Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

Booli skips off to the port to see if Martin has found some live bait for his fishing rod. He’s only four but he has the run of the island, a golden-haired princeling welcome at any table, wonderful really. Charmian smiles as she watches him go. We talk about Bayswater, about being cooped up in a flat and all the trees we weren’t allowed to climb in Kensington Gardens and the dirty gutters and constantly coughing because of the beastly yellow smog.

The golden hour lights our way up the lane of the roses and on towards the graveyard where wild raspberries grow. ‘I think your mother would’ve loved this island,’ Charmian says and tells me of an afternoon they shared in Mum’s open-topped car with a swim in the Thames and devilled eggs in a tea shop in Cookham. She shakes her head when I ask her: ‘Really, she never mentioned a lover?’

The graveyard has a glorious view to the sea; you can almost imagine yourself happy to die knowing you’ll rest with this vista among the pines and the flowers. We stand beside the grave of a young sponge-diver, an anchor, an iron boot and the round window of a diving bell set into his headstone. I haven’t entered a graveyard since we buried Mum in a corner of Kensal Green Cemetery so shaded it was dank. Charmian reaches for my hand. I tell her how I long for my mother to come back and haunt me. ‘I suppose that everyone feels like that when they miss somebody,’ I say and wipe my eyes with the back of my wrist.

‘Do you feel ghosts, Charmian?’

‘Oh yes,’ she replies, and she sighs long and hard. ‘I have ghosts, not all of them dead.’

‘What do you mean?’ She opens her mouth to say something, stops. I feel her change tack.

‘It’s a strange thing when you miss someone who is there,’ she says, and she looks down at the sponge-diver’s grave as sadly as if he were her own son. ‘There but not there. Right before you all the time. Like George, by which I mean the George I married, with his tremendous verve and unbroken spirit.’

She tells me it can’t have escaped my notice that things are not right between them, says how awful she feels for the children having to witness their fights. ‘I should have put my foot down about that wretched novel of his.’

‘You know I shan’t read it,’ I say, making a cutting motion at my throat and giving her my Girl Guide’s honour which at least makes her laugh. ‘But if it’s embarrassing for you, why has he done it?’

‘To understand George, you have to know something of his childhood in Australia: a fragile boy, bookish, rather artistic in temperament, the opposite of his beefy brother Jack. His father was a brute with the razor strop. Savage beatings and never for something naughty he’d done, that was the thing, but just in case there was some misdemeanour that he wasn’t admitting to. Can you imagine what that does to a sensitive little boy?

‘The saddest thing is he’s become like his old man, now his leaping time is behind him. It’s buried so deep in him there’s nothing he can do. He suspects me and imagines all sorts of bullshit things, and he thinks he should punish me.’ She manages a rueful smile. ‘You know, just in case.

‘ Closer to the Sun is a difficult one. There’s often a green-eyed nymphomaniac stirring up the troops in George’s books…’ Again the rueful smile. ‘But this is the first time he’s written from within his own skin. An Aussie writer, a former war correspondent, a wife and a family on a Greek island. No doubt people are going to read it as though it were the truth – memoir, if you like, and not some twisted product of his poor tortured imagination.’

I’ve been silent but can’t help myself. ‘Hang on, what about Jean-Claude?’ I daren’t look at her once the words are out.

‘Really, Erica, you’re just as bad as the rest of the mongrels.’ She stamps her foot. ‘And, if you must know, Jean-Claude Maurice does not merit the literary attention that is lavished upon him.’

She changes the subject as we cut across the top of the gully. ‘I’ve been mulling over what you told me the other day at the store and I think you really have to pluck up the courage to tell Marianne that Axel’s with Patricia.’ I know she’s right but still it feels like a punishment. ‘It would be a kind thing to do, if you can bear it. The poor girl’s under the impression that he’s alone on his boat, thinking how to save his marriage.’

I follow her into Marianne’s, my stomach queasy. A small breeze ruffles the lace at the broken window. Stems of pink rambler roses have been arranged in a pewter jug on the table. Someone has been attempting to sketch her on a sheet of paper that lies with a stub of pencil beside it. It’s a good likeness, catches the Sphinx-like smile, the modest lowered lashes against the bloom of her cheek.

We call to her from the foot of the stairs and she appears above us in a white dress, like a sun-bleached angel. The dress might once have been a peasant girl’s petticoat but Marianne is wearing it with a belt of plaited leather. We pass a sleeping Axel Joachim as we tiptoe outside.

Marianne moves dreamily, clearing some beakers and an earthenware jug from the table. I can’t seem to speak without crushing my r’s. She has a peach-coloured shawl, despite the heat, which she keeps wound around her face.

She ends my agony by resting her hands on my shoulders to silence me. Above the peach silk her eyes are sharp with tears.

She drops her hands and I feel dismissed as she turns from me to Charmian. ‘So, I guess he picked Patricia up from where she was waiting on Poros as soon as he left here.’ Her voice is shaking. ‘I suppose it was all arranged. Maybe he thought it would cause me less humiliation if I didn’t see them leave together as a couple.’

Charmian’s eyes flare with dislike. ‘Who does he think he is, to parcel out pain like that? He’s nothing but a moral coward. A child-man like Axel can never be a good father for your son.’

Marianne speaks through the scarf, her face turned away from us. ‘He is crazy about Patricia. There’s nothing I can do about the bones in his nose. He thinks only of her.’

‘I know how forgiving you can be, but not this time, Marianne,’ Charmian says. ‘And what’s all this with the shawl? I can’t really make out half of what you’re saying…’

Charmian reaches a couple of times to pull it aside and eventually Marianne gives way and unwinds it to reveal skin that looks sore and red around her mouth and chin. ‘Oh, what is to be done?’ she says, giggling and burying her head in her hands.

‘Has something been biting you?’ Charmian asks with a wicked arch of her brow.

‘It’s not what you think.’ Marianne is still trying to conceal her hot face. Tiny blue sparks dance in her eyes. She squeaks through her fingers, ‘I am allergic to the face cream Magda got for me.’

‘Marianne!’ Charmian says. ‘I really do think you might tell our Canadian friend to buy some new razor blades.’

The harbour is jostling with yachts. The port is so crowded you might think the whole of Athens has come to the island for the festival. The artists are hopeful, displaying their paintings along the wall of the Lagoudera Marine Club; the sponge-sellers arrange their wares in tiers and pyramids at the dock and have more success than the painters. Every taverna is open, the coffee shops and bars along the waterfront are bustling, the grand stone houses high above the port throw open their shutters and old Vasilis the knife-grinder wheels his stone through the lanes.

At home I sit chin to knees in the deep window nook and watch Jimmy as he hammers nails into the rafters for my hangings and for some netting against the mosquitoes. I don’t have a bite on my body thanks to the superior bait that lies sprawled beside me every night. He balances, naked and effortless, with one foot on the bedpost, reaches for the furthest beam with a mouthful of nails. His calf muscles flex, and I watch the shifting contours of his bum which is as burnt-honey tanned as the rest of him. No wonder the mosquitoes thirst for his body. I see the way other girls look at him, grown-up women too. I’d like to build a moat around him and fill it with crocodiles. I hug my knees tighter, say what I’ve been meaning to say for the last few nights. ‘We could always convert to Greek Orthodox and get married on the island.’