Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

The Vespers are ringing. The island grows mellow in the evening sun. Though I usually go barefoot, I’m wearing sandals and, instead of my shorts, the Capris that I’ve recently had Archonda take in so they fit like a second skin. I’ve washed and rinsed my hair with well water and my skin is glossy with olive oil. I’ve given more thought than usual to my clothes. My Aertex shirt I washed and ironed especially and I’ve helped myself to Edie’s shell-pink lipstick. It isn’t without shame that the prospect of finally meeting mad Axel Jensen thrills me.

I climb to the top road, up the twisting steps that rise between ever more tumbledown houses, some lots marked only by rubble and boulders clad in vines, occasionally a brave bread oven or a chimney left standing where nature reigns. Crumbling stone walls host fig trees and passion fruit, sudden clear vistas to the sea, wild squashes and capers, a family of kittens. The low sun burnishes every tuft and seed head softest gold and releases the scent of night jasmine. From above, a donkey is playing its violin of a face at me and I clamber up the loose wall to its tether and scratch all the places it tells me are itching.

It’s Marianne I’m visiting, not him – at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Marianne mentioned a woman who might sell me some leaves for a tea to cure Bobby’s depression and I’ve spent all day making a little dancing Dutchman for baby Axel. It’s electrifying to think of big Axel’s eyes on me; there was something about the way he held Patricia when he kissed her that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Her long hair falling, her body fluid in his arms, as though she were fainting and dissolving with desire. I will have to try not to touch him. I might get a shock.

I hope baby Axel Joachim will like the dancing Dutchman. I cut it from card and Bobby let me use his paints for a red, green and black harlequin’s costume. I jointed him with knots and threads, and put a bead on the end of the cord that makes him jig, like Mum used to do for us. Bobby only grunted when I showed him but I think it’s pretty good.

I can hear voices from the terrace while I’m still climbing the path through the trees and almost turn back due to shyness, but the little white dog shoots out of the gate barking and giving me away.

Lamps have been brought outside, insects buzz in the haze, the sun has left a sky streaked with purple welts. Marianne sits motionless in her rocking chair, the others positioned like handmaidens or nurses, Charmian talking, Nancy stroking Marianne’s hand. Patrick Greer is stooped over administering wine.

A woman in an emerald silk tunic comes shushing the dog with baby Axel Joachim in her arms. ‘Hi, you! I’ve seen you before,’ she says, rocking the baby to and fro while he pulls at her necklace. ‘You and your English crowd. But why do you never come and have fun at the marine club?’ The baby is tugging a chunk of her carved jade pendant to his mouth and I recognise her as Magda, the Czech woman who charged Jimmy a fortune for two beers at Lagoudera. Magda’s perfume is strong enough to be heady. She is chatting about all the famous people who have sailed in to dance at the bar. ‘Henry Fonda, Princess Margaret, Melina Mercouri…’

Patrick Greer lurches over with the bottle. He’s wagging his schoolmaster’s finger at Magda to interrupt. ‘It’s that Babis Mores taking pictures of all the starlets for the society columns. Oh dear Jesus, that’s what they come here for; I’m telling you, it’s obscene. Babis’s camera. To be is to be seen. And now your damned nightclub and its loudspeakers are destroying this place.’

‘Oh never mind,’ I say, hiding the baby’s present behind my back. ‘Maybe I’d better return tomorrow.’

Magda snatches the glass that Patrick is offering to me. If it weren’t for the baby I think she might throw it at him.

‘This island needs tourism and I need to feed my son,’ she says, jiggling the baby who whinges louder as she untangles his fingers from her necklace.

Charmian gives Marianne’s arm a small shake. ‘I think the little man needs his bed,’ she says, but Marianne gives no indication of having heard her. She’s flopped into the rocker as though she’s been flung there.

Magda is glaring at Patrick and such irritated jiggling is not working on the baby, who has left a dark trail on her emerald silk breast. I reach to take him. His cheeks are reddened with spit and he is gnawing at his fist.

Charmian sweeps a lamp from the table. ‘Poor little blighter. Teething and hungry and tired all at the same time.’ She motions for me to follow her inside. ‘Let’s see what we can do. I don’t think Marianne’s in any fit state.’

The room bears few scars of recent battle. A ring of fresh vine leaves wreathes the water jar. Yards of lace catch the breeze at the missing window. Charmian’s lantern makes water pitchers of flowers dance across the walls and we see that the bookshelves are now almost empty of books, an arrangement of broken pottery and icons lies behind a brushwood broom, a guitar that had been hanging at the foot of the stairs is gone. The moon is a ghostly face through the lace veils of the empty window frame. Charmian lights the stove and sets a pan of water to boil.

I don’t seem to be any better than Magda at comforting poor Axel Joachim. Charmian takes him and almost immediately his crying subsides and he lays his head to her bosom. She looks so soft in the lamplight with the baby in her arms. Some sort of lovely music is playing in her head that makes her sway her hips as she finds the bottle and the teat and drops them in the water.

She’s dancing with the baby and fixing his milk, shaking a drop on to her wrist which sets him clamouring, and at the same time talking to me. ‘It’s all been terribly emotional for poor Marianne. Lots of tears as he sailed away, though she’s the one who told him to bugger off. Now she seems to be in some sort of a trance.’

I follow her upstairs. ‘Seriously. Axel’s upped and left her?’

‘Yes, of course. He pushed her until she had no choice, really. It was pretty awful at the dock, the baby screaming blue bloody murder and Marianne falling to her knees, every inch of her begging the bastard to stay while all the time she was yelling at him to go. He was keen to get the wind in his sails, I’ll tell you that. This way he can always say it was she who sent him away. She says he may sail back to Oslo.’

Soft glimmers in the gloom. Fleeces on the boards, hangings around the bed, a washstand of elaborate wrought iron with a shining white china bowl; through an archway, a large worktable is scattered with papers.

‘I see he took his typewriter,’ Charmian says.

She sweeps aside bolts of embroideries from around the high bed – a grand Russian affair of carved black wood and brass curlicues – dampens a sponge at the washstand, finds a fresh nappy and pins. I hold up a candle while she cleans and changes the baby who is humming softly as he sucks at the warm goat’s milk.

‘I’m guessing she’ll want to sleep with this little fatty tonight.’ Charmian sighs as she settles the baby into a nest at the centre of the bed. ‘Just look how she makes everything beautiful. All these lace pillows. And such terribly pretty flowers on the nightstand.’

The night has grown deeper and the temperature has dropped. Nancy and Magda come inside to chop tomatoes for sauce. Only the bellowing of a donkey and distant goat bells disturb the silence.

Marianne remains on the terrace, looking out to space with a woven blanket pulled across her shoulders, singing breathily to herself in Norwegian. Patrick Greer is refilling her glass. The wine glows like rubies in the lamplight.