Any other nationality would have complained about the Purser’s presence in this shrine to womanhood, let alone mine as a foreigner’s, but this is where the Greeks so delightfully differ from other races. They knew it was a SITUATION with capital letters, and this above all is what Greeks love. The presence of three men (if you include the invisible one closeted with Margo) in their lavatory was as nothing compared to the SITUATION.
Their eyes glittered, their moustaches wiffled and, a solid wall of eager flesh, they enveloped the Purser and demanded to know what was afoot. As usual in a SITUATION, everyone spoke at once. The temperature in the Ladies’ went up to something like seventy degrees and the volume of sound made one’s head spin, like playing the noisier bits of the Ride of the Valkyries in an iron barrel.
Having grasped the elements of the SITUATION from the harassed Purser, the three powerful ladies, each built on the lines of a professional wrestler, swept him out of the way with scarlet-tipped spade-shaped hands and proceeded to lift up their skirts. With deafening cries of “Oopah, oopah” they charged the lavatory door. Their combined weights must have amounted to some sixty stone of flesh and bone, but the door was stalwart and the three ladies fell in a tangle of limbs on the floor. They got to their feet with some difficulty and then argued among themselves as to the best way to break down a lavatory door.
One of them, the least heavy of the three, demonstrated her idea — an ideal method — against one of the other lavatory doors. This, unfortunately, was not on the latch and so she crashed through at surprising speed and received a nasty contusion upon her thigh by crashing full tilt into the lavatory pan. Although it had not proved her point, she was very good-natured about it, especially as at that moment Larry arrived accompanied by the barman carrying a tray of drinks.
For a time we all sipped ouzo companionably, toasted each other, and asked if we were all married and how many children we had. Fresh interest in the SITUATION was aroused by the arrival of Leslie with what appeared to be the ship’s carpenter for whom he had gone in search. Everyone now forgot their drinks and expounded their theories to the carpenter, all of which he disagreed with, with the air of one who knows. He then, like a magician, rolled up his sleeves and approached the door. Silence fell. He produced a minute screwdriver from his pocket and inserted it into a minute hole. There was a click and a gasp of admiration, and the door flew open. He stood back and spread his hands like a conjuror.
The first little man and Margo emerged like survivors from the Black Hole of Calcutta. The poor little man was seized by the Purser and pounded and pummelled and shaken, while being roundly abused. The carpenter, at this stage, took over. After all, he had opened the door. We listened to him with respect as he expounded the cunning mechanism of locks in general and this one in particular. He drained an ouzo and waxed poetic on locks, which were his hobby it appeared. With his little screwdriver or a hairpin or a bent nail or, indeed, a piece of plastic, he could open any lock. He took the first little man and the Purser by the wrist and led them into the lavatory like lambs to the slaughter. Before we could stop them, he had slammed the door shut. My family and the three fat ladies waited with bated breath. There were strange scrapings and clickings, then a long pause. This was followed by a torrent of vituperation from the Purser and the Steward, mixed with confused excuses and explanations from the lock expert. As we furtively crept away, the three ladies were preparing to charge the door again.
So ended scene one of the maiden voyage.
I draw a veil over the increasing irritability of my family that evening because, for some strange Greek reason of protocol, dinner could not be served until the Purser had been released. This took a considerable time since the constant assaults to which the door had been subjected had irretrievably damaged the lock and they had to wait until the Bosun could be retrieved, from some carousal ashore, to saw through the hinges. We eventually gave up waiting, went ashore, had a quick snack, and then retired to our respective cabins in a morbid state of mind.
The following morning, we went down to the dining-room and tried to partake of breakfast. The years had mercifully obliterated our memories of the average Greek’s approach to cuisine. There are, of course, places in Greece where one can eat well, but they have to be searched for and are as rare as unicorns. Greece provides most of the ingredients for good cooking but the inhabitants are generally so busy arguing that they have no time left to pursue the effete paths of haute cuisine .
The four young waiters in the dining saloon were no exception and kept up an incessant and noisy warfare with each other like a troupe of angry magpies disputing a titbit. The decor, if that is not too strong a word, followed that of the bar, which we had now discovered was called the Night-Cloob. Fumed oak pervaded all. The brasswork had not been polished with more than a superficial interest in its brightness and the tables were covered with off-white table-cloths covered with the ghosts of stains that some remote laundry in Piraeus had not quite succeeded in exorcising. Mother surreptitiously but determinedly polished all her cutlery on her handkerchief and exhorted us to do the same. The waiters, since we were the only people there for breakfast, saw no reason to disturb their bickering until Larry, tried beyond endurance, bellowed, “Se parakalo !” in such vibrant tones that Mother dropped three pieces of Margo’s cutlery on the floor. The waiters ceased their cacophony immediately and surrounded our table with the most healthy obsequiousness. Mother, to her delight, found that one of the waiters, an ingratiating young man, had spent some time in Australia and had a rudimentary knowledge of English.
“Now,” she said, beaming at her protégé, “what I would like is a nice, large pot of hot tea. Make sure the pot is warmed and the water is boiling, and none of those tea-bag things that make one shudder when one refills the pot.”
“I’m always reminded of the Bramaputra after an epidemic,” said Larry.
“Larry, dear, please, not at breakfast,” remonstrated Mother, and continued to the waiter, “and then I shall have some grilled tomatoes on toast.”
We sat back expectantly. After years of experience, Mother had never given up a pathetic hope that she would one day find a Greek who would understand her requirements. As was to be expected, the waiter had let Mother’s instructions regarding the tea pass unnoticed. Tea grew in tea-bags, and any attempt to tamper with nature would, he felt, involve dire consequences for all concerned. However, Mother had now introduced into his life a complication, a species of food unknown to him.
“Gill-ed tomatoes?” he queried uncomfortably. “What is?”
“Gilled tomatoes,” echoed Mother, “I mean grilled tomatoes. You know, tomatoes grilled on toast.”
The waiter clung to the one sane thing in the world, toast.
“Madam want toast,” he said firmly, trying to keep Mother on the right track, “tea and toast.”
“And tomatoes,” said Mother, enunciating dearly, “grilled tomatoes.”
A faint bead of perspiration made itself apparent upon the waiter’s brow.
“What is ‘gill-ed tomatoes’, Madam?” he asked, thus bringing the thing full circle.
We had all relaxed around the table having ordered our breakfast, sotto voce, and now we watched Mother launch herself into battle.
“Well,” she explained. “You know, um, tomatoes . . . those, those red things, like apples. No, no, I mean plums.”
“Madam want plums?” asked the boy, puzzled.