Stranded with a stranger

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Jul 28, 2007 

At 23 or 24 I was still quite a home girl. I was not well travelled. The few times I'd been abroad, I'd lived with families. I'd never done the sort of travelling where you packed your own bath plug and set off somewhere completely foreign with no one waiting for you at the other end.

So when my boyfriend suggested a trip to the Greek islands, I was excited. Born in Athens but educated in the UK, he spoke crisper, posher English than I did but Greek was his first language.

"Kythera is at the foot of the Peloponnese, " he told me, spreading out a map. "It's the island where Aphrodite was born! "

I stared at a tangle of ancient and beautiful words: Paleochora, Hora, Milopotamos, Kapsali. "Here, " - my boyfriend put his thumb on a speck on the island's edge - "Diakofti, the most beautiful place on earth. That's where we're going! "

We took the ferry out to Kythera, arriving in the dusty yellow afternoon. I remember heat, smells, donkeys, cans of oil clunking on and off boats. I also remember being very, very hungry.

My boyfriend had brought his car, a beat-up old sports car, on the ferry and, since no one seemed to have any food, we set off at once for Diakofti. "It's paradise, " he told me as he lit a cigarette. "You'll see. "

I asked if we could get food there.

"There'll be something, " he said but, sucking on his Camel, he already seemed more Greek than English, too impatient with thoughts of paradise to think of food.

I don't remember at what point we abandoned the car. But soon the rough roads turned to nothing and so we parked and went on foot down the steep dirt tracks to the sea. Heat from the scorched earth hit my face, crickets hissed in my ears and I smelled thyme. Hunger was making me shaky.

"It'll be worth it, " my boyfriend said as he pulled me down the scrubby cliff. "You wait. "

We found ourselves in a tiny inlet with the whitest sand I'd ever seen, the bluest sky. In front of us, a couple of fishermen's huts and nothing else. Nothing. It was the kind of place that made you unable to believe you'd ever been at an airport, in a shopping centre, in a crowd.

A man came out and walked towards us. He greeted my boyfriend with hugs and kisses and pats on the back like a long lost friend, then gave me a cursory glance. Everything about my boyfriend seemed suddenly different, foreign, Greek. I tried not to keep on thinking about food.

Round the back of the hut, some more men were playing backgammon. Black coffee was offered and ouzo. I whispered to my boyfriend to please ask for some bread and it arrived and I began to cheer up. My boyfriend seemed very happy, very relaxed. I sat and listened and smiled and pretended to understand and not mind being completely ignored.

A few hours later, night fell and the air grew cold. Blackness covered the water. I was amazed to realise that apart from the string of bulbs over the porch, there wasn't a single light to be seen anywhere. I asked my boyfriend where we were going to sleep and he gestured to the sand. We were lent a blanket and I lay there shivering till dawn.

We spent two or three days at Diakofti. There was nowhere to wash but we swam in the sea. I remember how my hair grew matted and bleached and how the only toilet was unspeakably filthy and had no light. I'm not sure whether it was that or the fact that I spent all day every day watching men smoke and drink and play backgammon that finally got to me. In the end, feeling like a bad traveller, I cracked. I begged my boyfriend to let us move on.

"Move on where? "

"Anywhere. "

"But this is paradise. You won't find better than this. "

"I don't care. I need a bed. "

We arrived at a village high in the mountains. People were singing, dancing; you could smell cooking - tomatoes, lamb. All of this made my spirits soar. I never thought I'd be so glad to see women and children again.

The place where we ate supper wasn't exactly a taverna - more a couple of tables where an elderly couple made us welcome. We ate everything and this time I didn't mind feeling excluded.

"Ask them if they know where there's a hotel, " I said, "or a room to rent. "

After a little discussion, my boyfriend said to me: "It's OK. We can stay here. "

"Here? "

"They're going to give us their bed. "

I struggled to understand. "What? For money? "

"No, just because. It's the thing to do. "

My boyfriend seemed even more foreign. Unlike me, he'd been quite at home sleeping on the beach. Now he was suggesting we move in with some elderly couple.

"But, " I said, "where will they sleep? "

"Downstairs, of course. "

"On the floor? "

Now he looked impatient. "Maybe on the floor. How do I know? "

It was a comfortable bed, a double, lent to us by kind strangers who shared their home with us that night. I remember the room was whitewashed but still very dark and that there was nothing on the walls except for one single figure of Christ on the crucifix, crying tears of blood.

I felt so ungrateful. I knew my boyfriend had accepted this offer to make me happy and now I couldn't sleep. I lay awake all night in that dark Greek island bedroom and as soon as the rooster crowed at first light, I was up, smiling and ready to get out of there.