High life
A modern Penelope
Taki
New York Well, here I am, about to be a bachelor once again. I don't know how American attorneys manage to do it, but when both parties are — as they say willing, the great American divorce machine goes into action with amazingly quick results. A bachelor once again. It sounds almost perverse at my age, but I prefer it to being a widower — which my darling ex tells me I soon would have been if we had continued as before. Her last words were, 'I love you very much, but I don't want to end up like your mother.' What a thing to say about poor Mama! Here is this wonderful old lady who has stayed married to the same man for 53 years, and her daughter-in-law doesn't even hold her up as a role model. But perhaps Alexandra knows a thing or two I've kept secret all these years.
One of them is that not only has my mother put up with her husband's constant philandering for 53 years, she never even wanted to get married to him in the first place. The old man was known even then as being rather wild. My grandfather was a cruel man who divorced my grandmother and lived only on his lands in Zante with various local lassies, fathering illegitimate children left and right.
My father's brother, Harilaos, commit- ted suicide when he was very young be- cause he was unable to pay a debt of honour within 24 hours, as was the custom among Venetian gentlemen at the time. (Thank God that quaint old tradition is no longer. Otherwise I'd be deprived of most of my English friends.) My father left home soon after that, and went to live in Athens with a rich aunt. When he met my mother and her three sisters at an after- noon tea party, he knew immediately she was to be the one. He went on to see her father, probably the only honest politician and Chief Justice ever to bless the olive republic, and asked for her hand in mar- riage. Grandpapa was too kind a man to say no, so he made up an excuse about the older girl having to marry first. Which meant Daddy soon had a banker friend of his in hot pursuit of my Aunt Sophia.
Soon after, Sophia said yes, but my mother said no. Needless to say, that didn't stop the old boy. When my aunt's betrothal was announced in the newspapers, he included that of himself and my mother. Back then Athenian society was, to put it mildly, somewhat gentler than it is today. There was no room for scandal and, heaven forbid, for a denial in the gutter press.
My mother was duly married, albeit in tears, and has been the modern equivalent of Penelope ever since. She has lived quietly at home, praying for our souls, and turning a dignified and blind eye to the shenanigans of Don Giovanni (albeit an ageing one) and the various divorces of her two sons. She regards her ex-daughters-in- law as her daughters, and remains in touch with all of them. Alexandra was and remains her favourite, and last week when I rang her to announce the news she refused to come to the telephone. My father told me it was because she considers me to be the guilty party. I detected a hint of sanctimony in his voice, and asked him if he felt the same way. 'Certainly I do', was his answer. And he added the proverbial insult that a man who allowed his wife to divorce him was no man.
He is probably right — and wiser than me. The one time my mother finally decided to go on board his sailing boat, she found him quietly sitting with his crew discussing matters of the sea. It was in Mykonos in 1967. When I heard about it I asked around and found out why. It seems that sometime during the Fifties, my father designed a large flag of a ball and chain which he kept along with the other ensigns on board. He also passed the word around in ports throughout the Greek isles, that if ever he flew the ball and chain ensign none of his friends and none of the tarts should could near the yacht. If they did there would be more than hell to pay. When one of his minions advised him that my mother was on her way, he simply hoisted the ball and chain and you can guess the rest. Well, now that I'm a bachelor I plan to order the same flag, but there are a couple of small problems. I do not plan to marry in the immediate future, and I have no money to buy back my boat which I sold last year. Otherwise I know that next time it will be forever.
Previous page
