Songs of Blue and Gold (17 page)

‘Manos, my old landlord before the war, led me here.

‘He is always busy. We can hear him shouting on the rocks below, as we lie in our stark white rooms, the light playing in waves on the ceiling. The colours of the sea are inside too, in my wife's vast unframed canvasses. On the table where I write, my diving mask lies next to a copy of Ovid's
Amores
, a flask of Greek brandy and a salt-encrusted, sun-crinkled notebook.

‘Manos is a fisherman and olive farmer; our good friend and guide. One afternoon, as the nets lay drying, he called up. We took the small rowing boat towards the bay at Agni, past the flat plate of yellow rock where the fig tree grows in a crack, and a soft carpet of moss leads our feet past submerged boulders and inky starbursts of sea urchin. We pulled past that green headland too, and found ourselves here.

‘This was the place they had found the icon washed up, a small dark gilded oil of St Arsenius. He had clearly survived an arduous voyage, apart from some damage to his luxuriant
beard, so the fishermen felt it was right and fitting to look after him, in return for favours as yet unspecified. So they built a resting place for him, and once every year the priest was ferried here to hold a short service.

‘Manos nudged the prow right into the rock pool, and then lightly as a dancer, for all his sixty years, he leapt out of the boat and helped us scramble ashore.

‘We climbed to the door of the shrine. Once inside, he knew exactly where to feel in the darkness for a candle. In a pumpkin glow, we could make out the altar on which the saint was propped against the far wall, a quizzical and somewhat scratched expression on his venerable face.

‘A phial of thick golden olive oil was opened and poured into a lamp on the altar. He crossed himself in the Greek way, to us the wrong way round, and we tied the door closed behind us with weathered rope.

‘The next day my wife and I came back alone. We bathed naked in the rock pool, then lay eating figs and grapes in the boat. It rocked like a cradle on a blue and gold swell.'

For a long time the only sounds were the smack of water on stone, the call of birds and the tick of cicadas from the hillside.

Then he reached out to touch her for the first time.

His warm mouth tasted of musky French cigarettes.

They made love in the grove above the rocks, on grass soft as hair. He was tender with her, always. She confided to her diary that his skin smelt of honey and tasted of salt.

Elizabeth was entranced by his mind, his body and the setting. ‘It was like being locked into a spiritual experience. I could feel the nearness of immortality, the life force of thousands of years, and I was part of it, all senses heightened.
It was like nothing I had ever known before, a great doorway opening to another world.'

Afterwards they dived from the rocks, and he led her to the breech, the secret opening into the cave he called his temple.

‘I used to worship in there. A rough statue of Pan I made of clay to sit on the stone shelf. It must have dissolved years ago.'

Play of sunlight flashed jade green into the peacock blue of the water. She had never seen such shifting blues. She wanted to remember every second, every fragment of it, this intense moment. Every sense was sharp and singing. And she was conscious that she was in it, living it now.

He made her adventurous.

Catching her waist underwater, he wrapped her with his arms as if he did not want to let her go.

‘Thank you,' he said.

‘For what?'

‘You've made me young again.'

Late that afternoon, heading back across Kalami bay he changed direction as if on a whim. Behind the little village, hardly more than a string of houses above the beach, green hills rose steeply in the shape of a bowl. They approached the shore at the near end of the bay where a square white house was set almost in the arm of the headland.

‘My old home,' he said. ‘I'm going to introduce you to Manos.'

‘Manos who first took you to the shrine?'

‘The son of Manos my old landlord.'

A young boy ran out on to the jetty in front of the house. The boat shuddered as it slid into place. The boy caught the rope and tied the boat up.

‘This is his son, Manolis.'

Julian spoke to him in Greek. Manolis shook their hands with a grin on his wide, engaging face and Julian reached into his pocket for a large coin. The boy whooped with delight as he handed it over.

Elizabeth hung back as a small, sinewy man waved from the wall and then came down.

‘Here's Manos.'

He welcomed Julian with a brotherly hug, shook her hand solemnly, and led them to the waterside terrace which was shaded by an acacia tree.

Julian and Manos jabbered in frantic Greek. Now and then he turned to her and translated what had made them laugh.

‘Thanks to my phenomenal success,' he said, rolling his eyes to defuse the boast, ‘there has been a resurgence of interest in earlier work –
The Gates of Paradise
in particular. Apparently there are tourist boats with megaphones ploughing into the bay here and solemnly broadcasting that this is the very spot where all my books have been written.

‘Manos suggests that I take up residence once more in my old apartment in order to greet the crowds, Pope-like from the balcony each day at noon. Then we can all make plenty of money by staying just where we are, drinking ouzo all summer!'

Manos chuckled and shook his head. ‘Not ouzo,' he said in English. ‘Champagne!' Then, as if the thought made action, he got up and beetled inside. He emerged with a bottle of Greek wine which fizzed when he pulled out the cork.

They watched as he poured the golden effervescence carefully into three glasses.

Julian passed one to her. ‘No, wait!' he said. He looked around the terrace with some urgency, then seized on a red flower growing in a terracotta pot. He snapped off a long succulent bud and brought it to her. ‘Hold out your glass!' he said.

She did, and he dropped the bud into the wine. Magically it unfurled into a scarlet trumpet with bright yellow anther.

‘Hibiscus,' said Julian. He looked deep into her eyes. ‘Look how deep red the heart is.'

A pink trail of pigment floated through the bubbles until the wine was stained pink.

‘Can I still drink it?'

‘Of course! Manos, tell her!'

Manos nodded and clapped his hands. Elizabeth laughed, and tasted the wine over the petals, metallic and herby.

Sunburn still hot on her arms and legs, her mind still adjusting to the newness of what had passed between them, Elizabeth sat sipping in a happy daze. Everything had changed between them. It was as if this introduction to his old life marked the beginning of a new depth in their relationship, or understanding, or whatever it was between them.

When they left, he held her close in the boat, as he edged it away from its mooring. The sun was a crimson beacon
on the mountains above. Elizabeth stretched out her legs and leaned back on his shoulder. For the first time in a long while she felt at peace, happy just to be in the present.

FOR ALL HIS
grief at the loss of Simone, Julian liked to be surrounded by people. In the evenings following their afternoons in the grove, or at the olive press on the hillside, there were invitations to parties, boat trips, restaurants, and almost every night he would pitch up at one gathering or another. Often, Elizabeth went with him. His friends and acquaintances were eclectic: from the Corfiots he had known as a young man, to expatriate British and Americans, cultured and successful, poets from Athens, Yugoslavia and Paris.

One evening, she recognised the intense American woman from the restaurant among the throng at the Liston Bar. Julian made no effort to speak to her. But Elizabeth saw the expression on her thin, taut face and the same hungry stares she had given him before.

‘Who is that?' she asked him.

‘Who's who?'

‘The woman over there in the yellow. I can't remember her name. She was there that first evening in the restaurant when we ignored each other.'

She was clear still in Elizabeth's mind: the girlish scarf
around her head like an alice band at odds with her tightly controlled face. The barely repressed bitterness released by drink.

‘That's Veronica Rae,' he said.

‘Veronica . . . that's right. Who is she?'

‘What of her? There's nothing to say.'

‘She's staring. She stares at you all the time.'

‘I haven't noticed.'

‘You obviously know each other,' said Elizabeth. ‘Why doesn't she come across and speak?'

‘I really have no idea.'

But that could not have been true. Surely he wasn't oblivious to the intensity of Veronica's reaction to him.

Adie, for once, kept quiet.

‘
I was so bound into becoming whole again myself, and absorbing every second with J that I did not look beyond that
,' wrote Elizabeth on 15 July. ‘
I allowed myself to sink into this enclosed, exhilarating world of the senses that we had created
.'

It was a perfect fantasia, made more so by the implicit knowledge that it was a temporary retreat for both of them. It could not last. She was too young for him, too inexperienced. The ghost of Simone was always with them. Elizabeth knew that. In barely mentioning his loss Julian ensured she knew how deeply he was wounded. ‘
This affair is healing balm, for him as much as me
.' It was all about living for the moment, finding happiness where they had least expected.

But less than a week later, she was confessing: ‘
I am under his spell, completely. This is the real thing, for me. Could it be
for him too? Whatever happens, I want to remember this enchantment all my life. I don't care if it means more to me than it does to him
.'

Was that the wistful observation of a diary writer trying to persuade herself, in the teeth of what she knew to be true? She must have known even then that Julian Adie would always be out of reach.

If I could not see Julian Adie himself, I would search out what he saw: that was my reasoning. I might come to know him better by putting myself in his place, not by looking into his eyes but by somehow seeing out from behind them. And by using other senses: by tasting his words, rolling them around my mouth, writing them by hand on paper, matching them to my surroundings; by feeling the blue water on my skin and the ridged rocks under my bare feet; by taking in deep breaths of wild sage and pine, jasmine and the sharp orange-mustard smell of the marigolds that hung over the lane up to the White House.

In my raw state, I was sensitive to every tiny observation. Sapped by the events of the previous months, I had hardly dared look too closely at my own situation. I can see now that going to Corfu was my own escape from reality, from sadness and shock. It was my way of
trying to make sense of what had happened: my mother's death and Richard's betrayal. Giving myself this task, striving numbly for objectivity, was my way of coping.

A part of me had come to the fore, the quiet anxious part that only feels truly safe with files of information and books. In that state, I relate better to people and events reduced to print on paper or screen than with living personalities and present complications. People are less dangerous at one remove. I can rationalise it now; at the time I was dealing with life's blows the best way I could. I was even beginning to feel stronger. As if I was in control.

So I stared at the houses on the hillsides and wondered whether they had been there seventy years ago for Julian Adie to see. I walked through the olive groves and across the headlands looking for clues. This was where Julian Adie set his course: to learn how to look and to feel the spirit of place and to write; to remake himself as the person he wanted to be. In this too, he was becoming my guide.

Adie wrote of the elemental magic of the rocks and sea, but it was always beauty with a dark undercurrent. Even when the island was his paradise found, the threat of war and destruction shadowed even the brightest blue.

His account of his life with Grace at the White House has the quality of a recovered dream. ‘
On the island we live in the historic present
,' he wrote. Grace
stands on the rocks watching as a small boat edges away across fields of sea shimmer, measuring the seconds of its progress in ribbons of glittering light. She dives again and again, for cherries which she drops into the pool by the shrine. Then they sleep in the shade of an ilex, velvety sage for a pillow. They live in a place of charms and spells, and the sea is the enchantress.

There was plenty he missed out, like the physical discomforts of living in Kalami at that time. There were few modern amenities. The house would have been lit by oil lamps. Drinking water came from the spring on the hillside, routinely carried down in earthenware pots by the women. Manos's innovative plumbing was a comic thread which ran through
The Gates of Paradise
. His fisherman-landlord enjoyed inventing his own mechanical systems (including a rare flushing lavatory), ingenious but sabotaged by their own idiosyncratic flaws. This was the man who made an outboard motor for his boat out of an old well pump; it progressed at a stately pace apparently towing its own fountain.

In winter, heat came from piles of branches which smoked in the cavernous stone rooms. Local medicines were medieval, dependent on herbal remedies dispensed by the wise women of the village and hot water which could take twenty minutes to boil on a wood-burning stove. The Adies were soon sending to England for more supplies of aspirin, quinine and antiseptic lotion, which they would dispense as required to their new neighbours. The long dark nights were spent learning demotic
Greek from the village school teacher and the fisherman and his family, learning to pronounce the harsh throaty ‘g' sound while the waves crashed furiously in counterpoint on the rocks outside.