work. She saw that her hair was wet as she took out the manuscript that had come in the post, its fat pile of paper densely peopled with words. Other people’s storylines and societies would keep her from feeling confined. Perhaps in addition she’d write a book about her life on the island; the accident and the way she met her second husband would both be gifts to anopening chapter. The small blue flame of her self-regard sparked and caught, when she thought of this plausible life.
Nina picked up her notebook. The thing I love about the plan is that its simplicity and luxury are both the opposite to how they are at home . The simplicity would be in the material facts, their few possessions. The luxury would be in the backdrop, the sunshine, the seafront location, and most important in the stretching out of time. There’d be the opportunity to be properly alive. There would be four summer dresses; there’d only be a need for four. There’d be local leather sandals and a big plain hat and straw baskets for visiting the street market. She’d have an allotment up in the top village, and join the women gardeners on the minibus. The seven of them, six alike and one startlingly different, would stand together at the bus bench and scrutinize outsiders. Her Greek would be good by the second spring.
She’d be able to build a new house: Dr. Christos didn’t know, yet, about the money her mother had left her. She began to make sketches in her notebook. What she wanted had a lot in common with the island hospital: a courtyard house, single story with large, airy rooms, French windows leading into a central garden, and a veranda all around the inner three sides of the building, its stout pillars made of a hard Asian wood. Indoors there’d be simple furniture, nice pictures, a lot of books, a lot of music, perhaps a piano by the window. Nina saw herself out watering her pots in the evening, wearing a white linen tunic and trousers, her hair tousled and full of salt, her bare brown feet encrusted with sand. She looked absolutely content, this woman, and young for her age. Her new husband was sitting on the veranda with the newspaper and with wine. He was saying, “Let me cook tonight; I was given some fish today.” He was saying, “Did you bring artichokes down from the garden, my love?”
Everything had gone disastrously wrong by the sixth morning of the holiday. On the sixth day, there didn’t seem anything to do but the same things she’d done the day before. She began to be frightened; there ought to be other things to do, other things to imagine, so why couldn’t she imagine them? She went along to Blue Bay, stopping to take photographs that were identical to ones she had already, of the morning sea, the boats arriving back in the harbor, the fishermen’s blue trousers and bent backs. At the beach she made camp in a shady patch under a pine, swam for a few minutes and tried to read while drying off, and swam a second time and returned to the tree and lay with one eye open, watching the other tourists. This was the best part of the day, but it was over by noon. By then she didn’t any longer want to be on holiday or here or alone; by noon she felt stunted by misery, her heart wrapped tight and all her responses and thoughts blunted. She ate warm white beans and tomatoes at the café, drank a small carafe of wine and went back to her room for a siesta, but sleep wouldn’t come, so she lay looking at the square of bright blue sky, and at the small, agile lizard on her bedroom wall, which was darting and then standing as if in a trance. She watched her alarm clock, longing for it to be time for a swim at Octopus Beach, but was bored by her visit there and didn’t stay long. After a shower, clad in fresh evening clothes, she went to the shop and bought leather belts, jewelry made of polished blue and green pebbles, and a series of boxes covered in tiny glued shells. Then, having deposited her finds in the room, she
Nina picked up her notebook. The thing I love about the plan is that its simplicity and luxury are both the opposite to how they are at home . The simplicity would be in the material facts, their few possessions. The luxury would be in the backdrop, the sunshine, the seafront location, and most important in the stretching out of time. There’d be the opportunity to be properly alive. There would be four summer dresses; there’d only be a need for four. There’d be local leather sandals and a big plain hat and straw baskets for visiting the street market. She’d have an allotment up in the top village, and join the women gardeners on the minibus. The seven of them, six alike and one startlingly different, would stand together at the bus bench and scrutinize outsiders. Her Greek would be good by the second spring.
She’d be able to build a new house: Dr. Christos didn’t know, yet, about the money her mother had left her. She began to make sketches in her notebook. What she wanted had a lot in common with the island hospital: a courtyard house, single story with large, airy rooms, French windows leading into a central garden, and a veranda all around the inner three sides of the building, its stout pillars made of a hard Asian wood. Indoors there’d be simple furniture, nice pictures, a lot of books, a lot of music, perhaps a piano by the window. Nina saw herself out watering her pots in the evening, wearing a white linen tunic and trousers, her hair tousled and full of salt, her bare brown feet encrusted with sand. She looked absolutely content, this woman, and young for her age. Her new husband was sitting on the veranda with the newspaper and with wine. He was saying, “Let me cook tonight; I was given some fish today.” He was saying, “Did you bring artichokes down from the garden, my love?”
Everything had gone disastrously wrong by the sixth morning of the holiday. On the sixth day, there didn’t seem anything to do but the same things she’d done the day before. She began to be frightened; there ought to be other things to do, other things to imagine, so why couldn’t she imagine them? She went along to Blue Bay, stopping to take photographs that were identical to ones she had already, of the morning sea, the boats arriving back in the harbor, the fishermen’s blue trousers and bent backs. At the beach she made camp in a shady patch under a pine, swam for a few minutes and tried to read while drying off, and swam a second time and returned to the tree and lay with one eye open, watching the other tourists. This was the best part of the day, but it was over by noon. By then she didn’t any longer want to be on holiday or here or alone; by noon she felt stunted by misery, her heart wrapped tight and all her responses and thoughts blunted. She ate warm white beans and tomatoes at the café, drank a small carafe of wine and went back to her room for a siesta, but sleep wouldn’t come, so she lay looking at the square of bright blue sky, and at the small, agile lizard on her bedroom wall, which was darting and then standing as if in a trance. She watched her alarm clock, longing for it to be time for a swim at Octopus Beach, but was bored by her visit there and didn’t stay long. After a shower, clad in fresh evening clothes, she went to the shop and bought leather belts, jewelry made of polished blue and green pebbles, and a series of boxes covered in tiny glued shells. Then, having deposited her finds in the room, she
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