WHAT GOES AROUND
David J Christopher
With grateful thanks to Hannah for her incisive critique of earlier drafts, to Martine for her invaluable comments, and to Miranda for her encouragement.
Thank you as well to my resilient editor Fiona who probably knows this manuscript better than I do.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Author: David J Christopher
Cover design: Canva.
ISBN: 9789463981965
© 2020 David J Christopher
Chapter One
Low levels of lighting and no mirrors are distinct positives this morning. If I look half as bad as I feel, then reflection avoidance is the best policy. It wasn't so much last night that was to blame, more the preceding three days. What people often refer to as a "bender." I struggle to remember the details, but ouzo featured heavily and food not so much. It was my friend Agnon's fault. He owns the taverna on the other side of the bay. He was celebrating something or other, opening for the season or a new Godson or such like. He's Albanian, has lived in Greece for over thirty years, works like a trojan, and knows how to party. As I gradually rejoin the land of the living, I am aware that my right hand is throbbing painfully. A hazy memory returns. Some posh bloke telling me that I was the mirror image of Worzel Gummidge. He insisted on pulling up a picture to emphasise the point on his swanky telephone. Having done so he invited the others in his party to agree that the scarecrow character and I could have been separated at birth. He thought it was hysterical, and so did they. I failed to grasp the funny side at the time though in the cold light of day, the comparison is perhaps not entirely unfair. There was however something about the smarmy git that just hit a raw nerve. A memory is reforming in my mind of taking a swing at him.
I'm pretty certain I missed but from the sensation in my hand I must have struck something solid. Soon after that Agnon rowed me back across the bay, laughing the whole way before staying on for a couple of night caps. Well, I had to return his hospitality didn't I?
At some point he must have gone and, somehow, I must have made it into my cabin because I'm sure that's where I am now. My head is fuzzy. My face feels flushed and my mouth parched. Not an entirely new sensation if truth be told. I open my eyes, one at a time trying not to allow panic to get the better of me as I realise I can't see very much. Paranoia and hypochondria being two of my closest friends, I start running through what the hell I would do if I have been blinded by the homemade ouzo. Fortunately, just then, Kitty decides it's time to go ashore and jumps off my face onto the floor. Panic over.
I groan out loud. Once the cat decides that we're getting up, we are. No chance now of turning over and going back to sleep. If I choose to ignore her she will complain vocally at first and then find a dark hole somewhere hidden deep in the boat to do her business.
"Come on then."
I live alone so about 75% of the conversations I have are with Kitty. We discuss all sorts of things from the weather, crucial to all sailors, to politics and religion. Kitty agrees with most of what I say. We find it works better that way.
I pick her up with my good hand, peering at the injured one as I do so. Sliding back the cabin door, the boat is filled with glorious morning sunshine. My head hurts and I groan aloud.
"Where the fuck is the dinghy?" I demand of Kitty, as if she might have popped ashore with it in the night. It should be tied to the back of the boat ready for the twenty-meter row to shore. I stare at the empty space.
"Doh!"
I smack my forehead with my bad hand, a stupid move on two counts. Of course, Agnon brought me back last night. I squint into the sunlight looking towards his taverna and the little pier his guests tie up to. There is one dinghy still there.
"Looks like we're swimming Kitty."
"You fuckwit," she replies.
I'm only wearing boxer shorts and frankly they could do with a wash anyway. The morning is warm, and the water will be a reasonable temperature. What the hell. Holding Kitty and a scrunched-up t-shirt high above my head I leap into the crystal-clear water which immerses my head for a brief revitalising second. Kitty and t-shirt stay dry as I wade ashore. Slowly I begin to feel at least a little human. I put Kitty on the beach and without a backward glance she trots off into the olive tree wood that covers the hillside to my right. I sit down on a handy rock and scratch my stubbly chin. I need a shave. I catch sight of my reflection in the gently rippling water. Even that slight distortion cannot hide the reality of my appearance. Worzel Gummidge might have been generous. My hair is too long and standing up in odd places. My face is weathered from the scorching Hellenic sun and wrinkled by my sixty-three years of daily usage. I grin at my reflection. My teeth are my own but stained yellow, maybe even green, by the twenty roll-ups I smoke a day, often with a little something extra inside them, and the fifteen cups of Greek coffee.
"Roydon mate, you look like shit," I tell the face staring back at me.
"Morning Roydon how are you today?" A cheery voice from behind me.
I turn my head slowly so as not to reignite my hangover and squint straight into the sun. Putting my hand up to shade my eyes, I can make out that the speaker is Camille. Much as I love her, and believe me I do, if there is anyone I would less like to meet looking and feeling as I do at this minute, then I can't think of them. Camille is amazing. She's probably my age but you would never guess it. I'm told that in her youth she was a model in her native Switzerland, and I can believe it. She's one of those women who has allowed herself to age gracefully eschewing chemical assistance in the process. Of course, it helps that she never smokes, rarely drinks, is a vegetarian, and exercises every day. She is my neighbour here in our little piece of paradise. She lives with her husband, Phillippe, on Faith, a beautiful wooden boat which they built themselves. Like me, they live on the island pretty much twelve months of the year. Unlike me, they are virtually self-sufficient. They've anchored here for so long they have a strip of land on the shoreline on which they cultivate vegetables. They collect water from Agnon's taverna and Camille rows across the bay regularly at speeds that would put Steve Redgrave to shame.
She surveys me now with just a hint of the disappointment in me that I know she feels. I realise that even by my own standards I must look bad this morning.
"Can I offer you a lift?" she asks. "In fact, can I offer you breakfast? Phillippe is cooking some of the mushrooms he collected last Autumn from Kastos."
"That's incredibly kind of you but I'm not up to eating much at the moment." Whilst speaking I silently assess the chances that Phillippe might poison all of us having picked the wrong type of mushroom.
As if she is reading my mind Camille continues. "You don't need to worry; Phillippe has a book and has become quite an expert."
This does not surprise me. As much as I am a huge fan of Camille, I find Phillippe less appealing. He is French and has that confidence his compatriots appear to have in natural abundance. He is an expert on virtually every subject I've ever discussed with him from boating to botany and back again. Our conversations are thankfully well spaced as they tend to go less well than those I have with Kitty. Mind you, if I'm honest, that can be said of many of the interactions I have with males. Obviously Agnon is different, but then I can't understand much of what he says. I've always got on better with women but given that I am once again living alone with a cat, those relationships clearly have their limitations too.
"I'll take a coffee off you though," I say as I pull on my t-shirt. Never let it be said that I would allow an opinionated Frenchman to get in the way of a free coffee or two. Today might have to be an eating day given that as far as I can remember I've had nothing much to eat in the last three days, unless you count olives. Mentally I think about the cold store I