about the buzz he got from working in the family business and tried to compare it to a life imagined with Elaine. He read The Great Gatsby and liked it – but then he was drawn by the fact Gatsby was a successful bootlegger. And he thought about the violence he’d been willing to do. The violence he might have to do.
He’d tried to be more caring to Dawn – and even to his mother – but his old life at home seemed to be someone else’s life. By the time he got round to seeing Barbara in the hospital, her treatment had finished and she’d gone. Not back to Europe, though. According to Reilly, his father had paid her off – generously – and she’d got out of the life. But nobody knew where she’d gone.
He’d never been away with a girl – never spent so much concentrated time with anyone. Greece was an experiment, to see if he could live a normal life. Elaine’s friend, Gregory, almost derailed it before it got started.
‘Greece is a no-go country,’ he said. He was a man who favoured the Jesus look with long brown boots. ‘A military junta is in power. There’s no democracy.’
Hathaway took the ‘helping support the people with his drachmas’ line and Elaine went along with it. The thought of two weeks in a beautiful country with bright sunshine might have had something to do with it. Barnie, Elaine’s non-political poet friend, recommended Hathaway buy a copy of a book called The Magus.
‘Essential reading for the island-hopper,’ he said, nodding sagely.
Hathaway had a suitcase; she had a rucksack. They ate the first night in the Plaka in Athens. Hathaway cautiously, Elaine with gusto. They spent the night in a hotel on Omonia Square, the noisy bustle of the streets never pausing. Piercing whistles; the grinding of gears; an ill-tempered cacophony of car and scooter horns. Fumes came up through the window then through the air conditioning.
Hathaway hadn’t realized Greece was so oriental.
The next morning they’d taken the train down to Piraeus and boarded a ferry to Spetsi. For ten days they island-hopped: sunbathing, swimming, drinking ouzo and retsina and making love. On the last weekend they boarded a ferry to Hydra.
Stepping off the boat at a narrow dock, the first person they saw sitting outside a restaurant on the dock was Leonard Cohen, with a gaggle of beautiful women. Cohen clocked Elaine, braless in her tight white T-shirt and denim mini skirt, and watched her as she walked by.
Elaine pretended to be insouciant about the attention but Hathaway could tell she was excited. He didn’t mind the singer/songwriter giving his girlfriend the once-over – that was part of the music business – but he quickly got cheesed off with having to give the local lads the hard eye.
They spent the next day on a scrap of beach, Elaine topless (of course). Hathaway was nearing the end of the book. He’d started it on the plane and had really got drawn in. Some old guy called Conchis was orchestrating a whole series of things affecting the central character and Hathaway wanted to know why. He didn’t much like the central character, who was pretty much a poncy git, but the story drew him along.
Elaine casually suggested they go to the restaurant on the dock that evening. She tried to hide her disappointment that Cohen wasn’t there. Cat Stevens, however, was. He had his back to the room, presumably to avoid drawing attention to himself, but Hathaway went to the toilet and noticed him on his way back.
In the time it took him to have a piss, two Greek guys had started chatting up Elaine. They hung around for a bit when Hathaway came back but eventually took the hint from Hathaway’s attitude. They sauntered off, casting disdainful glances back at Hathaway and making comments in Greek.
‘Pricks,’ Hathaway said.
‘They’re just guys,’ Elaine said.
Hathaway scowled.
He finished The Magus late the next morning on their beach and threw it against a rock in disgust.
‘What?’ Elaine said, looking up from her battered copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
‘The bloody bastard,’ Hathaway said. ‘I don’t bloody believe it.’
‘What?’ she said again, laughing.
‘Aren’t books supposed to explain by the end what’s been happening?’
‘Not always.’
‘I don’t mean the kind of books you study, I mean regular books. Stories. This guy John Fowles has just been stringing me along. It’s like a five-hundred-page shaggy dog story with no punchline.’
‘Did you enjoy the stringing along?’ she said.
‘Yeah – but part of it was wanting to know why it was all happening.’
She smiled.
‘If only.’
‘At the end the guy is sitting on a park bench waiting for someone to turn up to tell him why he’s been dragged through shit through most of the book – admittedly on a beautiful Greek island by beautiful twins, but even so. And nobody turns up. And the last sentence of the bloody book-’
‘Calm down, John – they’ll hear you in Piraeus.’
‘The last sentence of the bloody book,’ he said in a loud whisper, ‘is in fucking Greek!’
She laughed at that and rolled over towards him. They went for a dip and he checked out a rock for sea urchins, then he pressed Elaine against it and started to have sex with her. Suddenly she cried out as she trod on a sea urchin with the one foot that she was using to try to keep her balance.
It would have been funny if her bikini bottoms hadn’t drifted away and if, as he was hoisting her out of the water, one of the Greek men from the restaurant hadn’t come by.
Hathaway didn’t notice him at first. He was busy examining the sole of Elaine’s foot. He’d located the black dot on the fleshy pad below her big toe where the spine had broken off when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. The Greek man was standing leering at Elaine’s nakedness.
Hathaway gave him a hostile look and grabbed a towel to thrust at Elaine.
‘We’re not alone,’ he said.
She looked over.
‘Who cares? That’s Yannis – we met him last night.’
‘You met him last night,’ Hathaway muttered, trying to pick at the black spot with his nails. Elaine yelped.
Yannis stepped off the road, calling something in Greek.
‘We’re fine, thank you,’ Hathaway called, adding under his breath: ‘so fuck off.’
‘You need to make water on it,’ Yannis said, dropping down on to the patch of sand, his eyes fixed on Elaine’s still naked breasts.
‘What?’ Hathaway said.
‘Pee-pee? Do pee-pee.’
‘Who?’
‘You.’ Yannis grinned at Elaine. ‘Or I will if you wish.’
He patted his crotch, leaving his hand there, the grin widening.
‘You’re serious?’
‘Chemicals. The spine comes out.’
Hathaway looked from him to Elaine.
‘Well, are you going to do something?’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘Not when he’s standing there.’
‘Jesus, this is no time to worry about the size of your cock.’
‘I’m not fucking worried,’ Hathaway said, ‘I just want this guy to fuck off.’
Yannis’s smile disappeared.
‘You say fuck off?’
‘For God’s sake, will somebody piss on my foot?’
‘Piss on your own bloody foot, you’re so clever,’ Hathaway said, thrusting his chin out and taking a step towards Yannis.
Yannis was in flip-flops; Hathaway was bare-footed. Hathaway knocked him down with a roundhouse kick that caught the Greek on the side of the head just above his left ear.
Yannis fell heavily. Hathaway heard the hollow clunk as his head hit rock. He stepped forward and picked up another rock, raising it to smash down into Yannis’s face. Elaine screamed his name.
