Cretan Teat

‘No village. Is church. Kostas is still living. I know it. He is my relation. His name is now Christodoulas – “He who serves Christ”.’

Thanking the woman, clutching the paper bag, they left the shop. It meant sailing back the way they had come, and so probably returning the Southern Warrior late to the rental firm in Piraeus.

‘Why not? It sounds amusing,’ said Langstreet. The remark was an uncharacteristic one, as her glance at him indicated.

‘And maybe something more than that.’

They sat in a taverna with Cliff, drinking frappé and consulting a nautical map. The mouth of the Mesovrahi Gorge was only some nine nautical miles from Paleohora, an easy sail. Cliff said he did not wish to come.

‘Oh, come on, darling, it’ll be a bit of an adventure.’

He smiled at her. ‘I’m having my adventure here, Kathi. If you’re away overnight, I can stay with Vibe… Yes, in her hotel room… Oh, don’t look so old-fashioned, father! The hotel won’t care. You can pick me up when you come back.’

‘Do come with us, Cliff,’ his father said. ‘You should not sleep with a woman so easily. Besides which, it’s safer if we’re together.’

‘Safer?’ He shook his head with affected weariness. ‘What danger is there here?’

Langstreet shrugged. ‘You never know.’

So far so good. I get the impression that Archie Langstreet is a decent, serious man. Quite a different character from me. Perhaps there is an echo of my son in Cliff. On second thoughts, no, not really.

I have said very little about Boris. I call him my son, but he is not a blood relation. At one time I was living with a decent woman called Polly Pointer. My life was then sane and orderly.

Polly was superintendent of a home for unwanted children, and that was where she picked up Boris. His parents had beaten and abandoned him. She brought him home one day, a small sad mite of a boy who said nothing for two or three weeks. Tell me I have no sense of responsibility, but Boris was not popular with me.

Polly and I quarrelled over the boy. I said she should have consulted me before bringing him home. The bad feeling between us was not improved by the child’s filthy habits, which were slow to improve.

Not that bad feelings got in the way of our fascination for each other. Here was a woman who accepted responsibility, who cared for a number of people with horrible habits. And Polly did care – in a calm, deep way. What did she see in me? I was an independent spirit; I did not have to answer to a board, as she did. Also, at that time I was immensely popular and successful. I appeared frequently on TV chat shows. I was on the Literature Panel of the Arts Council, dishing out money to those less fortunate than myself (you notice that the money has run out, just when I’m broke). My novel, Whom the Gods Hate, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. All this success faded when Polly died.

There was more truth than I had bargained for in my epigram, adopted from the Greek, ‘Whom the gods hate, they first make famous’.

It seems as if, looking back, I was earning enough money to iron out our differences and live and love in some style.

As circumstances eased, Boris improved. Polly was applying to have him officially adopted. Then the home where she worked rang one day to say that Polly was injured. I left the lad with a neighbour and drove to the hospital in Bournemouth where she lay.

She had been run over in the driveway of the home. A client making an angry retreat had hit her as she ran to pick up a child who had fallen over. She died two days later, without regaining consciousness.

After the funeral, I was stunned by grief. Only then did I fully realise what a good woman she was, and how much I loved her. And how I had often quarrelled with her unnecessarily.

Poor dear Polly! I had taken her for granted. What do you expect? That’s life, as they say. She had been so joyous; without that joy, I was one of the walking dead.

For Polly’s sake I did not get rid of Boris. He was by now a lonely and still oddly behaved little boy. I tried to talk to him about Polly.

‘She didn’t love me,’ he said. He was merely responding to the pattern of his life.

‘Yes she did, she loved you very much. Polly chose you of all the children in the home.’

‘She didn’t love me, or else why did she die?’

How often I cried over that very question; it was one I could not help asking myself. How self-centred I was, crying more for myself than for her.

Now I think of it, I remember ringing my literary agent at that time, about something or other, and telling him that only women were capable of real joy. Not men. Men hid their incapacity in obsessions, such as writing. Real joy was granted only to women.

‘And how do you make that out?’ he had asked.

‘It’s a fact, Will. Something everyone knows. Like the fact that if you live in London you’re never more than a yard from a rat. Men should be humble before women, and serve them.’

‘Jesus,’ he said, and put the phone down. I then recalled what a big woman his wife was.

Anyhow, to cheer up this narrative a bit, I must relate that I bought Boris some livestock to keep him happy. I was such an inadequate father. Firstly, I bought him a pair of ring-doves. Boris would be quiet in the garden, sitting on a log, to watch those pretty birds for hours, as they were cooing and flitting from tree to ground, strutting, flirting, seemingly everything to each other, the most contented of creatures.

For his indoor companion, I bought him an iguana. We went together to a pet shop and chose a small common iguana, young but wise-looking. Years later, Fred, as we called him, had grown to be five feet long and became rather a problem; but Boris and I loved him from the start.

We got two goats, which were rather a nuisance. But why am I telling you all this? So that you will know something of this rather silent lad, now almost a man, who still lives with me, who came on holiday with me to Paleohora, and remains a mystery to me, as I to him. He is studying to be a naturalist. His affections are directed, not to women or men, as far as I can see, but to the world of birds and animals.

Much of my present trouble springs from my flying Boris to Tuscany to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. Our intention was to take a party of four friends, two adults and a girl and a boy, with us; but one of them fell ill at the last moment. Boris and I went alone, to a large, sparsely-furnished house in the wilds. I had a book to write. Boris cycled about the countryside, watching for wildlife.

One evening, as I sat on the balcony with a glass of wine by my elbow, I saw Boris coming along the valley road, pushing his bike. With him was a young woman, walking in a confident manner. A woman, or girl, I should say, he had met in a village trattoria. This was Lucia, a pretty dark-haired girl, whose breasts were noticeable under her T-shirt. She wore shorts and mountain boots. They were excited, since Boris had captured a rare butterfly in a specimen jar, so introductions were perfunctory.

I was disturbed. Somehow, that sight of Boris and the young girl, with the bike, walking along that road among the poplars, seemed oddly familiar and consequently disconcerting.

‘I’ll cook us some supper,’ I said.

I poured them some wine before going to cook. Lucia – little more than a kid – followed me into the kitchen. Boris tailed after her.

Lucia said, lifting up the jar containing the butterfly, ‘Boris must let this poor creature go free, don’t you think?’

When I agreed with her, she flashed me a smile. Just to keep in practice, she took to flashing me enticing looks. I told myself they meant nothing. I like women, am generally on good terms with them, but these young specimens of their sex, just come to puberty – heaven preserve me from them!

Boris was eager to please Lucia. He emanated, he seemed to be surrounded by, a blush of emotion. Until this time, I had not seen him exhibit any sexual desire. Certainly, Lucia seemed as pleasing a cause of desire as any girl could be, if you were young and rash enough, and had a lot to learn. Old though I was, I was shortly to find I too had much to learn.

The sun had just set behind the hills. We stood outside as he opened the specimen jar. Out flew the butterfly. As it fluttered to the corner of the house, a bird flew swiftly past, snatching the insect in its beak and making off without pause. It was a terrible moment of synchronicity.

Over the meal, I asked Lucia if she was staying the night.

‘I think I will. Soon I will become a film star.’

This curious conjunction of sentences needed some thinking about. I hardly listened to Boris’ explanation of Lucia’s fortunate meeting with a British film crew making a mystery-thriller set partly in Florence. Boris seemed to my eyes clumsy and unsophisticated when compared with this sparkling and confident young creature.

‘Will your parents mind?’ I asked.

She looked at me as if I had come from the Ark. In reply, she gave what novelists call ‘a tinkling laugh’.

After the meal, Lucia started to make up to Boris, becoming coquettish and teasing him, after the manner of her kind. He was embarrassed in front of his father, so I left the house and walked through a fine night, down to the river. There I listened to the swift flow of water over the pebbles on its bed. That ceaseless energy made music through the darkness. Admittedly, I felt some envy of my son, having such a pretty girl in tow.

My heart ached for my lovely Polly.

Stars came out overhead. I watched them through the trees and thought about my life, and its unsatisfactory quality, which I recognised as being mainly of my own making.