Adonis in Adidas

By noon, we had worked ourselves into a tizzy. Seán said they would escort us to the border and send us into exile. I thought were looking for bribes. Maybe they would call our parents. This didn’t bear thinking about. We ordered a round of Tuborg. Stories from other travellers mentioned fines of hundreds of thousands of drachmas – a thousand pounds or more. Neither of us had that kind of money. We drained our glasses and shuffled up the hill to the police station.

The queue of sheepish travellers stretched around the corner, past the sweet smelling bakers and down the sunny side of the square. Forget that. We skipped back to the café and ordered a goats’ cheese pizza from Zorba, our new friend. After a while, I went back to scout out the queue, but there was little movement, just a line of silent, sunburnt people. We splashed out on some rice pudding and Zorba, his mother and his extraordinarily handsome son joined us from the kitchen for a fortifying glass of ouzo, then we stretched and wove our way back to the square. The queue was gone. All that was left was a battered moped leaning against the whitewashed wall.

I tapped on the door but before we could run away, a voice yelled out something in Greek that could only have meant, “Come in.” We trooped inside, heads hanging.

The man in the shiny boots sat behind a battered Formica desk. He slapped our passports on the desk and studied each photo intently, checking our faces, one slightly pink, the other crimson. We both spoke at once.

“We only came in on a ferry last night, too late to find a room.”

“We’re very sorry, really we are.”

He sat back in his plastic chair. A labouring fan moved the hot air around.

“You,” he said. “You are from Ingerlaand?”

“Yes,” I replied, smiling in a hot, sweaty English Rose sort of a way. “Have you ever been there?”

“My mather have.”

Seán was studying the toes of his greying trainers with great interest. I was on my own.

“How did your mother like it?” I tried.

“Werry nice. Werry cold. Here is better.”

“My mother was in Greece last summer,” I said after a pause. “She loved it.” Conversations about mothers seemed like a good approach. “She said the people were very friendly and very kind,” I added for good measure.

“Oh yes,” he said, shaking his head the way the Greeks do when they agree with you. “Werry kind.”

He slicked his black hair behind his ears and studied me. I leaned forward and made admiring remarks about Paros, his office, his command of English, the local goats’ cheese pizzas and Greece in general. I was running out of things to praise and close to mentioning the wine when he started telling us about himself. Well, to be honest, he told me. He barely glanced at Seán after that.

He said how hard it was being a policeman, especially in the summer. How he had a motorbike for patrolling the island and had been run off the road by a busload of tourists. His leg was still giving him trouble. I nodded and sympathised in what seemed like the right places. He could represent Greece in a contest for talking about himself. But I was up to it, having already endured two weeks of Seán, the English candidate.

At last, he stood up, straightened his leg with a wince and slammed his fist on the desk. We jumped.

“You know how much is the fine for sleeping on the beach?” he demanded.

 “No?”

“One hundred drachma.” He rolled the H with a dramatic flourish. This was about 70p, some thousand times less than we had expected.

“One hundred drachma?” I repeated. Maybe he had left out a zero. Seán swallowed, struggling not to laugh. That would have gone down like a wodge of Zorba’s extra thick pizza. “Gosh.”

“Yes. It is serious crime. Sleeping on the beach is not good. Not safe. We have many good rooms in Paros. Where you stay tonight?”

I mentioned a local taverna.

“Good.” He paused and broke into a wide grin. “OK. I let you go. You werry nice Ingerlish girl. Hab a nice day!” He gave us back our passports, shook our hands warmly and wouldn’t take our money.

“What was that about your mother?” asked Seán, back in Zorba’s. “You know she hasn’t been further than Southend.”

“It worked, didn’t it? And thanks for all your help.”

“You were doing fine on your own. You didn’t need me.”

Seán was right. I didn’t need him so I decided I would try something new. I gave him my mirror and put him  on the next ferry with the French girls and no regrets but I stayed on the island for the rest of the summer, working in Zorba’s restaurant. I went back the next summer too, on my own. My mother was so disappointed in me. We would have had such beautiful children but Seán moved away to Halifax. I heard he grew stout and balding and lost his boyish features. But for that one summer, he was my Adonis in Adidas.