The house was in the middle of the island—a sandstone monster, over a hundred years old. It had pale yellow walls, a red terra-cotta roof, and green wooden shutters. Otto and Lana added to it, extending it, renovating the more dilapidated areas. They built a swimming pool and a guesthouse in the garden; and a stone jetty on the most accessible beach, where they kept their speedboat.
It’s hard to describe how lovely the island is—was? I’m struggling a little with my tenses here. I’m not where sure I am—the present, or the past? I know where I would be, given half a chance. I’d give anything to be back there right now.
I can picture it all so clearly. If I shut my eyes, I can be there: on the terrace at the house, a cool drink in my hand, looking out at that view. It’s pretty flat for the most part, so you can see a long way: past the olive trees, all the way down to the beaches and coves and the clear turquoise water. The water, when calm, is blue and glass-like, almost translucent. But, like most things in life, it has more than one nature. When the wind comes, which it does, frequently, the churning waves and currents stir up all the sand in the seabed, turning the water murky, dark, and dangerous.
The wind plagues that part of the world. It hits it all the year round; not continuously, though, or with the same intensity—but every so often it works itself into a rage and tears across the water, battering the islands. Agathi’s grandmother used to call the Aegean wind to menos, which means “the fury” in English.
The island also has a name, by the way.
The island was named Aura, after the Greek goddess of the “morning air” or the “breeze.” A pretty name, which belied the ferocity of the wind, and of the goddess herself.
Aura was a minor deity, a nymph, a huntress, a companion of Artemis’s. She didn’t like men very much and would slaughter them for sport. When she gave birth to two boys, she ate one of them before Artemis quickly spirited away the other.
That’s how the locals spoke about the wind, incidentally—as monstrous and devouring. No wonder it made it into their myths, their stories; as personified by Aura.
I was lucky enough never to have personally experienced it—the wind, I mean. I visited the island over several years and was always blessed with unusually docile weather—often missing a gale by a day or two.
But not this year. This year, the fury caught up with me.
5
Lana did invite me to the island, in the end—–despite saying to Kate that I was annoying her.
I’m Elliot, by the way, in case you hadn’t guessed.
And Lana was only joking when she said that. That’s the kind of relationship she and I had. We played around a lot. We kept it light, like the bubbles in a glass of Bollinger.
Not that I was offered champagne, or even cava, on my flight to Greece. Unlike Lana and her family, presumably—who traveled to the island the same way Lana went everywhere, on a private jet. Mere mortals like myself flew commercial; or more often than not, these days, sadly, budget airlines.
And so it is here, at a distinctly down-to-earth check-in desk at Gatwick Airport, that I enter this story. As you know, I’ve been waiting impatiently to introduce myself. Now at last, we can get properly acquainted.
I hope I won’t prove disappointing as a narrator. I like to think I’m considered decent company—fairly entertaining; pretty straightforward, good-natured; even occasionally profound—once I’ve bought you a few drinks, that is.
I’m about forty years old, give or take a year or two. I’m told I look younger. That’s down to my refusal to grow up, no doubt—never mind grow old. I still feel like a kid inside. Doesn’t everyone?
I’m about average height, perhaps a bit taller. I have a slim build, but not as razor-thin as I used to be. I used to vanish if I turned sideways. That had a lot to do with cigarettes, of course. I’ve got it under control now, just the odd joint and the very occasional cigarette, but during my twenties and early thirties, my God, I had a fierce tobacco habit. I used to exist solely on smoke and coffee. I was skinny, wired, edgy, and anxious. What a joy I must have been to be around. I’ve calmed down now, thankfully.
That’s the only good thing I’ll say about getting older. I’m finally calming down.
I have dark eyes and dark hair, like my old man. Average looks, I’d say. Some have described me as handsome; but I don’t think of myself that way at all—unless I’m in good lighting.
Barbara West always said the two most important things in life are lighting and timing. She was right. If the light’s too glaring, I see only my flaws. I hate my profile, for instance, and the way my hair sticks up in a weird angle at the back, and my small chin. It’s always an unpleasant shock when I catch sight of myself in a side mirror in a department-store changing room, with my bad hair, big nose, and no jaw. I don’t have movie-star looks, put it like that. Unlike the others in this story.
I grew up outside London. The less said about my childhood, the better. Let’s dispense with it in as few words as possible, shall we? How about three?
It was darkness. That about sums it up.
My father was a brute; my mother drank. Together they lived surrounded by filth, squalor, and ugliness—like two drunken children squabbling in a gutter.
Don’t feel bad for me; this isn’t a misery memoir. Just a simple statement of fact. It’s a familiar enough tale, I suspect. Like all too many children, I endured an upbringing characterized by long periods of abandonment and neglect, both physical and emotional. I was rarely touched, or played with, barely held by my mother—and the only time my father laid a hand on me was in anger.
This I find harder to forgive. Not the physical violence, you understand, which I soon learned to accept as a part of life, but the lack of touch—and its repercussions for me, later, as an adult. How can I put it? It left me unused to—even afraid of?—the touch of another. And it has made intimate relationships, emotional or physical, extremely difficult.
I couldn’t wait to leave home. My parents were strangers to me; it felt inconceivable that I was even related to them. I felt like an alien, an extraterrestrial, adopted by an inferior life-form—with no choice but to flee and find others of my own species.
If that sounds arrogant, forgive me. It’s just when you spend years marooned on the desert island of childhood, trapped with parents who are angry, alcoholic, endlessly sarcastic, full of contempt; who never encourage you, who bully and belittle you, mock you for loving learning or art; who ridicule anything remotely sensitive, emotional, or intellectual … then you grow up a little angry, a little prickly and defensive.
You grow up determined to defend your right to be—what, exactly? Different? An individual? A freak?
In case I am speaking to a young person now, let me give you something to hold on to: do not despair at being different. For that very difference, initially such a source of shame, so humiliating, and painful, will one day become a badge of honor and pride.
The reality is, these days, I am proud to be different—I thank God I am. And even when I was a child, and full of self-loathing, I sensed another world was out there. A better world, where I might belong. A brighter world—beyond the darkness, lit by spotlights.
What am I talking about? The theater, of course. Think of that moment the auditorium darkens, the curtain glows, the audience clears its collective throat, settling down, tingling with anticipation. It’s magic, pure and simple; more addictive than any drug I ever tried. I knew from a young age—glimpsing it on school trips to plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, or West End matinees—that I had to belong to this world.
Also I understood, just as clearly, that if I wanted to be accepted by this world, if I wanted to fit in, I had to change.
Who I was simply wasn’t good enough. I had to become someone else.
It seems absurd, writing that now—even painful—but I believed it then, with all my heart. I believed I had to change everything about me: my name, my appearance, how I carried myself, how I spoke, what I talked about, thought about. To be part of this brave new world, I needed to become a different person—a better one.