Chapter 6 Koločep #2
Continuing along the narrow path, to her right the sea was as clear and blue as she’d ever seen it, fish darting to and fro as the water lapped the rocky edges of the tongue-shaped bay.
The slopes above were filled with various shades and shapes of green, studded here and there with long pinnacles of cypresses, the white-washed walls and orange-brown roofs of the houses peeping through randomly to complete the prettiest of pictures.
The tiny village square was bordered by a couple of cafés with tables next to the water, so of course Obi wanted to investigate every single one.
They must smell amazing with all the things that people dropped, and Natali didn’t have the heart to deny her.
Thankfully it was too early for there to be many people about, although two old boys sat under an awning just outside a café door, chatting to a waiter who had a pile of ashtrays in his hand.
At the quayside a blue and white fishing boat rocked in the gentle swell, crates of octopus and mullet balanced on its stern, and beyond the cafés a squat, thick-trunked palm tree dominated the square, half hiding the tiny supermarket behind it, which was obviously her first port of call.
A rack of brightly coloured plastic beach toys and jelly shoes outside the door was topped by a metre-long inflatable crocodile, its colour faded some distance from the bright green it was meant to be.
Even so, a memory stirred in Natali; yet another day from her childhood she’d tried to forget, but here it was, all the same.
Some girls from her class had been messing around in the sea with a crocodile just like that, and although she’d crossed the road to avoid them, they’d still seen her, calling at her to join in, then jeering when she wouldn’t.
Tupka Natali, Natali tupka. Their sing-song voices made her flesh crawl even now.
How could she have gone into the water? She hadn’t even possessed a bathing costume – there’d never been money for luxuries like that.
Thank goodness one of her unofficial cousins had grown out of theirs before she’d had to take swimming classes at school.
Even so, it hadn’t fitted properly and after a while she’d pretended to have athlete’s foot to get out of the lessons.
Working on yachts, she’d often regretted not having learnt to swim properly, and although she could just about doggy-paddle she still hated being out of her depth.
But for now, she needed to shop. Which meant leaving Obi outside in a place she didn’t know. If only she’d asked Lloyd to mind her, but she hadn’t, so that was that. She couldn’t go back now. She’d just have to trust that Donje ?elo was an honest place and tie her to the nearest lamp-post.
“I won’t be long,” she told her.
Trying to ignore Obi’s baleful look, Natali dived into the shop’s dark interior.
Her nose led her straight to a freshly baked loaf, but the vegetable racks were all but empty – just a few, sad, over-squishy tomatoes no one in their right mind would buy.
The woman sitting at the till saw her looking and called out that there would be more when the ferry unloaded.
This ferry or the next one, she wasn’t sure.
So Natali paid for the bread and hurriedly retrieved Obi, who barked with delight when she saw her.
This could have been a significant setback as far as supper was concerned, but on the nearby fishing boat a man in a navy cap was wrapping something in newspaper and handing it to a woman with a pushchair.
Natali brightened. The fish was for sale.
Simply fried fresh mullet would be wonderful, and she was sure there were chips in the catamaran’s freezer.
She’d just have to hope that some salad stuff or green beans arrived on the island before she and Obi finished their walk.
Already the weird lawnmower-trailers were making their way from the quayside, laden with boxes and crates of beer and soft drinks.
One headed past her towards the hotel in the far corner of the bay, and another ground to a halt in front of the shop.
She saw little point in gawping at them while they unloaded, so she decided to explore a little more.
Just beyond a konoba set back from the path, Obi began to pant.
Stopping on the scrappy piece of grass next to a children’s play park, she took the pop-up dog bowl from her rucksack and filled it from her water bottle, watching as Obi lapped noisily.
Around her the wash of waves and the thrum of cicadas swelled, broken only by the putter of a small boat.
Now this was more like the peaceful island she’d expected, so different in every way to the bustling city where she’d grown up.
If Obi was thirsty then Lloyd might be too, so she retraced her steps with the intention of asking him before completing her shop. But as she neared the library she saw a mother with two young children, maybe about four and seven years old, in front of the table.
Lloyd crouched down, presumably to listen to what the older child was saying.
Almost immediately the boy laughed, as did his mother, the sound drifting over the gentle lap of the waves.
He was clearly a natural with kids, but then not only was he a teacher, but he had a daughter of his own.
Grown up now, of course, but they must be close because he’d spoken to her every night.
What must it be like to have family like that?
Natali had always told herself you couldn’t miss what you didn’t know, but watching Lloyd with the children made her feel strange inside.
She’d barely met her father, and she and her mum weren’t close at all.
Unsurprisingly, when everything Natali did annoyed her.
Even the women she called her aunties weren’t her mother’s sisters; they were just her friends, their children not really Natali’s cousins at all.
And her grandparents certainly didn’t want to know her.
They had been ashamed of Mama for being an unmarried mother, so of course they were ashamed of their granddaughter too.
And as for her other grandparents in Sweden …
she didn’t even know if they existed. Well, they must have done at some point for her father to have been born, but she could remember so little about him.
He’d stopped coming to see them when she was about four, once he’d married and started a family of his own.
A better family, she supposed. Not like her and her mama.
The only thing she could recall was his straw-blond hair and almost white skin.
The skin and hair she’d inherited which, together with the stammer, had meant she’d been mercilessly teased at school.
“No point even thinking about bad stuff,” she told Obi, who looked up at her, tail wagging.
That’s what Auntie Stela had always taught her: stay positive, and you’ll be surprised how many good things happen.
And she was right. More often than not, anyway.
After all, Natali had work for a whole ten weeks, and a place for her and Obi to live.
If she stuck to the mantra, who knew what other good things might come her way?
* * *
As they sailed towards their berth for the night in Lopud’s harbour, Lloyd closed his eyes and let the peacefulness of the moment settle over him – the wash of the Mediterranean against the catamaran’s hulls, her gentle creak as she skimmed the water, the late afternoon sun filtering through the rippling sail.
If he could, he would bottle this and take it with him for whenever he needed a moment of calm.
God, he sounded just like that mindfulness app Ruth had tried to persuade him to download.
Smiling to himself, he took a sip of his tea.
He had ten weeks to enjoy these evening sails from one island to the next and he was going to make the most of them, here on the fly deck, lounging on the comfortable sofas as Ana sat up front and steered, and Natali scurried around below them, doing whatever Natali did.
She was a nice kid, Natali, and it was such a shame she was hampered by her stammer.
It was hard to encourage more than a few words out of her, and he wished he could do something to help.
What wasn’t useful, he was sure, was Ana finishing Natali’s sentences for her, but he didn’t know her well enough to mention it just yet.
After all, it was probably only because he’d spent his working life with teenagers that he was sensitive to that sort of thing.
Although they’d been few and far between, his encounters with the local children today had convinced him Ruth had been right to push him to apply for this job. He’d all but forgotten how much he missed it.
“You look happy.” Ana turned to face him, the breeze licking her hair around her face.
“So do you. I’m relieved, as well, to have the first day under our belt. I’ll be less nervous now that I know what I’m doing. And on an island of two hundred souls, I guess five books wasn’t too bad for the start of the school holidays.”
“Five?”
“Yes. The teenage lad took two fantasy novels. Said he was a fast reader.” Lloyd grinned. “We had a little chat in German too. I’m not as rusty as I thought.”
Ana nodded, then centred the boom before calling down to Natali to prepare the headsail to tack.
They were sailing up the channel between the dark green tree-cloaked hills of the mainland and the island of Lopud, the sea sparkling around them, the sky the palest of blues above, as though it was bleached by the sun.
To Lloyd’s right a small harbour nestled below a random stagger of red-roofed villas on the steep slope behind it, a band of tall cypresses stretching their fingers up from the grey rocky shore.