Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

‘Hi there, pretty little girl,’ she says, slurring, patting the wall beside her. ‘Have you come here to taunt me with your youth and beauty and unbroken heart?’

‘Sorry, no. I came to ask you about the woman who makes the tea… but it seems like the wrong time.’ I’m as red as the wine, I can feel the blood. Patrick Greer is rude enough to snort. He passes me a glass of the Kokineli and I gulp at it. Charmian joins us with a new bottle and the corkscrew, tells Marianne her baby is settled.

Marianne seems to be having trouble focusing and it only strikes me later that she’s been given a pill. She’s repeating over and over that she was the one who told him to go.

‘Oh what will I do if he does something reckless all alone out at sea?’

Charmian motions for me to shift along and takes my place beside her. She pulls Marianne close to soothe her, reminds her that Axel’s a fine sailor and far too ambitious to risk drowning himself. Magda cuts in with the news that Nancy’s ready to serve up.

‘You have to let this one go, he’s too bonkers. There’ll be no shortage of blokes who will happily take his place, you know that.’

Marianne closes her eyes and we all fall silent before she leaps to her feet with a cry.

‘There is only him, that’s the thing. Him and his golden voice. Just as my grandmother predicted. Momo said my man would have a golden voice and that’s Axel Jensen.’

Magda shakes her head, mouths, ‘Here we go again,’ and stomps inside to help Nancy.

Marianne is unsteady and not making much sense. She holds out her hand to Charmian. ‘Come with me, help me write him a letter. I love my husband. There’s nothing I can do about it. If it goes in the mail on tomorrow’s steamer, he’ll get it as soon as he checks in to Athens.’

I’m left with Patrick Greer who refills my glass before I can make an excuse to leave.

‘She really is quite a woman – but you’ll have noticed that for yourself,’ he says, watching them go.

‘Marianne?’ I say. ‘Because she wants to put up with whatever rotten thing her husband does?’

Patrick snorts. ‘Ha, no. I was talking about Charm. Here she is, a ministering angel, while her own husband and kids are God knows where… scrounging dinner from one of the neighbours, no doubt.’ His eyes shine black with malice as he leans towards me, his lips winking wet and pink as a mollusc from within the weedy beard.

‘You know things ain’t great at home for her right now? Everyone’s waiting for George’s book; it’s making her paranoid. And with Jean-Claude back here sniffing around. Well, you could say it’s leading to an interesting atmosphere.’

The greasy, defeated smell of him makes my stomach clench. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He’s got his hand on my knee. ‘It’s nasty of George, really, to take his revenge in this way, by so publicly humiliating her.’ Though I’m desperate to get away and know I’ll feel soiled, I find myself keening towards him.

‘So?’

Patrick squeezes my thigh as Magda appears with a stack of willow-pattern plates which she scatters around the table. She clinks her glass to mine.

‘I will make special prices for you if you and your beautiful English friends will come to Lagoudera during Yacht Week. We need a few more young bohemians to mix it up a bit.’

Patrick scowls at her and bends to light his pipe.

The stem makes an unpleasantly juicy sound. ‘George is a victim of his own jealousy. I’ve read the manuscript and he’s ruined a perfectly good novel by including a totally gratuitous sex scene. It’s only there to humiliate Charm and Jean-Claude.’

‘Oh, do stop going on about it,’ Magda snaps. ‘It’s no one’s business but theirs.’

‘Excuse me, but it’s George who makes it everyone’s business by writing so luridly about his wife,’ Patrick scoffs. ‘A self-proclaimed once-a-year man sticking the knife in because that’s all he’s got left that he can stick in.’

‘Ugh, you’re drunk,’ Magda says, but Patrick is back to wagging his finger.

‘He’s never believed his luck would hold, having a woman like that. She’s too red-blooded to lead the life of a nun, and he knows it.’

Magda gives him a shove that almost topples him. ‘Oh you are enjoying it, aren’t you? Is it because Charm went with Jean-Claude when you made it so obvious she could have picked you?’

Patrick glares at her. ‘I make no secret of my admiration for the woman,’ he says.

Charmian reappears with the cutlery. In the Sartre story we’d all read, Lulu, the wife who chose to stay with her impotent husband, was, rather conveniently, medically unable to enjoy sex. I can’t bear the thought that Charmian’s marriage to George might be doomed. They’re the closest thing I have to a family. I love them all: their banter and moods and tears and wild laughter, all of it, every chaotic bit of it.

Patrick and Magda are still sniping at each other as Marianne strides across the terrace, the cat at her heels. She kneels down with an envelope in her hand and starts filling it with yellow flowers from between the stones. ‘There we are,’ she says to the cat. ‘He’ll see the daisies from our own little terrace when he reads my letter.’ She looks up and nods when I pass on my way out, laying my present beside her. ‘It’s just a little nothing I made for Axel Joachim,’ I say and leave them all to it with a lump in my throat and a babyish need to cry.

Jimmy pokes me in the ribs as I pay for our tickets at the ferry picket. ‘Looks like somebody’s scarpering,’ he says. The gangplank is down, people are swarming with cameras and beach bags and spear guns and masks, boys jostling and touting for business. I’m amused to see Martin running with the other harbour rats, charming the day-trippers who, for a few drachmas, might want directions to the best swimming spots or tavernas. Jimmy nudges me again and points.

Jean-Claude is shuffling to the front of the embarkation line, naked to the waist and strung with bags, a bulging portfolio, a large rolled-up canvas under one arm. A steward is pushing his ticket back at him, beckoning for others to pass. There’s an explosion of shouting in Greek and French until Jean-Claude, still cursing, wrestles his scarlet rag of a shirt from a bag and puts it on.

Trudy ambles by in a floppy blue sun hat with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Her red hair hangs in a plait over one shoulder, fuzzy and thick as a bell-pull. We chat over the picket while Jimmy comes strolling back from Costas’s ice-cream cart in a clean linen shirt with his precious typewriter in one hand and two cones in the other.

‘Ahhhh, but you’re a lucky girl…’ Trudy says, giving me a pinch. ‘And I don’t mean the cornets, honey.’ I ask about Jean-Claude but she bats his name away.

‘He’s heading for Berlin, as far as I know, meeting his dealer,’ she says, with a dismissive shrug. Her face has a greenish tinge and she says she’s been feeling bad ever since she got out of bed and that the meatballs at Stephanos’s taverna must have been off. Among the confusion of people, the men have come with a consignment of evil-smelling black sponges which they are piling at the dockside.

Jimmy hands me the ice cream, wipes a drip from the case of his precious typewriter. ‘All the way to Athens to get this baby fixed,’ he says.

‘Ah yes, but a night in a hotel,’ Trudy sighs.

‘And a hot bath,’ I say, giving myself the biggest hug at the prospect.

There’s a hold-up in front of us. Two of the stewards are helping a one-legged man up the ramp. The man is old and wears his patched fisherman’s trousers with the empty leg dangling in a knot that swings as he spins around and spits at the port so savagely he makes me jump. Two old women dressed in black start to wail. The Nereida lets out a series of impatient bellows and everyone shouts to make themselves heard.