Under a Croatian Sun (7 page)

From then on, I was on red alert every time I went to the market in case another inquisitive granny might be lurking behind a pile of beetroot, but it was a small price to pay. Health talk was definitely the way to the hearts and minds of the grannies – and they were a powerful pressure group. Besides, who knows, given a few more years of island living, even I
might learn how to exchange the intimacies of my bodily functions with my fellow beings in the full light of day.

Something to look forward to, then.

A
fter a month of being on the island, we could still remember the state of euphoria we were in when we returned to London after deciding to sell up and move. Euphoria had put our house on the market, euphoria had found us a tiny flat and euphoria had got my company ready for sale. Though when it came to breaking the news to our two children, it failed us.

Now in their late twenties, our children had serious doubts about our ability to cope with such a change. Like most treasured offspring, they had started life as dear sweet little things, and after a few ghastly years of teenage strop they mercifully reverted to the endearing people they used to be, but they had recently started on a new phase of treating their parents as old duffers who needed a watchful eye kept on them. They considered our decision irresponsible and were clearly worried about what it might lead to next – joining the Moonies, running amok, spending their inheritance? The lectures came
from all angles, and, when I was foolish enough to let slip that I was looking for a boat, things got worse. Knowing that their mother’s argumentative powers were more than a match for them, they didn’t start right away, but, as soon as Ivana left the kitchen, they closed their chairs on me in a pincer movement like two of Rommel’s tanks.

‘Now,’ said Milena in a voice she borrows from her mother, ‘this boat. You
are
going to have it properly serviced, aren’t you?’

(Both my wife and my children have an unfairly jaundiced opinion of my DIY expertise. I should never have tried to fix the hot water system in 1983; it’s given me a reputation that’s dogged me ever since.)

Milena continued, ‘Because, unless you have it properly serviced, none of us will be able to sleep.’

I held my ground. ‘I’m quite capable of doing it all myself, except for the electronic stuff.’

Milena shot a look at her brother.

‘Dad,’ said Christopher, ‘Vis is the last island before the open sea. If you’re out there with Mum and the engine packs up, you’ll drift over to Italy and no one’s going to save you. Did you ever see
Dead Calm
?’

‘Yes, I did,’ I said testily, ‘but conditions in the Adriatic aren’t anything like that. And I do know how to look after an engine on my own, thank you very much.’

‘You could always just do trips around the island or go to the mainland,’ said Milena hopefully. ‘You’d be safe enough then.’

‘But the whole idea of a boat is to explore. I can drop anchor in hidden coves and Mum and I can sit on deck with a bottle of wine watching the sun go down. And we’ll sleep with the hatch open and look up at the stars to marvel at the wonders of the universe.’

Irreverent giggling from both my offspring.

‘Has Mum been giving you the magic mushroom pills again?’ asked Child One with a smirk.

‘And what about poor Mum having to listen to your poetic outbursts?’ Child Two chortled.

‘Dad, I’m sure you’ll look terribly romantic reciting poetry on your poop deck, but imagine Mum with a force eight gale coming up and you beside her going on about the wonders of the universe!’

‘You are talking to your father to whom fear is a stranger. I’m a man who can look into the eye of an approaching storm without flinching – or into the eye of a charging elephant, for that matter!’

‘Dad, be sensible. This isn’t Rudyard Kipling.’

‘It’s all very well for you playing Captain Pugwash, but Mum will be really frightened.’

‘But there are so many islands to explore,’ I countered. ‘And they’re right on our doorstep. We could even go over to Italy. Mum would love that.’

‘Mum won’t if she knows you’ve been tinkering with the engines,’ said Child One.

‘Maybe Mum liked doing dangerous things when we were little,’ said Child Two, ‘but now she gets frightened. Remember Portugal two years ago when you took her up on that hang glider.’

(How could I not? Her cries could be heard in the next county.)

‘Well, a boat is different to flying.’

Christopher sighed. ‘You don’t have to explore the Kalahari just because it’s there, Dad. You really shouldn’t be doing dangerous things anymore. We do worry about you, you know – now that you’re getting on a bit.’

‘I beg your pardon! I’m only in my fifties,’ I retorted indignantly. ‘And it’ll be a very sorry day when a man can’t take his boat out to sea when he feels like it!’

‘Damned Zulus!’ said Milena (in a most inaccurate impression of me). ‘The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead, but just wait till I’ve got my colonial shorts on and I’ll sort the natives out!’

They got the giggles again and I called for Ivana.

Ignoring my offspring, I continued with my plans. Once I had my boat, I’d explore the coast like Ragnar Hairybreeks. I’d show the children.

So, from the moment we set foot on the island, thoughts about boats had seldom been out of my mind, even when I woke. Each morning I’d take my cornflakes on to the terrace as the fishing boats were coming in from their night’s work and watch as they chuntered in, sturdy and duck-like, a white cloud of seagulls wheeling behind them and the men calling out to their wives and daughters waiting for them on the shore. Once alongside, they heaved off their night’s catches in big baskets and poured them into smaller boxes, the fish cascading in a shimmering, silvery torrent as the wet scales caught the sunlight. After the boxes were on the vans and the women had driven off, the men came to sit on the wall below me to smoke and chat for a while, before returning to their boats, fags still on the go. There they would squat beside their nets to repair the night’s damage, and, hunched and tense with concentration, they’d stay for another hour working away at the intricate knots with knives and needles as they had done on a thousand other mornings.

By the time they had finished, sailing boats were beginning to leave the harbour and were drifting past, their white sails
billowing gently in the morning breeze in what seemed like slow motion. The water was so clean that I could see the stones gleaming on the sea bed thirty feet down, and the air so clear that the mountains on the mainland stood out crisply against the blue sky, their barren, steely peaks glinting like encrusted gold as if touched by a bright knife of sun. Grouped like a family with the higher formations looming majestically over the foothills, they looked like older relatives who had given birth to the lower hills and were now hovering watchfully over them as they retired slowly backwards into the blue distance and greyness of time.

The bay was bathed in sunshine, seagulls wheeled above me crying like risen souls and from over the water came the faint chug of fishing boats. It was all so far away from my usual frantic start to the day – bolting my breakfast and then scrambling to work like a wartime air-squadron pilot. I stood on the terrace marvelling at the world around me. There was such a special feeling to this early-morning life on the bay. The air was warm, the light was sharp and the tang of salt, seaweed and burned cork hung in the air. Standing there with the sun on my shoulders and my bare feet warmed by the flagstones under me, I almost gasped with a sense of wellbeing. This was better than waking up rich.

The oncoming spring brought an atmosphere of expectancy to the village, as if a curtain was about to rise. Pink and white blossom were appearing on the fruit trees, thread-like green shoots were peeking up from the earth and geraniums kept inside for the winter were emerging on to balconies and windowsills. In front of the houses, women were sweeping the streets and the squares to turn them into living spaces for the summer months, and along the shore men were peeling off
tarpaulins from their upturned boats and beginning the laborious job of scraping and painting. The smell of blow-torched paint permeated the air.

The island was in fact full of ‘sweet airs’ as the Bard put it. The strongest were up on the hills when we went for walks along the headland. It was covered by yellow broom, which gave off an overpowering honey-like fragrance and coloured the slope like a brightly dyed carpet. Walking along our usual track, a new scent would waft over every few yards – lavender, thyme, rosemary, fennel and myriad others we didn’t recognise. Beside the track, red poppies, blue periwinkle, yellow buttercups, white daisies dotted the rough grass with colour, and walking over them released even more perfumes to the air.

The track led along the top of the headland and down into the valley, and, although we rarely saw a soul, the passing presence of man was everywhere in the form of derelict houses, stone walls and goat sheds. Over the hill, green slopes coloured by lavender fields, young vines and cherry blossom dropped into the valley where vineyards, olive groves and fallow fields stretched along the valley. Flocks of sheep meandered slowly across them and in between the olives and vines, their bells clanging faintly in the distance. It resembled one of those illustrations in a Bible storybook.

Oh my newly adopted homeland, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

Now that the warm winds of spring had begun to fan the island, windows were left open and we could hear the women calling out across the streets to each other in that strident sound of women over the age of sixty around the Mediterranean. It’s like a caw of a crow or the squawk of a parrot, and at full decibel it can knife through your eardrum and judder your spine. For
some reason, Anglo-Saxon women don’t seem to produce this ear-jolting screech, but any grandmother from Vis could drown out a Guards drill sergeant any day.

Our nearest granny was the possessor of a particularly terrifying screech. Her appearance was pretty terrifying too. Large, stately and dressed in regulation black, Grandma Klakic had the hatchet face of a Borgia Pope and a temperament to match. She was universally feared, as all domestic matters in the village came under her scrutiny – although Karmela told us that many thought she was just an interfering old busybody, even though they didn’t dare to say it out loud.

Grandma Klakic began her summer reign of terror by sitting by her doorstep in her carpet slippers with her stockings rolled halfway down her legs. A solid block of black-clad belligerence, she sat like Jabba the Hutt emanating a dark energy, and, like her Star Wars doppelgänger, she’d shoot out a malevolent croak at anyone who was foolish enough to pass by without giving her appropriate salutation.

In contrast, her timid sister sat hunched and silent three doors down as if she was waiting for her dinner or her death, whichever came first. So obviously overshadowed by her dominant sibling, I felt sorry for her (I had a sister like that), and one morning I went over to make neighbourly conversation. But, just as I started, we were interrupted by a long-haired youth in an official hat knocking loudly on Grandma Klakic’s door. The door opened and the bulky figure appeared, arms crossed defensively. Not a good sign, both of us knew, but the youth didn’t, and, instead of running for his life, he took a paper from his leather satchel, stood to attention and read it out. The Town Hall wanted her to pay the rates for a member of her family who had failed to de-register when he left the island two years ago.

The sister and I waited tensely for the explosion to come. It
came. The blast of her armour-piercing shriek delivered at close range literally rocked the boy back on his heels. The sister and I flinched too, and we were twenty paces away. The youth took off in terror. He ran down the street, one hand on his hat and the other clutching his little satchel, as Grandma K’s screeches ricocheted off the walls behind him like high-octave tracer fire.

‘Is this all you can do at the Town Hall these days, you useless lot of good-for-nothings? Is this what your grandmother and I fought the Germans for – to end up being persecuted in our homes by our own grandchildren? Oh! If your sainted grandmother Vera were alive today, she’d give you such a clout, you stupid boy! You dare come round to my house again and you’ll get a saucepan in your face!’

A few passers-by had gathered in the street and were smirking.

‘Poor boy,’ I said to Zoran who was with them.

‘Don’t worry about him. His boss will understand. He’ll have heard it. His office is only a hundred metres away. You can hear Grandma Klakic at three times that distance.’

The others laughed. ‘They’re so terrified of her in the Town Hall,’ said a man, ‘that they’ll just forget about the tax rather than have to face up to her.’

‘I suppose I should have warned you about her when I heard you were buying the house at the end of her street,’ said Zoran.

‘Oh, I’m sure there won’t be a problem.’

‘You’ll see,’ he said with an evil leer.

When business was slow, Zoran would sit outside the bar, waiting for someone to come along with whom he could argue. Poised like a terrier for someone to throw a ball, he sat on a chair outside the door, and, if he spotted me, he’d get up and come to clap an arm around my shoulders and propel me in. Once inside, he’d
take up position against the bar and hold forth on a bewildering range of topics – American foreign policy, Greek mythology, EU fishing rights or the effect of the Chernobyl fallout on Balkan cattle herds. He liked to flaunt his knowledge in front of his coterie, but, although he occasionally threw a rhetorical question at them, he didn’t like to be interrupted and was visibly irritated if anyone did. The most frequent culprit was Domigoy, his goofy, bearded younger cousin who looked as if nature had meant him to be a gorilla but had changed its mind at the last minute. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, Domigoy had never twigged that his interruptions annoyed his cousin.

The two topics never discussed by the bar-proppers were the recent war and their past communist affiliations. Oddly, after several weeks, Marko admitted that he’d been a member of the Communist Party, but he said he wanted me to know so I would understand how life had been. If you wanted to get on, you had to belong to the Party, he explained. He had never liked the system himself, he told me, but it was the only way of getting a good job, a car, a decent apartment and the best education for your children – and so what did you do if you wanted the best for your family?