That Day but Mostly This Day, Tomorrow
A short story for Espace Maurice, which is low key about sex
Below is a short story commissioned by Espace Maurice for That Day but Mostly This Day, Tomorrow, a duo exhibition of new works by Paris Hynes and David Cyrenne. Special thanks to Marie Segolene for letting me reproduce the text. You can read her French translation on the gallery’s website, where you can also enquire about the works pictured below.
That Day but Mostly This Day, Tomorrow
HEAT Between my legs, clammy, below the hem of my shorts, where skin touches skin. The heat of a taxi in Greece.
THE WHITE HOUSE We stay in the White House. I am eight and I know this is the residence of the American President, from which dictates are issued and repeated on the radio. “The white house has said”. I imagine a gaping maw between its neoclassical pillars.
THIS WHITE HOUSE This White House is on Homer’s Ithaca, close to Vathi’s harbour. It stands alone and is white, a shocking bright white painful in the Ionian sun. It has a large door on the front and a smaller stable door on the side that opens onto a courtyard and leads to the kitchen.
THE KITCHEN The kitchen is bare. It has an overwhelming white marble sink, a large table, covered with an ancient plastic tablecloth, and a dresser, heavy with plates, glasses, tureens in flowery Victorian pattern. It is lit by a bare bulb and has only a small window, which lets in very little light, so we keep the door open. “This is a room for a servant,” my mother explains. When we eat at the house, we eat in the dining room, which has a heavy wooden table and chairs imported from England. We shutter the large windows in the day to keep the heat out so the room is stuffy and quite scary.
PEACH JUICE For breakfast I have peach juice and a pastry. I do not like eating in the dining room, so sit beneath the table in the kitchen, back against one of its thick legs.
CATS, KITTENS In the courtyard a cat is nursing a family of tawny kittens. One is sick, can hardly stand, its head lolls to the side. The island has many strays, and many kittens, and I wonder why no one cares. “They do care,” says my father, “there are piles of cat food everywhere.” Each time I see one of these piles I feel sad and also hopeful. When I think of the kitten dying in the courtyard, I cannot sleep. After four days it has gone and this relieves me and my relief comes with a short-lived pang of guilt.
BOATS The harbour is a mess of boats, most of them sailing boats and small yachts. The sailors are Germans and cook sausages on their decks. “They are cooking bratwurst” says my mother, “do you think they bought them from Germany?” We are English and frugal but we are not as frugal as the Germans. The Germans wake early to lay their towels out to save the best places for sunbathing. “On the other hand, we put up wind-blockers and shades around our beach encampments, and I can’t say which is worse.” This we means the English but precludes my family and the people we know.
SWIMMING TRUNKS My trunks are loose shorts, while those of the Greek boys are tight. I am ashamed by the looseness of mine and by the tightness of theirs. The Greek children play in a pack by the harbour, screaming and shouting, kicking a ball and pushing each other. Whenever we pass I look down at my feet, hoping not to attract their attention. My mother says that the boys are all fat because they are spoiled, while the girls are thin because they must be pretty. Occasionally a parent will come and shout “Adonis! Adonis!” or “Antigone!” and a dirty child will run from the crowd.
CHAPELS Mine is a secular family. The White House has a small chapel, arrayed with Orthodox icons and crosses, permeated by myrrh. I sit in the chapel, unmoved by the spirit, pleased that it exists.
We meet a painter at dinner one evening, an Anglo-Greek married to a British diplomat “Oh I was there a few years before you” says my father, of their university. The next day she takes us to visit her family chapel, which is accessed by a rough stone path. As we walk I am enraptured by her legs in khaki shorts, bronzed and strong, but not athletic. The chapel looks over the Ionian sea and smells of charcoal and myrrh. My parents are excited, praising its beauty, while I think it is plain and dowdy. I am hungry and resent the hour it will take to walk back to Vathi. Townward, I look at the path before my feet and not the painter’s legs.
LAPITHS, CENTAURS “This is Homer’s Ithaca” says my mother, pointing to a lopsided marble bust in the square. “But there isn’t much to show for it.”
Appalled at the paucity of my education, my mother removed me from school and had been teaching me for the past six months. Lessons were mostly sitting on the edge of her bed, hands folded on my lap, listening to her read Pope’s Homer. Mostly, I would be pinching myself to stay awake; her room was always gloomy and warm, nestlike, smelling of sleep and the long poem very boring. But phrases, exclamations, stuck with me – O insolence of youth! or And soft approach the balmy hours of sleep or with joy impetuous to the port I speed.
She had taken me to the British Museum the week before this trip. There an old scholar – a woman with grey pigtails tied in ribbons – led me through the Greek collection, culminating in the Elgin Marbles where she told me about the depicted Lapiths and centaurs, of their drinking and feasting and murder. “The Centaurs ravished the Lapith women!”
CHIPS Travelling with us is my infant sister. She says little and I forget her until dinner. She eats chips for every meal, with great excitement. At a taverna one lunchtime, a child, one of the children of the taverna, comes up to see my sister, who is pink and pale and has white hair. My sister dawdles along and the girl says something in Greek, then again, louder, then again, and after pinches my sister’s cheek until she cries. “No, don’t do that” says my mother, gently, and gently shakes her head at the Greek girl, smiling. The little girl pouts and nods. My parents take-up their conversation, which is about the farmhouse they are buying and to which we are moving, far away from London. My sister screams, clutching her cheek, and the little girl runs off.
SQUID I do not like the deep fried calamari, but feel this is a personal failing so eat it anyway.
SUNCREAM I burn, however much suncream is applied to my reluctant skin, as does my father. My mother says “you look like a British colonialist” when she sees him come down to dinner, his cheeks an imperial red.
THE HOTEL HELENA My mother likes to sit by the pool at the Hotel Helena, the grandest building beside the harbour. She drinks cappuccino and reads one of the day-old English newspapers, The Guardian or the New York Times. I swim or sit on a deck chair reading Swallows and Amazons. If her mood takes her, my mother will buy me a Coca-Cola. My sister, as ever, is at her feet. My father is back at the house, writing.
PARACETAMOL One morning my mother has a headache from drinking too much ouzo. My father has gone out for a long walk and so my mother asks me to go to the shop. This fills me with so much panic that I cannot say no, so say yes. She gives me a handful of coins from her purse and writes down ‘PARACETAMOL, FOR HEADACHE’ on a piece of paper. “The pharmacist will understand English.”
I sit on a wall opposite the pharmacy, trying to convince myself to go in, my heart beating very fast. I take the change from my pocket, which, aside from Greek coins, has a button, a franc and a fifty pence piece. I put the fifty pence into its own pocket and sit for ten minutes, arguing with myself then walk back to the White House. She rolls her eyes “bloody jobsworths” she says, and “thank you for trying,” smiles at me, and “keep the money for sweets,” then “where is your bloody father?”
COVES This is an island of coves, inlets, natural harbours, protected from the aggressive sea. The water sprawls upon the beaches with kindness. In these coves the world is gentle and one’s worries are immaterial, abstract. My parents had taken to an evening walk – a constitutional, my father calls it, grinning – that passed through a particularly peaceful cove, bounded by sand dunes, shielded from the sea and the rest of the island. One evening my mother exclaims, “Gosh!” and so I look up from my shoes. Two figures are bobbing in the shallows, trying to keep their bodies beneath the water. A young man and a young woman, both naked, her breasts buoyant. My mother turns, taking my hand, and I trail behind staring at the couple, who laugh and laugh.
CRABS Perhaps because I am so timid, my parents allow me to sit beside the harbour alone and fish for crabs, of which there seem to be very few.
MILK My mother laughs as she tells the painter about the naked youths. “I just didn’t want to spoil their fun!” We’ve bumped into her outside the grocers, where my father is buying milk for my mother’s morning tea. She invites us for dinner that evening, to her family’s house up the hill. “It’s steep but the view is very good.” My mother is very pleased all the way back to the White House, though she grumbles that there is only UHT milk. My father teases her for her tea drinking, reminding her that in Europe he drinks coffee.
WINSTON CHURCHILL My mother is carrying a large basil plant, brought from the grocers as a present. “It’s Greek basil” my father, who is carrying my infant sister, says.
There are very many stairs and at the top I am tired. I hope the dinner is good and that there will be Coca-Cola. I look over the town and its harbour below, and think it looks relaxed in the twilight, like a man leaning against a thick wall. “It’s quite an ugly town,” says my mother to my thoughts.
The painter’s house has a large veranda with a view over the town and the harbour. “It’s quite an ugly town, there was an earthquake in the fifties, and they rebuilt it very cheaply. I’ll show you…”
She strolls inside, into the dim hallway and returns to the table, moving aside empty soiled plates to make room for a heavy photo album album. I stand as close to her as I can, looking over her shoulder, while she flips through the pages. “Here” – in sepia, a town of neat white buildings, nestled snug against the hills. I am in love with the painter's wrists and her pointed fingers. She smells like jam. She speaks softly. “And,” she turns the page, “here is Winston Churchill sitting on this balcony.” She grins as my parents exclaim. For dessert we have strawberry ice cream, the colour of the painter’s gateposts.
THE POOL I am swimming in the pool, alone. My mother is at the painter’s house and my father is working. Lying on my back I look at myself – my soft belly, my child’s legs – and feel hatred.
A boy calls from beside the pool, a Greek. “Hey!” He is about my own age, and there is another boy, a year or so younger, beside him. “You ask manager if we can swim.” He nods at me, motioning at his brother and himself, miming swimming. I nod. “Okay.” I point to the door of the hotel and wrap myself in my towel, smarting at the hot tiles on my bare feet. I walk through the hotel, its lobby, its front door and around the corner to the White House.
THE STABLE DOOR I am fishing for crabs and thinking about returning to England. “Hey!” A shout from behind me, it’s a Greek kid with a ball. “Football?” He looks intently at me. I hate football but I am too scared to say this, so nod. We play with four other boys on the square behind the harbour. I play poorly, am uncomfortable, hot. A group of girls sit on the side, laughing at me. There is a pause and they all gather around, the boys and the girls, and begin jostling, jabbering questions in Greek and English. “Team? Team? Football team?” “You English? German?” “Name?” I cannot speak and my cheeks flush red, eyes water. One of the girls laughs. “Moró!” They are all laughing now and the smallest girl shoves me. I turn and run, and while the boys don’t give chase, two girls do, ribboned braids flying behind them. I run around the side of the house, to the open kitchen door, and once I am through, slam it shut. But it is still open. Its top is still open and I look through it to the two laughing little girls, fumbling to close it completely. My face, suddenly, is a mess of spit and strawberry flavouring – the oldest has spat her sweet into my face. I shut the top of the door, not before seeing the snarl of her smile, a cat’s mouth. I do not wipe my face and sit in the chapel for an hour or so, a novel fever in my chest, stomach, fingertips and groin. I tell no one.