Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

He laughs like it’s a joke and lets her hair fall. Patricia remains serious, her eyes ever more shimmery. Axel is blond and spry, a man with the looks of a spoilt boy. His collar is neat and his hair springs from a firm side parting, the sort that a nanny would make with a metal comb.

Patricia is gulping back tears. ‘I’ll say it again until you hear me, Axel. You cannot leave your baby son because you’ve met me. You can’t break your life into pieces.’ The tabby cat is pulling at the salami in my basket but I can’t shoo it away without drawing attention to myself.

Axel is shaking his head. ‘But neither can I stay drowning in her passivity,’ he says, and he puts a finger to Patricia’s lips. ‘I will leave them knowing I’m the biggest bastard that ever walked the earth. But leave I shall.’ His voice starts to crack and then he’s got her hair again and he starts kissing her without giving a monkey’s who sees him do it. The tabby cat lashes out as I retrieve my basket and scamper away, cursing and licking blood from the back of my hand, running to Charmian as fast as a child in need of a plaster to its mother.

Charmian and George’s house stands solid as a judge where five sets of narrow lanes and steps convene at the town well. As usual there’s a huddle of women in the cobbled square, a parliament dressed all in black, quenching things other than thirst since the well offers only brackish water. Bougainvillea bursts from a pot in the most passionate of pinks beside the front door. I fly through the salon to the cool green of the kitchen where Zoe is rolling out pastry, Booli beside her, brown and naked but for his pants.

‘Is Charmian here?’ I’m panting and Zoe eyes me with alarm. She points to the ladder but makes a cutting motion at her throat. Booli sees her do it and chuckles. I ignore her and tear around to the side door, gallop up the stone steps and through to the hall where Max is slumped. He thumps his tail on the rug while I listen for the sound of the typewriter but hear only tiny bells and pattering feet as a string of donkeys goes by in the street. I leave Max to his longings and climb the narrow wooden steps to the studio.

I run my eyes around the room. No Charmian. Only George slumped at the table with an unlit briar pipe drooping from his mouth. I see the words ‘FUCK VIRGINIA WOOLF’ in bold capitals pinned among the pictures on his corkboard, balls of screwed-up paper at his feet, a world globe grown dusty on the bookcase beside him. George’s fingers have ploughed furrows through his hair. He turns and for an instant his tired eyes light up within their heavy square frames. He pats his knee as though expecting me to sit on it and barks with laughter.

The door to the terrace is wide open and, thank goodness, there she is. She is silhouetted against the light, one hand to the terrace wall as she blows smoke out to sea. She turns when she hears him, comes flying through the door with a wail like a cat with its fur on end.

‘Erica!’

I rock back a step. Her fury could burn me. A black and white photograph shakes in her hand.

I look from her to the picture she is thrusting towards us. It’s a stark portrait of a small girl, a Chinese waif with round starving eyes beneath a blunt-cut fringe. She’s scrap and bone in a filthy torn dress, like a rag doll that’s been flung into the dirt.

‘What in Christ’s name can you possibly want, Erica?’ I jumble my words – Axel, Patricia – my voice shaking. Charmian flings the photograph to George’s desk.

‘This,’ she says, stabbing her finger at it, ‘only this.’ George buries his head in his hands and, before I’ve had a chance to pull myself together, she picks up a book from the table and cries, ‘It doesn’t help having you standing there gawping at us!’ The book comes flying, pages splaying, and lands with a dusty thump at my feet. She’s still yelling as I stagger away, things like: ‘I’m sick of the way you act around him, when he’s got so much bloody work to do.’ And: ‘Piss off, and don’t come back.’

I’m almost home but here’s Bobby lurching down the steps towards me, two full goatskins of water swinging from the wooden yoke. ‘I gave up waiting for the beer,’ he says. It’s too late to dry my eyes and he gives me a withering look. ‘Whatever now?’ His T-shirt is dark with sweat from carrying the water.

I shoulder the door to the house, too ashamed to tell him what just happened, though Charmian’s roaring is fresh in my ears. I move out of his way to let him pass. The water-skins bump like fat carcasses. I reach into my basket to show him the beer. It received a good shaking-up as I scarpered from Charmian’s and explodes when I open it. I confess only to my eavesdropping and what I overheard Axel say to Patricia. I tell him my tears are for poor Marianne.

Bobby grabs the beer and cuffs the side of my head. He takes a swig and grunts before heaving a water-skin above his shoulder.

‘Why do you always have to get so wound up about something that’s none of your business?’ The water thumps into the Qupi. I want to kick him but daren’t. Instead I escape to my room and bury myself beneath the bedspread.

Out of the dark they come, the stark raving faces, all screaming at me and distorted as melting wax. First Charmian, her eyes burning absinthe. The book flies from her hand and my father comes looming behind her, rage boiling his face – ‘Get out! Go away and don’t come back!’ – and then Bobby led by his uncontrollable fists, Bobby hurling stones while my mother wears a mask of Pan-Cake and lipstick. A pink powder puff explodes on the carpet. Her hands cover my eyes but behind them Charmian jabs at me with her picture and the little Chinese girl lies broken in rags, eyes luminous with hunger.

After a while I’m nothing but a big baby crying for my mother and that’s how Jimmy finds me. Jimmy Jones starts working his magic, pulling away the covers and replacing the nightmare faces with his own, his lips soft and warm with promises. He bounces until the bedsprings are singing and I agree to stop being a misery-guts and go with him to the hills to gather flowers for our headdresses for the party tonight.

Our costumes are not fit for the eyes of the port so we climb the back steps and alleys and across to the Tombazi Mansion with me trying not to let Charmian throw a shadow over everything. The moon shines like a dented shilling above the mountains and Jimmy looks more godlike than earthly beneath his garlands of vines and tiny pomegranates but still he has to chivvy me all the way. He keeps his fingers laced through mine as we climb. I shush him because I don’t want the others to hear of my banishment. Janey and Edie wear duster coats over their outfits, their eyes huge with false lashes. There’s not a chance they’d understand why Charmian matters so much to me. I barely understand it myself.

Bobby leads the way, a makeshift Jason with a bare torso and a pale curly fleece slung over one shoulder. Just before we arrive he pulls me to his chest, calls me ‘doll’ and mumbles that he’s sorry he snapped. I sniff back my tears, catch the reek of the fleece’s original occupant.

‘Tell me I’m not an annoying mosquito,’ I say and he grunts, ‘Only sometimes,’ and pretends to swat me away. I feel a bit better. I don’t think we’ve hugged since we left London.

The pistachio tree in the courtyard of the painting school is hung with paper lanterns, the path to the door lit by jars of candles. The grey and white chequerboard of the grand marbled hall is silky smooth beneath our feet. Some sort of birdman and a black-clad nymph with tulle wings fly past jingling with bells. Someone is bashing away at the piano and Edie and Janey scoot off to find Trudy to present her with her birthday gown.