Cretan Teat

After Boris and I had seen Agia Anna, we travelled by bus back to our hotel, where we had a drink together. To be honest, we had a titter at the thought of the Virgin Mary running out of milk. After which, I hastened up to my room to have a shower, followed by plenty of talcum powder. At my age, there’s always a suspicion that you may smell unpleasant.

I made a note about a possible story. It unfolded as I wrote. My main preoccupation was to meet up again with Ingrid that evening. Ingrid was a Danish lady of uncertain age, staying in the hotel with her daughter, Lisa. The daughter, a woman in her late thirties, was recovering from some kind of nervous breakdown. My sights, however, were set upon the mother, the amusing and civilised Ingrid Gustaffsdotter.

How was it that I sensed no sexual interest in the younger woman, and plenty in her mother? I suspected this inherited detection system – a cunning mixture of pheromones and body language, for a start – must have developed many generations earlier in human history.

Boris cleared off into town, disappearing with his usual brand of glum cheer. I settled down to wait in a comfortable wicker chair for Ingrid’s return from the beach. I read a page or two of the novel I had brought on holiday with me. The novel, as if it matters to you, was by Arturo Perez-Reverte, entitled The Victor Hugo Club.

Ingrid and I had met at a nightclub the previous evening. A rather sly little friendship had developed. I loved her perfect English, spoken with that alluring accent. While I did not particularly wish Boris to know of this liaison, Ingrid seemed determined to keep it a secret from Lisa. Some recent incident, of which Ingrid would not speak, had upset this eldest daughter of hers. She also had two younger daughters in Denmark. They were safe in the care of an aunt. It was Lisa who most required her mother’s protection.

Ingrid showed up at about four-thirty, immaculate in a pale green linen suit, with a wide-brimmed white linen hat. She wore sandals; her toenails were painted green. I put my novel aside and ordered us a bottle of wine.

We had a sophisticated way of courting each other, she and I; for Ingrid was a professor of English Literature at Copenhagen University.

So it was, over our glasses of Chardonnay, I quoted to her:

Cupid’s an infernal God and underground With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound: Men to such gods their sacrificing coals Did not in altars lay, but pits and holes.

She was quick to respond, from that same naughty Donne:

Rich nature hath in women wisely made Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid: They then, which to the lower tribute owe, That way which that exchequer looks must go.

Such exchanges caused a stirring below the little wrought iron tabletop. As we talked, I became convinced that this lady, with her pink gums and pearly teeth, was deserving of what a lady novelist of my acquaintance genteelly calls, ‘a kiss between the legs’.

As we were growing cosier in our conversation, seeing Lisa approaching, Ingrid said hastily, ‘Climb over my balcony tonight – I’ll be in my room waiting for you. I must take care that Lisa does not know of this.’

It can be imagined with what a fever I lurked in my room later that evening. I took a shower to cleanse and cool myself. I put on shirt and trousers. Ah, my dainty dirty-minded Danish dove, I may be getting on in years, but I am inventive and know more than one way to please you and surprise you. How are you feeling now? What do you hope for? What do you expect? It is entirely ready for you.

My room was next to Lisa’s; then came Ingrid’s room. Our rooms looked out on the Libyan Sea. Each had a balcony. Since the rooms were not large, the balconies almost touched each other; there was no danger involved in climbing from one to the next. I had only to cross Lisa’s to reach Ingrid’s.

Some minutes after eleven-thirty, I judged Lisa to be asleep. High with expectation, I went onto my balcony. The sea glittered under a moon shining high behind the hotel. What a night for love! Ingrid was old and soft and affectionate. I could imagine no greater bliss than to lie in her embrace! I went to the iron railing. I lifted my leg to swing it over.

Unfortunately, my damned leg was too stiff to reach the required level. I wrenched at the stupid thing. A bone creaked. It would not go. The first inkling of cramp warned me to cease my useless efforts.

I stood there in the shadows, out of breath.

How maddening to be thwarted by one’s own limb! I had forgotten it was seventy years old. Even the independent-minded member nearby was more loyal to its master…

The furniture of the balcony consisted of a metal table and two metal chairs. As quietly as I could, I drew up one of the chairs, setting its back against the balcony rail. I climbed on to it.

The chair tipped.

I fell back. The chair toppled sideways with a clatter. With an even louder clatter, the table I struck with my shoulder capsized. I could hear the noise of it rushing down the street and out to sea, to alarm the fishermen at their nets.

Immediately, a light came on in Lisa’s room.

Fatally injured though I was, I crawled away into my room, dragging my legs behind me, concealing myself just as Lisa came rushing out on her balcony.

Lying mute on the floor, clutching my knee, I heard her call her mother. Ingrid arrived on her balcony and the two exclaimed in Danish. By the tone of Ingrid’s voice, I could tell she was soothing her daughter: ‘Not a burglar, dear, merely a cat…’

Eventually, they both went back to their beds.

Eventually, I crawled into my bed. Well, there, I am seventy. What do you expect? Sometimes, ideas of romance outlive the anatomy.

Sprawled on the bed in total darkness, I found cause to reflect – as everyone must do at some time or another – that life, which seems so full of opportunities, denies us too much, whatever we do or refrain from doing, or find ourselves incapable of doing.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why we enjoy reading novels: there, in the secrecy of their pages, we find persons who defy life and do those things – grand, awful, delectable, or trivial – which we have denied ourselves, or have been denied. You don’t imagine that in a fiction I would have been unable to negotiate a balcony or two, do you?

It was when lying in bed that I began again to think about Agia Anna. It was curious to reflect that a rather vital episode in the life of the infant Jesus Christ seemed to have been edited out of the Gospels. Perhaps that censorship had been accomplished by prudes and religious bigots. There may be those who fear the female breast, as they fear the vagina, because of the lascivious thoughts they engender. Something of that nature may have accounted also for the flabby modesty of Agia Anna’s breast, as depicted in the mural.

I could not help smiling at such reflections. Alas, I lacked seriousness. How different it was for my hero, Archie Langstreet. How much more Archie was destined to achieve than I!

Chapter Two (#u7d3784e8-3865-5540-a508-42c3219dba75)

The monk in Langstreet’s car directed Langstreet into wild and deserted countryside. At a certain bend in the road, the Punto had to be abandoned. Langstreet and the monk proceeded on foot. They made their way down a narrow track, which ran between ancient olive trees; the branches of the trees on one side of the way met the branches of the trees on the other side. It was dark here; evening was approaching. Langstreet stumbled on a stone.

‘Who owns this lane?’ he asked his guide.

‘Fighting was all here,’ said the monk, with a sweeping gesture.

‘I asked you who owned the lane.’

‘Maybe is Family Paskateris. At the end of the twelfth century, Byzantine noblemen moved to Crete. They fight against the Venetians. Once was very rich, long ago but not now. Except one man, is now our mayor.’

They trudged on as the gloom intensified.

At last, the monk grunted and stopped. He heaved at a section of fencing that guarded the grove on their left. It fell away. Langstreet climbed through, to stand amid rank grass. The monk followed, replacing the fencing behind him.

He gestured ahead. ‘Here is a chapel, but is too near to darkness to see in a good way.’

They tramped among the trees, distorted into bizarre shapes by the extremes of old age. The gloom was pierced by a lingering ray of the setting sun which cut through a gap in the mountains nearby. Its smouldering light lit the front of a small stone building. The building was low and square, resembling a stable except for a bell set in its front facade.

The monk pushed at the door. It yielded grudgingly at his third heave. They entered with bowed shoulders.

A scent of incense, just a ghost of a trace of incense, reached Langstreet’s nostrils. Incense, mingled with damp and age and old stories. The monk shone a small pocket torch.

‘No, wait!’ The thin white beam destroyed the atmosphere. Langstreet went to the rear of the chapel. There was only a cubby-hole, no ikonostasis: clearly this family, Family Paskateris, had not been of the wealthiest. In the cubby-hole lay a few brown candles, slender as willow twigs, and a rather damp box of matches. Getting a match to strike, Langstreet lit the wick of a candle. Its frail glow warmed the preoccupied lines of his face, making of it an ikon in the surrounding gloom. He carried the candle back to where the monk stood.

‘Would you permit me to remain here alone for a moment, please?’ he asked.

‘I shall remain outside.’ As the monk opened the door, Langstreet had a glimpse of the thicket of olive trees, hieroglyphics of age as they slipped into darkness. The door shut. He was alone in the old chapel. He crossed himself.

No windows punctuated the rough stone walls of the building. Four cane-bottomed chairs huddled together in a corner, refugees from family congregations. There came to Langstreet’s mind the thought of his family’s fortunes, his parents arriving in England, a foreign land, his mother dying – that pain, still attendant on him – his father’s remarriage into a wealthy Scottish family, his own marriage to Kathi. That change of nationality a generation ago: it was brought about by the tides of history. This chapel must have represented security, piety, to a family facing the changing fortunes of time.

Langstreet was moved to kneel on a damp patch of carpet. Clasping his hands together, he uttered a short prayer.

‘Great Lord, I thank you that I have been able to emerge from the darkness of an evil history into the light of goodness, through your good guidance. Here in this humble place where you still dwell, I beseech you to remain with me while I endeavour still to make restitution for the past. And I pray that my dear wife may come to understand these things which I do in your name. Amen.’

Whoever the generations had been, worshipping here, they had certainly experienced no diminution in the desire of the outside world for olive oil. But slowly their means of processing and distribution had fallen behind the technological advances elsewhere. Now the olive-crushing machines in Kyriotisa – those old-fashioned engines Langstreet had briefly glimpsed in the town – supplied their oil to Italy, where it was bottled and sold as genuine Italian oil. There was no longer a name for the Kyriotisan olive oil which once had been praised in Constantinople.