Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [10]
Quaking with fury, I went to pay my bill at the bar. “I tell you what Bob Weare is like,” said Yannis, with a look of complicity. “He is of bad character.”
I went to a phone box and rang Jane in London.
“Chris,” she said, “I’ve always had my suspicions of this man, and from what you say I now doubt that he was ever a captain of anything. The title is mere mendacity. You have my full confidence and authority to do what needs to be done. I am so sorry for your trouble. It is entirely my fault for putting my trust in this serpent. I promise I will make it up to you, but now, if you will, I would like you to take the matter out of the detestable Weare’s hands, arrange to have done whatever work needs to be done to the boat, and sail her down to the island.”
There was something about the sincerity with which she issued this trusting and near impossible demand that seduced me utterly. I was impressed, too, by her ability to take command of the situation; even surgery wasn’t going to sideline such a tough and indomitable woman. At that moment I would have laid down my life for her. Certainly I would take on the task of sorting out the beastly machinations of the serpent Weare. But it would be far from easy, as I knew nothing of Greece, my command of the language was negligible, and I had never fixed up a boat before. On top of which there was Weare to contend with, and as the days went by he seemed, by his general intransigence and obstructiveness, to do everything in his power to make things even more difficult than they already were.
I had imagined, now that a whole month had passed, that I would be living on the boat in the pretty little harbor of Spetses, and that my days would be spent cruising pleasantly from island to island with my enchanting employer and her friends. Instead I was stuck in Kalamaki, one of the vilest spots in Greece, where the roar of the constant traffic on the busy coastal road to Athens was smothered every ten minutes or so throughout the day and night by the noise of aircraft taking off and landing. There was a long, grubby beach on the edge of the road and a line of enormous ugly hotels.
The marina itself was vast, and all the more galling for me as I watched boat after boat set off from the harbor mouth into the beautiful blue sea beyond. They were like flying ants, launching themselves one after another from a blade of grass, and me the poor earthbound ant, condemned to stay behind, wingless, and watch them, as the sun caught and then flickered in the beauty of their silver wings.
The only consolation—and there’s always at least one consolation—was a patisserie half an hour’s walk away in the town. Here I would sit at the end of the day, and with the joy of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek—I had dumped the grammar—assuage the misery of my situation with a coffee and the most divine chocolate cake, or perhaps a mango ice cream. It is one of life’s great blessings that the safety valves of the human condition operate in such a simple way: misery’s turmoil sweetly stilled by a sip of fine wine; pain dulled by a bite of good bacon, or a smile from a pretty girl.
Little by little I made progress, too. I traveled on foot in the heat and the dust from one yacht chandler to another until I found somebody prepared, for a consideration, to help me sort out my problem. I hit upon a person who I reckoned was called Ecstaticos, although I was told later that it was Eustathios. He was a smooth operator if ever I saw one, in a sharp suit and shades, and with a glinting smile, but at least he was prepared to take on the job. “My men will be there tomorrow morning,” he assured me as we sat in his opulent air-conditioned office in Piraeus. “They will assess the problem and do the work and you will have your boat.”
I shook hands with him, and bounced off to ring the Boss. As a result of being so steeped in Zorba, I had taken to calling Jane