John Waller - Greek Walls: An Odyssey in Corfu

An odyssey in Corfu

John Waller

Illustrations by
John Chipperfield

YIANNIS BOOKS
England

YIANNIS BOOKS

Acknowledgements

I thank my friends and family who have supported me in this project, to Lucy for her skill in the cutting room, to Agalis and Rob for checking everything Greek and for their help with the artwork and to David for his editing. I apologise to Greek speakers for my attempts at their beautiful language.

GREEK WALLS. Copyright 2004 by John Waller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for quotation of brief passages in reviews.

Published in 2004 by YIANNIS BOOKS
Strawberry Vale, Twickenham TW1 4SJ, UK

First published in Corfu July 2004
Reprinted in UK September 2004
Second reprint in UK March 2005
Third reprint in UK August 2007
Fourth reprint in UK March 2009

Typeset by Mike Cooper, 25 Orchard Rd, Sutton SM1 2QA, UK.
Printed by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK

248pp
ISBN 978-0-9547887-0-4
ISBN 978-1-7830130-9-8(eBook)

An odyssey in Corfu

In memory of George
For the love of his island

THE MAIN CHARACTERS

The Manessis family

Just below an overhanging cliff, we discovered a humble stone building perched above the olive trees overlooking the sea far below ... To the south, we could see the little harbour of Benitses ... From our nest, we thought, could anything be more perfect?

The veranda, roofed with a transparent corrugated sheet with plastic sides, was empty. We opened the door into the single room, which measured three metres by four. It contained the furniture: a bed, a folding table and two chairs plus the current inhabitants-mainly spiders.

It is said that it is best to see an island from the sea. It is like seeing a girl from a distance. As you get closer her features become clearer: the curves of the mountains, the colours of the hills and the sparkle of the windows in little houses, woken by the rising sun.

Nothing could have been better than the sight of Corfu as Jannie and I sailed on the Brindisi ferry through the Corfu Channel early on a June morning in 1966. To our left were the brown menacing mountains of Albania, on the right the gentle green of Corfu and ahead the silver mirage of the shimmering sea. On the island were a fishing village, a little cove with a villa, and then a bay with eight or so small houses with a larger white one at the south end. Way above the bay, two more villages lay on a scar which crossed the mountain perhaps a new road. Then out of the haze, slowly, magically, appeared Corfu town with her magnificent buildings between two enormous forts. It was love at first sight.

It had been the same four years earlier, when a friend had introduced me to Jannie.

Shes different, he had said, a Dane, a red-head. Her name sounds like Yannie but it is spelled as Annie with a J in front. And shes pretty, he added.

Say no more, I replied. Danes, Dutch; they are all the same to me, foreign and exciting.

We met. She was more than just pretty; she was the most gorgeous girl I had ever set eyes on strawberries and cream, except that her hair was not so much strawberry as flaming red and her skin was more ivory than cream. My name means flagrant flower in Sanskrit, she explained when I queried its origin. Whether that was true or not, it was a perfect description. Two years later we were married. Now, two more years on, Louise had arrived.

Just a month before, my half brother Peter had suggested that I looked worn out. He was right, but it was work not parenthood that was the culprit. I was running a computer company with a national network of on-line users. It was challenging, but also extremely exhausting.

Why dont you go and stay at my place in Greece, Peter suggested. Corfu is such a beautiful island.

It was an offer we couldnt resist. The Danish grandparents would look after Louise and, with a new company car and the AA route planner to take us the 1280 miles through France and Italy to Brindisi, we were off.

Peter had asked his Corfiot friend Theodore Manessis to meet us off the ferry. We had been told that he ran the Mobil services station off San Rocco Square. As we drove off the boat, we scanned the quayside. There were a large number of people welcoming arrivals with much kissing and hugging between men as well as women. I noticed that Greeks were shorter than us Northerners and that they had dark hair and swarthy complexions. One man stood out he was tall with light brown hair and he waved. We were the only British car to arrive so it was not difficult to spot us.

He came over and introduced himself. Theodore was in his mid forties and powerfully built. His smile came from bright blue eyes, set beneath substantial eyebrows and above a manly moustache.

You must go through customs, John, he said in perfect English, pointing to a shed where voices were raised in argument. They assume people with foreign cars are trying to import them illegally as the cost of a licence over here is huge. Dont worry, Ill sort it out. Just follow me.

Theodore drove his miniscule car over to the shed and led us past the queue of waiting vehicles, mainly Italian with a few Greek. In the chaos of Brindisi we had noted that it was the Greeks who always pushed to the front. The chief customs officer interrupted his vigorous questioning and came over. Theodore said a few words and pointed to us. The man in uniform smiled at us and took our passports, which he glanced at.