Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

They’re all here at Katsikas, waiting for treasure. Jimmy moves among them like a merchant prince. Trudy lurks in the shadow of the wall, still a little green to my eyes, and without, as it turns out, the cash to pay us back for her LP and oil paints. Jimmy chucks Bobby his keys, fills him in on the state of his car. ‘… Eventually Erica managed to flag down a lorry driver with jump leads,’ he says. Bobby looks a little more cheerful today; he’s changed his clothes, had a shave. Edie is sitting across his knees in a wide-brimmed hat so he has to push her to one side while I describe how the lorry driver became grumpy when we got to the car park and Jimmy was there. I want to tell him that, after all this time sitting in the shade of a bitter orange tree in Piraeus, Mum’s little green Morris has started to smell once again of her scent. Bobby grins and thanks me, calls to Andonis to bring us retsina.

There’s been a postal strike in Athens for the last few days and a whoop goes up when the mail sacks are carted by. There’s the chatter of hasty arrangements in several languages, coins clattering across tables, chairs scraping as notes are wedged under cups.

Marianne remains drinking orangeade at Charmian’s table, the pram pushed against the store.

‘Don’t worry,’ Charmian is saying. ‘George will check if there’s a letter for you.’ Marianne chews her lip. There’s a line between her eyes that’s not just from squinting at the sun. Her shirt is the twin of the one Axel was wearing yesterday in Athens, a fine blue line running through the linen.

Marianne lays a hand on my arm. ‘The clown puppet you made for the baby has made us both happy,’ she says.

Charmian smiles up at me. ‘How was the trip?’

‘Oh, I meant to say: Jean-Claude was on the ferry and he’s not coming back here.’

I blurt this out, wild with panic at so immediately having to face Marianne. I try not to look at her. I don’t want to be the messenger. Don’t want to say: ‘Look here, I saw Axel…’

I babble about how frustrating it was with all the shopping we had to do. ‘We never did make it up the Parthenon,’ I say.

Even though Jimmy and I had split up for a while to save time, there were still too many errands to run. Jimmy took his typewriter to the mender’s in Pouliandros Street while I queued at the American Express office with my traveller’s cheques. As time ticked by, our trip to the seat of the gods was looking increasingly unlikely.

The American Express building was stifling, panelled with dark wood. People shuffled along; in front of me two men in shorts and ragged espadrilles were so stinky with old sweat I had to turn my head away to breathe. I was struck by our mass, the backpacks and bedrolls, and by how many of the men needed a shave.

There were blinds to keep out the heat, apart from a top window where they were torn and shafts of sunlight fell to the floor in front of the tellers’ desk. When he turned around, his Nordic hair flashed almost silver in the brightness of the beam. It took me a moment to believe it was him. Axel wore his fine-striped linen shirt untucked and was stuffing banknotes into the back pocket of his sailor pants. In his hand was a letter. His smile cut a dimple in his cheek and I followed his gaze to where she waited with their bags. So, not in Chicago after all, but standing not even ten yards away from me, with hair newly washed and shiny as treacle. I edged closer. Patricia’s dress was penitent black silk and almost to her ankles, a row of jet buttons down the front.

She was pointing to the letter. Axel looked surprised to find it in his hand. She dumped the bags and stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder as he opened it. Yellow daisies came spilling as he shook out the folded sheets. He brushed them from his shirtsleeve and I watched as he tore up the unread pages and threw the pieces into a corner. He snatched up their bags and grew impatient with Patricia, attempting to pull her behind him, but she resisted and stooped down to the fallen flowers. She chose two or three and pressed them between the pages of her sketchbook before following him into the street.

I am glad to be shaken from thinking about this by George who returns to our table with his letters.

‘Nothing for me then?’ Marianne says and George shakes his head and Charmian pats her hand.

There’s nothing for me either and I wonder if this is it, if my father really meant it when he disowned me.

Leonard’s received something bulky from Canada and draws up a chair to read, leaning back with his feet to the wall and his sixpenny cap cocked to the sun. Nikos brings a jug of retsina as all around me everyone settles down to bulletins from the outside world. Jimmy has an encouraging letter about his first few chapters from a friend in England and, with much relief, a small cheque from his mother.

Charmian curses, pushes a bill across to George. ‘Last warning from Foyles before they close our account, darling.’

George is using his pocket knife to slit open an envelope. Our Majesty on the stamp. Charmian notices the letterhead of William Collins Publishers. She stops talking as he scans the letter and refolds it. It’s hard to tell if it’s pain or pleasure that makes him close his eyes.

‘Well?’ Charmian says as she shakes out a cigarette.

His hand tremors a little as he lights a match. ‘Looks like Billy might be going all guns blazing on Closer to the Sun ,’ he says as she leans to the flame. ‘He’s getting that Kenneth Farnhill who does all the Agatha Christies to design the cover and they’re using puffs from Muriel Spark and J. B. Priestley for an advert.’

Leonard is back with us, still chuckling to himself over the contents of his letter. ‘What’s up?’ he says when he notices the look on Charmian’s face.

‘Oh, George is rather pleased with himself,’ she says, with a martyr’s smile. ‘Looks like Collins think they have a bestseller with his new novel.’

Leonard narrows his eyes as he looks at her, dangles his komboloi behind his chair. Click, click, click; the amber beads drop.

‘The thing is, I so terribly want to be pleased for him – for us, really – after all these years of keeping that pot boiling he deserves a success; but there’s a character who too closely resembles me in this damn book and I’m wondering if I should reserve myself a place in the loony bin in time for publication.’

George groans the deep groan of a man returning to battle in heavy armour.

‘My God, woman,’ he says. ‘Give me some credit for having an imagination. Closer to the Sun is not only about you and bloody Nature Boy, you know…’

Leonard comes between them, with the delicate authority of one attempting to unite Khrushchev and Eisenhower.

‘If you can make something that is beautiful out of something you’ve experienced, I think that everybody concerned is happy about it,’ he says.

Charmian shakes her head at both of them. ‘But what about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald? You can’t say it worked out all that bloody well for her that he used their experiences, can you?’

‘Yes, well, she wanted to… I guess she had ambitions as a writer, but I don’t know…’ Leonard’s words peter out as he catches the look on Charmian’s face. It’s as though he’s only that moment remembered that she too is a writer.

‘But would you do it?’ Marianne says, springing to life. ‘Would you use the woman you loved in your work?’

Leonard scrapes at his sandpaper jaw, back and forth, back and forth, while he feasts his eyes on her face. ‘I don’t think I take anything that anybody could use anyway, another way…’

They smile at each other before Marianne lowers her eyes and attempts a more sympathetic expression for Charmian. ‘I know how you feel. I’m glad I shan’t be in Oslo when the film of Axel’s novel is on,’ she says, unable to completely staunch her sunny smile. ‘I know it feels bad to be in the pages of a book, but imagine the fuss when this teenage actress who is supposed to be me is lying naked in the pine forest with everything showing.’