Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat (5 page)

“Hey, man,” he said, dangling a primitive-looking key before my eyes, and giving me a conspiratorial wink. “Take the
trikiklo
. Impress her.”

I HAD ALREADY BEEN
away for about a month and I was beside myself at the prospect of seeing Ana. She wore a straw
hat with real cornflowers in the band and, as a consequence of a felicitous acquaintance in the airline industry, she had been plied with so much alcohol on the plane that she was almost unable to speak. Weaving in the
trikiklo
through the frenzied Athens traffic, I took her to the whorehouse where, in rather unpromising circumstances, we did what we could to become reacquainted with each other.

Later, with Ana fast asleep, I took the
trikiklo
back to the boatyard.

“So where’s your girlfriend, man?” asked the Nikoses, in what I thought was a rather conspiratorial fashion.

“Er … she’s sleeping. But she was certainly impressed by the
trikiklo.”

“Well, bring her down to the boat tomorrow, man. We’d sure as hell like to meet her.”

Over coffee and cake I told Ana how disappointed I was about not having the boat to take her for a spin round the islands. I had been dreaming of this ever since I got involved with the Crabber, but now it was not to be.

“But I’d like to see your boat, anyway,” she said.

So next morning I took her down to meet the Nikoses and show her the Crabber. I thought I might have made a horrible mistake when the Nikoses turned on their Mediterranean charm and gallantry, and I felt wanting by comparison. I was just an ungainly Anglo-Saxon oaf. Ana was enchanted by the dazzling Nikoses, who had spruced themselves up to a certain limited extent for this meeting, and she also professed a certain admiration for the Crabber. All in all we spent a pleasant hour.

As we turned to leave for the shabby hotel and the
grubby beach, tall-dark-Nikos beckoned me to follow him. He led us out of the boatyard and down onto the pontoons. We walked along past gleaming yachts and gin palaces, until he stopped at an unassuming little sailing boat that seemed somehow out of place among all the ostentatious opulence.

“There you go,” he said with a big grin. “There’s your boat. Take her away; she’s all fueled up. I guess you know how to sail, no?”

“B-but what do you mean, Nikos?” I spluttered.

“This is Nikos’s boat … well, it’s not exactly his, but we fixed things so you can use it. Nobody’s gonna know. Go on, take Ana for a trip down the coast; Sounion is a kinda nice trip … and it’s easy, too: just stick to the coast and turn left after a couple of hours.”

I HAVE TO ADMIT
that the boat was not up to much … I mean, it was a great gesture on the part of the Nikoses, but it was disappointingly similar to Keith’s wretched tub. Nonetheless, I was ecstatic at the mere thought of getting out there on that glorious sea with my girlfriend, in any kind of boat. And to Ana one boat was much like another.

So we motored out of the marina, hoisted the sail, and, with me happily wielding the tiller and Ana taking instructions at the jib, we sailed away on that sunny afternoon, hugging the coast all the way down to Sounion. Toward evening we anchored in the bay about fifty yards off the beach and, with our clothes in plastic bags held high above our heads, we swam to the shore.

As night fell we wandered in the moonlight alone at the Temple of Poseidon, high on the cape of Sounion. We sat side by side on a warm rock and watched the play of the moon on the ancient white marble, and wondered at the loveliness of Greece. It put Ana in mind of poetry. She began to declaim little snatches of epic verse I’d long forgotten … if I’d ever known them at all.

“That’s nice,” I said, slipping my arm round her shoulders. “Did you just make that up?”

“It’s Byron,” she replied … with just a hint of condescension in her voice. “He sat perhaps on this very stone, and I think he carved his name on one of these pillars of the temple.”

“No? Surely not. What a dastardly thing to do.”

“Indeed. And I’m pretty sure he slept here too. He was very keen on sleeping wild in classical monuments, or maybe he just liked climbing up to them to see the sunset and got stuck in the dark.”

I thought for a moment how romantic it would be to curl up together in the shelter of an ancient marble block for the night. But then I remembered how cold marble gets, and how sharp and very stony it can be, and our snug boat lulled by the calm waters seemed a much better option.

We drank wine at a taverna on the beach, and ate a sweet pink fish, alluringly arrayed upon its dish, while the foam from the wavelets lapped at our bare feet in the sand. Sated with all that succulence and not a little sodden with wine, we swam out to where the boat swung on her anchor and settled down in the balmy night air to sleep on the deck beneath the moon and stars.

Next morning we headed home, scudding on a west by northwest wind back toward the loathsome Kalamaki. It was a matter of getting the boat, which the Nikoses had clearly nicked on our behalf, back to the marina before its owner discovered its loss.

“You wanna be careful get that boat back here before two o’clock, because if not she turn into a
karpouzi,”
tall Nikos had said, rather pleased with his variation on the Cinderella theme. (A
karpouzi
is a watermelon.)

The sea was the deepest blue but for the pale white foam of the bow wave. The scents of baked rosemary and thyme and pungent, hot pine swirled in warm currents of air off the land to delight us as we passed.

ANA HAD ONLY A
few days left before she had to return to Sussex. She had a business to see to. Just before I left she had begun supplying greenery to local offices to brighten their gloomy reception areas and the idea seemed to be catching on. So after little more than a week, she said her fond good-byes to the Nikoses, and, loading her bags in the back, I drove her back to the airport in the trusty
trikiklo
.

For all their qualities, the Nikoses had only the shakiest grasp of the workings of time, and thus the projected week extended ever further into the distant realms of probability. Some days they came, some days they didn’t, but little by little the boat started to take shape. We spent several days stuffed into the
trikiklo
cruising the business end of Piraeus looking for an engine. We found one that fit, humped it back to the Crabber, and the Nikoses set
about installing it. I busied myself with the less technologically demanding work of sanding down and oiling the mast and spars.

We were clearly on the final stretch now.

Then one particularly luminous morning—I remember that even in Kalamaki there was a special quality to the light reflected in the grubby scum of the harbor—Nikos handed over a crumpled message. It was from Jane, sent via Ecstaticos, whose contact details I had given her as soon as I had engaged him. She was at Spetses at last in their summer villa and there was her telephone number. I dropped my oily paintbrush and rushed to the Bar Thalassa, where as a regular customer they let me use the telephone.

“Hi, Boss. How’s the hips?” I asked.

“Much better now I’m here—nothing a bit of Greek sunshine and sea won’t cure. Your Ecstaticos tells me the boat’s nearly ready.”

“It’s looking good. I don’t want to be unduly optimistic, but I reckon within the week she should be done.”

“Well, that’s the most marvelous news, Chris. Now tell me, would you care to come across on the hydrofoil and join us for luncheon tomorrow? I’d love you to meet our friends here, and I can hand you the papers for the boat.” It seemed Captain Weare had only had photocopies…. Hmm, so maybe she hadn’t been quite so trusting after all.

SO THE NEXT MORNING
I took the bus along to Piraeus and hopped on a hydrofoil, one of the “Flying Dolphins,”
known by the Greeks as
Flyings
. The sea was rough, so the passengers were confined, moaning and subdued, to the cabin, and all I saw of the sea and the islands was a blur of rock and water through spray-soaked windows. I buried my nose in
Zorba
. In a couple of hours, squinting against the noonday sun, I stepped onto the long concrete quay of Spetses. Cries of
“Ella, Ella”
(“Here! Here!”) rang out around me as the crew nonchalantly tossed ropes onto the quay. The handful of disembarking passengers shouldered their bags, some hugging waiting families or lovers; a trolley manned by a handsome brown-limbed youth picked up the parcel post. I watched as the hydrofoil eased slowly away from the dock—more cries, more snaking ropes—then I turned and followed the Spetsiots up toward the town.

My first Greek island, a richly textured little city-state. It smelled of the sea, of which there was a lot, it being an island; also hot pine because what wasn’t beach or olive grove or town was pine forest … and then there was fish, fresh or frying, and roasting meat. As a subtle counterpoint there was burnt petrol from the little motorbikes and vans, and from time to time an agreeable hint of drains.

Little wooden boats, blue and white, the beautiful Greek caïques, jostled one another on the swell set up by the unruly sea. Gulls cried, flapping to and fro with beakfuls of the glistening bowels of fish. Outside the
kafeneion
, fishermen, dressed like Bolsheviks in worn shirtsleeves and frayed trousers, sat at wooden tables, idly clicking their worry beads and nursing little glasses of milky ouzo and water. The town was tiny, a labyrinth of cobbled alleys clustered
round the dock. The buildings blazed white in the bright sunshine, with the woodwork picked out in blue. The scale, the proportions, and the color seemed perfectly contrived to make you feel at ease. Here and there handfuls of holidaymakers ambled among the alleys, happily displaying their newly browned limbs. They smelled of the sweetest scents and suntan lotion, and they laughed and twittered in that peculiar state of abandon and gaiety that holidays bring.

The euphoria was infectious; I gave a hitch to my bag and strolled among the squares and alleys, my heart lightened by so much beauty and pleasure. Little by little I left behind me the hubbub and the din of the town and, following the directions that Jane had given me, climbed up through the quieter streets to the north, hugging the shade to escape the fierceness of the glaring sun. A mottled dog loped by. Somewhere a turkey gobbled. A donkey tethered in the shade of a tall eucalyptus tree brayed long and loud, enough to break your heart.