Sally James didn’t usually have a problem getting rid of
boy-friends who’d passed their sell-by date. She’d dumped them in Montreal,
she’d dumped them in Rome, she’d dumped them in Sydney. One had got his
marching orders for driving his sports car too slowly, another for wearing a
Versace suit, another for refusing to wear a Versace suit, yet another for being
bizarre in bed.
But now she was in London, and this one was different. Or did she mean
indifferent? That was the problem; she didn’t know. Ernest by name (what
prescient parents!), earnest by nature. Plodding along in a dead-end office,
while she zipped around the country and half of Europe as a fashion buyer for
one of New York’s slickest import stores, studying for his City and Guilds
nearly every evening. “City and Guilds, what the hell’s that?” she’d
asked when it was first put up as a reason for not going out for a night of
pubbing and clubbing. “The exam for my course in Quantity Surveying,” he had
answered, adopting a lofty tone to punish her ignorance. She hadn’t bothered
to enquire what Quantity Surveying was.
Life with Ernest was life in the slow lane indeed. In their early days, that was
part of the attraction; no, it was the attraction. The Eighties had
turned into the Nineties. Sally had become a bit older and wiser with the new
decade, though old wasn’t a word you associated with her long blonde hair -
the sort Porphyria’s lover strangled her with in Browning’s poem, eyes of a
blue that could switch in a micro-second from Mediterranean to Arctic, a figure
to die for, and racehorse legs. When she and Ernest were out together, men
looked at her and looked at him (short, though well enough built behind the -
what else? -gray suit, three-piece at work, two off-duty, but it wasn’t his
body they noticed so much as the crumply face, the Hugh Grant teeth, and the
hair parted down the middle like a sportsman in a team photo from fifty years
ago) and looked at her again (rarely going back to him) and wondered what a girl
like that saw in a guy like that. Wise wasn’t a word you associated with Sally
either, in anything beyond her job at which she was top-notch, hence her juicy
salary and bonuses and platinum credit cards and the sort of luxury apartment
blondes used to be found dead in across the tabloid headlines of yesteryear.
The night they’d met at Covent Garden, he leaving a meeting, she storming out
of a restaurant wherein the latest boy-friend dumping had just taken place in a
stickier style than usual - she’d inverted a jug of Sangria over his head, she
was already in the mood to quit the fast lane for a while and take a breather
with the kind of man her now dead mother had always hoped she’d bring home.
Not that this would normally have led her to give Ernest a second glance, but
when a drunk lurched up and started pawing at her and swearing and everybody
else was trying to look the other way with true modern manners, it was he who
came over and gave the drunk a shove and told him in no uncertain terms to get
lost and to both their amazement it worked.
He’d been going just to flag down a taxi, see her safely
into it, and shuffle away with a waved farewell. But Sally, out of ordinary
gratitude and sheer curiosity about this strange knight errant, had
steamrollered him through the doors of a very ‘In’ wine bar that was nearby,
set them up with a large glass of red each, and they’d talked. He wasn’t
always given a chance to say much, and showed no sign that he wanted to, being
preoccupied with his surroundings and other drinkers - it was clear he’d never
been in such a place before. But he got enough in to tell Sally some of what she
wanted to know, and like the shrewd buyer she was, she felt herself teasing a
good deal more out of his body language, the way he looked or didn’t look at
her depending on what she was talking about, his inability to open the
cellophane packages of complimentary peanuts provided by the bar, his struggle
to find a euphemism for going to the bathroom, though here he ended up by
surprising her with an attempt at humour: “Girls are lucky, they can just say
they are going to powder their noses.” Sally hadn’t powdered her nose in
years, if indeed she ever had, but she remembered the expression as one of her
mother’s, and thought this told her something else about him.
So Ernest became a habit. Sally originally had him down as her
rebound man, her transition guy, someone with whom to have a drink or meal,
exchange a few confidences, spend the odd night, until her batteries were
recharged for a return to the fast lane. Not that she saw him more than once or
twice a week, sometimes less - his exam studying and lack of moneysaw to that.
As to exchanging confidences, forget it, they were strictly one-way traffic. If
he had any to share, his English reticence kept them buttoned up out of sight.
And as to any love life, that was a laugh. Sally was a normal healthy woman, her
juices were flowing most of the time, but Ernest seemed to be more desiccated
than a mouldy fig, as though he’d skipped puberty and gone straight from
infant promise to sunset years. Although he could, when in the mood, which was
not often, turn on a slow smile that made Sally’s heart jump and other parts
of her melt, his biggest move so far had been dry handshakes and daring pats on
the arm and sometimes a brother-sister peck on the cheek when saying Goodbye,
always Goodbye, never Goodnight, a distinction that Sally was sharp enough to
see must mean something, just what, though, she couldn’t grasp. When in an
emotional puree of frustration and impatience she had finally pulled him to her
- most guys his height would have died for that, it brought his face between her
breasts - and given him a big hug, he had been about as responsive as a Scrooge
with no arms at a charity-raiser. I don’t believe it, thought Sally bitterly,
not only do I find the only virgin left in London, he doesn’t even want to do
anything about it.
Tossing restlessly in her Queen-size bed (another joke, these
days) in a tangle of designer sheets, Sally would ask herself after each such
encounter why she bothered. Or at least why she didn’t fill up the gaps in the
whatever it was she had going with Ernest with guys who could see that she
wanted what they wanted and who would be only too pleased to supply it without
anything more on either side. Sally was officially a feminist who didn’t see
why Wham Bam Thank You Maam couldn’t be altered to Purr Purr Thank You Sir.
But like most people, she had two sides to her character, and it was the reverse
that made her stick to Ernest. He was dullsville to the max, a piece of faded
Valley Girl talk that suited him better than any of the more up-to-date idioms
in Sally’s regular circles, but he was nice, or could be, and solid, and
reliable. There hadn’t been much of any of this in Sally’s life, above all
not from her long fled, just popping out for a packet of cigarettes and never
returning, father. While she didn’t yet want this to be her whole life, she
could visualise a time when she might, or might have to. Meanwhile, if possible,
she would find a way to have the best of both worlds out of the one and the same
Ernest. Or if not, then it was time for the old heave-ho; at least she would
have had a sample of his kind of future to set alongside the other sort.
Sally finally decided the best plan was to get him away from
his regular routines and surroundings. Two weeks on a Greek island. If all that
sun and sea and ouzo didn’t bring him out of his shell, nothing would. Just in
case he still couldn’t get out of it by himself, she would prod him into life
by madly flirting in front of his very eyes with the best-looking unattached man
there. If he made a positive scene, great; if a negative one, unaccompanied by
any erotic action, then it was definitely Goodbye time for Ernest.
Knowing he couldn’t afford such a holiday, and that he
wouldn’t take her charity, Sally made the bookings with a travel agent who was
also a friend, one able and willing to go along with the fiction that she had
won this trip in a company Euro-raffle and provide the necessary documents to
back this up. Her biggest emotion was relief when Ernest agreed to come, though
not without some grumbling about being away when he should be working (his books
would have to come with him) and missing the Lords cricket Test on BBC 2, and it
was of course separate rooms.
The three and a half hour flight was Ernest’s first, perhaps
an omen for another kind of first time, thought Sally. He spent it retching
intermittently into his sick-bag while she ate both their in-flight meals. But
once they were through the customs and baggage scrums and outside of the Corfu
airport, breathing in the heady aroma of lemon trees and the wet dust, he
started to perk up. It wasn’t long before the green and cream bus decanted
them at the Hotel Athene on Kapodistriou Street near the new harbour. Sally
would have preferred one of the smarter places, Kanoni or Perama, where there
would be a private beach and hunky waiters with one of whom she might do a
Shirley Valentine as a back-up to her planned main flirting. But she knew Ernest
would only be happy in Corfu town itself where he could be sure of finding an
English paper every morning and be confident that the hotel would have “proper
plumbing.” So she had made all her arrangements accordingly.
Luckily, Sally’s immediate target was at the next breakfast
table to theirs. As finely made a specimen of manhood as she was of woman. She
shrewdly waited until the third day before suggesting they invite him to join
them, not being sure how imperceptive or otherwise Ernest would be about such
things.
“Hmm, well, I suppose we could. Though you’ve got to
wonder why somebody like that is by himself. He’s not a bad-looking chap.”
“Maybe he’s just lost his wife, or he’s broken up with
his girl-friend and come here to get over it.”
To Sally’s great surprise, Ernest greeted these suggestions
with a brief burst of quotation,
The Isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sang,
before adding a more characteristic deflationary postscript, “what a romantic
you are. All right, let’s have him over. At least he doesn’t appear to be
one of those lager louts with their Union Jack shorts and beer for breakfast.”
“Don’t worry, they all go to Benitses, miles away South of
here. With any luck, we won’t see hide nor hair of them.”
With Ernest seemingly reassured, Sally waved across to the man, indicating in dumb show that he should join them. The speed with which he rose from his seat and the smile that lit up his already tanned face belied the lazy saunter which brought him over to them. He stood almost to attention as Sally made her introductions, said in reply that his name was Roger, and sat down in the chair which an alert waiter had already provided, but only after Sally and Ernest had resumed their own places. Sally offered him a cup of her coffee or Ernest’s tea. He opted for coffee and she played mother, heartened that Ernest should pass across the milk and sugar without being asked. He and Roger were soon sounding each other out over the Test Match (the local cricket tradition imported by Lord Byron had been a selling-point in getting Ernest to Corfu), interest rates, and the latest government follies. They also made a solemn pact whereby Ernest would exchange his ‘Daily Telegraph’ for Roger’s ‘Express’. Sally sat back in satisfied silence. She wasn’t sure how much they had taken to each other, or even if they had at all, but she knew enough about Englishmen to appreciate that they did not have to like each other to be friends, and they had clearly established a good enough rapport to rub along on for two weeks, while Sally set up Ernest for a decisive reaction to whatever might develop or be developed.
So, over the next few days, while Ernest largely stayed in his room to slog over
his books, he made no objections, indeed he rather encouraged Sally to accept
Roger’s ever-increasing number of offers to escort her around. On one
occasion, he rented a car and drove them across to the island’s most famous
beauty spot, Palaeokastritsa on the West coast. It was jam-packed with foreign
flesh, but they were able to escape, first by taking the steep but wonderful
walk through a forest of cypress and pine and mysteriously appearing donkeys to
the village of Lakones with its breathtaking views and sumptuous Bella Vista
taverna for a proper Greek meal (not a chip in sight), then by hiring one of the
local sailors down at the dock to take them in his motor boat to Ermones where
Roger said the ship-wrecked Odysseus had appeared in all his naked glory to
Princess Nausikaa who had come to that beach with her slave girls to do the
palace laundry.
“A princess doing the washing? Christ, I can’t quite see
Fergie doing that, can you?”
“Hardly.”
Another day, since it was only an hour each way by launch,
they took the two and a half mile trip across the Corfu Strait to Saranda on the
South coast of the once forbidden and still foreboding country of Albania.
Despite all the horror stories, the Hotel Butrinti, set among prickly pears,
oleanders, and oranges, attracted them at once, and the lunch of risotto with a
plate of olives, veal with salad, a slice of cake, and fresh peaches was good,
and Sally was very impressed when Roger showed himself able to carry on a
rudimentary conversation with the waiter in Albanian. “It’s nothing,” he
said with a not quite convincing modesty, “just memorised bits and bobs from
my Berlitz Euro Phrasebook.” Afterwards, they ignored the carpet-weaving and
shirt factories, preferring the promenade with its gently stirring palm trees
and the three roads terraced around the hillside over the curving bay, remarking
on how for once tourists were outnumbered by the natives.
“I suppose people are still put off by what they read in the
papers.”
“I dare say. They shouldn’t be. Things are rarely what
they are said to be.”
This tailpiece rather intrigued Sally, but he didn’t pursue
it, so neither did she, not wanting to spoil the moment with too heavy a
discussion. They were back at the Hotel Athene in time to drag Ernest away from
his books, eat a meal of sofrito - meat stew with garlic - at one of the
restaurants amid the French arcades of the Liston on the West edge of the
Esplanade that was so delicious as to be almost worth what it cost, and try
their luck at the casino in the Achilleion. Sally was able to inform the men
that this nineteenth century palace built by the Empress Elizabeth of Austria
had been a location in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only. She was
pleased to be able, for once, to tell Roger something he didn’t know. And she
ended the evening a few drachmas up at roulette, while he and Ernest went down
by similar amounts. Maybe the old Greek gods were giving her a wink.
Sally felt this all the more as Ernest’s mood gradually
shifted from complaisance to a gruffer acceptance of the latest plans announced
at breakfast - Roger had long since given up his own table to be permanently at
theirs - to signs of active unhappiness. The two men didn’t actually quarrel,
but their conversations ebbed away into mere conventional English exchanges
about the weather, each telling the other what they already must know as one
great writer of the past had put it, and it was evident that the
newspaper-trading treaty had been torn up.
It was working, Sally thought, glowing at her own brilliance.
Yet she was still quite uncertain as to which way Ernest was going to jump.
While his growing hostility towards Roger hadn’t transferred itself to her,
beyond the occasional queer look and his increasingly pointed emphasis after
breakfast that he supposed he’d better be off to his books while they had
their fun, he hadn’t been goaded into upgrading their own relationship. The
Goodbyes, still unchanged to Goodnights, despite the seductive beauty of the
starry Greek sky, were as low-key as they had always been. And, of course, never
a suggestion that she share any part of the day, let alone the night, with him
and his books in his room six doors down the corridor from hers.
Sally was in fact doubly frustrated on the sex side. So far,
Roger wasn’t the hot-shot swain she’d expected him to be. Although he was a
great one for shoulder patting and wrist holding and eyeball-melting staring
competitions, his hugs were loose and his kisses were not only perfunctory, they
usually seemed to contrive to miss her mouth and land on her cheeks. And not so
much as a courtesy grope. Ah well, thought Sally, a watched lover never boils.
Maybe it was just his technique. Some men (not many, she had to admit) were like
cats, they preferred to wait a long time before making their move, but, boy! (an
old memory flickered through her mind) when they pounced, they really pounced.
She surely couldn’t have been unlucky enough to have ended up on a Greek
island with the last two remaining gentlemen of the Western World. No, Roger was
saving it all up for the big occasion.
Which was at the end of their second week, just before their
return to England, courtesy of the dinner-cum-disco dance the hotel was putting
on. Sally now concentrated all her hopes and plans on this. As a fashion expert,
she knew the virtues of simplicity, also that clothes should be accessory to
looks, not the other way around. So on the night she chose a straightforward
lemon dress, off the shoulder and stopping well north of the knees to show off
her good and now tanned limbs, a garment whose lines and fit contrived to give
the false but tantalising impressin that she wasn’t wearing anything
underneath, a look accentuated by bare feet, this last being sanctioned for that
evening only by notices posted throughout the hotel.
The big air-conditioned lobby had been cleared for the music
and dancing, a strange and not always successful wedding of Nineties dances with
Sixties tunes, Greek pop being almost as old as the ruins of the town’s
Garitsa Bay. Most people, though, fuelled themselves first from the lavish
buffet dinner out in the courtyard. The chef had put together a well-judged mix
of the things tourists were used to at home - lamb kebabs, dolmades,
spanokopitta - and more exotic dishes such as shrimp baked in feta with ouzo and
cognac and chicken stew kapama with its pungent union of allspice,
cinnamon, and nutmeg. It was all a far cry from Ernest’s preferred moussaka
and chips back in London. Likewise with the desserts, not just good old baklava
and yoghourt with honey and raisins, but things like the sweet Turkish ekmek that
is often hard to find. There was plenty to wash it down with as well: retsina
for the adventurous, the sweet Madeira-styled Mavrodaphne favoured by those who
wanted to retain a touch of suburbia with their Hellenic experience, the
rose-red Kokkineli whose name always made Sally laugh, and for the likes of
Ernest (and, surprisingly, Roger) lashings of Fix beer.
Ernest, though, had clearly made an effort to get into the
spirit of things. He’d stopped working early, had drinks at lunch as well as
late afternoon, and methodically chomped his way through the buffet, drawing
more than one amused glance for the Hawaiian shirt he’d bought especially for
the trip in the Old Kent Road, an item of apparrel that clashed with nearly
everyone else’s, above all Roger’s, whose white jacket and flannels and
flower in lapel made him look a bit like Pierce Brosnan playing Noel Coward,
whereas Ernest resembled a big old dog trying to play. Sally wanted to giggle
every time she looked at the pair of them.
The evening rumbled on. Everybody gradually abandoned the
ruins of the buffet, though a steady flow of traffic continued to and from the
drinks area, and crowded into the lobby for the dancing. Sally made sure she
gave the smoothly moving Roger far more time than she did to the gamely
gallumphing Ernest, trusting that he hadn’t drunk too much not to notice this
inequality.
The time to make her key move came when the music stopped and
some hotel minion dressed up as a mountain chief announced that after a break of
ten minutes waiters and guests would be joining together in
handkerchief-connected lines to out-Zorba Zorba in traditional folk dancing.
People clapped wildly at this news, hoping that it would also mean an
opportunity to break a lot of plates. Ernest said very loudly that he had to
pee, glancing meaningfully at Roger who seemed not to notice him. Sally moved
Roger and herself as far out of the throng as she could, so that they would be
the more visible, keeping a sharp look out all the while. The minute she saw
Ernest lumber back into view, she crushed Roger to her and began kissing him
passionately. Even now, he didn’t respond as he might have; she felt no press
of harder ardour. Sally optimistically put this down to drink and surprise.
Maintaining a watch on Ernest out of the corner of her eye, she tightened her
embrace even more to coincide with his seeing them, stopping, and then shunting
towards them in a half-walk half-run style. Happily sensing trouble, the people
nearest them nudged each other and started to form an unofficial audience.
Will he thump me first or Roger? Sally wondered. And, if he
does, what will it mean? Or, what if he slings me over his shoulder and carries
me off to his room?I suppose I know what that would mean. But do I still want
him to, in view of Roger? And if he does, what will Roger do?
Ernest, however, did not thump or carry anybody off. “Well,
now,” he began, then stopped for a moment as though he were a stage actor who
had temporarily wiped his memory out with one too many nerve-quelling drinks.
“This is a pretty kettle of fish.”
What an Ernest expression, thought Sally, before forcing a not
altogether fake look of contrition on to her face and getting down to her own
prepared script. “I don’t know what to say. I, we, I’ve been trying...”
“So you have, so you have, very trying, if I may say so.”
“Ernest, no, you must listen, Roger and I have been waiting
for the right moment to...” Sally looked at Roger who responded with a bit of
silent shoulder and hand play suggesting that all this lay hopelessly outside
his control.
“Have you now? Well, this will come as news to you, but so
have I.”
“Ernest, I, we, didn’t mean...”
“Mean, didn’t mean, it all comes down to the same thing in
the end. If you are trying to say what I think you are, then I’ll get in first
and say it for both of us. When we return to London, we will not be seeing each
other again.”
“Ernest, I don’t know what to say...”
“Ah, I think you do, but there’s no need.”
Having said this, Ernest gave Sally a look she couldn’t
fathom and Roger one that she couldn’t interpret either, then turned and in
what was, given the state of play all round, an impressively dignified manner he
strode away in the direction of the staircase, clearly intending to retreat to
his room. He looked back once. Sally didn’t react, though she thought Roger
gave him a quick little hand sign: shame or embarrassment, she supposed.
Disappointed that it hadn’t come to blows or even a good shouting match, the
audience dissolved as quickly as it had formed.
“That’s that, then,” she said. “My room in fifteen
minutes, right?” Roger nodded, without saying anything. Sally gave his hand a
squeeze and headed towards the stairs, finding with what emotion she wasn’t
totally sure that Ernest was not lying in wait outside her room.
Inside, Sally took off the lemon dress, hung it up carefully,
took a quick but comprehensive shower, and popped into bed wearing what Marilyn
Monroe had once famously described as just three little drops of perfume, to
wait for Roger. She was sure he would come. He’d better. After all, he
wouldn’t have had this Greek holiday in the first place if she hadn’t
arranged and paid for it all back in London where she had met him through the
fashion industry in which he also worked. Despite her great track record with
men, Sally wasn’t confident enough to assume she’d have instant success, so
had decided she’d better have a ready-made stranger on tap in Corfu rather
than risk seeing her plan scuppered by failing to get off with anyone at all,
not even a waiter. She had picked on Roger as being detached and sophisticated
enough to appreciate her scheming and derive amusement (not to mention the
benefit) from being her accomplice. Plus the fact that she did quite fancy him
and believed that he might actually go for her, though he had given her no
obvious reason to think so. Now that the play was over, his inhibitions would
melt away and Sally would have a real man again, though something, perhaps
several things, was already telling her that his tenure might well be a short
one. It hadn’t been nice being the dumpee rather than the dumper, which on
balance she had to admit she’d been, a first for her, especially in public,
even though it had been part of her game plan, but at least it had happened
abroad where no one else knew her. The same applied to Ernest, she told herself
in a conscience-assuaging effort, poor Ernest, though why poor Ernest. she’d
given him his chance and he’d jumped the wrong way, so it was high time to cut
the knot that was strangling them both, and he could go home unhumiliated,
imagining she had turned out to be just one more featherbrained lady who’d
lost her head in a holiday whirlwind and would live to regret it, ha ha, never
knowing the full story.
Sally thrashed around for well beyond the allotted fifteen
minutes, something she registered with a disappointment that might have turned
into retributive action, if her mental kaleidoscope hadn’t suddenly shook
itself into another pattern that stopped being silly when she began to pull its
threads together, at least until she realised her door was being tapped and
gently opening. Everything was going to turn out, after all.
The policeman lounging by the door through which the peeling
duty-free laden horde was soon to shuffle its way to the tarmac and the plane
that would three hours later decant them at Heathrow wasn’t pleased at having
to be there at seven in the morning. Especially on this fools’ errand. He
supposed his chief had to go through the motions before filing a report to
Athens. Any problem involving a tourist was taken very seriously in the capital.
But was any worthwhile information to be expected from such people? Look at this
pair, for example. The two men, hand in hand, two of those, the policeman
thought with distaste, despite the ancient reputation his country had for
toleration of such things, the short one with the old-fashioned hair and
ridiculously thick suit peering up and exchanging a look of knowing contentment
with his taller companion in the differently foolish white jacket, what could
they possibly know or care about the young woman whose unclothed body had been
found beneath her window at the Hotel Athene?
Copyright ©2005, Barry Baldwin All Rights Reserved