Graham Swift - Out of This World

I met him at Thermopylae. How about that? Where Leonidas held the pass, keeping the world safe for democracy. But he wasn’t called Leonidas. Just Joe. And Thermopylae now is a pull-in with some road-houses where the Athens — Salonika buses take a half-hour break. On one side of the road are steep rocks and on the other is a marsh and an ugly monument to the battle.

He picked me out straight away from that busload of yawning, stretching passengers. And I had him down as English before he even spoke, because only Englishmen abroad have that faint look about them of the boy scout. Even when they’re driving a white Mercedes.

You know what my first thought is? To pretend I’m Greek! Defending the pass. Ha! But that lasts about two seconds. Because he says, ‘You’re not going all the way to Athens in that thing , are you?’ And it’s true, it was some bus. My suitcase was strapped to the roof with about a ton of other misshapen luggage, and we had a hard job persuading the driver to fetch it down.

‘I’m air-conditioned,’ he says. Then he laughs, the laugh of a man who wears laughter like a second skin. ‘I mean, so is my car.’

He orders two beers and souvlákia — in a terrible accent — and says, What was I doing in Greece? And I say, Oh, just travelling, a tourist. You looked Greek, he says. And I say, Oh, so how did you know I wasn’t? And he says, You looked lost too. And I thought, Well, okay, so that’s a well-tried line: the little lost girl. So I look at him meekly and girlishly and say, ‘And what are you doing in Greece?’

You see: older men . Schoolgirl parties. Fathers of friends. Uncle Frank even. Looking up at them all eyelashes and sweet admiration. Not even knowing I might be making them sweat. So when I meet a man, one to one, on neutral territory, in Thermopylae of all places, what do I do but slip into the same old role? Wanting there to be this safe buffer of an imaginary generation between us, wanting to be like a child, and wanting him to erase that touch of the boy scout. Which unnerves him. Because he’s only twenty-five, for a start — he gets that in early. Twenty-five but a company executive. And the more he tries to play his side of it, the more he betrays that he’s just a kid really, though a kid who’s landed on his feet. Here he is in Greece for a whole year, working for a tour company that’s just started to take off, swanning around in a hired Mercedes, doing deals and making contacts. And out of nervousness or naivety or just sheer high spirits he starts to talk to me as if I’m some client he has to impress. He says, This is the age of fun, the age of leisure, the age of the holiday — there never was a time to be alive like the 1960s.

And I’m thinking: Okay, so there’s no threat here. And Jesus, I am the older one. My head full of Homer and Sophocles and scholarship and sage thoughts. Sophia! Sophia! You know what my name means?

So what am I doing talking to a shrink?

And I fell for him. I fell for him like I would go on falling for him, till I was pregnant. Like a mother falls for a little boy she does and doesn’t want to grow up. I’d got it wrong, you see. The wrong way round. What I needed was a younger man.

We drove past signs to Chalcis and Thebes. He kept looking at me, turning his head quickly from the road as we drove. I kept my eyes ahead, but I could tell that with each glance he was a little less certain, the laughter in his face melting away. That his plan, whatever his plan had been — an old, hackneyed plan — was being modified, changed. He hadn’t reckoned on this . He was going to have to take me seriously. And I was thinking, I shall have to tell him lots of things, the whole story of my life perhaps. Oh, and another thing I shall have to tell him: that I’m still a virgin.

I’d never felt so beautiful.

The sun was sinking. You know about the light in Greece? How it goes purple and violet and rose. Greek light. I thought: I hadn’t come to Greece to find my mother. I’d come to find myself, to find my own life. And here I was, in the land of gods and heroes.

And I’d never thought the world could be so lovely. White houses stepping down to the sea on all those little islands. Painted eyes on painted boats. Olive trees turning silver in the breeze. And the lemon trees on Poros and the pines throbbing with cicadas and their own hot scent. I never thought the blue Aegean could be so blue-blue-blue. Or the days so dazzling. Or the nights so voluptuous and starlit. Or the heat so flagrant, so that you felt all the time you were really naked, just the thin sleeve of your clothes between you and the world, and you could walk down even a raucous Athens street, as brazen, as confident and erotic (oh yes, Doctor K, no longer a virgin) as those statues of striding, beaming youths in the museums.

I used to feel almost sorry sometimes for those parties I led round the Acropolis. Round Delphi and Corinth. And Mycenae and Epidauros. Because they weren’t in love too? How did I know? They were on holiday, weren’t they, having the time of their lives? But they could look so lost and sheepish, stumbling around those ruins, as if, without their guide, they wouldn’t have known what to do. Or as if it didn’t matter what the guide said or whether or not it was true, so long as she just kept talking. I used to pick out the ones who fancied me. Middle-aged husbands with straw hats and peeling noses. Not listening and not looking at what they were meant to be looking at. Nothing like knowing one man is crazy over you for spotting the others.

But when I’d finished, there would always be the ritual, the duty of the cameras. Always leave plenty of time, pause at the best places, for photographs. I used to think, Why is it so desperate, so sad, so urgent — everyone taking the same pictures? And I’d come to this conclusion: They are trying to possess something that doesn’t belong to them.

I used to tell Joe sometimes — as if I were responsible: But they don’t seem to enjoy themselves. And he’d say, ‘Don’t patronize the paying customer. Who knows what they feel? Maybe they’ve never had a holiday abroad before. Never seen the world. Eyes down all their lives. You put them suddenly in the sunshine, show them the sights. They’re a little shy, a little dazzled. Like I was, goddess …’

That’s what he used to call me. Goddess. We used to make love right there in the office on Nikodhimou. The blinds drawn and the evening noise in the street. His head in my thighs.

He said it would be easy. I knew about all that stuff , didn’t I? And I spoke some Greek. And he’d fix up my papers, no problem. Guide and courier. So I wrote to Grandad and said I wouldn’t be coming home, after all, in September, in fact I wouldn’t even be going to university (I’d write separately). The fact was I’d met this man, and he could get me a job. The fact was I was happy . And I think it was that word, heavily underlined, that made him write back, without a hint of reproach, whatever he really felt, and say I must do what I thought was best, I was eighteen now. But I would remember to write to him, wouldn’t I?

So I stayed the whole winter. I stayed till Joe’s year was up. I wrote Grandad letters. We had the apartment on Ippodamou Street and the place on Poros Mr Zoumboulakis lent us for weekends. They say Poros is all ruined now. In the winter there were still plenty of tour parties wanting to do Athens and trips out. Sounion. Marathon. ‘Had the Athenians not won at Marathon, the whole history of our civilization might have been different.’ (Got that, everyone?) In between, on the coach rides, little snippets of mythology. The deeds of Theseus. How the Aegean got its name.