Nine Summers Page 26

I lost him. I rarely listened to doctors when they explained what was to be done. I relied on Felix to make the decisions. He understood how serious the procedure was, but I didn’t, and had nothing to say. I assumed Felix would know how to deal with this. Dr Crooks waited for me to comment, but I waited for Felix to do that. He didn’t.

  Dr Crooks then continued, ‘I must tell you the risks involved. The worst that can happen is that you end up a quadriplegic. But let me assure you that this has never happened to me.’ He paused for my reaction, but there was none. Then he said, ‘You could also have damaged vocal cords, but they would eventually repair themselves.’

  When he finished, he waited for me again. I turned to Felix. He smiled and said, ‘Honey, you ask whatever you want to know.’

  I wasn’t used to this. It was unlike him. I thought of something to say: ‘What would happen if I don’t have the operation?’

  ‘You’ll lose the use of your arms, and eventually, probably also your legs.’

  ‘How likely is it that this operation will be a success?’ I asked.

  Dr Crooks took his time, then said, ‘Well, if you can stay asleep for four hours, and I can stay awake for four hours, it should be all right.’

  I laughed, turned to Felix so he could decide, but he didn’t. Again, he just smiled and said, ‘This is your decision, honey.’ I had no choice. ‘Well then, OK, but will everything be normal after the operation?’

  ‘You’ll lose mobility in your neck. Looking up, down or sideways will be difficult, but your arms will gradually regain their strength. But I guarantee your neck will be OK in a gale force 8.’

  ‘You won’t catch me out in a gale force 8. Not if I can help it. But if I can’t look up, how will I see the top of the mast?’

  ‘You can lie flat on deck and look up.’

  ‘Good idea. So that solves that. How long before we can go back to the boat?’

  ‘In six weeks, two months.’

  I was cheerful when we left. The decision had been made. On most occasions I’m an optimist, and anyway, I had no alternative. ‘If we can get back to the boat in two months, then that’s not too bad. I can lie on the deck to look up at the mast, but I can’t very well lie on the floor to look at the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.’

  ‘I’ll get you a big mirror, plenty of art experts do that…Now then, where do we go for lunch?’

  It was only much later that I found out how worried Felix had been. He had chosen not to tell me how serious this operation was in order not to panic me, especially as there was no alternative.

  As promised, I stayed asleep for four hours during the operation, and Dr Crooks stayed awake for four hours, and all went according to plan.

  Felix had his last session of radiotherapy the day before my operation. He looked exhausted, not only from his treatment, but also because of his concern for me. My first night after the operation was a nightmare. I couldn’t breathe properly. The special nurse Felix had arranged didn’t know how to work the oxygen cylinder. She also spent much of the night studying for an exam. I was hysterical when Felix came to visit the following morning.

  ‘Puss, I can’t breathe. Will you stay with me tonight?’

  ‘Of course I’ll stay. I’ll sit here and pretend we’re on the London to Bangkok leg. I’ll ask sister if that’s OK.’

  When he asked the head nurse, she said, ‘Dr Huber, you do realise this is highly irregular, but you may. Just this time.’ I thought of the nurses at the Guy de Chauliac in Montpellier, where they had organised a stretcher for me.

  Exhausted from the radiotherapy and the cough, Felix sat up all night and helped me breathe with the oxygen cylinder. On the third day, my breathing had improved. But the adhesive they used to glue monitors to my head during the operation was driving me crazy.

  ‘I feel as itchy as a mangy dog. I can’t get a comb through my hair!’

  ‘Let me try and wash it off.’

  Felix tried soap and water, eau de cologne and methylated spirits but nothing worked. The nursing staff had no bright ideas. Finally, he tried nail polish remover. It worked.

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ I said.

  Felix laughed. It was good to see him laugh. ‘I smell of acetone. It’s making me sick, I have to wash my hair.’

  ‘I’ll bring your shampoo and hair drier. We can have a go in the bath.’

  Next day, like naughty children, we crept into the bathroom. I knelt in the bath while Felix held the shower hose over my head, shampooed my hair, then dried it.

  ‘Quick, before one of the nurses sees us and I get expelled!’ On the fifth day I was back home with a new neck and a collar I had to wear for six weeks.

  During the following weeks, I was in a lot of pain. Felix fed me painkillers.

  ‘Puss, you look exhausted. Your cough, the radiotherapy, my operation. I feel so guilty. You’re doing all the cooking, the washing, the housework…’

  ‘I’ll be OK. You’re improving, a bit slower than we expected, but you’re walking much better, less pain in your hip, and if Mike Hunt tells me that my last tests are all clear, we’ll celebrate.’

  When Felix came home from his next appointment, he beamed. ‘Tests are all clear!’

  ‘So how will we celebrate?’

  ‘How about driving to Wales, to the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival next month. Also, there’s a great performance of Eugen Onegin in Glyndebourne.’

  ‘It’s “yes” to both.’ I was enthusiastic.

  chapter twelve

  During those cold months in London, the future looked dark and I sometimes wondered how we’d continue. But we did, and we were back in Bodrum in late June for our seventh summer in the Mediterranean.

  Felix made a list of items that needed repair. ‘Eighteen!’ he announced. He worked on Galatea all day. The GPS didn’t work, the hot-water tank leaked, the plastic sides of the bimini (the cover over the cockpit) had to be replaced, we needed three new batteries, the anchor chain was caught in the tube, the anchor winch was broken…

  ‘The carpet needs to be replaced.’

  ‘OK,’ Felix said, ‘that’s your department.’

  After ten days of preparations, we were ready to take off.

  The day before we left, Ali, the mechanic who had been helping Felix, came for coffee and a chat. He stirred sugar into his coffee and talked about his life, his village and his family.

  ‘…My father worked hard. He sold the crops he bought from peasants. That’s how he made money. Accumulating a lot of money gave him influence in our village. At the last elections my father made sure that 400 people voted for the party.

  ‘My mother died five years ago. My father doesn’t work any more. He lives with my sister and her three children. In the old days, a woman went to live in the house of her mother-in-law. My sister first lived with her husband’s family, and she was a slave to her mother-in-law. But today things are different. Her husband is now in Germany and she lives with our father and feels more free. It’s better for her. My wife and I live by ourselves in Bodrum. We’ve only been married for a year.

  ‘My father still has much respect and honour because he is old. When he was young, people in the village knew how to make and fix everything they needed. Older men could teach younger men. Today, everyone buys many of these things, so young men don’t know how to make things. When I will be old, I will not have so much respect and honour like my father. I’ll only have respect and honour if I have a lot of money. In Australia, old people have honour?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. In Australia most people live in big cities like Istanbul, so it’s different from your old village life.’

  Ali finished his coffee and stood up. We shook hands and he wished us a good trip, adding, ‘Come and see me when you get back. Enjoy your sailing!’

  ‘My fig deprivation is really bad,’ I told Felix. ‘I know we checked out every shop and market for figs in Bodrum before we left, but they may have some here.’

  We had put down anchor in Pala
mut, a small hamlet with a white beach, and we were the only boat there. The scent of pines wafted in the breeze. A group of Turkish gypsies camped on a hill above the shore.

  ‘Let’s row in and ask,’ Felix said. The shopkeepers smiled, shook their heads and told us that the fig season was over, but ‘…you may find some in Rhodes.’

  ‘Problem is we’re not going to Rhodes.’ We rowed back to Galatea.

  The sea was an orange velvet at sunset. From the beach, the aroma of cooking meat drifted towards us. It was still early, but we were tired, and the rhythmic sound of music from the gypsy camp rocked us to sleep.

  Squawking gulls woke us at dawn. On the hill above the beach where the gypsies had spent the night, a plume of smoke streaked into a misty porcelain sky. We sniffed a faint smell of smoke and coffee. It was early, still cool, and our deck was covered in dew. We heard a motor boat putter into the bay. Two fishermen were returning from a night at sea. Their port and starboard lights were still aglow, and the soft sound of Turkish music drifted from their cabin.

  Felix checked the weather fax, then looked at the sky. ‘It’s going to be a brilliant day.’ We had coffee and toast in the cockpit, then pulled up anchor and set the headsail and mizzen. With one hand on the wheel and the other holding binoculars, Felix scoured the landscape for fig trees. ‘Look, fig trees on the hill above that inlet. The place looks deserted, but maybe there are still some figs on the trees, if birds haven’t got them. You never know.’ He made for the shore.

  As we approached the head of the inlet, we noticed a boat tied up to a small wooden pier, flying a flag we didn’t recognise. On the hill above was a burnt-out ruin of a house. Two boys sat on the deck clutching fishing lines while a man was absorbed with something on the boom. When he heard us approach, he turned and indicated that we could tie up alongside his boat. We strung out fenders, threw him our lines and made fast.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The man was about 40, his face and hands were smooth and lean; it was obvious he didn’t belong to the sea. His attire and that of the boys was ‘casual vacation’. Shortly after we tied up, the boys, aged about 10 and 12, started an angry yelling match. Dad turned to them and shouted, and suddenly the scene was out of control.

  From the gesticulation I guessed the battle was over a large can that the younger boy had knocked, freeing an army of live crabs now making a dash to freedom. The other boy exploded, ran after them with a knife and tried to stab them. When this proved a useless exercise, he picked up as many as he could and pulled out their legs to stop them running.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick. Let’s anchor out in the bay.’

  We untied our lines and left them to it.

  ‘What’s the time?’ I asked.

  ‘One o’clock,’ Felix answered, then added, ‘What about we go to Rhodes to look for figs, and stay there a few days?’

  ‘But we decided to go to Bozuk Buku and Marmaris!’

  ‘Says who? If we change course now, we’ll get there in a couple of hours.’

  ‘OK, but Rhodes is in Greece. What about Greek customs?’

  ‘Let’s worry about it when we get there.’

  On a beautiful summer’s day we passed between two bronze deer guarding the entrance once straddled by the Colossus of Rhodes. We tied up near the entrance, under the fortress of Aghios Nikolaos and the medieval windmills.

  Two young couples tied up next to us took our lines and greeted us with ‘G’day!’ The boys were New Zealanders, the girls Australians. They were enthusiasts in a clapped out 30-year-old boat and referred to themselves as ‘sailing amateurs’. They had little equipment. Not such a bad thing, I thought. It must save a lot of repairs.

  ‘Aren’t we lucky. A berth in this crowded marina,’ I said to Felix.

  ‘Don’t get so excited, here’s a bloke making straight for us.’

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘Just wait, here he is.’

  ‘You come to stay how long?’ He was small, leathery-skinned, with an aggressive tone.

  ‘Two or three days.’

  ‘You must see port police with passport, customs, health, immigration.’

  ‘OK, where are they?’

  ‘Will take you two to three days to fix,’ he paused, and waited for our reaction.

  ‘Does it have to take all that time?’

  ‘If I do this, it will take only two hours.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand drachmas.’

  Felix took his time. The man was irritated. After a while Felix said ‘OK’ and handed over our passports and ship’s papers.

  ‘I come back in two hours.’ No smile. He trotted off.

  ‘That’s £70. If I tried to fix the papers, they’d make damn sure it’d take three days,’ said Felix.

  ‘Oh, forget it. Enjoy the thrill. Three hours ago we had no idea we’d be in Rhodes!’

  ‘OK, put on your chapeau rouge and let’s go into town. I’m starved.’

  We walked into the walled city. It hummed with activity and people. We went into the main square, and decided on an upstairs restaurant, with a view over the action. We ordered prawns and beer. Felix’s appetite was in fine form.

  ‘Do you have figs?’ I asked the waiter.

  ‘Oh, madam, since last week no more figs.’

  ‘Never mind, it was worth coming,’ I assured Felix. ‘To find ourselves here so unexpectedly, that’s what I call the joys of freedom.’

  Rhodes is a garden island, often compared to Capri. When Tiberius heard about the beauty of Rhodes, he decided to see for himself; in 6 BC he retired there for a time. In 1522, with a force of 100 000, Suleiman I battled 650 knights and their supporters for five months, until the knights capitulated. Turkey ruled Rhodes for almost four centuries until 1912, when Italy occupied the island. In the 1930s, Italians restored the castle and the old medieval walled town to their former glory. In 1947, Rhodes was ceded to Greece. All these influences have left their mark.

  We walked through the Palace of Knights of Rhodes, the Street of Knights, Socrates’ Street, Suleiman Mosque and the Square of Jewish Martyrs. Two thousand Jews, who had lived in Rhodes, were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. We spent three days in Rhodes before heading back along the Turkish coast to a rendezvous with our daughter Julie and a friend.

  After a long absence, we entered Skopea Liman in Turkey. We made for Göcek at the head of the bay. The small square near the marina was now paved, and there was a new telephone booth and a new laundry run by a returnee from Germany.

  I was too lazy to go to the luxurious showers on shore and instead had a cold shower on board. While under the shower, it occurred to me to wash my underwear. Soon there was knocking on the hull. I emerged to find a bulky, balding, angry man with a face like a prune, dressed in a tight suit and tie. He barked Turkish at me. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. A young man from the marina who spoke English came to my aid.

  ‘He says that you have been washing up.’

  ‘I haven’t been near the sink, I’ve just had a shower.’

  ‘He says you must have been washing up, he saw the detergent flow out.’

  ‘I’m telling you. I have not been near the sink.’ The man continued to shout. Suddenly it occurred to me. The ‘detergent’ must have been the soap from the underwear.

  ‘Oh yes, I washed two pieces of underwear, that’s all.’ The young man was embarrassed by the tirade or perhaps my mention of underwear, and tried to placate the man.

  ‘He says that you know you are not allowed to have soap running out into the bay. You must do all the washing in the washrooms ashore. I’m sorry he’s so angry.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry too.’

  ‘The problem is that he is the new mayor. He says that you must pay the fine.’

  ‘What’s the fine?’

  ‘One million Turkish lira.’

  ‘What!?’

  ‘I’ve tried to tell him that you made a mistake, you didn’t mean to
have detergent flow into the bay, that you always wash on shore. But he needs to show that he’s serious about keeping the bay clean. You must understand, he was elected mayor yesterday and must show that he’s important.’

  ‘But that’s £200!’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately we can’t change that. Last year a man emptied diesel into the bay, couldn’t pay the big fine and lost his boat.’

  I was aghast, and looked at Felix. He looked at me. ‘You sure could have bought some sexy underwear for that, but I guess that’s why Turkish waters are so clean.’

  As soon as we had hugged and greeted the girls, we made for Wall Bay and rowed ashore to our favourite shack restaurant. The same Turkish mum and dad were there. Mum was still stoking the fire, Dad was still collecting the wood, the goats still needed a scratch or a feed. We recognised one of their girls from the previous year, and her smile was as welcoming as ever. She had grown several centimetres. I wanted to ask where her two siblings were, but we still couldn’t communicate. In the evening, thin clouds dimmed the stars and a new moon. The next morning the shore was a delicate Japanese-style landscape hidden in a veil of mist.

  In Kalkan we spent hours in a carpet shop that smelt of wool and was owned by a Swiss woman with lively blue eyes and her husband, an athletic Turk with straight black hair and a gentle manner. They plied us with cups of Turkish coffee, and with endless patience explained the differences between various styles of weaves. Julie bought two kilims, or flatweaves, and we bought four. When we tore ourselves away from the carpets, we sailed into Kas, at the foot of steep green slopes. Like many villages along this coast, Kas had been Greek until 1922. Behind the village were many Lycian rock tombs. When spotlights shone on them after dark they looked like glow-worms.

  Nearby is the Greek island of Kastelloritzo, a melancholy place. A notice over one door read: ‘The Sydney Club’. Early in the twentieth century the island had a population of 20 000, but at the time of our visit, only a couple of hundred lived there. Many had migrated to Australia. The houses looked forlorn and unkempt. Apart from some renovating financed by money from abroad, little happened there. Returnees visited, and a few tourists. In the Blue Grotto, the flitting colours were like stained-glass windows. We walked into a restaurant where the owner went out of his way to make Australians welcome.