Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [12]
I switched off my grinder and laid it on the ground. I looked at Nikos for a bit and he looked at me.
“Hard to say, Nikos,” I said.
He considered this for a moment, then returned to his side of the boat. I started my grinder, the generator dropped, then picked up again as the other Nikos turned his grinder off, the better to hear what his colleague had to report. They discussed my noncommittal reply for a bit, then the generator took up the load again as both grinders got back to work, and we would all sink back into the working trance.
Ten minutes or so later the engine note would rise and, sure enough, the other Nikos, the handsome dark one, would appear. “You think Shakespeare wrote all the late plays, or you reckon it was that Philip Sidney?”
In this fashion the work continued until about two o’clock, when the heat became too intense to carry on, and the Nikoses downed tools, climbed back into the trikiklo, and went off for a siesta.
They didn’t come back that first evening, and the next day they didn’t turn up at all … but the day after they came and worked like lunatics without stopping, all day long. They were not what you’d call altogether reliable, but it was clear that they knew what they were doing, and little by little we got to like one another. But as the week passed, the wretched Crabber was nowhere near ready for sea. Maybe I found it hard to hide my disappointment as I waved good-bye to the Nikoses on my way to fetch Ana from the airport. I trudged off in the direction of the road. A minute later, there was red-beard-Nikos, panting by my side.
“Hey, man,” he said, dangling a primitive-looking key before my eyes, and giving me a conspiratorial wink. “Take the trikiklo. Impress her.”
I HAD ALREADY BEEN away for about a month and I was beside myself at the prospect of seeing Ana. She wore a straw hat with real cornflowers in the band and, as a consequence of a felicitous acquaintance in the airline industry, she had been plied with so much alcohol on the plane that she was almost unable to speak. Weaving in the trikiklo through the frenzied Athens traffic, I took her to the whorehouse where, in rather unpromising circumstances, we did what we could to become reacquainted with each other.
Later, with Ana fast asleep, I took the trikiklo back to the boatyard.
“So where’s your girlfriend, man?” asked the Nikoses, in what I thought was a rather conspiratorial fashion.
“Er … she’s sleeping. But she was certainly impressed by the trikiklo.”
“Well, bring her down to the boat tomorrow, man. We’d sure as hell like to meet her.”
Over coffee and cake I told Ana how disappointed I was about not having the boat to take her for a spin round the islands. I had been dreaming of this ever since I got involved with the Crabber, but now it was not to be.
“But I’d like to see your boat, anyway,” she said.
So next morning I took her down to meet the Nikoses and show her the Crabber. I thought I might have made a horrible mistake when the Nikoses turned on their Mediterranean charm and gallantry, and I felt wanting by comparison. I was just an ungainly Anglo-Saxon oaf. Ana was enchanted by the dazzling Nikoses, who had spruced themselves up to a certain limited extent for this meeting, and she also professed a certain admiration for the Crabber. All in all we spent a pleasant hour.
As we turned to leave for the shabby hotel and the grubby beach, tall-dark-Nikos beckoned me to follow him. He led us out of the boatyard and down onto the pontoons. We walked along past gleaming yachts and gin palaces, until he stopped at an unassuming little sailing boat that seemed somehow out of place among all the ostentatious opulence.
“There you go,” he said with a big grin. “There’s your boat. Take her away; she’s all fueled up. I guess you know how to sail, no?”
“B-but what do you mean, Nikos?” I spluttered.
“This is Nikos’s boat … well, it’s not exactly his, but we fixed things so you can use it. Nobody’s gonna know. Go on, take Ana for a trip down the coast; Sounion is a kinda