Out of This World (18 page)

And now I was an orphan too …

Some unthinkable night in the Blitz? Some topsy-turvy moment in the Anderson shelter when the bombs were getting close and the lamp blew out and they thought, if not now, then maybe never? I was a war baby. June 1941. I don’t remember any of it, of course. But I have to thank Hitler and Goering and the poor aim of the Luftwaffe for the bomb-site in Thorndyke Road, three blocks from Davenport Road, which gave me somewhere to play when I was young, out of the shadow of home. Kids’ games. Cowboys and Indians. Cops and Robbers. English and Jerries, naturally. Bang bang! You’re dead! What do you think, Mario, is it wrong? Is it wrong for kids to play that sort of game?

Dad thought it was wrong, of course. ‘Running the streets’. It’s not the streets, Dad, it’s a bomb-site. But I reckoned it was worth it. He tried to wop me once for hanging out down there. I saw his arm go back, but Mum stopped him. Not that she was taking my side. She just said calmly, ‘No need for that, Eric.’ And he stopped dead.

It was all brambles and nettles down there where the houses had been, and garden shrubs run wild. Like a little nature reserve. One warm Sunday morning there was this lizard just sitting on an old lump of masonry, right in front of my nose. Who’d expect to see a lizard in Tottenham? I remember looking at it, and then making a grab for it. And then the lizard was gone but I was holding its tail between
my fingers, and I thought, Oh God, what have I done? I’ve ripped a lizard in half, for no reason at all. But there wasn’t any mess, just this dry bit of tail. And when I asked my teacher, she said they could do that, just shed their tails, then grow another one. And then I thought, It’s okay. He’ll be all right. And so will I.

That’s one of the first things I noticed when Terry Gray and I went to the South of France. And again in Greece. Lizards. See them everywhere. Big ones, small ones. Green, black. On the slopes of the Acropolis. On Poros, in the garden of the villa. On the white-washed stones. Even inside, clinging to the walls. Maybe dragons are just big lizards. I told Sophie once about my London lizard. I said if I wasn’t human, that’s what I’d be. On a warm stone, lapping up the sun. Something bad comes along, like St George in his chain-mail, you just dart away. All you lose is the skin of your arse.

Something bad.

Sophie, come here. I want to lick the salt off you. Off every bit of you. Perfect skin on your arse, and all over. Greek skin. Made for sunshine. Sophie, you know what I like about this country? It feels like it’s a holiday all the time …

Zoumboulakis liked to talk business in his car. He’d take me to the Plaka. Or to Tourkolimani or Vougliameni. We’d eat platefuls of seafood, watch the yachts and the half-dressed girls. Then we’d get into his big, cool Lincoln and he’d snap his fingers to the driver to just cruise around.

‘Mr Carmichael, how wise of you – how wise of your company – to give you the opportunity to come and see for yourself. The good merchant always samples his own wares. And you are becoming, I think, just a little bit Greek?’

We would take one of the coast roads or just circle the city. Along Venizelou, Patission and Alexandras, then back along King Constantine, past the Zappeion and the Acropolis.

He would get out his cigarettes. Silver case. Offer me one.
Then that incongruous, ethnic-looking cigarette-holder. Carved yellow wood. His face never lost its look of glee.

‘Mr Carmichael, I have a friend. A ship-owner. Yes, I know, every Greek will tell you that. But in this case both things are true – the ship-owner and the friendship. My friend not only owns ships, but, like every good ship-owner, he owns land. Lots of land. Land – as you say – ‘ripe for development’. He wishes to take advantage of this ‘tourist boom’ we have discussed so much. He wishes to build hotels – ‘international’ hotels and villas. But he needs – backers.’

‘He’s a ship-owner and he needs backers?’

‘Even ship-owners do not have everything. Let us say, though, it is a matter of friends in the right places. Not friends, you understand, like me – humble and ineffective. He has friends but they are not yet in a position to help him. He will help them, they will help him. Meanwhile, he has enemies. You understand? It is a matter also of timing. But then again it is a matter of personality. My friend is timid. Powerful but timid. For the same reason that he must wait for his friends to help him, he fears that this tourist boom we are all expecting may be – ‘nipped in the bud’. How can this be, eh Mr Carmichael? My country is poor, but we have our sunshine. Who can take that from us? But my friend is timid – a fact of advantage, I need not tell you, to those who do business with him. He needs backers for his backers. But let me explain to you this mystery …’

When I rode round with Zoumboulakis like that I used to think, Is this really happening? Is this really me, Joe Carmichael? Driving around Athens, under the palm trees, past the white buildings, doing business with the friends of ship-owners? Any moment now I will be flicked back to Davenport Road and discover that it’s all only something on the television. All only a dream.

But I have this formula with dreams, Mario. Never pinch
yourself to check. If it’s good, why not take the trip? If it’s bad, why discover that you can no longer tell yourself: But it’s only a dream?

How much did I really know and how much did I pretend to myself that I didn’t? And how much, anyway, did I
believe
? That agreement I signed with Zoumboulakis was so wrapped in conditions, so all in the future, that I thought it would never take effect. And yet the bonanza of discounts and concessions it offered to Argosy Tours was too good not to hold on option. And, besides, this wasn’t my country and my business was just tourism. And I was high – just floating – on sunshine and freedom. And love.

‘Joe, you make me laugh, Joe. Joe, you’re good to be with.’

The last time he picked me up in that Lincoln was just a week after the coup. A brilliant day in late April, one of those warm, rich spring days with a southerly breeze, when it already seems like full summer. So that you felt it was all only some strange diversion – nothing essential had changed. The schools and public buildings were open again, and either because of this or because of the curfew at night or simply because of the weather, the streets seemed more crowded than ever. The cafés were full, the kiosks were as stacked as ever with foreign magazines, and, as Zoumboulakis himself pointed out, there was no short-age of coach parties, winding their way up to the Parthenon.

He said Karatsivas (we were naming names now) was having a little midday reception and it was time that we met.

He was different that day. More playful and familiar. As if, before, he had aped a certain English composure, but now he could show his true, loosened-up Greek self. When we drew up outside that huge place in Kifissiá, he buttoned his jacket and visibly stiffened, but with a hint of mischief, as if we were two boys on our first day in a new school. And, strangely enough, for this I actually felt fond of him for the first time.

I don’t remember Karatsivas clearly. I recall a man with a
high, domed forehead, grey sideburns and a cosmopolitan, faintly vexed manner. ‘Ah, Mr Carmichael. But you are so young! Our mutual venture has been blessed, so it seems. Your health, Mr Carmichael. To success. You can rely at all times, I assure you, on Mr Zoumboulakis.’ And that was all. He turned to another guest. I was even glad to feel like a minor item on his agenda.

I don’t recall Karatsivas clearly, because though it was his party and his house, it seemed he was not quite at the centre of it, it was not quite what he would have planned. And what I do remember about that party is the soldiers. The soldiers at the front gates, the parked jeeps, the soldiers visible across the lawns, under the pines and eucalyptus beyond the wire fence, standing on guard with white helmets and rifles. And the soldiers, officers, in peaked caps and sharply pressed uniforms, who seemed to make up the majority of the guests – none of them high-ranking or dripping with braid, but all of them wearing an expression of saintly authority.

Zoumboulakis steered me back to the car. He was drunk, but my head seemed stubbornly clear. ‘Now, Mr Joseph, now we have done our duty and paid our respects – to lunch! You are hungry? Vougliameni, I think? On a day like today.’

We avoided the city centre and took the country road. A long drive to the east. I didn’t speak and he seemed prepared for this. He loosened his tie, gave a belch or two and turned his head to the window, tapping his knee and hissing a tune through his teeth. On the road out of Halandri we passed whole rows of stationary armoured cars, dusty from recent manoeuvres. Then as we drove along the green slopes of Hymettos, he started to rapturize about spring in Attica.

‘But your English spring is something too. You know, I was in your country for two years, in the war. In Chatham. I have seen your “Garden of England”. Your “toast-houses”.’

He was waiting for me to pass comment, and like a true
Englishman I had buttoned my lip. It was only as we came down into Vougliameni itself and saw the blue sea and the yachts, the awnings of the tavernas and the beach dotted with coloured umbrellas, that he gave up waiting.

‘Ah, Mr Carmichael, in your country you have your system – Winston Churchill, Buckingham Palace, Rule Britannia – but here we do it differently, eh? Bam-bam! Everybody change! Bam-bam! Everybody change again! Ha! Why so solemn, Mr Carmichael, why so quiet? You are ill? You have a pain somewhere? Why not enjoy yourself? No one is stopping you from enjoying yourself. Why look over the hill when the view this way is so beautiful?
Kalí orexímas
, Mr Carmichael,
kalí thias-kedasímas
! The sensible man enjoys himself. What is the desire of every man? What is the duty of every man? To enjoy himself!’

Harry
 

Dear Sophie. Someone has to be a witness, someone has to see. And tell? And tell? Tell me, Sophie, can it be a kindness not to tell what you see? And a blessing to be blind? And the best aid to human happiness that has ever been invented is a blanket made of soft, white lies?

I never knew that Dad knew about Anna. But that night – the men on the moon and Anna up on Olympus – our minds must have crossed paths. I said, ‘There’s something I want to know.’ And after a long pause he said, ‘Anna?’ And I knew that he knew.

We had turned down the sound on the TV. The moon-men bobbed in silence over the Sea of Tranquillity.

He said, ‘Yes, I knew about Anna.’

‘But you didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t know if you knew.’

‘You were never going to tell me.’

(Sixteen years!)

‘Would you have wanted me to? If you hadn’t known?’

‘The truth.’

‘The truth!’ He snorted, made a wry face and raised his whisky glass to his lips. Outside, it was getting light.

He said, ‘You never told Sophie?’

‘No.’

‘And how did you know?’

‘Because she told me. She – confessed. You know when she got the news about Uncle Spiro. The state she was in. It wasn’t just – Before she left she said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” She was crying. She said, “I’m pregnant.” ’

But I knew before that. I knew that summer, in Cornwall. Do you remember that day – the day you almost drowned? I already knew then.

I was sitting on the rug with Stella, half-way up the beach. She was getting out the things for our picnic and I was watching her emptying the bag, shooing away a fly. I never had any special feelings for Stella Irving. Just the usual jokey flirtation (jokey! Jesus!) that goes on when two couples are together. But that morning I could have reached across that rug and hugged her like my sister, because she looked so innocent, getting out those sandwiches and chicken legs, and I could see so clearly she didn’t have an inkling.

You’d gone down to the water with Anna, and Frank had gone for some beers. It was hot. Blue sky, waves coming in lazily. Anna used to say that when the weather was like that it reminded her of Greece. She was holding your hands and making you float up in the water and kick your legs and you were both laughing.

Stella had a wide straw sun-hat. In a year’s time she would be a mother too: her own daughter. As she bent over the picnic things, the brim of the hat hid her face and I looked at her breasts in her wet swim-suit. But I thought, even if she were stark naked beside me and we were the only ones on this beach, I wouldn’t feel a scrap of lust for her. Just this need to hold her tight and say – God knows why – ‘Sorry.’

She turned towards me and I looked away, and she said,
‘You’re quiet today, Harry.’ But just as she said it, I wasn’t quiet any more. I yelled, ‘Jesus Christ!’, or something like that, and jumped to my feet. Because I’d looked towards the water and I couldn’t see you any more. I couldn’t see you. I saw Anna, ten, fifteen yards out, with her head tilted back as if she were relishing the sensation of floating freely by herself. And then I saw the splash and thrash of your arms, some way to Anna’s left, maybe five yards out. I didn’t wait. I ran down the beach, plunged in and grabbed you.

Maybe I’d got it wrong. Maybe, as Anna said, my eyes had tricked me. (My eyes!) She said you’d learnt to do it – to float by yourself and splash your arms – and in any case you could still touch bottom there with your feet. We stood round the picnic rug, and I just kept repeating, ‘She might have drowned! She might have drowned!’ I was holding you and you were crying. Frank came down the beach with a string bag full of bottles of beer and lemonade, and I saw the way he checked, recognizing a crisis: ‘What’s happened?’ Stella said, ‘Sophie got into trouble in the water. Harry’s just got her out.’ His look changed, almost relaxed. ‘Poor little Sophie,’ he said, putting down the bottles. ‘Poor little Sophie.’ Anna said, ‘She wasn’t drowning, everyone. She was trying to swim.’ Her face had this calm, sensible expression. Could she tell? Then she said to me, ‘She’s crying because you’re holding her so tight. If you’ve just saved her from drowning, there’s no need to suffocate her now.’ She said this lightly, laughingly, without anger. I thought: She doesn’t suspect. She picked up the beach towel and held it between her opened arms. ‘Come here, Sophie.
Ela sti Mammásou
. Daddy just thought –’ I thought: I could just hold on to you. Let her stand there like that with the towel and her arms emptily open. Then she’d know.