“Wow,” I said. “Guess what I’m thinking about now?”
“Filthy.”
“Wow,” I said again. “I’m stunned.”
She squeezed my hand then let it go, hooking her arm around my waist, fingers tucked into the back pocket of my shorts. She tipped her head against me as we walked.
The zip to the front of our tent was a bit broken. Soon it would be all the way broken but at that time you could still get it open if you knew what you were doing, if you had the touch. Clio did, I didn’t. While she got us inside, I stood watching a fat moth drum and fluster around the campsite’s weak electric lighting. The night was all about stars, empty space and the greasy smell of bug candles. There was no breeze.
We had sex and when we finished, Clio folded her elbows and lay on top of me, me still inside her, her head on my shoulder, her forehead touching my chin.
It all felt so clear, so in-focus and specific. My fingertips on her wet back, over her ribs. Her body rising and falling from my breathing, the slight stretch in her skin from hers. Our breath moving in and out of synch. The resistance against the fill of my lungs: Clio’s weight in the world. Just all this. I stroked the hair from her temple, followed the arch of her ear as gently as I could, over the ghost hairs that lived there, almost not touching at all. This was everything, at the heart of everything this was a simple, perfect just-is.
Clio’s arm stretched up under me and her fingers curled around my shoulder. When she finally spoke, I could feel the air coming from inside her and making the words.
“Promise you’ll leave me if you ever need to.”
“What?” I tucked my chin to the side, trying to see her. “I’m not going to leave you, don’t be stupid.”
Her eyes came up to meet mine.
I frowned.
“I’m not joking,” she said. “If you need to leave me, if I’m making you unhappy, you have to just do it.” She propped up on her elbows, curled her hips to move me out of her. “You have to promise, Eric. It’s important.”
“Hey,” I rubbed her arms. “What’s wrong?”
She looked down at me for a long time and I really thought she was going to cry. “Hey,” I said again and I hooked her hair away from her face.
“Nothing,” she said with an unfocused smile. Then another smile, this one was stronger and it came from somewhere more recognisable. “Nothing, I’m a dick.”
I linked my arms up around her and she came back down to me. We hugged, her head on my chest.
“Come on,” I said. “Tell me.”
“You’re sweaty,” she said, lifting her head up and putting it back down.
“So are you.”
We lay like that for a while.
I listened. Outside the tent there was absolutely nothing.
“I couldn’t stand it if I ruined you,” she said in the end.
“Clio,” I said, stroking back her hair, “you’re not in charge of the world.”
•
In Greece, they drink their coffee cold. It’s called frappé, or Nescafé frappé, or just Nescafé. Greek people usually take their frappé without milk or sugar, but they tend to give tourists both.
We were outside a coffeehouse in Naxos town, overlooking the harbour, having a day out. They call Naxos the green island even though it isn’t particularly green at the moment, but then summer is well underway and the idea of things staying green all year round is probably an English peculiarity. Anyway, it’s all relative. Some of the other Greek islands are much more un-green, all rock and sand. According to the guidebook, the ancient Greeks chopped down the native woodlands on most of the islands and replaced them with olive trees. Olive trees just don’t have the roots to hold onto soil on slopes, so all that earthy goodness washed away into the sea or dustified and now those islands are just spines of stony bones with patches of brown grass here and there and the odd lizard.
Naxos is beautiful, but it’s not really green, not now anyway.
The waitress gave us our frappés with milk and sugar without asking, but then I was dressed a bit Hunter S. Thompson – khaki shorts, sky blue Hawaiian shirt with seagulls, big sunglasses and a beanie hat – so that was probably down to me.
When you first get your frappé, if it’s a good one, the ice cubes are down at the bottom. As the drink settles down, becomes more coffee and less bubbles, the ice fights its way to the top. Like running water, and fire, it’s sort of hypnotic.
Clio said something about a half-carved twenty-five foot colossus in an ancient quarry over the other side of the island. It was enough for me to blink up from my glass.
“What?”
She put the guidebook on the table and pulled down her shades. “Wake up.”
“I know,” I smiled. “I think it must be the heat.”
Clio poked her glasses back up her nose and stared at me for a second.
“You might want to work on your stamina, Sanderson. You’re no use to me broken.”
I came over all mock hurt. “Is that all I am to you?”
“Yes,” she said.
Hours after what I’m clumsily thinking of as Clio’s moment of crisis the night before, we’d had sex again, at something o’clock in the morning. The second time was sleepy and slow, a drifting almost subconscious thing. Clio speaking so quietly as I moved inside her and me speaking too and the words were from a long way down, not thinking and then saying things, words, at all. Night words, sex words or dream words, I don’t know, not for conversation or the sun. Not the kind of words that can be pinned down with letters and ink. I don’t really know how to explain it, but that’s how it was.
“I love you,” Clio said out of nowhere as I reached across the table for the guidebook.
“I know,” I nodded, taking the book and leafing through it. “And I enjoy spending time with you too.”
“Wanker,” she laughed. “I hate that one.”
“You invented that one.”
“Give me the book back,” she said. “I want to show you the stone man thing.”
The videotape of the flashing light perched on top of the video recorder, under the TV, in the
