of it.’ She pulls a sad-funny face as she crosses her arms over her chest. ‘Axel says the girl who plays me in the film has much bigger ones than me.’

She sees my eyes settle on her scar and prods it with her finger. ‘This was a gift of our long journey from Oslo. My appendix almost burst. We were on a little dirt road out of Delphi, bump, bump, bump, my God, the pain, but somehow, in the middle of nowhere, Axel manifested two angels. He had a vision, did a detour and boom , there in his headlights, all in white, two sisters from a medical centre. Axel thinks the surgeon was most likely a horse butcher, he fainted when he cut me, but pfft , here I am. Quite honestly, I’m surprised Axel hasn’t made himself known to you, Erica. Sexy dark-haired girls with puppy-dog eyes have always been his thing.’

This last bit gives me quite a jolt. The American painter in the red shorts certainly fits the bill and it makes me giddy to think Marianne’s description might apply to me also. I widen my puppy-dog eyes at her and we both laugh to ease the tension and she asks me to excuse her suspicious mind.

‘I’m really not his type, you see. And not clever enough either. One year he drove me so crazy with one of his brain-box brunettes that I went to Athens and had my hair dyed black. And now I will tease him forever because that was when he asked me to marry him.’ She touches the wedding ring on her finger, as though checking it’s really there, twists it around.

‘I hope now we have our little baby I can be enough for him,’ she says and my heart wrenches when she tells me that she was so sad when Axel left Norway that she was unable to make milk for the baby. ‘He had to get out for tax reasons,’ she attempts to excuse him. But she knows what he’s like and everyone’s been a bit awkward around her since she got back to the island. ‘Axel’s pretty way out,’ she tells me with an exasperated sigh.

While she’s talking I’m convinced my pulse is racing but keep my face as immobile as I can manage. ‘I know how it is,’ I say. ‘I see Jimmy looking at other girls all the time.’

She snorts and dismisses me with one of her pfft s.

‘We’re getting married,’ I tell her, and she shakes her head at me, makes her eyes merry.

‘You’re children. You should have fun in the playground while you’re young.’

We both stare out to sea for a while and I think about this, about how sure I am that for as long as I live the only man I’ll ever want is Jimmy Jones. Knowing this makes me sad for my mother and for Charmian having an affair and I wonder how it will be when everyone gets to read George’s bitter account of it, and if out of decency I’ll be able to resist. Then I look at Marianne sitting beside me and hope with all my heart that Patricia will soon leave the island.

We smile at each other and Marianne stands and pulls on a bright orange dress. It is made from some sort of floaty material and she can see I’m admiring it. ‘Silk. Axel bought it for me in Rome,’ she says, fastening a row of tiny buttons. ‘We were young and in love, on our way here in his little Beetle motor car. I think I must look good for him now I’m back with our baby, not all gameldags and mamsen .’

The sky is mother-of-pearl. She reaches to refasten a couple of pins in her glinting hair; the sun behind her turns the orange dress diaphanous, and I think Axel must need his head examining.

‘Tell me, what are they wearing in London. Is it all culottes like in the magazines?’

It feels like an age since I left. The buttoned-up wool coats, court shoes, girdles and splashed stockings of wet, grey pavements seem a lifetime away. ‘Edie’s better at knowing about fashion than me,’ I say. ‘None of my clothes even fit me any more. I was much fatter when I left London.’

‘Get Charmian to take you to meet Archonda, she’s a good seamstress,’ Marianne advises and, rolling her towel, flatters me by saying how good it’s been talking. She’s in a hurry now to get the baby’s milk, tells me she’s worried that if he cries Axel won’t be able to work.

‘Axel Joachim can nearly sit up all by himself, you know, a good strong boy just like his pappa. Axel thinks he looks like a Buddha. He calls him “the little man”.’

She scoops her few bits and pieces into her basket and I realise that I’ve learnt much about Axel but very little of Marianne herself.

‘Tell Charmian I’ll come with the baby as soon as I can. Or maybe one night you will be my babysitter?’

I am alone now. I roll down my swimsuit and spread myself on the warm ledge, waiting for the others to return from their swim. The sun sinks low over Dokos island, turning it black as a sleeping whale. There’s the simple thud of the gri-gri boats and behind my eyelids everything swims as orange as Marianne’s dress. Jimmy spins like a gold coin against the sky and falls to the water, scattering sun-dazzles as he surfaces, and I’m thinking, what does he see in me? I have no idea who I am. I seem to have hatched while no one was looking. And just for this moment, I am veiled in a golden glow of loveliness bestowed by a Scandinavian goddess who considers me a love rival.

I feel a great surge of affection the following morning when Marianne comes clacking down the hill in her wooden-soled sandals.

Jimmy and I are sitting outside Katsikas with the usual crowd awaiting fortune’s blessing. Bales of flattened sponges are being unloaded from wooden carts at the dock, the men sweating in the heat of the noonday sun. Some fishermen are stretching their nets at the water’s edge, the usual cats hanging around as we pick over morsels of octopus that Sofia brings to the table from the grill. I watch Marianne as she clops up the steps to the bakery, a large basket in the crook of her arm.