Nine Summers Page 13

  Yet time and again I left the salon in horror. It was as if I sported a new wig every few weeks. The final straw occurred when I emerged with a hair colour that was a cross between pink and apricot. I didn’t wait for the woman to explain. I fled without paying, and by the time I reached Galatea I was in a state of apoplexy.

  ‘That’s it! I’m going grey!’

  Felix’s head and shoulders were deep in the engine’s cavity when I stepped on board, and before he’d even extricated himself, he said, ‘Hi, how did you go?’ No sooner had he uttered this than his face emerged and his jaw dropped. I heard a long ‘Ohhhh!’ followed by a pained attempt at a laugh. Then, realising that for me this was no laughing matter, he added, ‘Honey, don’t worry, when we get to London you can get it fixed. What the hell, you can wear your straw hats meanwhile, and you know I don’t care.’

  ‘You mightn’t care, but I do! And from now on, I’m going grey!’

  ‘You do whatever you like, but you know you won’t like being grey.’

  So, the day after we arrived back in London, I made straight for Toni & Guy, an upmarket salon near Bond Street. I was in tears as I explained my problem to a young woman called Deborah. From her sympathetic manner, I felt she was accustomed to handling women in distress. Probably most of London’s chic and stylish had, at one time or another, passed through the portals of Toni & Guy in a state of shock.

  Tall and slim, with an intelligent face and long fair hair, Deborah put a gentle hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s easily fixed. And as for the boat, why don’t you tint your own hair?’

  ‘I can’t do that. How could I do the back of my head?’

  ‘Ask whoever is on the boat with you to do the back.’

  ‘There’s only my husband on the boat.’

  ‘Is he any good with his hands?’

  ‘Not bad, but he wouldn’t have a clue how to put on tint.’

  ‘Why don’t you get him to come into the salon tomorrow and I’ll show him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled and passed me a box of tissues.

  When I got home I looked at Felix imploringly. ‘The girl at Toni & Guy said that if you come in with me tomorrow, she’ll show you how to tint hair. Would you mind?’ It took him a second to reply, ‘Sure, I wouldn’t mind. Come the revolution, I can put up a shield on marinas: APPENDIX REMOVED, TEETH EXTRACTED AND HAIR TINTED.’

  ‘You know you drive me crazy with your humour!’

  Felix dressed for the occasion. Corduroy trousers, beige polo neck skivvy and a Harris tweed jacket — which, alas, did not have leather elbow patches — and an amused smile.

  ‘This is my husband.’ I introduced him to Deborah. ‘It’s really very good of you,’ I said in an embarrassed tone.

  ‘Not at all.’ She then turned to Felix. ‘Well, let’s go downstairs. That’s where we do all the tinting.’

  A row of women wrapped in pastel gowns, their hair at various stages of tinting and streaking, with clumps of hair wrapped in silver foil, sat peering into magazines. Smooth faces and shaped eyebrows bore the marks of regular facials. Their shoes and handbags were distinctly up-market.

  A young girl wrapped a plastic cape over my gown and led me to a chair. Deborah wasted no time. She tied a tinting gown around Felix. ‘I hope you’re good with your hands. Now I’ll show you how to put on these gloves. They’re like surgical gloves, quite thin and tear easily…’ Felix gave me a fleeting smile in the mirror.

  ‘Now then,’ Deborah continued, ‘you stir the peroxide with the tint like this…then you part the hair into four segments, put these clips in…’ She showed him exactly what to do. Looking into the mirror, I noticed two women, eyebrows raised, convey messages to each other, which I read to be, ‘What on earth is a 60-year-old apprentice doing at Toni & Guy?’

  When Deborah handed Felix the brush, he looked confident and acted as if he were about to varnish Galatea’s rails, which prompted Deborah to say that he showed distinct talent. The women in the mirror looked horrified.

  With my hair back to its original brown, I was ecstatic, and Felix was delighted with himself. Deborah proceeded to write down the colour formula and a list of tools we would need. From then on our tinting equipment accompanied us on all our travels.

  Dear Kids,

  It was wonderful to find a bundle of letters when we arrived in London. So civilised after trying to collect couriered mail in Italy which never arrived. Also a relief to phone you without having to go through Berne Radio.

  We feel so lucky to have had a great summer with little drama in spite of our steep learning curve on how not to sink in the Mediterranean. And now that Dad has acquired yet another skill, hair tinting, which has solved my hair problem, we can turn our attention to the wonders of London. Theatres, concerts, exhibitions…we’ve been busy booking. Our only problem is having to look for a flat to rent each winter, not to mention living in a different place every year. We’re toying with the idea of buying a small pad which would make life a lot easier — we shall see.

  We’re seeing friends and I must say it’s a relief to have ordinary English conversations without mentally translating into French and Italian, no matter how much we enjoyed it. Some of our Sydney crowd will be in London during the next few weeks. That’s part of the joy of living here. Most people who go overseas seem to pass through London.

  I hope you like this selection of photos, we have many more which we’ll show you when we come home in February. Of course you can’t expect Dad to stay still for too long, so we plan to spend a few days in Paris in the New Year. I’ve sent off birthday presents for Jackie and Emma, hope they like them. Hope you’re all well and not overworked.

  Lots of love, from Us Two

  ****

  In February, our four weeks with the family in Sydney were a break for Felix. No repairs, no need to worry about what could go wrong next. His eyes had improved, and he enjoyed reading for long periods. The fact that he couldn’t write by hand didn’t worry him — he typed letters and I wrote the envelopes. But after a month he needed to be on the move again.

  We left London in March, drove to Germany, and then along Germany’s scenic route, the ‘Romantic Road’ from Wurzburg to Rothenburg and Augsburg. Much of the way was along the Tauber River valley, where willows in the palest of green swayed in the spring breeze in a landscape evocative of medieval times. We drove slowly south, and reached Galatea in Rome four weeks later.

  chapter five

  It had been raining heavily when we arrived at Fiumare Grande, and the place was a sea of mud. We parked the car on a patch of grass and the remains of asphalt. Galatea was just as we’d left her, on the dry. Ludovico and Anita, the couple we’d met in Sardinia, had kept an eye on her during the winter months.

  The marina was a long boatshed on the banks of the Tiber near Fiumicino. It had a café and an office, whose staff more than made up for the lack of facilities one expects in modern marinas. There was an added attraction. A community of cats and dogs in all shapes and sizes roamed freely, bred at a prodigious rate and were a testament to the nutritious merits of pasta in all stages of decomposition. An antique automatic washing machine was available for the use of clients who were not in a rush. One wash took well over three hours but cost one-fifth of the local laundrette rate. A ten-point list of instructions was stuck on the wall above it, the last of which read: ‘It is strictly forbidden to wash live domestic animals in this machine.’

  The shower and toilet facilities left much to be desired. But the pleasure of showering with a limitless supply of hot water was irresistible, even though the only clean item in and around the shower was the water itself. ‘We can avoid the plague if we make sure we only touch the floor, and wash our feet when we’re back on board,’ Felix assured me. At night we heard the screeching of rodents, but as we always pulled up the gangplank before we went to bed, we ignored them.

  Felix’s first crisis was replacing an engin
e filter. After searching every ship chandler and hardware store around Fiumicino, he contacted his ever reliable Sydney diesel mechanic, Ken Evans, via Berne Radio.

  ‘G’day, Ken.’

  ‘G’day, Felix. Where are ya?’

  ‘Near Rome airport. Sitting on the Tiber, having trouble getting spares for the filter. They don’t have Nissan diesels here. What d’ya reckon Ken?’

  ‘Jeez, fancy that! OK, Felix, I’ll send ya what ya need tomorrow. Gimme the address and I’ll courier it. Should get it to ya in two or three days.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. I’ll spell the address for ya…’

  Meanwhile, we did a lot of sightseeing in and around Rome. Two and a half weeks after the phone call to Sydney, the filter still hadn’t arrived. Subsequent phone calls traced the package to customs in Milan. We were assured that, if we sent 19 000 lire to customs in Milan, we could have the parcel within days. A week later the parcel arrived.

  ‘Geez, it’s awfully heavy. I hope he sent the right bit.’ Felix looked worried, and unpacked the parcel slowly and carefully. Suddenly, he beamed. ‘Look at this, good old Ken! He put in a can of Fosters with the filter. What an Oz thing to do.’

  ‘Here’s to Ken’s health!’ We shared the can of beer.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot. The boat insurance is due in three weeks. Italian mail is so erratic, we’d better post the cheque express today. You’d better take it to the post office. I can’t move just now.’ Felix was on the floor, squeezed between the sink and the cracked toilet of the aft cabin, working out how to install the new one.

  Clutching the envelope, I set off to the post office.

  ‘If I send this letter express, will it arrive in London in a few days?’ I asked the girl behind the desk. She glared as if she’d never heard such a stupid question. An elderly man standing near me turned, and said in a matter of fact way, ‘The only way you can make sure a letter leaves Italy is to post it at the Vatican.’

  Is he cracking a funny? Am I expected to laugh? I wondered. I was about to ask him whether stamps bought in the Vatican included prayers for quick delivery, but decided against it. Certainly, there was no twinkle in his eye. The girl behind the counter narrowed her eyes, stared first at him, then at me, and spat out, ‘He obviously knows when an express letter will get to London.’

  I thanked the man. He nodded. Back at the marina, still clutching the envelope, I asked the girl who ran the office about express mail. She confirmed that if the letter was really important, we should post it at the Vatican. So we drove to the Vatican.

  The next time I went to the post office was to buy stamps. ‘Stamps?’ the girl asked peremptorily. ‘Yes, stamps. For England and Australia.’

  ‘But I don’t have any stamps!’ she replied, as if any fool would know this.

  ‘Well, when will you have more stamps?’

  ‘When they arrive I will have more stamps!’

  We also learnt a lot about banks. Not only the hours of opening and closing, but also the different rules. Once we understood the idiosyncrasies of each one, life became tolerable. With only one Eurocheque in my wallet, I ventured into the Banco di Lavoro to cash it. I’d made an unfortunate error with the date — out by one day. I altered and initialled it.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ was the expression on the teller’s face as he returned it to me.

  ‘But this is the only cheque I have on me,’ I begged, ‘and our next meal depends on my cashing it.’ It was all to no avail. I stormed out in a huff and marched towards another bank, the Banco d’Italia. It was closed. A woman passing by noticed me standing at the closed front door. ‘Signora,’ she said, ‘there is a sciopera, a strike, at this bank, but there’s another bank around the corner, it’s open.’ By now Felix had joined me. We made for the bank the woman suggested. It was called Banco di Santo Spirito.

  ‘Do you think this bank will accept an initialled date?’

  ‘If it has something to do with the Vatican, they’ll accept it,’ Felix said. ‘An initialled date shouldn’t worry them too much as long as there’s real money at the other end. Give it a go.’ I made for the nearest teller. He didn’t even bother to look up before he cashed it.

  ‘From now on, we only use the Vatican Post Office and Vatican Banks!’

  ****

  We were moored close to the excavations of Ostia Antica, ancient Rome’s principal port, which dates from the fourth century BC. At its peak, 100 000 people lived there. By the third century AD, the accumulation of silt began the port’s decline, and within another 100 years it was abandoned. Extensive excavations revealed a complex, sophisticated town with merchants’ guilds and trading links throughout the known world. We walked along the main streets where the furrows of carriage wheels are still visible, down side streets and through shopping arcades where mosaics at the entrances to shops advertised their wares. Bars and bath houses, theatres, temples, synagogues, shipping offices, food shops, public latrines, warehouses, even an erotica palace — Ostia Antica had them all.

  With a little imagination we could smell, see and hear the multitudes of people on the streets — shopping, eating, conducting business and enjoying themselves.

  ‘Let’s go one more time to visit Ostia,’ Felix suggested, a couple of days before we intended to leave the mainland. Unlike previous occasions when we’d been there, the place was packed with tour buses. In fact, it was so crowded we decided to turn back to the car, and found the back window broken and Felix’s jacket stolen. We spent the rest of the day driving around Rome to get the window fixed, which was easier than getting stamps at the post office. In all our years of travelling, this was the only time that our car was broken into — and on this occasion we’d left it for less than half an hour.

  During our seven weeks on the Tiber, we’d come to know Rome and its surroundings well, but it was time to move on. On the way to Florence, where we intended to leave our car with friends, we spent time in Umbria, and found it so beautiful we decided to rent a house and have a family get-together there one day.

  ‘Let’s make it our 50th wedding anniversary. May 1999!’

  ‘Funny how we go on making plans,’ I thought. ‘We never speak about the bad times that await us, but that’s how we cope, that’s how I cope, and Felix knows it.’

  Hi Kids,

  We’re almost off. We did a lot of sightseeing, Ostia Antica, Tivoli, Villa Adriana, Tarquinia, which has hundreds of Etruscan tombs, and of course Rome. We left the car again with Grazia and Giovanni in Florence, but managed to spend time in Assisi, Spoleto, Perugia, Orvieto, Todi and Gubbio on the way, and took the train back to Rome from Florence.

  Dad’s well, although he’s been getting tired.

  He maintains that the most useful thing he has ever done is to work with a mechanic one school holiday, a plumber another year, and then an electrician. The next most useful is abdominal surgery, which has taught him to work in the dark by ‘feeling’. Well, he’s been doing a lot of that on the boat.

  You’ll gather that we haven’t had much reading time lately, but we’ve seen a lot of Italy. We have, however, re-read large bits of Homer. The reason for this urgent re-reading is that we’ll now be covering Odysseus’s route — that is, the Aeolian Islands and the Strait of Messina, reputed to be the original Scylla and Charybdis, which you will doubtless remember from your Greek mythology.

  I’ll post this today and with luck you should get it in under two months. We’ll try and phone next week, depending on where we find ourselves. We’re sorry to leave Italy, but looking forward to the Dalmatian Coast.

  Keep well, lots of love, M & D

  ****

  The mist was thick as we set sail for the Pontine Islands the following morning. These were very much part of the Ancient Roman world. The harbour entrance to Ventotene, the most interesting of the islands, is barely 15 m across. It was originally a Roman galley harbour carved out of volcanic rock. For the Romans, this was a prison that once held notables such as Julia, daughter of Augustus
, Octavia, the wife of Nero, and others. In more recent times, Mussolini used Ventotene as a penal settlement for political prisoners. We stayed for a couple of days. On the third day, Felix looked up at the sky and announced, ‘It’s going to be a brilliant day. Your turn to read.’ Since our collision off Corsica, we were strict about taking turns to read when we were out at sea — two hours on, two hours off.

  We manoeuvred out of Ventotene soon after sunrise, and with all sails drawing, we hoped to cover the 22 miles to Ischia by lunchtime. The 9.30 forecast, however, was for a burasca, gale.

  ‘Better turn on the engine and get there before it really starts to blow.’

  While I went down to fasten everything that was lying loose, Felix shortened the headsail, took down the main and increased the throttle. We were making 7 knots and arrived at the entrance to Ischia harbour just as the gale hit. We were not the only ones making it into port. Ferries, hydrofoils, motor boats, yachts, fishing vessels — everything afloat within a visible radius — was negotiating the narrow entrance to the shelter of Porto d’Ischia. We radioed the harbour authorities for permission to enter. But that was purely academic.

  ‘You don’t expect a response, do you? We’re in Italy.’

  ‘Let’s make for any free spot along the public quay before the others get ahead of us.’ Felix was racing the other boats. We made for the nearest spot. The ormeggiatore, his arms in full flight, belly shuddering, face growling, spat out: ‘Via! Via! Go! Go!’ It was clear he wouldn’t let us in. Felix reversed and made for another spot. The ormeggiatore followed us. Gesticulating with every part of his body, he was sending us a message — ‘…it would be unhealthy for you to tie up!’

  ‘For God’s sake, let’s get away from here. If we go ashore, he’ll sink her!’ I shouted.

  ‘Bastard! We’re legally entitled to tie up to a public quay!’ Felix had lost his cool and I was scared.

  Then, with the engine at full throttle, and cursing the ormeggiatore, he reversed with such force it sounded as if the gearbox had fallen apart. The dinghy, which was tied to the stern rail, caught a mooring line and capsized, the outboard was in the air. Felix let go of the wheel, and as we both rushed to grab the rope that was still tied to the aft rail, the helm spun free, and Galatea collided with boats on both sides. A large vessel was already waiting to pull into the spot we were vacating. As we struggled to pull the dinghy in closer, Galatea drifted out into the heaving waves, bumping into everything in her path.