Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

The face on the page told the story. The dark-haired woman with striking bone structure and generous mouth was almost a dead ringer for her mother. Her name was Suzanne Chick and she had written a book. She was the same age as me.

The daughter’s eyes were familiarly up-tipped and soulful, my own too blurred by tears to read on. Charmian’s face leapt at me, ashen with terror. We were outside Johnny Lulu’s and she sprang at George who was rearing away and holding up his hands like she might strike him.

Jennifer was the name of the cat that he had threatened to let out of the bag, I’m certain of that now. It was the day I found Cato, the festival; he’d been drinking all day. She was flirting with Corso who was making her giggle and Big Grace was sniping that his wife only had time for men. Not so, I had started to say… and bang , the public performance. George with pointing finger, playing to the crowd: ‘Ah, but there’s a special reason she has so much time for little Ricky here – isn’t that right, Charm?’

My heart was breaking as I read on. The daughter had been told her mother died giving birth to her. In a fundamental way, perhaps she had. Charmian had called her Jennifer. She was relinquished, along with her name, at three weeks old. The matron’s beloved brother and his wife were without children. Charmian was nineteen and unmarried, with nowhere to turn to but the hospital’s charity. She was unusually beautiful and vigorously healthy; she spoke with a cultivated voice. She didn’t stand a chance.

‘This one is special,’ the matron said, placing the baby girl, all dressed up pretty in lace, in her sister-in-law’s arms. I imagine there was little opportunity for Charmian to change her mind. With her firstborn spirited away, losing things came to define her. It wasn’t such a leap that she allowed George to steal the oxygen in the writing room, or that she let her own life spin so out of control that she lost her grip. No woman can endure the pain of losing a child.

I look across my valley to the sea and it strikes me that I’ve ended up living the life she dreamt of for herself.

It was at Charmian’s table that Dinos and I first met; I can’t help but see a twinkle in her eye: Bim having to shift along so that I would be next to him, the way she made sure Dinos knew I’d made the dolmades. Thank you! Thank you! I shout it out like the proper crazy old island woman I’ve become. And thank you for writing the book that led me here, despite the howls of despair that I now see in its pages. For all the times I’ve sat here crying for my losses, I have never felt anything close to the bite of the loneliness that she suffered so unendurably. I can no more imagine relinquishing a child than I can my own grip on this speck of whirling astral dust. No wonder she couldn’t find comfort in the stars and let go.

I keep her with me, like a wise imaginary friend, her voice my oracle. I let time slip. It’s good to dream.

They’re so vivid, the players of that first summer; here in every phase of the moon as though an eighteen-year-old me is forever appearing beneath a gauzy overlay of the present. I change. I am the same.

Not long after Marianne died, Bobby sent me a magazine from the States, along with a fancy invitation to his and Trudy’s golden-wedding bash in Boston. I turned to the article. The headline was predictable, SO LONG, MARIANNE, and the pictures of Hydra 1960. I tried to remember the face of the photographer who kept popping over from Athens. Jim was his name, an old newspaper buddy of George’s; they’d been through some scrapes together, in fact George had once saved his life in Tibet, we’d heard the stories many times…

Trudy had marked an arrow to what was unmistakably the back of my head, my ponytail glossy as I lean into a circle where Leonard plays guitar. Charmian’s beside him, so close she looks like she’s his woman, a halo of light caught in her hair. Behind them the moon is full as a silver balloon caught in the branches of the old pine tree at Douskos Taverna. Leonard handles the guitar like it’s part of his body, sits cross-legged on the wall with his back to the white-painted trunk. Charmian’s hair is freshly washed and she’s wearing a Norwegian jumper of claret wool patterned with white that Marianne has donated to help with the chill of England.

We’ve all made a pact to put our thoughts about tomorrow’s departure on hold, to squeeze every last drop of pleasure from the evening. There have been speeches, many toasts; it has the air of a wedding. Tomorrow George and Charmian leave the island for a while but tonight we are full of spaghetti and Stavros Douskos keeps the jugs of retsina coming.

Leonard’s playing ‘Red River Valley’; we all join in like we always do but it’s Charmian’s bright eyes and sweet smile we’ll be missing after tomorrow. Axel sits at Leonard’s feet hugging his knees, looking up at him like a disciple. He requests ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ but bungles the words and is rescued by Charlie Heck’s fine baritone and the rest of us join in with the choruses. Marianne catches Axel’s eye and shakes her head and he leans across and says something in Norwegian that makes her smile and pretend to slap his face.

Everyone’s beaming. Leonard retunes the guitar. He’s become a little more studied and serious, adjusts his position. We recognise the opening strum of one of his songs. Only George and Didy keep talking, which strikes me as rude given that it was George who suggested he play some of his own stuff.

Leonard’s been making up verses to this one all summer and Charmian looks blissful with her head on his shoulder while he sings.

He launches into a new verse; there’s kissing and marriage and all the women who have known him at dawn, and Charmian turns to gaze up at him.

‘You know, I was never in love with you, Leonard,’ she says and he doesn’t break rhythm to reply, ‘No, me neither,’ and they both laugh.

Thank you Lola Bubbosh for sharing a hunch and so much more. This book would not have been written without your enthusiasm and support.

I am eternally grateful to Charmian Clift for opening my eyes to Hydra with the memoir Peel Me A Lotus and to her Estate and Jane Novak for allowing me to quote from its pages. Thank you Nadia Wheatley for confronting the myths and slanders with such an excellent biography and for bringing the essays into collected editions and to my attention. As I write, Charmian Clift’s books are out of print and I thank in advance any publisher with the taste and resources to reissue them.

Serendipity has been my friend throughout the writing of this book and it has been a privilege and a joy to spend time with Jason Johnston. Thank you to him especially for the tortoises and for the word ‘crapulous’ but most of all for being so gracious about this book.

It has been invaluable to have access to the complete set of James Burke’s photographs of Hydra 1960 and I am grateful to Charles Merullo and Bob Ahern of Getty Images New York for facilitating the contact sheets.

Thank you to Leonard Cohen and the Leonard Cohen Estate for the words spoken in this book © Leonard Cohen, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC, and to Ira B Nadel, Jeff Berger, Helle Vaagland, Rob O’Connor, Ray Connolly, Bård Oses, Sandra Djwa, Malka Marom, Jed Adams and Donald Brittain for recording those words. Thank you Robert Kory.

Annabel Merullo has been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration, as has Rosie Boycott who I must also thank for sharing a Gregory Corso story that I have re-cast in these pages. Nicola Marchant has gone beyond the call of duty, special thanks to her and to Jaz Rowland. Thank you Kathy Lette for boundless enthusiasm as well as a smattering of extra bloodys and mates and crikeys and for introducing me to Thomas Keneally who generously shared his memories of Charmian Clift and George Johnston.