They came down into the port just as the last ferry back to the mainland was leaving. A few soldiers stood around the harbor with slung weapons, inactive and mute, staring at the Hellenic ship as it pulled out with its lights ablaze and the tourist music animating the decks. Up the little hill to the left of the harbor, Jimmie’s walking stick tapping the cobbles, they came to the first bend where cliffs plunged down to the water, young people clinging to the slabs of rock below like prehistoric animals. There were terraces with tables of dark blue cloth, bronzed Slavic women with oiled hair laid out on sofas with their drinks. Above the restaurant’s terrace stood one of the old island windmills, aloofly superior to the frustrated and harassed waiters in aprons. Sloping pines like giant bonsai would have shaded the terrace in sunlight. By the outer wall with its row of cannons, the Haldanes were already seated with Naomi within a glow of pleasurable energy and they had a startling arrangement of shellfish laid on ice between them. Jimmie’s rapid eye spotted the young girl seated next to his daughter at once: the friend, the Huckleberry friend, he thought at once with a quick approval and a nod to himself.
The tables around them were filled with British and French families. Here and there were wealthy Athenians escaping from their national tragedy, and perhaps relieved to be back among their true peers. The couples who came every summer, the men with the yachts who docked for a month and then disappeared again. Sam caught Jimmie’s eye and she wondered about him. He looked like a decaying nightclub singer. Naomi’s stepmother was an appalling snob, you could tell at once. The kind of couple who would vet their daughter’s prospective friends, even if it was just with a glance. But things soon settled down and flowed on, because it was the law of summers among the rich that the season of leisure should flow like a large and charming river. The imperative was to have a good time and float along on the luminescent surface. You couldn’t back down or show weakness. It was not that different from the horror of the Hamptons, except this was less pretentious and slightly less soulless. She was beginning to like these people. At least they were curious about strangers; they asked her questions, they pestered her for insights into her baffling generation. Here being young had a value that wasn’t just physical or sexual. Youth became the fount of other people’s curiosity—what did she think, what did she want to do in the future, how did she feel about the old? It amused them. It amused them because it mattered.
Sam didn’t exactly tell the truth in answer to such questions. As she ventured into a few glasses of wine under the watchful eye of her mother, less comfortable thoughts invaded her head. Even though she was still young, it had occurred to her that if she could relive any moment in the past she would refuse. But why was that so? A thousand summers could be like this, each one as beautiful as the last, and still nothing worth reliving a second time. It was an amazing idea.
Naomi and Sam connected silently through their eyes. The older girl reeled her in in this way, and Sam felt for a moment that she was the kite this time. Jimmie was being a raconteur, that most terrible of things. Naomi half turned to her and there was disdain in her frozen smile. Isn’t it awful? the look said to her new friend. Isn’t he? The two of them enjoyed a moment of contempt, but Sam was not as disdainful. She found the old man rather jolly and gimcrack.
So, she thought, Naomi’s like me. She’s tormented.
Naomi leaned over and said to her ear, “He goes on like this for hours. Who knows who’ll be mown down. It’s like a snowplow without gears. Should I say something? Your poor parents.”
But Amy was not suffering at all. Fascinating, she was thinking to herself. A man with some force!
After dinner Naomi left her father and Phaine at Sunset and walked the Haldanes home to Vlychos. Just before Kamini the path rose to a series of platforms and steps and a restaurant called Kodylenia’s where the terrace was still open and a few old men sat with their shot glasses of ouzo in an aura of timeless patience. Oil lamps hung from the trellis rocked back and forth to the sound of old Tsitsanis songs piped through speakers. During the day, Naomi recalled, it was usually Mahler and sundry hits of Rossini. The Greeks didn’t look up. A well-heeled French family did. They came down into Kamini, boats hauled up on the sand. On the far side of the beach stood a ruined cafe, blood red, with shattered windows and an old sign that read Mouragio Cafe-Bar in Greek. A half-moon had risen above the dry mountain, and by its light the forms of horses gradually became visible in the fields. They stood perfectly still, attuned to the smell of humans.
The house lay above the path to the left—somewhat before Vlychos—and the fields below it tilted away toward treacherous cliffs and the sea. But even there, on perilous pastures, horses stood quietly attacking the wet grass. It was the usual white house with Aegean-blue frames and pillars, and there were lemon trees outside it. The bloated and neglected fruit lay all over the grass.
“Do you want to come up for some tea?” Amy asked as they came to the villa’s wall and the iron gate swung open.
They went up to their own terrace and they saw Jeffrey standing there with his pipe and a box of matches. There was a look of surprise that didn’t quite seem to be directed only at them. Perhaps, Naomi thought, that was his default expression all the time. Surprise at life itself, or else an endearing incompetence. He was lighting oil lamps but he also turned on the more efficient orange glass electric lamps as well. There were two rocking chairs and two rattan sofas, and between them a glass table covered with desiccated ornamental sponges. The island had once been the center of the Greek sponge trade. They sprawled into the cushions and it occurred to Naomi that the evening was ending much better than it had begun. The Haldanes were more relaxed when in their own company and away from the intimidating headlights of her father and his overbearing confidence, which had crushed them in subtle and intangible ways of which they were only partially conscious.
Sam sat curled up by the edge of the porch with the wind whipping her hair. Her eyes were slow and absorbent while her father talked.
“Is it true,” he said, blowing smoke, “that your father offered a ride on his yacht? I won’t go, but Sam and Chris would love it.”
“Yes,” Naomi said, “he offered. We can sail right around the island. We do it a lot. Good swimming.”
“I’d love to,” Sam said, but without any drama.
“Will you go, Amy?”
“Sure. I want to see the wild side of the island.”
“You can’t walk to the wild side, can you?”
Naomi shook her head. “Not really.”
“I’m not really into the wild sides of islands,” Jeffrey said. “Though I like to walk on the wild side from time to time. I’m happy to stay here and wallow with my crippled leg, but everyone else—”
“Then I’ll arrange everything,” Naomi said.
“Can we go spearfishing?” Sam asked.
“I don’t see why not.”
But Sam didn’t want to go spearfishing, she just wanted to know if it was possible in that unknown sea.
“You’ll only see dolphins,” her mother put in majestically. “And you can’t spear those.”
“Why don’t you stay the night, Naomi?” Amy finally suggested. “We have two extra rooms, all made up. It’s a long walk to your house. Just call your dad and let him know.”
“That’s a fine idea,” Sam said quietly. “Will you?”
Naomi weighed it up for a moment, then let herself slide.