Greece is calling – three more years and then I move south

Porto Cheli

I have been thinking about my children and my own strange boyhood as I gaze up at the clear blue skies of summer. Summers lasted an eternity back then, and by the time one got back to school there were new friends, new loves and new discoveries of things unknown the previous May. For example, I had seen my father kiss a very pretty woman whose name, Raimonde, was French. She was a blonde beauty who was engaged to dad’s closest friend, Paris. It gave one a strange feeling, knowing something no one else did — certainly not my mother or Paris. Paris Kyriakopoulos was the son of the governor of the Bank of Greece, an extremely powerful position. But Paris also had something else going for him. He was by far the best-looking man in Athens, so handsome that a German general lost his head over him and had him arrested and brought to his quarters until sanity prevailed. He apologised, bowed and sent Paris home in his Mercedes. The general’s name was Rosenberg, and 30 years later, when I was dating Paris’s daughter, Paris and his wife came on board my boat and we spent an evening talking about old times. Rosenberg lost his life in Russia and Paris had lost all his silken hair by then, but he was still among the most attractive men ever. Paris did not marry Raimonde and I think she was dad’s close friend for a while but then I lost track of her. Paris and my father stayed friends until the end. It was during a bombing raid by the Allies when the lights went out that I saw Daddy kissing her and it has stayed in my mind for ever. The war years were interminable, as were the summers that followed, in America.