Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

The next day is cooler and after our siesta I must leave Jimmy working in our room, his typewriter set up beside the door for the breeze. He returns to his writing slender and brown and naked as a reed. I dance about for a while, trying to distract him. I swirl within our new embroideries, doing my best Salome or at least attempting to interest him in working out how to fix them from the rafters above our bed. Red and blue flowers, birds, look at those millions of stitches…

He springs and I let him wrestle me. We tussle and play and it isn’t long before the bedsprings are singing their immodest song. After that I promise to give him the peace he needs. I make him a sandwich before I set off to consult Charmian.

I am so pleased with my flea-market find, and tell myself my mum wouldn’t mind me splurging out, just this once, on something so fine. The old lady at the stall in Monastiraki didn’t speak much English but I gathered they were from a bride’s trousseau, every stitch from her own fingers while she sat on her stoop, maybe more than a century ago. There are red peacocks, blue-and-red-striped jugs, a repetition of tiny knots of red thread that make flowers and vines.

There’s a blue boat in every corner. ‘And look, a dolphin for luck,’ Charmian says, running her eye across the needlework. ‘She must have been waiting for her sailor boy for a very long time…’

Charmian tells me about the old families on Kalymnos, about wedding festivities that would go on until not another morsel could be eaten nor another drop drunk, at which point the bride and groom were locked for three days in their new house. ‘To fuck,’ she said, as though I might not understand. ‘On the third morning the families would gather, very solemnly, at the door of the house and wait for the boy to emerge with the blooded sheet…’

My flea-market sheets are without stains, uniformly aged to the colour of palest sherry.

It’s chaos; the whole family here. Shane’s had her way with the music and ‘Alley Oop’ plays on the gramophone. Charmian is doing about eight things at once, a ragged tea towel at her shoulder, and a wild-cat’s prowl as she chops and tidies. Zoe is filling the iron with charcoal embers, lettuce leaves crisp in an enamel pail. Shane and Martin peel potatoes at the table, bickering in English and Greek about one of them having to give up a room, about Shane’s appalling taste in music.

George looks up from the lamp he’s fixing to tell me about his friends who are coming with their children from Athens and, Martin hopes, some new comic books. ‘Charlie Sriber’s me old cobber, used to sub my copy in Melbourne. They let us bunk at their place in the Metz when we need to be in Athens and we have them here in return. It’s all fireworks and dancing on the island this weekend….’ He touches the wire with his pliers and the lamp sparks and fizzles, making us all jump; Charmian begs him not to electrocute everyone.

There’s always a festival of some sort, the bells are constantly ringing, but this weekend is a big one in honour of Admiral Miaoulis, whose statue guards the harbour mouth to the east, a ship’s wheel in his hand and a dagger at the ready in his cummerbund. Martin knows all the facts, every detail of the skirmishes with the Turks, the revenge our great hero took against the Sultan’s fleet for the massacre of Chios… The boy’s a walking encyclopaedia and his parents couldn’t be prouder, though Charmian shoots George a furious look each time he calls him ‘Professor’.

‘It brings out the worst sort of nationalism in the people who come for the fireworks and parties,’ George grumbles and Martin starts begging him for gunpowder so he can make his own firecrackers this year.

Someone Charmian refers to, with a grimace, as ‘Big Grace’ will be arriving too. ‘Big Grace has designs on my hubby. Isn’t that right, darling?’ she says, planting a kiss on George’s cheek while he growls at her. A whole cask of wine stands beside the sink, its spigot dripping into a jug. Charmian has a devilish gleam; her skirt swishes around while she teases him. ‘Big Grace took very good care of my husband while he was recovering after the hospital in Athens. Very good. All his favourite delicacies – isn’t that right, darling? Dressed crab and teeny-tiny portions of veal tartare…’

George rocks back in his chair, watching her perform.

‘Any titbit to tempt him with his poor invalid appetite. A perfect Manhattan shaken on ice on the balcony looking across all of Athens to the Hill of the Muses, really nothing was too much trouble for her.’

He starts laughing and coughing and lunges for her, grabbing her by the waist as she tries to skip past.

‘Oh, do cut it out, Cliftie. You’re getting yourself worked up again; not every relationship with a woman has to be about sex, as you very well know.’ He pulls her to his knee for a growly kiss that sends Martin and Shane running from the room making gagging noises.

Little Booli is grasping my hand and leading me up the ladder to show me his new den beneath the couch. We run in and out of the rooms playing hide and seek and Booli bursts with helpless giggles and gives himself away every time.

I help Charmian to make up the beds and couches for the guests. She tucks and straightens, takes snips of lavender she’s brought from the courtyard to lay on the pillows. She tells me Big Grace is under the impression that it’s constant rowing with his wife that’s made George ill. ‘She is determined to rescue him, you’ll see if you meet her,’ she says. The sheets, though thin and darned, smell of new ironing, of charcoal and steam and best intentions.

‘Oh, it’s all such a bloody bother when I could be getting on with my book, but we owe them an invitation and better they come now while there’s still water in the cistern.’ She stands from the bed, easing her hands to the small of her back.

‘You can’t imagine the fuss of having people stay when we’re dry, which often happens in high season when we have to pay for every drop to be delivered by Elias, plus it’s a terrible chore having to flush through the privy with sea-water. Water becomes terrifically hard work and so pricey; I feel I must warn you, Erica.’ She’s stuffing a few things away in drawers, straightening the rug. ‘Though, when at last the rains come, the sound of the water filling the cistern will call to you and you’ll want to dance starkers through the streets.’

She surveys the room and cocks an ear. A ting and a burst of clatter from George’s typewriter, another ting and then a pause and the sound of paper being wrenched from the carriage with a roar of her name. ‘Soundtrack to my life,’ she says with a pantomime curtsy and smile.

Shane calls to us from the courtyard. ‘Look, Dissy has found Penny,’ she cries, pointing at the tortoises who are bashing shell to shell, as if locked in mortal combat. The heavy breathing and orgiastic grunts sound all too human as the old boy scrabbles in a frenzy of lust on top of his smaller mate. Booli is horrified, runs at them: ‘Óchi, óchi, óchi,’ pulls Odysseus off and banishes him to the furthest corner, behind the privy.

We run around with a tennis ball. Shane is the champion in every possible sequence of bouncing the ball against the wall or the well, and clapping and turning and touching the ground, and Booli is good at fetch. It’s a relief, sometimes, to mess around with the kids.

Charmian comes out with a basket on her arm. She says it’s her last chance for freedom before the guests arrive. ‘Anyone fancy a walk?’ The others shirk. ‘If you like we can go to Marianne’s with your embroideries. She has a good sewing machine and she’ll know about fixings,’ she says, and offers to wait while I grab them.