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The property was a picturesque smallholding that straddled two hills and rolled away towards a rocky coastline. The name, presumably charming in Greek, translated clumsily to ‘Goat’s Neck’ in English, which, according to Theodora, was on account of the way the property occupied its own small peninsula and was dotted with goats.
When Theodora heard from Urian’s aunt that the family’s dry-cleaning business on the mainland was struggling she’d called Urian in Athens and persuaded him to sell. As far as she was concerned she’d brokered the deal of the century, so my sudden retreat drove her into a frenzy of indignation and she persisted with her assault like a fly smashing into glass.
The entire thing left me feeling sick and confused. Clearly his family were in dire straights financially, but this was their history for God’s sake! Urian’s legacy. I’d seen the pain in his eyes the first time I’d met him.
‘Our Country is on Sale’ he said.‘ Foreigners will come to buy us.’
How could I do that? Be the foreigner that capitalised on his loss. The vulture that tore the meat from his bones. I wanted to be toasting the sunset on Goat’s Neck beach with him, not driving him from the place he loved.
To avoid her I tried to keep on the move. I started going to Kikis for breakfast, mostly in the hope of seeing Urian, but also because I became quite fond of Mr Potatohead whose name I’d since learned was Evangelos.
His wife Sofia was equally charming. She ran the kitchen while Evangelos did front of house, a job ideally suited to him. Wherever he went he was followed by a menagerie of people and animals wanting his attention – the keys to the cellar, a titbit of bacon, a pat on the head. One of his errant offspring was invariably hanging off his leg as he gracefully wove his way between tables with plates held aloft in his massive hands. Even Barbara Streisand plumped up his feathers and called out loudly as he passed. Evangelos made a habit of stopping every so often, no matter how busy the restaurant, and scratching the colourful bird behind the ear. His party trick was to dance comically in front of it which would make Barbara Streisand jump up and down in excitement and shout ‘Yaso, yaso’ loudly.
If I turned up before ten I was usually in time to see Urian and Gregorie arrive for breakfast. My heart would speed up as soon as I heard the distant buzz of their motorbike coming over the hill. Ridiculous I know, but it felt enlivening having an adolescent crush after all these years. It made me want to feel beautiful again with that same blushing awkwardness that gave teenaged passion its pulse-quickening edge. The more Andrew annoyed me with his pompous calls from Brussels (barked instructions and orations about his own glorious conquests), the more I justified my titillating daydreams to myself. I’d played the dutiful housewife for fifteen years. Hell, I was owed a few harmless fantasies.
Not that Urian even looked my way. He’d stalk in, grab a paper, order a coffee and commandeer his usual table on the veranda without so much as a surly nod. Clearly he wasn’t a morning person. Although he didn’t seem like much of a night person either, given how moody he’d been the first night we’d met. That set me off thinking about the times of day that would suit Urian…
Carnal carousal at dawn?
Febrile fondles at dusk?
Comforting cuddles at lunch?
I needed to get a grip.
Gregorie was the opposite. Warm, convivial, approachable. There was clearly something going on between him and Turban Girl as they often arrived together and shared things like forks and plates of food. She could speak fluent Greek (of course!) and I’d turn green with envy as she huddled conspiratorially over the newspaper or round the radio.
Only Gregorie was kind enough to give me the time of day. He usually wandered over after breakfast and asked what I’d been up to, whether I’d taken in the caves at Agios Ioannis or climbed Papas, the island’s highest mountain. I usually felt embarrassed that I’d done so little with my time.
Moisturising.
Exfoliating.
Detoxing.
Toning.
That’s what filled my days.
Halfway through my stuttered excuses I’d feel Urian turn his scornful gaze on me. Once, I was brave enough to return his stare but I had to break away first. He just continued staring over his paper with his bottomless brown eyes as if seeing me exactly for who I was. No one.
After that I often felt his hot stare penetrating my forehead from across the restaurant as I self-consciously scooped my yoghurt and honey into my mouth, trying not to smudge my lipstick. His expression was unreadable, but I figured it was one of disdain. I was the vanguard of league of greedy foreigners come over from Europe to gobble up his heritage like low-hanging fruit off a vine. What was he thinking? Did he know I was the devil Theodora was in league with? Or did he just disdain me for being a stupid, botoxed foreigner? The more he condemned me with his Heathcliffian scorn, the more I responded with a Brontean yearning to feel his thighs against mine.
Back home in the villa I Facebook-stalked him – but of course he was way too cool to be on Facebook. In desperation, I ended up Googling his name like the sad loner I was. I found it on a page of popular Greek names for boys.
Get this, Urian means ‘from Heaven’.
Naturally.
Theodora worked herself into a flat spin of bewilderment over my refusal to engage. I had the money, she had the property - why would I not dance? She soon worked out my new schedule and started turning up earlier in the mornings, prompting me to take up jogging to Livadi before breakfast. If I left early enough I could catch the cinematic splendour of dawn breaking across turquoise sea. I’d circle the castle ruins and then double back to the concrete bunker restaurant where I’d do my stretches on the shuttered deck.
Livadi was so peaceful at dawn. The bedraggled city of colourful hippy tents flapped contentedly in the breeze and goat bells chimed softly in the surrounding hills.
One morning I saw Turban Girl crawling out from one of the tents. She was instantly recognisable from the trademark coil of tangerine fabric wrapped around her head despite the fact that she was wearing only a skimpy brown bikini.
I studied her through the small window between my thighs as I counted my sit-ups. Her breasts were large and pendulous while by some strange miracle her arms remained thin and her stomach flat.
Bitch.
She probably did no exercise at all.
As if reading my thoughts she stretched and yawned, arching out the vertebrae of her spine like an oversexed cat. In her hand she appeared to be holding something – a leather pouch. She sauntered over to a rock near the water’s edge, perched on top and began digging around in the pouch until she produced a roll of tobacco and a packet of Rizlas. Of course, I thought to myself sourly, Turban Girl was far too cool to smoke pedestrian cigarettes like the rest of us plebeians. It went without saying she’d roll her own.
The luminous surf framed her bent head as she painstakingly rolled her smoke with the same care she’d taken over her leather bracelets. Then she lit up and smoked with ritualistic solemnity, savouring the morning light in meditative silence. She looked beautiful sitting there. Like a rebellious mermaid that had crawled from the lapping waves to escape Neptune and his lecherous demands.
When she was done smoking, she ground the fag out on a rock and stood up, turning in my direction. I ducked involuntarily but she didn’t see me spying on her from the deck like a weirdo. Instead of going back to her tent, she picked her way through the thorny undergrowth to the dune behind, kicking at the sand as if she was looking for something. Intrigued, I sat up and squinted to get a better look. To my horror she yanked down her bikini bottoms and squatted down to pee in broad daylight.
Unbelievable.
Simultaneously disgusted and fascinated, I froze, mesmerised by the stream of yellow urine that shot out from between her legs into the sand. Suddenly she looked up, directly into my eyes, and lasered me with a penetrating glare as if she knew I’d been there all along. Flustered, I launched back into my sit-ups with the commitment of an Olympic athlete.
You’d think she would have dived for cover or something but she just carried on squatting there, staring straight at me and peeing into the sand like a horse. When she was done she waggled her bum in the air for a few seconds before pulling up her pants and nonchalantly strolling back to her tent.
By then I’d done so many crunches my stomach was killing me and I collapsed back onto the deck in agony. Something about the girl infuriated me. The way she met my gaze as if I was the one committing the transgression through my voyeuristic curiosity, not her by peeing in a public place. Annoyed by her louche confidence and my own spinelessness, I pounded up the hill at double the speed, my anger building with each step.
Jogging’s not great for the skin. The repetitive up and down motion tears at the collagen and makes it sag like a rubber band that’s been stretched once too often. Each time my trainers struck the tarmac I pictured the hundreds of small rents opening up in my subcutaneous layer. But whereas in the past I had avoided activities that diminished my looks, for once it actually felt liberating embracing the destruction that the act of living entails.
Fuck the shackles of perpetual youth, I ranted as I pounded my way home
Fuck the fear of aging, I fumed as I opened my stride.
Fuck Chelsea perfection.
Fuck wrinkles.
Fuck Andrew.
I was way too vain for self-harming so this was as close as it was going to get! A wave of relief washed over me as let it all out. A lifetime of frustration and neurosis. Of never looking good enough and never being perfect enough to be loved.
By the time I got home I was a foaming, wobbling, salivating wreck but my anger had drained away. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror for some time.
Eyebrows plucked, arched high.
Skin dermabrased, acid peeled.
Top lip waxed.
Eyes vacant.
Behind me my clothes sat in a tidy pile waiting to adorn me.
Gossard Plunge Bra for extra lift.
DKNY control briefs for smooth thighs.
Silk blouse with slimming vertical stripes.
Cigarette capris for elongated legs.
My gaze transferred back to my face. It seemed suddenly greyer and pallid in comparison with Turban Girl’s glowing tan. As if all the life had drained from it and I was looking at my own dead corpse.
That day I left the house without sun cream. Pasty face held high (foundation-free!), I marched defiantly toward Livadi in my bikini top (no sun hat even!), my marbled shoulders as naked as the day I was born.
I would no longer kowtow to the fear tactics of the cosmetic industry!
I would no longer simper and snivel at the altar of beauty!
I would no longer numb myself with restraint.
From that day forward I, Faith Cotton, would worship at the bacchanalian feet of ‘The Gods of Excess’! When I got to Livadi I pulled off my bikini top and tanned half naked on a rock, hoping Turban Girl would appear to marvel at my breathless insouciance. Heck, I could be as defiant as the next turbaned beach bum. If I had been camping and needed the loo, I would have peed right there on the beach.
Behind a bush.
Well, maybe, behind some rocks.
Luckily I did not need the loo all that day.
By five pm the Bacchanalian Sun God of Excess had burned me to a crisp. Theodora nearly screamed when she came knocking.
‘What you done?’ she said. ‘You look haggard.’
That night I dreamed my face was falling off, sliding down the sheets like melting wax, but over the next two days the colour settled and I started to go an attractive shade of brown.
A day later my nose peeled white again. I dug my sun cream out of the bin (where I’d chucked it that morning in defiance) and decided a ‘once-daily’ application would still count as a form of rebellion. After all, being a feminist was one thing. Dying of cancer was another. Whilst rummaging round in the bin I retrieved my foundation, mascara and lippy (gosh I really had gone overboard that morning!). Perhaps I’d been a bit over zealous in my outright rejection of the cosmetics industry. Even feminists had the right to look pretty.
On Friday Andrew flew back from Brussels. I picked him up from the midday ferry looking hot and irritable in his crumpled suit.
‘What the hell happened to your face?’ was the first thing he said as he threw his bag into the back of the buggy.
All charm was Andrew. He lived by the maxim ‘I say what I think’, and said what he thought far too often. Somewhere along his life’s journey he had actually come to believe that the recipients of his unfettered opinion-giving should be grateful for these unsolicited pearls of wisdom on account of the fact they were his honestly held views and therefore tantamount to universally held truth.
‘I got a bit of sun.’
‘A bit of sun. You look like you’ve been freeze-dried.’
I decided not to dignify his comment with a reply but made a mental note to re-moisturise when I got home. Knowing full well Andrew liked to drive, I made a point of firing up the engine and revving it with feminist indignation. He frowned but got in the passenger seat and plugged in his seatbelt before leaning over to plug in mine. While I may have embraced the Gods of Excess, Andrew was still worshipping the Gods of Health & Safety.
‘Really Fay,’ he persisted above the din. ‘God knows what damage you’ve inflicted to your skin and how that could age you in years to come. All it takes is a bit of sun cream’.
My mum always said Andrew took an unhealthy interest in my appearance. The first weekend I stayed at his place, I was applying my make-up in the bedroom mirror when he walked past and snapped the lights off. ‘Natural light for make-up please,’ he said without irony.
I still married him. My dad had died the year before and it seemed too much effort to say no.
I studied him now out of the corner of my eye as we chugged up the hill towards the villa. He was not a particularly good-looking man although he was aging well. His forehead was a little too high, his eyes a bit too pale, his jaw too pronounced.
For someone that craved perfection, the realisation when he hit puberty that he would never be more than a mediocre-looking adult must have come as a blow. He’d overcompensated in the gym ever since.
Right now his pronounced jaw was working overtime, grinding and flaring at the point where the mandible meets the zygomatic bone. This was his stress indicant. Clearly his meetings in Brussels hadn’t gone well. I listened absently to his remonstrations about the airline, the ferry, the queues – a preamble to the herculean disburdenment of his real grievances which he’d hold back to ruin dinner with.
Ironically it was his loquaciousness that attracted me to him in the first place. The first time I saw him he was holding court in the Foreign Office canteen surrounded by a gaggle of wide-eyed disciples lapping up every word of his diatribe on UK interference in the Middle-East. Of course, he didn’t refer to it as interference – as far as Andrew was concerned the British Empire was the greatest thing God visited upon the face of the earth and any country fortunate enough to attract UK interest in their affairs, their minerals, their cash crops, should be thanking their lucky stars. Once his oration was over he detached himself from his fan club and zoned in on me. What Andrew lacked in looks he made up for in gumption and self-confidence. As he slid into the chair opposite mine, I clocked the jealous glares of the other women and blushed with pride. I was after all only a junior advisor in the Migrations Directorate whereas Andrew had the grand title of ‘Deputy Permanent Director to the EU’. He insisted on taking me out for dinner and my fate was sealed from that moment on as he regaled me with clever stories of capricious foreign dignitaries and ambitious commonwealth aspirants. His Cambridge accent seemed so erudite, his turn of phrase so eloquent.
Nowadays I just wished he’d shut up.
When we got back to the villa he showered, went for a half-hour run, showered again and announced he was hungry. This was my cue to disappear into the kitchen and produce some culinary victual from the warmer.
Bridgette encouraged Andrew to believe that women loved men through food. The more effort put into a meal – the finer the filo pastry, the smoother the hollandaise sauce – the more a wife valued her husband. This he reminded me of at every meal with a crumb-by-crumb critique of his gastronomic experience.
Fortunately, our meal was interrupted halfway through by his mobile.
Unfortunately, the call was from Theodora.
He listened quietly while chewing on his sea bass en croute with grinding concentration.
‘I see,’ he said, pausing to take a swig of wine. ‘And where is it?’
He eyes settled on me with a look of annoyance.
‘I understand. I’ll get her to see it on Monday.’
Theodora would have prattled on for a quarter of an hour longer but Andrew didn’t suffer gasbags lightly.
‘Got to run. Thanks for your assistance Theodora.’
He hung up and poured another glass of wine thoughtfully.
‘Fay, I hope you are taking this house-hunting thing seriously.’
‘Of course I am,’ I replied, pushing my lettuce around the plate.
‘Theodora tells me she’s found a perfect property but you’ve refused to view it.’
‘I drove past it. Just to have a look. You can see it quite easily from the gate.’
‘Did you go in?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
