I popped into the consulate before it shut
down. I had my photographs of Mt Athos to show Terry. The prints delighted him,
genuinely, I thought, so I gave them to him. I kept the negatives. When he
moved to England, he showed the photos to some friends. They decided to go to
Athos together. They’d travel to Salonica first, then continue to the Holy
Mountain.
So, Terry came back to Greece like most
people, on holiday, a plain citizen. The consul was no more. He brought three
friends – he liked his party of four – but one of them irked even Terry. When
the others couldn’t hear, he confided, “Gerald comes across too camp.”
There was an air of
expectation about them, as if they had a mission to fulfil. I pictured them at
Ouranoupolis, city of heaven, assembled on the pier, like schoolboys on a trip,
then boarding the boat to Athos, a special boat which left the girls behind.
After they returned, I
went around to their hotel room. If I hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been a kiss
in the Hotel Tourist, not one involving me. They were going back to England,
and I wanted to say goodbye to Terry. At the end of the evening, when I was
about to leave, he leaned his face forward – he didn’t say anything – and kissed
me on the left cheek. He was drunk; he was maudlin, though he mightn’t have
done it in front of Bryan. Three men stood next to us. They all saw the kiss
and they all condoned it. I think I did as well. There isn’t much else to say.
It was very quick. A kiss in the Hotel Tourist – a chapter heading, not
the title for a book; a thing you do with sadness as much as love, like a last
sip of ouzo, when you’re leaving Greece and you aren’t sure if you’re coming
back again. A kiss is like the person who gives it, and this one felt like
Terry: gentle, spontaneous, not too wicked but not too innocent. There weren’t
any more. It was our final meeting. I didn’t tell Bryan about the kiss. I
didn’t need to. I could guess what he’d do. He’d swing around with a touch of
rhetoric, then say, with a second touch: “Oh, did he?”
In every monastery,
there’s a prominent sign, normally in the pilgrims’ quarters by the door. The
wording varies, but the message, in several languages, is the same: no
inappropriate behaviour or disrespect to the Holy Mountain. Examples include
noise and bare skin; ordinary things, really, for most people. If you break the
rules, you risk being “cast out” of the monastery, like devils, I assume. We
used to smile at the signs, Bryan and I; at most things, in fact, when I knew
him better. We imagined being thrown off the roof. A Greek hotel has signs but
nothing like these.
A few years later, when I
was living in Rome, I got a letter from Terry asking if he could stay with me
‘if things get too difficult over here.’ It was ominous. He’d never said
anything like that. There were no more letters. Some months passed, a year at
most. Bryan sent me the news. Terry’s wife had divorced him. He’d been cast out
again. First, it was a country, Cyprus, when the Turks invaded; then a
mountain, Athos, when he hurt his ankle; next, a town, Salonica, when the
consulate closed; and now his own home in England. As always, he adapted; he
found another place, for the time being, anyway. He was living with a young man,
Bryan said, adding, “It’s not homosexual or anything like that.”
Good old Terry. He’ll be
chuckling somewhere. He liked irony. They re-opened the British consulate.
Better still, the consul is a woman.
