PS Olive You. Lizzie Allen
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were attached to short stubby arms that disappeared into the armholes of a shockingly yellow sundress. Flabby puckerings of flesh gathered at the armpits and her batwings wobbled alarmingly over every hump.
As we thundered along the dirt track towards Urian’s farm at maximum speed, an undeniable sense of smugness filled the air. Theodora had worked out the pecking order in my marriage:
Andrew – Head Honcho
Fay – Minion.
Her toadying days, such as they were, were over.
A plastic strawberry bobbed from her rear-view mirror, seeping sickly sweet vapours of rotting watermelon into the airless car.
‘That’s a nice smell,’ I said insincerely, flicking at it with my forefinger.
‘Smells exact of strawberry, isn’t it?’ she said pleased.
‘Yes,’ I lied, wiping my fingers down the side of the chair.
A herd of goats appeared further down the track. Theodora slammed on the brakes and hooted at the young boy minding them. He didn’t look too fussed. The more Theodora cursed and bellowed, the slower he went. The deadly strawberry vapours ebbed and flowed through the afternoon heat as we waited for the bedlam to subside.
‘You haf nice name,’ she said, trying to be charming.
‘Thanks.’
‘What this mean, Fay?’
‘Actually it’s not Fay. That’s just what everyone calls me. It’s Faith.’
‘Ah, Fayeth. Eeez like – to haf belief, no?’
‘Yes,’ said I, who believed in nothing. ‘My father chose it.’
‘Verrry verrry good man your father. He live London?’
‘No, actually he died a few years ago’.
She made a ‘tch, tch’ sound with her tongue. Silence filled the car again.
‘Have you lived on Iraklia long?’ I probed, wondering how well she knew Urian’s family.
‘Since I retire.’
‘You seem too young to be retired’ I lied.
She was pleased with the pseudo compliment. ‘I hav fifhafty two years,’ she said proudly.
Her sausage fingers gesticulated with large rings glinting in the sun.
‘In Greece government say OK, you retire fifhafty if you haf dangeros job.’
I looked at her with interest.
‘Really? What did you do for a living?’
‘Hairdresser.’
‘Hairdresser?’
‘Neh. I was making hairs thirhaty years.’
‘And that was dangerous?’
‘Of course!’ she replied seriously. ‘Fumes verrry bad’. She shook her head gravely from side to side and dropped her double chin to her chest to emphasise the severity of her situation. ‘Chemicals verrry dangeros.’
‘And the government gives you a full pension from fifty?’
This made her click her tongue in annoyance.
‘No full.’
She pointed indignantly into the air with her chubby forefinger.
‘Ninety per-ha-cent only.’
I digested this news in silence. Andrew would not be pleased to hear his angel Theodora was one of the scroungers he admonished for bleeding the state dry with phony disability claims while working on the QT as an estate agent.
I couldn’t wait to tell him.
Ahead the young lad started pushing the goats with his bare hands off the road. As soon as he pushed one, another would return.
‘Do you have any other family on the island?’ I asked, changing the subject.
‘Sister,’ she said, hooting pointlessly. ‘She also retired.’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘She have a dangerous job too?’
‘Yes. Baker.’
I nearly guffawed out loud.
‘What’s dangerous about baking?’
‘She breevist in that flour,’ she said, getting out the car. ‘Verrryy dangeros.’
I watched her trundle over to the terrified boy like Shrek and begin haranguing him and the goats off the road. She was the least disabled person I had ever seen. Her flour-inhaling sister was probably equally as robust and running some other scam across the island.
Five minutes later we were back on the move. We skidded into Urian’s place as if we were competing in a dirt road derby and screeched to a halt at the front door. Fortunately there were no other cars and no sign of Urian’s motorbike.
As the dust settled I could already see the house occupied a spectacular position in relation to the rest of the island. It looked out towards Schoinoussa in the east and Paros in the west. The sun hovered over the horizon, suspended in the sky like a giant lantern ready to splash the world with colour before it dipped below the water.
The house itself was a single-storey dwelling consisting of no more than a series of interlinking white boxes, each with its own wooden veranda attached. Below, the land rolled away in gentle undulations to a small beach, and to the rear of the house the strong masculine shape of Papas Mountain could be seen rising in the distance.
But it was the inside of the place that transfixed me. I was used to the bland sameishness of English interiors that replicated each other within a degree of colour.
Artwork: elegant, non-descript.
Furniture: ditto.
Light Fittings: John Lewis.
Bathrooms: Fired Earth.
Kitchen: Smallbone of Devizes.
Such was the manner in which we regulated our army of clones. We made a huge pretence of shunning catalogues and designing our own ‘colour stories’ – but each time Farrow & Ball added a new tone to its range, a veritable stampede ensued in the race to become fully homogenised.
The same applied to clothing. I was once frogmarched out of a coffee shop in Putney because I was wearing last year’s boot-cut trousers. My friends were so anxious not to be seen with me looking yesterday that that they took it upon themselves to dragoon me into purchasing trousers from the boutique next door that were more of-the-moment. Despite my agitation I went along with it like the spineless amoeba I was.
Urian’s house could not have been more different from the flavourless middle-class world I had become accustomed to. It was filled with amazing artefacts from all over the world, presumably collected on globe-trotting expeditions and adventures.
An ornate camel saddle with rows of plaited tassels.
A bronze cooking pot, precariously balancing on three legs.
The ancient skull of some horned animal.
No house was more revealing of its occupant. Stacks of ragged VHS tapes next to an aging VCR machine showed an eclectic taste in film, Westerns to Woody Allen, Lars Von Trier to Lasse Hallström.
I was surprised to see he had a sense of humour after all. An ebony carved black woman stared out through aviator goggles and a furry football mascot sported pink Asteras Tripoli underpants.
Some of it looked expensive, like the luxurious duck egg silk carpet that ran the length of the sitting room, but the majority of the stuff seemed to have been salvaged from the island. Bits of bleached driftwood, shells and feathers. On the veranda a quaint mobile of glass and copper tubing tinkled in the breeze and a neat row of potted