Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

Leonard gives her an enormous grin. I can see him imagining the scene, appreciating it. ‘When it comes down to it, all subjects are just an allegory, a metaphor for human experience,’ he says.

Baby Axel Joachim is stirring; Marianne leans across to jiggle the pram, sees me watching. ‘Would you like to take him?’

I sit with the baby on my lap and she gives me his bottle of water. The baby plays with the teat but is more interested in wrapping his fingers around my ponytail and staring into my eyes. His eyes are as blue as the ocean, as blue as the sky. I’m trying not to think about Axel standing with Marianne’s yellow flowers scattered around his feet because for all I know the baby can see the pictures in my mind. I glance across at Charmian who is nodding at something Leonard is reading out from his sister’s letter. She stops and catches my eye for a moment and I feel my mouth almost contort with the effort of not becoming the bearer of bad news.

There was a small café in the street off Syntagma Square, opposite the American Express office, on the way to the art shop. It was where I’d agreed to meet Jimmy, at one of the tables beneath the dark blue awnings.

The gods we’d made no time for must have been having fun with us from their temple on the hill. Patricia was there, leafing through her sketchbook, and I was surprised to see Jimmy’s hand on her waist, before Axel came out of the café’s door, shaking water from his hands.

He stopped when he saw me.

‘Hydra?’ he said and his face paled.

He spoke rapid Greek to the waiter, turned to Patricia. ‘Now I’ve got the cash, you’re the one who is going to have to make up her mind…’ He was drumming his fingers on the table and his eyes were darting and bright as minnows.

‘There’s my Karmann Ghia at Piraeus. But you’ll have to drive it because I don’t have a licence right now and it’s a long way to Troy. Maybe there’s somewhere you’d like to sail to instead? Kos? Mykonos?’ He threw back his glass of water, almost buzzing with desire to be somewhere else.

Patricia explained that they were looking for somewhere quieter than Hydra where Axel could write his novel and she could paint. Axel took his coffee like a shot. The scars on the back of his hand were minutely raised and pale as silverfish. He made no mention of Marianne or the baby.

I’m trying not to think about it. I take Marianne’s baby inside with me to the grocery store; I like his babbling, am lost in a daydream that this bundle of warm sweetness is mine and Jimmy’s. Charmian is beside me, checking the price on a tin of corned beef. Of course she’s picked up on all the looks I’ve been giving her outside. ‘Go on, what is it you’re not saying?’ she says and I tell her about Axel and Patricia.

Outside Leonard is standing with his towel over his shoulder, Marianne smiling up at him, shaking her head. ‘It would be so nice, but…’

Charmian gives her a shove. ‘Go on, Marianne, a swim will do you the world of good. I’ll take this little fellow home with me and you can pick him up later. I could do with the distraction, to be honest.’ She takes Axel Joachim from me, holds him in the air and nuzzles his fat belly through his vest. ‘And I promise not to eat him all up…’

She turns to me once they’ve gone. ‘Now, what were you saying about Jean-Claude Maurice?’

The days grow so hot I don’t know where my skin finishes and the air begins. By lunchtime there’s only one place to be and that’s in the sea. Jimmy carries the basket packed with our towels and books and a picnic of feta, fresh bread from the baker, and tomatoes as big and knobbly as my fist.

A cruise ship is moored at the mouth of the harbour. Its passengers disgorge in a flotilla of rowing boats and, with not enough to interest them at the port, now swarm over the rocks above the cave at Spilia.

Jimmy and I pause beneath the fig tree at the turn. Maybe there’s fun to be had? I follow his gaze, check all the bikinis, like none as much as my own. My new two-piece is stitched from pale blue-and-white-striped seersucker. I wear it with my dress buttoned over because, unlike the Edies and Janeys of this world, I’m not willing to risk a fine. Police Chief Manolis patrols the waterfront with a new vigour since so many beautiful young women are flouting the public-decency rules of the island.

Music floats up to us from a transistor radio; the sea ripples with bright rubber hats, flippers, snorkels, mermaids on the rock; and a pair of young gods in matching red swim shorts have roped inflatable beds to the iron steps and lie golden and bobbing side by side. Toddlers squirm beneath their mothers’ sun-creaming hands, two beach balls are in play, Lena is at the lip of the cave with the other Swedes and has daringly removed her top to sunbathe.

Jimmy and I have been talking about Bobby. My brother has gone off on another long hike by himself, heading out straight after his chores with his backpack.

‘He’s looking better for it, whatever it is he does while he’s away,’ Jimmy says as we continue along the clifftop path. The heat is hazy, the rocks beaten bronze and rust and iron by strong light, faceted, run through with scraggly olive and pine, clumps of thyme and balls of acid-yellow euphorbia. Most of the wild flowers are brown with seed, only the occasional bright stab of a poppy flares and, as we turn a corner, below us a miraculous swathe of yellow meets the lapis-blue sea.

We decide to head for the beach in front of the old olive mill, which is never too crowded, and wander on through the lanes to the supermarket at Four Corners for a bottle of retsina.

I can’t wait to cool off in the pebbly shallows, while around every corner the sun-dazzled white walls offer enchantment, splashed with hibiscus bright as blood, or overhung by cascades of baby-blue plumbago and clashing pink and purple bougainvillea, narrow passageways leading us back to the sea. We stand high on the crest of the harbour, the fishing boats rock at their moorings, nets have been stretched out to dry on the shoreline. A gang of tabby cats are sleeping in the shade of a grove of cypress trees with a donkey snoring beside them, a white cockerel and his hens scratching about.

The Taverna Mavromatis stands square and boldly painted in rusty red and ochre with strong yellow awnings and tables with chequered cloths. Theodorakis plays through a small loudspeaker. Manolis Mavromatis cooks the best lobster on the island and his wife makes sweet cakes with candied prickly pears. Panayiotis and a couple of the older fishermen are playing tavli at a table outside, but it isn’t them that my eye is drawn to.

Marianne is laughing with Axel Joachim on her lap. Leonard is with them, making aeroplane noises, loop-de-looping a teaspoon towards the baby’s mouth. The sun pours through a gap in the awning and pools at their feet. Leonard wears his old tennis shoes without laces and one of her dainty feet rests beneath its freed tongue.

Panayiotis calls to Jimmy with his sun-baked growl. Marianne blows a shy kiss as we approach. She is plainly dressed in faded fisherman’s trousers and a man’s shirt but still manages to look as fresh as a new day’s gardenia. Axel Joachim is pulling a disgusted face at whatever is on the spoon and Marianne calls to Manolis not to take this as a comment on his cooking.

‘He’s tasting things for the first time, look he has two little teeth,’ she says, opening his mouth with her finger to show us.

Leonard is waving to the baby, pulling a monkey-grin.

‘Look how he waves back!’ Marianne cries as Axel Joachim raises his chubby hand. ‘I think my son is a genius.’

There’s an almost empty bottle of wine on the table, a flush to her cheeks, and as we go on our way it’s with music in our ears.