Chapter 8 Korčula
Kor?ula
Why, this morning of all mornings? A dream so real Lloyd had expected to find Jenny’s warmth beside him when he woke. He’d been sure it wouldn’t happen in his cabin on Dida Krila, but now he knew he’d been wrong.
And yet … and yet … it had been different, in a way. The yearning for her was the same, but the punch of agony had not come. Perhaps he was beginning to put a little distance between himself and his grief after all. Or perhaps something else, something more pressing, was on his mind.
Ah, here was a feeling he’d come to know rather too well in recent months – guilt.
Not the survivor’s guilt he’d suffered when the numbness began to fade after Jenny died; this guilt was bitter because it was all his fault.
His actions had caused it; he’d earned it, almost. But it was hardly a badge of honour, and what was more, with Kor?ula quite literally on the horizon, this shiny new guilt was reaching down inside him to find an old, almost forgotten friend.
Bloody Kor?ula. At least they wouldn’t ever be staying on the island overnight.
In and out quickly … just a few hours each week.
Thankfully berths in the marina were a precious commodity during the summer months, so last night they had moored off Badija Island, the imposing walls of its former monastery rising as if from the sea, and he’d spent the evening determinedly looking towards it, rather than at Kor?ula’s shoreline behind him.
Now the catamaran was chugging forwards in the morning sunshine, surging inexorably towards the old town, while he sat at the table, his gaze fixed firmly on his mug of tea.
He knew he couldn’t stay there all day, however much he wanted to.
He had a job to do, and that job meant stepping onto the island for the first time in over thirty years.
So perhaps the return of his guilt was inevitable, but it was pretty hard to cope with alongside the otherworldly fragility left by the dream.
More than anything he wanted to curl back under his duvet and rejoin Jenny in the oblivion of sleep.
What he needed to do was to stand, head out onto the deck and look Kor?ula old town in the eye. Face up to it, move on.
It was only after meeting Jenny that the feelings relating to his time on Kor?ula had begun to fade.
He’d completed his teacher training, found his first job and thrown himself into it, all the while scouring the newspapers for reports of the war in Croatia.
But then, just as peace seemed to be on the horizon, he had met Jenny, and slowly but surely he’d realised he could find happiness again.
He’d never told her about Kor?ula but, by some miracle, loving her, and her loving him, had closed the door on the guilt and pain.
He’d been able to move beyond that fateful summer into a new life, and it became almost as though Kor?ula had happened to someone else.
But without Jenny, and stirred up by actually being here, that old life, his young and foolish life, was creeping back.
And he’d need to find every last iota of mental strength he could summon to stop it.
God, he was wallowing. Ruth would have something to say about it if she knew. Where was his backbone? It was only a place. A place. He stood abruptly, almost knocking his empty mug to the floor, and stalked onto the deck.
It was a shock to discover they were closer than he had expected, heading straight for the old town, heaped onto its peninsula.
Nothing had changed over the years, but it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so why would it have?
Still that teardrop-shaped hump of land jutting into the sea; still the jumbled, terracotta roofscape cascading down from the slender grey tower of Sveti Marco Cathedral; still the tree-lined esplanade overlooking the water below.
In the morning light, and viewed from the sea, it was even more beautiful than Lloyd remembered.
The stones he knew to be grey were washed pink and gold and every shade between as Dida Krila rocked towards them, over the wake of a fast-cat ferry.
They were so close now that he could see a waiter shaking out tablecloths, the billowing white lifted by the gentlest of breezes, which in turn carried the aroma of rich, meaty pa?ticada towards him.
Was the pa?ticada from then, or now? Seeing the old town again, the memories flooded back from the day Mirjana had first walked him around its circumference, a stolen half-hour between buying his uniform for her father’s konoba and going back to begin his first shift.
* * *
Mirjana’s mama, Kosana Bili?, insisted on accompanying them to Kor?ula town.
At first Lloyd wondered if it had been to chaperone her daughter, or simply to sign the cheque for his two pairs of black uniform trousers and three white shirts.
Already this family was making an investment in him, willing him to stay for the summer, when he himself was far from sure.
But Mirjana was so damned lovely it was impossible to pass up the chance to get to know her a little better.
Shopping complete, Kosana took refuge from the heat of the morning in a café, suggesting Mirjana show Lloyd something of the famous old town.
Leaving the quaintly old-fashioned outfitters, they strolled through the narrow maze of streets between old town and new.
Lloyd soon discovered that most of the useful shops were on this flat strip of land – the grocer, the baker, the electrical store, as well as several places selling clothes.
Mirjana stopped in front of a window with a display of tops in bright highlighter-pen colours, a look of longing in her eyes.
“You like them?” he asked.
“The colours are amazing.”
“I think the green would suit you … or the blue…” He pointed to a crop top with the slogan “Just Do It”, and the thought of her voluptuous figure squeezed into it sent his imagination into overdrive. “How about that one?”
Mirjana shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m completely the wrong shape.”
“I don’t think you’re the wrong shape at all—” he blustered, then ground to a halt.
He wasn’t meant to notice her curves, was he?
He was just the new waiter, and it made him sound like some sort of creep.
A flush of embarrassment rode up his cheeks, but she laughed.
Not at him, but with him. And it felt so good.
Until she snapped them back to reality. “Come on, we have half an hour at the most. Tata needs us back by eleven.”
Leaving the maze of backstreets, they ambled past the tiny crescent of beach, then strolled along the quayside beneath the old town walls.
In front of the arches which protected the colonnade from the sun, the oleanders were coming into bloom, and above them palm trees swayed in the gentlest of breezes.
Higher still, tall, narrow houses rose, packed together on their almost perfectly oval hump of land, golden-grey stone and red roofs topped by the cupola of the cathedral.
Mirjana turned to him. “I know you want to see it all, but today shall we just walk around the outside? Then perhaps we can come back another morning on the bus so I can show you the rest.”
“I’d like that.”
“So would I.” The phrase was simple, but there was such warmth in her dark eyes it seemed they held a message only for him.
Which was a frankly ridiculous thought because her next words were a detailed and factual explanation of how the ferry that ran to and from Orebi? on the mainland was Kor?ula’s lifeline, but that for most of the year the traffic went both ways, with children from the mainland town attending high school on the island.
So he asked about the education system in Croatia, telling her that he wanted to be a teacher himself.
She smiled up at him. “What made you choose that particular career?”
“It was the teachers I had at school. Some of them were really inspirational, especially for a working-class lad with a single mother. I’d never even have thought about going to university without their input. Never known that I could. So I want to repay that debt and help other children like me.”
“And what will you teach?”
“Languages are my thing. I’m not much good at anything else, to be honest. So German, with French as my second subject.” He laughed. “I don’t think there’ll be much call for Croatian … and anyway, I won’t learn enough, will I? Won’t really experience…”
Mirjana stopped next to the most seaward of the round towers, between the wall that protected the town from the ocean and the old stone houses, one of which was now a bar, even at this early hour pumping disco music from its open doors.
“You mean, in just one summer? Assuming you do decide to stay, that is.”
Was her question loaded? It was impossible to tell.
“Assuming your father decides he wants me to.” He walked on a little way, then stopped. “Are you saying, for just one summer, it isn’t worth it?” Two could play at being obscure, but obscurity wasn’t what he wanted, and he kicked himself inwardly.
She shrugged. “You will need a little of the language to get by. And I will teach you, but I want something in return.”
Trying to act cool, he raised an eyebrow. “A bright blue baggy T-shirt?”
“No, of course not. I want you to teach me German.”
“Then we have a deal.” He held out his hand and she shook it, the warmth of skin on skin stretching up his arm.
She held on for a fraction, then dropped his fingers, and started to tell him about Marco Polo’s connections with Kor?ula as they walked under the shade of the Aleppo pines, the waves washing on the rocks below them, slowly heading back towards the coffee shop where her mother was waiting.
* * *