A Courtezan for the Priest

By Fiona Walters

An English woman, who is romantically involved with a Greek Orthodox priest on a remote Aegean island, is eventually revealed as a call girl via a Greek magazine article she consented to be interviewed for some time previously. This, though, is not what gets the parishioners backs up as the affair unfolds. Vestiges of a pagan past still linger here, which resonate with Maggy via a dream: so at the priests request, she undertakes the role of oracle to divine the outcome of any repercussions. The divination proves to be far more prophetic than he bargained for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477218884

Book preview

Prologue

A t three years old Maggy was separated from her parents and infant sister on a crowded station platform when it was suddenly invaded by soldiers running for a troop train. The Second World War was well under way and in their panic the young recruits had swept civilians aside, causing her father to let go of her hand. She had been dragged along under their feet for quite some distance before the platform was clear again. Meanwhile, amongst the forest of khaki gaiters and black boots, a pair of grey flannel trousers had come to her attention. She had reached for these and managed to cling on to a pair of ankles. It was not her father’s face which lowered itself to meet her terrified gaze, but that of a different man. His puzzled expression had quickly turned to one of realization as he bent down to pluck her to safety. In one deft movement little Maggy had found herself swept upwards to confront her rescuer face to face. Nestled against his chest like this, her gaze met his head on. Every facial detail came into focus before her transfixed stare. He was gazing back at her so compassionately that she seemed to be drawn into the grey-blue depths of his eyes as if by some magnetic force, until she became one with him. She had not been in his arms for long before her father could be seen struggling through the crowd to reach her. As she was passed from one man to the other, their faces seemed to move across each other like an eclipse. At the moment when they were superimposed there was a whirring sound in her head like that of a camera taking a photograph, and a clicking sound as the images fused. It was as though something indelible was being imprinted upon her memory. Some fifteen years later a similar experience, devoid of any danger this time, triggered something of this hidden memory. She was with a group of other young women touring the stately home that was be their place of education for next two or three years. This was their very first day as students as opposed to school girls: so there was a lot more at stake here than acquiring academic qualifications. They were all ripe for romance if not already conversant with it, and hoping to establish relationships that would lead to marriage. This is a rite of passage that that goes with further education whether educators recognize this imperative or not. In fact this had taken precedence over the academic potential of the place from the moment they had been ushered into the women’s hostel the previous evening, to be allocated bedrooms and room-mates. Now that they were mingling with the male students in the main building, the discussion was focusing on which one they would like to be approached by.

Their girlish excitement was verging on hysteria as the young men surging through the corridors and studios came under their scrutiny. Maggy, who was normally rather reticent when it came to this sort of thing, was sufficiently caught up in the breathless excitement that she quite forgot herself. Lingering over tea later in the day with first and second year women, she caught sight of a lofty figure in grey flannel trousers and cricket sweater, sweeping through the dining hall as a short cut to wherever he was going. That’s the one I want. That’s the man for me. She had cried out.

Such forward behaviour had shocked the other girls. Someone in the know had pointed out that the man in question was a Catholic priest, which made her recklessness seem even more indiscrete. She had put the idea straight out of her head and thought no more about it until a whole year later, when this same man approached her where she was sitting on a studio floor waiting for a tutor to come and take the class. There was no seating because this was an assembly point where the students had gathered in preparation for working on a project somewhere else.

What is the book you are reading? He had asked by way of making conversation. She had looked up to see the grey flannel trousers and then all the way up to meet the face bending down to her, framed by the same light coloured hair and intense grey blue eyes as the man who had made such an impression on her many years before. She was taken straight back to the incident at the station and that was all she could react to. In one bound she had risen to her feet and had the man pinned up against the wall he had backed into—somewhat alarmed by her response to the idle question he had just asked. She had held him there with a torrent of talk so that he could not escape until she came to her senses. There was an immediate bonding between them which persisted for the rest of the year, much to the incredulity of the other students. They often teased her about the one day a week rendezvous when neither she nor the priest got on with any work. They were completely wrapped up in each other. During the week he wrote to her from his monastery about nothing in particular: but the women students recognized his hand writing on the hall table at the women’s hostel, and teased her about that too. She refused to be drawn on the subject though because the very idea of romantic involvement with such a man was so completely taboo that she had not believed that such a thing could be possible. In fact, the thought did not strike her consciously until a particular episode took place which brought her up sharply with what was brewing between the two of them. One day as she passed an open studio door where a life class was in progress, all hell seemed to break loose. Two young men had jumped impulsively to their feet and were making a rush for the door to pull her into the studio. Father Sebastian had jumped up as well, dropping his drawing board with a loud clatter to the floor, in the process. As if in a hurry to lay claim to her before the other men did, he made a rush for the door—beating them to it to fling an arm round her shoulders. In this fashion he had led her across the studio to where he was working. He was talking to her but Maggy was too inhibited by the commotion her entrance had created, to answer him in any way. He drew up a chair for her to sit down next to the drawing bench that he was now sitting astride with the drawing board he had retrieved from the floor, restored to its easel. His drawing of the nude model seated in front of the class was already pinned to the board: so he could resume plumbing the relative measurements with a pencil held to one eye between strokes. By this time he was explaining his every move to her, including every stroke he was making on the paper as he applied the pencil between these squinting studies of the model. Maggy was completely speechless and slipping into a trance like state. She could not seem to register his actual words. Sounds assailed her ears but the words made absolutely no sense. They seemed irrelevant because she was picking up a completely different message from the one intended. The drawing on the paper did not so much represent a naked woman, as a pile of rocks. The jagged outlines could not have been further from the rounded contours of the model, and the pencil strokes were scoring the paper to the point of incising it in places. He was poised with this in his right hand—more like a dagger than a pencil. The buzz of his voice intoning his artistic intentions was completely at variance with the stabbing movements he was making. Maggy took this to be a statement of his indifference to the female form. This strange experience had filled her entire body with excruciating pain until his frenzy subsided. Eventually her course had come to an end and she left the art college. It was at this point that Sebastian decided to give up being a part time student there as well. However they continued writing to each other. As time went by, Maggy had begun to suffer unaccountably from depression. In those days one did not rush off to a doctor with anything so insubstantial for fear of being accused of malingering. Eventually, distinct signs of madness overtook the insubstantial nature of her distress, which made it even more imperative to keep away from doctors.

Then a strange thing happened which seemed to confirm that she really was not herself at all. While opening a letter from Sebastian she became aware of a physical presence right beside her. She could see nothing but could feel arms around her. They felt as solid and real as anything could feel but they were completely invisible, as was the rest of this male person. Next, she was being drawn down onto her bed and sexually seduced. There was no emotion attached to this experience other than complete surprise. She was neither frightened nor aroused by the sensation of being penetrated−just taken a-back. If anything was aroused in her, it was disbelief rather than fear or ecstasy. She did not know whether to put this down to a mutual attraction between herself and this man−whose letter she had been in the act of withdrawing from its envelop—or whether she was experiencing his attraction to her which he was trying to repress. The letter itself could not be said to convey anything of an amorous nature, so she had decided to keep quiet about this phantom seduction or she would be taken for mad. A year later she had arrived at the art gallery where she was by then employed, to find a portrait of herself on the wall opposite her desk. There was nothing mysterious about the coincidence of this painting appearing there over night. If paintings came to the attention of the gallery owner and she liked them, she exhibited them. This painting was signed by Sebastian, and there was no doubt about the subject. It was a portrait of Maggy, even though there was nothing in writing to confirm this. It even depicted a row of uneven stitches in her hand knitted beatnik sweater—just too perfectly to be a coincidence. She and Sebastian were to meet on two more occasions and even then neither of them referred to the portrait—nor indeed anything else about the relationship between them. Even though it had been powerful enough to affect those around them, this had remained unacknowledged. On the last occasion she had her baby son with her. This could hardly be described as a virgin birth—rather the inevitable consequence of an unconsummated affair with an unavailable man precipitating her into a consummated affair on the rebound with a psychologically unavailable man. Finding herself in his neck of the woods after a college reunion, she went to the church where she had been told that Sebastian would be officiating at a mass. She must have arrived somewhat late for this, because he was just turning from the altar to present the chalice to the congregation when she made her entrance. She had slipped respectfully behind a pillar for fear of surprising him again. This was perhaps just as well, given the affect that her unexpected presence was to have on him as soon as the mass was over. At the end of the service she joined the queue outside the church to shake hands with him.

He spotted her several people deep. This prompted him to let go of the hand he was shaking to plunge through the rest of the queue to reach her. Without anymore ado, he had hurried her away to another building where he had a studio. While he was out of the room ordering coffee from the kitchen staff, she noticed that there were a number of canvases turned to the walls. Her curiosity got the better of her: so she began to turn them round one by one, just to steal a glance. Every one of them was a portrait of her. She was taken completely off guard, but perhaps not altogether surprised. She had come upon these sketches without permission: so facing the wall as they were, she was clearly prying into something he kept secret. To confide the secret would be tantamount to a declaration of something that would threaten his calling, and perhaps disturb what they both accepted as a casual acquaintance with each other. Alone in the studio, holding her baby son with one arm whilst turning the paintings with her free hand−one by one and back to the wall again—she had had to accept that the obsession was mutual, however embarrassingly inappropriate this might be. It had then struck her that the ghostly deflowering she had experienced right out of the blue, just had to manifest in a child even though it had taken another man to bring this to fruition.

Chapter 1

Going along for the Ride

I t is early spring in the year 1977 and almost eighteen months since Magdala had been thrust into the limelight via a book on prostitution. The book had been written by a well known social commentator of the day, for whom she had undertaken some research for a previous book which had tackled the subject of single motherhood. As she had undertaken much of the research for this one as well, it had seemed fitting that she attend the press launch to step from its pages as the real live prostitute she had since become−much to the consternation of those espousing the liberation of women from more or less anything that had to do with men, never mind sexual relations with them. Mary Magdalene who is one of the Bible’s best known prostitutes, is portrayed as a saint who is not entirely fit to enter the kingdom of heaven, on account of this: but never the less manages to get by as the patron saint of fallen women on account of being forgiven by no less a person than Jesus Christ. In fact until quite recently, institutions in Southern Ireland for the incarceration of errant women were known as Maggy Houses, in memory of this dubious saint. These refuges were cruelly repressive places for those who had fallen short of the straight and narrow path of respectable womanhood. Those who ended up in them could be there for life and the fruit of their sins−the babies born out of wedlock—were taken from them for adoption or incarceration in orphanages by way of obscuring their origins. These places were indescribably puritanical as well, and often harbingers of the very evils the religious orders sought to repress. Emotional; physical, and even sexual abuse by priests was common place, according to those who have spoken about their experience of them. As far as most prostitutes at this time are concerned, Feminism is a notion which they cannot afford to waste any time on. They have much more pressing and immediate issues to deal with than that sort of thing. Even so, Maggy is by no means the only woman coming forward to admit that she has turned to prostitution as an escape route from the benefit system and those low paid women’s jobs which don’t provide enough income to leave this crushingly divisive system behind. In other words for many women, prostitution is their best option.

The newly launched book had caused quite a stir. Such books always do because both men and women are intrigued by the subject. On the strength of the feedback−much of which was favourable−Maggy has found herself spear heading a campaign to have the prostitution legislation in Britain, reviewed. However, although the media has been largely respectful towards prostitutes as victims of circumstance, this alone does not justify prostitution as a legitimate profession in the mind of the average person: so there is bound to be ambivalence about acknowledging the existence of prostitutes, as anything other than undesirables and even criminals.

It seems that even the mildest criticism of the legislation is seen by most people who have never encountered it at first hand, as tantamount to condoning vice. It has been taking all the strength Maggy has to keep going in her role as a spokesperson who is very much in demand on account of the subject: but highly suspect as the proverbial horse’s mouth putting the facts straight, because she hasn’t got a degree in the subject, nor the status of a social worker.

The prostitution laws are presumed to have established what prostitution is about and designated the women involved in it as criminals to all intents and purposes: although this was not the original intention. It was further legislation tacked on more than half a century later which had inadvertently rendered prostitution illegal to all intents and purposes. This means that the personal sacrifice that Maggy has made in bringing to public attention, the legal anomalies and stereo-typical prejudices associated with this world, has been like trying to swim upstream.

Just as she is beginning to wonder if she will ever get off this treadmill, a seemingly insignificant invitation comes her way. It seems so insignificant that her immediate reaction is to turn it down. She is invited to accompany her long-standing friend Val, to a little known Greek island on a house-hunting mission in an abandoned village. Ironically enough, it was through Maggy that Val had got to hear about this place at all. Maggy knows someone who has already bought and restored one of these houses. Val’s ears had picked up immediately when she had casually alluded to this during a conversation about the rising cost of housing in England during the last few years.

The arrival of the hippy culture back in the Sixties, has already imparted a sense of nostalgia for some out of the way part of the world where it needs little or no money to come by a place in the sun to call one’s own. It is already something that many who come from the industrial nations hanker after. Some of the more intrepid ones are already chasing after this sort of thing in those countries where they are still affordable. Greece, in particular is already experiencing a steady trickle of foreigners coming to its shores to live the carefree lifestyle. The island that Val is interested in had been hit by an earthquake several years before, leaving the main village so badly damaged that most of its inhabitants had abandoned it in favour of a housing estate near the main harbour—hastily thrown together with government money soon after the event. Although it is a rough and ready affair the inhabitants have had to adapt to a new life there because they do not have the wherewithal to make their ancestral homes viable again.

I really want to take a look at this place, Val had told Maggy after their meeting with Maggy’s friend Rosemary. Let’s look at it as an adventure and go together. It could be fun if nothing else and we could both do with a break. Maggy has a great deal on her plate at the moment. She has no spare money and certainly no desire to set foot in Greece again. Previous associations with it when she was there with her son’s father have left her with a bad taste in the mouth, which she does not relish being reminded of. The determined Val however, had wanted some company on this trip—badly enough to set about persuading her to see this as a break from the pressures of her life in London. Come along for the ride, she had begged. I’ll treat you to it because I really would like the moral support.

Put like this and paid for, it had seemed churlish to turn down a friend looking for moral support. Having relented and now ready to enter into the spirit of the adventure, Maggy has settled down to the idea of a much needed break for the few days that she and Val can be away from their respective children. Maggy’s son is at boarding school during the term time, and Val can rely on her ex husband to have hers for a few days: so it won’t be difficult to get away and still be back in time for the English Easter. The prospect of this trip, coming out of the blue like this, had triggered a dream. It was so vivid in all its detail that it survived the phone call which had woken Maggy from it. Just as soon as she had dealt with this she had set about recording the dream in all its graphic detail, as she always does when dreams are particularly memorable. This way she can record them before they fade away. This particular dream had implied previous connections with Greece so forcefully and at such length, that it had taken several sheets of paper and writing at a furious speed to capture as much of the narrative as possible. Via this epic account, Maggy realizes that her mission as a campaigner is no less free of personal wounding, than that of the average feminist protester around at this time. Until she comes to terms with the trauma she has experienced in her private life, she is aware that she is in as much danger of confusing buried pain with martyrdom as any other political activist of the day, and thereby arriving at convoluted notions about the reconstruction of society, as readily as anyone else. The dream as she read it back to herself seemed to be drawing her attention to this, because it made her reflect upon her current path in life and why it depresses her so much. She had gathered up the flimsy airmail sheets of writing paper and put them in a folder along with many other records of her sleeping life, for the simple reason that she finds dreams often more engaging than most of what goes on in her waking life.

Little does she realize it yet, but she is ripe for any adventure that can distract her from the loneliness she is experiencing as a highly controversial voice in a wilderness of complacency and prejudice, where her particular expertise lies. It concerns many women like herself at this time, facing the responsibility of single motherhood. All too often this is the factor which precipitates women into prostitution in the first place. Free sex is a very one sided affair when it comes who gains anything from detaching it from marriage. She is not the first woman in her family to brush up with the seamier side of life. Her grandmother some seventy years previously had taken her Christian faith to the heart of those areas where street walking was commonplace. Together with another woman missionary she had ministered to women in London’s East End slums. The two women were destined to become sisters in law via the other woman’s brother who would become Maggy’s maternal grandfather.

To return to current practicalities, Val has booked a couple of plane tickets at a knock-down price because the flight will get them into Athens at some unearthly hour when everyone else is already comfortably ensconced at their destinations before everything shuts down for the festive break. Sure enough, the timing of their arrival ensures a wasted night in Athens at some rather unsavoury youth hostel and a very early rise to get to a very squalid bus station in time for a long journey to the Aegean Sea. From here they must complete the journey on a ferry boat which has seen better days in service somewhere in the North of England. Rosemary though has agreed to have them both as guests for this Easter period, which is a great relief because there will be nothing in the way of hotels or bed and breakfast facilities until much later in the year. She is even arranging transport for their luggage up to her house. By the sound of it this will have to be a borrowed donkey because there is no motorized transport on this island. After a long and eventful journey to the outer reaches of Greece, the island of Eronissos eventually looms into sight. Rosemary, to their great relief is down at the harbour to meet them off the ferry. She has in fact managed to commandeer a builder’s truck which happens to be on the island that day. Motor vehicles are so unusual here that the truck soon fills up with villagers from Trella coming off the ferry as well, and eager to take advantage of a lift.

By the time the three English women have organised beds and an early supper, it is already dark. Val will have to contain her curiosity about the village until tomorrow. As a guest in one of the houses, she is already getting some impression of what is on offer though. Rosemary’s house is typical of Greek island cottages, clustered together in towns and villages either side of cobbled streets; steep steps and private courtyards overhung with vines. Although Val has not timed this trip to coincide with Holy Week, their very first day on the island does happen to be Palm Sunday. Maggy has not forgotten what an intensely moving experience Easter is in this part of the world, so she is all for attending this particular Sunday service. Neither Val nor Rosemary is interested: so with a few instructions as to how to find the main church, Maggy sets off on her own. The Greek Easter is very early this year: so this little known island, where Maggy is to discover that she has yet another date with destiny in Greece, is still cold and windswept at the tail end of the winter. The main church is quite a distance from the village of Trella but the old road is at least more direct and still used by pedestrians and pack animals, according to Rosemary. In spite of her footwear which is hopelessly inadequate for the terrain as it turns out, she picks her way down the rough track, taking much longer than she had expected. The huge paving stones it was originally constructed from have been disturbed by earthquakes over many centuries: so they are in some disarray. Maggy wishes she had thought of packing sensible shoes and a warmer coat, but it is too late to dwell on that now. By the time she makes it to the church, almost crippled by the constant twisting of her ankles, the Palm Sunday service is all but over. She appears in the doorway just as the priest emerges from behind the altar screen for the final benediction. He is directly opposite her at the far end of the aisle, and obviously taken by surprise at the sight of this statuesque figure framed in the doorway. His benediction hand is hovering in mid air as if he has seen an apparition.

Embarrassed at having distracted his attention, Maggy hesitates. For a split second they both stop in their tracks. The scene is momentarily frozen and then released as they follow through their actions. Maggy enters the church but it is so obvious that she has missed the service that she leaves almost immediately to retrace her steps back to the village in time for lunch.

Val is impatient to get on with her mission so that afternoon the two friends set about exploring the village. The weather has turned even more cold and cloudy, which adds considerably to the air of desolation in these old streets strewn with the debris of fallen masonry. It is not long before Maggy quite spontaneously takes over the reconnaissance and is leading Val through the ruined streets as though she knows the place. Val is so taken aback that she calls out to her to slow down. The long legged Maggy in her excitement, is outstripping Val as the area becomes increasingly familiar. Without stopping she calls over her shoulder that she wants to look at a particular house somewhere in these streets. What are you talking about? Val calls back, trying to keep up with her. How do you know where you are going? You have never been here before: or have you?

Maggy pauses to let her less robust friend catch up. No. I haven’t, but I recognize this place from a dream I had a few days ago and I want to see if a particular house I saw, really exists. She explains this without stopping to query the irrationality of what she is saying. The dream had been so memorable that the layout of the village is still fresh enough in her mind to make her way to the house she is looking for with complete confidence. She identifies it by a particular feature and setting which distinguishes it from the rest of the village. Furthermore, what in the dream she took to be a huge stone jar brimming over with water coming from a series of pipes leading off the roof of the house, upon closer examination turns out to be made of terracotta covered with several layers of old white wash. From the same distance that she viewed it in the dream, this still lends the appearance of stone, but water is no longer flowing into this receptacle as it did in her dream, because the system has fallen into rusty decrepitude. The rest of the afternoon is uneventful enough for the two women to get on with exploring these sadly abandoned wind-blown streets where any sign of life is huddled indoors against the cold. While they are thinking about getting back to Rosemary’s house before it gets dark, lighted lamps begin appearing in a few of the windows, indicating that at least some people still live here: so the village of Trella is not completely abandoned, after all. That evening as Val fills Rosemary in on the afternoon’s expedition, she pauses to ask Maggy about the dream. You know what? She says turning to Rosemary. Maggy found a house she saw in a dream. What about that for a coincidence?

I don’t believe in dreams. Rosemary answers dismissively. I don’t even remember mine.

Go on, Maggy, tell us the dream, urges Val.

It’s quite a long one, Maggy replies as if warning her that it could go on a bit.

Oh, don’t encourage her to tell it, please, Rosemary pleads. We don’t want to be bored out of our minds with that sort of thing. More to the point, who wants to go shopping tomorrow down in Palaistra?

Oh yes. That would be a good idea because I’ve come in the wrong shoes, Maggy explains rather pointedly by way of changing the subject.

The next day the weather is still cold and grey, but Maggy is looking forward to a comfortable pair of shoes and perhaps even a hand spun blanket to take back to London. After negotiating the rock strewn path again, it transpires that the limited choice of shops must rule out the shoes because most people are still wearing homemade ones, or going to one of the bigger islands for such things. She and Val do find some authentic-looking blankets though, which will add enormously to the load of luggage they will have to haul on and off the various means of transport that are involved in a visit to a place like this.

Before the trek back to the village of Trella—up-hill this time, Rosemary suggests a coffee break and an opportunity to rest their feet before returning home. She sends her son ahead with some of the food shopping and the three women head for a bar on the water front. Strictly speaking, only men congregate in bars but a concession is made to northern women because insensitive as they are to such things as male preserves, any bit of extra money makes a difference to this most basic of local economies. Who should they run into here but the local priest Maggy had caught sight of the day before at the far end of the aisle, officiating at the Palm Sunday service. This is Father Gregory as the ultra Roman Catholic Rosemary refers to him. He is having his morning coffee after the first of the Communion services. These will be taking place every morning right through Holy Week.

This story which is familiar throughout the Christian world, in slightly different versions, commemorates the time when Jesus—his path was strewn with welcoming fronds of palm leaves, rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to a rapturous welcome, only days before he was to be crucified. The Orthodox Church is famous for its particularly vivid version of this. The high drama of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection is maintained for a full three days with a stream of Communion Masses, culminating in an all-night vigil with the entombed Christ by priests in every parish throughout Greece, until the early hours of Easter Sunday.

Father Gregory is in the middle of some board game with another man, but he abandons this as Rosemary approaches the table to greet him. When introduced to her guests, he recognizes Maggy and expresses surprise that she had left so abruptly on seeing the service had ended, instead of joining him and the rest of the congregation for the distribution of the Communion bread. Maggy is aware of something uncomfortably familiar about this man which makes polite conversation with him seem quite meaningless to her. She does not at the time associate the dream she has had with anything other than the coincidence of the water system at the house she has seen both in a dream and in reality: but she is monetarily unsettled at finding herself once again coming face to face with this man. She is forthcoming enough though when it comes to the appropriate small talk with people who are not likely to be encountered again. She is relieved though when the interlude is over and she can return to what is left of her sense of normality. That same evening Val and Rosemary set out together to find one of the local men who might be able to help with Val’s house hunting expedition. As it is so cold Maggy decides to stay behind and read the book she has brought with her. She is quietly ensconced by the window with a lighted candle at the ready for when dusk approaches, when her attention is distracted by a presence outside the window obscuring what is left of the daylight.

She looks up from her book to see Father Gregory watching her quite intently: so she goes to the door to see what he wants. He has just finished a service with the old ladies living up here−for the saints who must be remembered at this time of the year. He now wants someone to make him some coffee. Maggy vaguely wonders why he has not invited himself for coffee with one of these old Greek women. Presuming that Rosemary is on his visiting list when in residence, she responds to this request on her behalf and makes coffee the Greek way. Her memory of Greek coffee making has not been diminished by the lapse of time, even though it is many years since her previous experience of Greece. That was during the heady sixties when young men felt free to commune with their souls while their female muses wrestled with childcare and poverty in the interests of Free Love. This previous experience of Greece had been on account of an abortive attempt to be reconciled with the American father of her son Paul back in the 1960’s when he was on the run from the Vietnam war. This reconciliation had been thrust upon him by his father rather than much inclination on his own part. All that had ever mattered to him was his poetry for which he required doses of inspiration via love affairs now and again. A woman in the life of a man attracted to the hippy lifestyle was an essential ingredient for self-realization but not necessarily a person in her own right towards whom a sense of commitment might be in order if a sexual relationship was involved. Since sex amongst the avant-garde had been removed from such bourgeois considerations as matrimony, it belonged in the same category as marijuana—a recreational or spiritual pursuit. At least, that was the way many young men viewed it in the days of doing your own thing. Young women though often mistook a sexual relationship as a sign of true love. They tended to expect such a rapturous experience to end in marriage.

Greece had seemed a good place for this reconciliation because its classical associations with Western culture would be inspirational as a setting for poetry. The day to day realities of an on-going relationship with this man however, soon proved unsustainable on account of his alcoholism. At the time Maggy had been too young and naive to appreciate the implications of this in time to save herself from a lot of heartache and near destitution.

The young man attached little relevance to binge drinking as a life-stunting affliction, so the experiment had resulted in few if any useful insights for him either. Within weeks she had been supplanted by another English girl from the same social class as herself and from the same part of England she had always been closely associated with. The two of them were even similar in physical appearance. This other girl was also destined to experience the same failure of communication with this particular man. Meanwhile Maggy had applied for a teaching post at a well known school in Greece, founded on English public school lines. She had been turned down for the job because this exclusively boys’ school did not employ women. However with the help of Greeks and English ex patriots she had found enough work teaching English privately, to be able to rent a small flat and pay for a child minder: so she was able to live independently of the poet—if somewhat emotionally bereft after facing up to the inevitable fact that this man although able to attract women, was completely incapable to sustaining any but the briefest relationship with any of them. The poet trod his own path for a few more months, putting in appearances now and then as he worked his way through a few more sexual liaisons with English girls caught up in the hippy life style in this part of the world. Inevitably venereal disease was to take over in these circles. The disappointment she was feeling about the complete demise of this relationship, was somewhat mitigated by viewing it as a blessing in disguise. The outbreak of venereal diseases in all their gruesome manifestations including syphilis, had at least given her a wide berth. It had been a timely lesson and it would certainly be quite some time before she would be ready to embrace an affair of the heart again.

Some years later however she was to meet a man who had been educated at the English school tucked away on its own Greek island. This happened to coincide with the publication of the famous novel entitled The Magus. The author, John Fowls had been a member of the teaching staff during this young man’s school days there: so he had lost no time in getting hold of a copy, which he had then passed onto Maggy.

The book draws on the author’s impression of Greece as a country loaded with mystery and intrigue−often quite sinister according to the story. Maggy had read it with complete absorption as though she were part of the drama herself. For a start the background to the story is about three English sisters who bore a remarkable resemblance to Maggy’s family of three sisters. The girls in the story not only hailed from the same part of England where she and her two sisters had grown up: but there were references to a connection with the same evocative part of London where she and one of her sisters and a cousin were currently living.

Maggy’s past connection with Greece and the unfolding of a very unhappy episode in her life could hardly leave her completely unscathed: so now that she is about to revisit this country−at someone else’s exhortation, yet again—a sense of trepidation is perhaps to be expected. Perhaps it was the prospect of returning to a place associated with grief that had triggered the dream. It had certainly been powerful enough to stay in her memory long enough to write it down at length upon waking up. It is only now that recall of this dream, triggered by something familiar about this village, suggests that it was set in Greece.

In the dream Maggy was being carried along a very specific route in the arms of a very young boy. She was carrying a bucket of water drawn from a vessel like the one she has just seen in this island village. The boy had insisted upon carrying her to her destination on account of an injury to her foot. The water had been sloshing about and splashing onto the ground quite alarmingly, because it had been such a struggle for this young adolescent to bear her weight. The man at the centre of this tableau was lying at a slightly skewed angle on a mattress which seemed to support him rather comfortably. He had the air of a Sixties hippy, complete with tousled hair and a beard. He was gazing ecstatically up at the sun with outstretched arms as though luxuriating in its radiance, into which he had seemed about to ascend like some bed rumpled Apollo.

Apart from his clothes, this bearded man with twinkling eyes and a broad uninhibited smile could pass for one of those carefree hippy types. He is uncannily like one of the characters Maggy has so recently encountered in the dream she had had only a few nights previously—all written down back in London along with so many other dreams. She records them because occasionally they turn out to have some bearing on future events.

This character had been lying flat on his back, luxuriating under the sun on a battered old mattress in the middle of the countryside. He was flanked on either side by two other men. The three of them had been grouped together somewhat like a Crucifixion scene, but stretched out on their mattresses in rather relaxed attitudes. This had lent them an air of indolent self-absorption rather than torture and suffering. The boy had paused at the foot of his mattress as if to present Maggy to this scene. Alerted to her presence hovering over him, the hippy man had turned his gaze in her direction to acknowledge her with a very seductive wink. This had sent a shudder of ecstasy through her. The boy had responded to this by setting her down at his feet. At which point, the mercurial presence that had been hovering over her since the beginning of the dream, had come to rest with the bearded man—into whom it had vanished. The boy had then vanished from the scene, leaving Maggy alone to confront a very tempting proposition. Father Gregory isn’t quite winking, but he looks as though he might at any moment. There had been a lucid moment during the dream when Maggy had made a conscious decision to resist the temptation to join the hippy on his mattress and move on. She had had a mission to fulfill. It was imperative that she undertake this for her own sake and that of the people of the village from where she had drawn the bucket of water. They were already gathered out in the countryside waiting for her to perform a cleansing ritual upon an outcrop of rock. This was still some way off, and with an injured foot this mission was already a very daunting proposition, without any other distractions thrown in her path.

She had veered away from the three men on this final stretch, to limp determinedly on towards her real destination. Here she had managed to fulfill the mission to everyone’s satisfaction. She had scrubbed the outcrop of rock until it had come up clean and white. She had achieved this with water from a vessel identical to the one she has just seen outside a house in this very village where she is now making coffee for this familiar man, whom in reality she has never met before.

Although the hippy stereotype is the very antithesis of the priest stereotype, the priest’s cheerful countenance and twinkling smile rekindles the allure of that moment at the foot of an old mattress. It is as though someone has wound the dream back for her to explore the alternative scenario rather than the one she actually pursued in order to fulfill a mission of great importance to her.

The connection between the man in her dream and the man she is making coffee for in Rosemary’s house, is their sensuality. This is what is going to force her to confront this epic dream sooner or later, either awake or asleep—perhaps a bit of both. That is, if she can find her way through the rich symbolism that had strewn her path towards the place of destiny and throughout the performance of the cleansing ritual upon the outcrop of rock.

She had identified the mercurial presence that had accompanied her and the boy to the foot the mattress where the outstretched hippy lay, as the man who had introduced her to The Magus. In the dream Maggy had been quite unable to countenance this presence: so she was steadfastly ignoring it. He was so like a lover from her past that it awakened feelings of such immense betrayal, that the task in hand was in danger of being submerged by it. This character was so obviously determined to accompany her to the threshold of some inward journey where something in her life was still unresolved, that there was something inevitable about his presence. It was as though he had popped up from nowhere to let her know that her destiny with Greece was still active at some unconscious level. Moreover, he had jumped into the hippy character almost head first as though pointing straight to the heart of the matter, then vanished like a messenger from the gods whose mission has been accomplished.The crowd which had gathered to accompany Maggy to the place of the rock to witness the ritual cleansing she was getting the water for, had not let the matter drop, however. Like an ancient Greek chorus they had kept up a running commentary concerning her state of mind in ignoring this presence. You can always tell what people really feel, was the essence of their message. It had been an older woman, hovering slightly apart from the crowd as though she was the custodian of this fountain head of water, who had finally put her finger on what Maggy was gagging on. As if to clarify her previous connection with Greece, she had broken into the chorus of voices to observe that Maggy’s silent indifference to the man’s presence must surely indicate how deeply her feelings ran and how much she must have been hurt in the past.

This had immediately established a previous connection with Greece at much closer quarters than her experience of it as a family group from the Western World—acting out their dysfunction on foreign soil—had ever done. Meanwhile, she had been struggling to lift what she took to be a bucket with a chain attached to it. It had been overflowing with water supplied from a tap which was fed by the complicated water system, coming from the roof of the house she has just seen in reality.

When she checked to see what the problem was, she realized for the first time that she was trying to hoist a vessel hewn out of stone. As she contemplated it, she saw that it was quite deeply carved with an intricate design. This made no particular sense to her, but it was clearly intended to be symbolic of something. At this point in the dream, the older woman had advised her to forget about the stone vessel and use a proper bucket instead. Armed with rubber gloves, Maggy had gone in search of one. When all was gathered together for the ritual cleansing which somewhat incongruously, included a bottle of bleach, Maggy had filled the bucket from the stone vessel and proceeded with her journey into the countryside in the arms of the boy who in turn was struggling to bear her weight. Unlike dreams that so often end rather frustratingly without a mission being accomplished, Maggy had succeeded in scrubbing this rock to her own and everyone else’s satisfaction, in spite of the physical handicap which had made her late for the ceremony. Her scrubbing had brought the rock up clean and white as though bringing something into the light for the first time. It had been a thoroughly satisfactory ending. Upon waking from the dream, she had realised that the place she dreamed of was in Greece and that the dream had been precipitated by her imminent return to a country she associates with emotional drama. The mercurial presence which had accompanied her right up to the point when she had been tempted to join the hippy on his mattress had come to rest in him for a reason. Something was being pointed out to her that had to do with her sensuality. She could have been lured away from her mission by this tempting new scenario but she had resisted it because the cleaning of the rock had been too important to abandon. It is as though she has to wipe a slate clean by way of expunging something that is preventing her from reaching out to embrace the sensuality that she misses in her emotionally uneventful life as an up market prostitute. She has not been ready to embark upon any more of those tempting propositions that the carefree Sixties and Seventies put in the way of young women in the name of sexual liberation. Men of this ilk were proving to be far more trouble than they were worth. She could not but be struck by the clarity of the message delivered to her so poignantly from the depths of her own subconscious. Until the trauma is resolved, the sensual side of her nature will remain frozen within it perhaps forever. It could even become the justification for the path she is treading in her waking life, for which she is trying to keep herself strong. Nevertheless, there is enough synchronicity between the dream places and what she has already encountered during her first visit to Eronissos, to make her wonder what it is about Greece that it should keep cropping up in her waking and sleeping life. This is now her third encounter with this country, and taken right off her guard, she has already found herself familiar with a quake-shattered village on this little-known island in the company of a man who seems uncomfortably familiar—via this same dream, of all things. Maggy, like quite a few women on the game at this time, is from a middle-class family with a history of university education. Although she herself did not go to university, it was part of the family tradition and her great-aunt had been amongst the first of the Oxford women dons; and one of the first women to become vice-principal of an Oxford college. Had this great-aunt not died in a road accident three years before Maggy was born, life might have taken a very different direction for her. As a role model she might have brought some discipline to bear on Maggy’s own potential as a university entrant. On the face of it, her background should have fitted her for university entrance but in point of fact, it did not. In part, this may have been due to the exigencies of the Second World War, which had displaced so many people at the time. Maggy’s family had never returned to London. Besides which, there was a psychological predisposition on the part of both her parents to regard themselves as too unworldly to be anything other than unfit for this world.

Perhaps this was because her mother had laboured so painfully under a sense of gender discrimination—arising no doubt from an invidious understanding that only boys really counted because of the family connections on her mother’s side with the Church. This went back to the Seventeenth Century and beyond. For some generations many of its sons had become vicars, including Maggy’s grandmother’s much beloved father and two brothers: so girls were ruled out of this from the start. Maggy’s father was an only son and the youngest of a family of girls: so perhaps too much was expected of this highly sensitive and artistic soul by his architect father—leaving him desperately unsure of himself. This reluctance to take education seriously came entirely from a subliminal level though, because in point of fact, Maggy’s mother was quite a feminist in her way. She was open to all sorts of avant-garde ideas in every area of intellectual pursuit: but she kept this along with her talent as a painter within the confines of her home—like a hobby that lacks the polish required for acceptance in any professional sense.

In this way, she managed to convey reservations about advanced education for girls with an emotional force that spoke louder than all her own intellectual arguments to the contrary. I don’t want you to be disappointed, she would say when school examinations were imminent. It really doesn’t matter if you fail. You are just as much of a person without judging yourself by exam results. Sometimes she would add that worry about exams and trying to get anywhere in life was actually bad for the psyche and could make one neurotic. Nevertheless, she had seen to it that her daughters underwent some school leaving education. In Maggy’s case it had been an art teacher’s training college albeit a very avant-garde one. However, as if intimating caution about taking the course too seriously, she seemed to be expressing reservations about this too. I do hope you don’t become a school marm, dear. That sort of thing is so unattractive in a woman. Whether this was the cause of Maggy’s desultory attitude to the course or not, she had spent these two years wandering somewhat aimlessly through the curriculum, gaining nothing in the way of qualifications.

This had left her sense of purpose in life very uncertain. There was no shortage of cultural stimulation though, so she had all the time in the world to read the books that lined the walls of the family sitting room, ranging over a wide area of interest. Some of them went back into the Nineteenth Century and even beyond. Consequently, her internal experience of the world became so rich and exciting that the outside world was increasingly experienced as irksome at the least and threatening at the most—the more she encountered its cruder realities.

Steeped in the world of artists, which included both parents and nearly all of their many friends, Maggy would probably have made more of her own talent in this direction, had she summoned the energy to go for this at a proper art school like her parents had done. There had seemed to be no future in being an artist in those days. The world of art was somewhat rarified in England at the time.

Only the very successful made any money at it. For the rest it was little more than a hobby for the neurotic. Artistic and musical people certainly did seem to go in for mental breakdowns, if Maggy’s experience of the adult world was anything to go by. The local mental hospital housed enough of her parents’ friends at any one time—not to mention one or other parent at times—to make it seem like a club for those whose emotional sensitivity fitted them for nothing but the arts, in one form or another.

Artistic people were considered eccentric and not really part of the real world, so there tended to be a condescending attitude towards them as somewhat useless in a culture obsessed with financial success, unless they had enough charisma to become celebrities, like Picasso. As far as Maggy was concerned marriage looked like being the only way out of the dilemma for her, but not with an artist if she could help it. Unfortunately she knew hardly anyone who was not part of that world, and whenever she did encounter any pragmatic and worldly people, she had felt very out of place with them: so marriage was not to be part of her destiny either. She did not want for feminist icons near at hand though. This included Rebecca West, whose books she read and whose cast off clothes came her way, via her daughter in law who was not tall enough to wear them herself. For what it is worth, the dream is indicating that some hidden mystery is being revealed to her, using the metaphor of mythology to weave a theme that can be meaningful if she explores the symbolism closely enough. The ancient method of conveying hidden meanings, known as gematria, is already abundantly clear in the symbol of the earthenware vessel. This is directly associated with the feminine principle: so this would seem to be a good place to start with some introspection.

Chapter 2

Succumbing to Temptation

V al’s afternoon with Rosemary has been productive. They have not only found a man who speaks excellent English, who is free to introduce her to the owners of houses she is interested in, but there is even talk of a car to drive them between houses in one village and their owners in the other. This man doesn’t have a car himself, but he knows who does. In fact, there is only one car on the island, and this belongs to the priest: so it rather depends whether he is prepared to lend it. When Rosemary learns that Maggy has already made his acquaintance while she and Val were out, she laughs. You have to watch him. He’s a terrible one for the women and he gets them too, she adds a little ominously. Everyone adores him, so he has no trouble getting himself girlfriends. In fact, he’s famous for it around here. The people almost expect it of him.

The following day, Val’s new acquaintance comes to collect them, not only with the priest’s car but with the priest as well. He is in the driving seat and ready to undertake the role of estate agent himself, along with anyone else who wants to come along for the ride. So Father Gregory, as if predestined to bring another piece of the epic dream into reality, is in the frame as chauffeur. He will be driving Val and Maggy around during this house hunting adventure, along with the man who tracked him down. This is Stavros, a naval officer born and bred on the island and currently