It’s May 1989. I am about six months into the biggest mistake of my life – a disastrous marriage which crumbled amid domestic violence (I was the victim, not the abuser, just in case you were wondering) – and my soon to be ex partner and me are flying to Corfu for a late spring holiday. We are to stay in an apartment in the north east harbour resort Kassiopi, a place I have stayed twice before on ill-conceived ‘lads’ holidays in one of the quietest, and frankly dullest, parts of the island. I have persuaded my partner that Kassiopi would be great for us, even though, a mere six months after our marriage, I knew we were doomed as an item.
We are flying with Paramount Airways, who advertised themselves as a ‘non-smoking airline’. At that time, smoking was the norm on aircraft because what could possibly go wrong on what was essentially a flying petrol tank? If social media had been around then, Paramount would have been dismissed as ‘PC’ and ‘woke’ for daring to prevent their aircraft from blowing up and allowing its passengers to be engulfed with second hand smoke. In 1989, I am still a smoker, the worst sort, quite happy for everyone else to share in the 300 carcinogens in each cigarette. In four years time, when I quit smoking for the final time, I become the worst kind of ex-smoker, intolerant, belligerent and hectoring towards smokers, but that’s another story.
I’m not great with flying back in 1989 and the rumours of Paramount being in some kind of financial bother don’t help, but nonetheless we board our smoke-free MD83. Nothing happens, of course, because planes don’t routinely fall out of the sky and soon we are in Corfu. We disembark, head to arrivals and chainsmoke to make up for the nicotine-free hours. Then we board a bus to Kassiopi, along the switchback bends high above the narrow stretch of sea between Corfu and Greece and, the further north you go, Albania.
As yes, gloomy Albania, a little over a couple of miles from the north east of Corfu. It always looked forbidding and sinister, even on the sunniest of days. The year before, my friends and I were enjoying a late night pint at the Wave Bar when a dead body floated slowly into the harbour. Cue chaos, frantic activity, screaming police sirens and paramedics whose only purpose is to put the body into the ambulance. “It’s an Albanian,” said the bar owner. “They try to escape and don’t realise that it’s further than they think.” I take that as gospel – these locals know everything – but in truth he has no more idea than I do.
It’s a difficult week with Mrs X. I’m not sure she even likes me, never mind loves me. She’s a strikingly attractive woman but in our case opposites don’t attract. In her case, they repel.
We eat around the harbour restaurants and drink in the long gone Edelweiss Bar. It’s always empty, the owner has one VHS video of music which he shows all day and all evening. So every day, I hear Blackbox, Neneh Cherry and Jane Wiedlin. We sit silently.
There’s live football on in some bars. I settle down alone to watch Liverpool go through the formality of avoiding defeat against Arsenal to claim the league title until bloody Michael Thomas wins the game for the Arse with a late goal. Then, in another bar, I watch England beat Scotland, again alone, in something called the Rous Cup. Decidedly unmemorable, although I remember Steve Bull scoring for us.
I’m wanting to go home after five days or so. Even more so after a trip to the small beach.
Although it’s relatively warm, certainly compared to the UK, it’s not boiling but I am persuaded to do some slip, slap, slop with sun oil, even though skin cancer had apparently not been invented back then. I apply the oil generously and within an hour I am burning up, seemingly literally, my skin blistering alarmingly, the soreness unbearable. It is some weeks until I realise that this was no accident.
I’ve been to hot places in the height of summer before and I never burned, at least not badly. I have been to Greece and the South of France and there are no issues. Yet here, in late spring, I am burning up under a barely warm Ionian sun. Soon, our relationship deteriorates until it disintegrates altogether, amid a wild flurry of violence whereupon I feel I must leave the house I own outright to maintain my safety and, in truth, my actual life. I leave because I think she may kill me.
I am pleased to be going home at end of the holiday, until we arrive at Corfu airport to a six hour delay. Paramount have only a few leased planes and are struggling to maintain their schedules. The departure lounge experts know it all. It is late into the evening when we are all alerted to an enormous noise coming from the runway. A huge and geriatric Boeing 707 has appeared. What a sight! I’m glad, though, we are getting a sparkly new MD83. Then: “Paramount Airways announce the delayed arrival of Flight ??? from Bristol.
We board the plane and it’s far from full. We sit at the back where I make my usual joke about it being far safer than the front: “How many planes reverse into mountains?” This goes down like the Titanic. She definitely hates me.
Amid colossal noise from the four engines, we launch our take off run towards Corfu Town. Rotating just before the road at the end, my seat collapses and I am lying flat on my back, unable to move. Wondering if this might be the end, I lie still as we roar above the town. It isn’t the end and soon we are enjoying the loudest flight of my entire life. My partner’s humourless expression made me wonder if perhaps she wishes it would be the end for me. Before long, the scary reality dawned on me that my premature passing might just gift her my house. Soon enough it was hers anyway and for 34 years I have always believed that was her plan from the day we met. I can’t prove it, of course, but I know. Trust me, I know.
Within a few months, I have been badly beaten up, attacked with a leather belt, late at night when I was asleep in bed. Paramount had also gone bust, by the way, but having fled for my safety, genuinely believing this might be the beginning of something, not the end, I wonder who wouldn’t? I wake up the following morning, battered, still dazed (I was knocked out in the frenzy), bruised and covered in blood and realise the sun oil incident can’t have been coincidence. Nor the many months of verbal abuse, psychological torture, the occasional mug throwing.
I was groomed at a time when I wondered that if I did not marry someone soon, I might get left behind.
35 years since the Paramount experience, 34 since the extreme violence. And that mental scars? Only from the Boeing 707 and the collapsing seat. From all the violence and hate? Honestly, none at all. Never has been.
When I passed through Kassiopi a few years ago, no memories of Mrs X came flooding back. And I realised why: you can’t argue with a sick mind. There ain’t have some evil, devious bastards out there – I am sure you have met some of them – but being an evil, devious bastard never made anyone happy, not really it didn’t. She’d dead to me, although I know she actually isn’t. Part of me wishes we might meet one day, to find out if she really lost her mind or if it was a cynical exercise in grooming and manipulation. I think it was both.
At least I look back to those times and smile at the 707, the Edelweiss Bar, bloody Michael Thomas. The rest is all about somebody I used to know.
