Christos Anesti

This year I have had the privilege of celebrating Christ’s resurrection twice over. After a traditional English celebration, I travelled with my sister Charlotte to spend the Greek Orthodox Easter with my colourful and rather idiosyncratic eighty four year-old aunt on the island of Corfu. The aim of the journey was partly to check on her health but also to reassure her of my own, following my recent battle with breast cancer.

Theresa Nicholas is English but has lived in Corfu since the early 1960s, having fled British suburbia to live with a Greek artist called Christo. The two of them survived by selling line drawings and paintings of picturesque peasant life, mountain villages and olive groves, and dancing in tavernas for the tourists. After Christo’s death from cancer, Theresa become known as ‘the chronicler of Corfu’, capturing a simpler way which now only exists in her memory and the pages of books like Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals.

Theresa and Christo first met ‘Gerry’ Durrell in the 1960s, when he returned repeatedly, spending months at a time on the island. He loved Christo who he described as a ‘a very well preserved bandit’ and my aunt, ‘the lady from Penge’. They were kindred spirits.

As children, my sister and I loved Corfu and were entranced by Theresa and Christo’s unconventional life style. We revelled in their freedom and watched wide-eyed as they danced; Christo pacing the floor like a caged panther to the plaintive strains of Mikis Theodorakis’ Zorba’s Dance. Later, while undergoing the rigours of chemotherapy, I dreamt of walking along the olive-fringed shore line and I vowed that, if I survived, I would return.

On a chill day at the end of April, we stepped out onto the tarmac. Inside the miniature airport we breathed in the familiar aroma of disinfectant and cigarette smoke; a distinct odour that ironically thrills the soul. As we sped through the outer reaches of Kerkyra, I drank in the familiar cacophony of signs, road side cafes and street carts which reminds me so much of South East Asia.

We drove up the North West of the island to a small family run hotel that Charlotte and I stayed at as children, and where my own offspring have played down by the shoreline, chasing stray cats between tables beneath olive and birch branches.

When Christo and Theresa first came to Dassia, they stayed in a bake house beside the family’s simple villa. Gradually small cell-like rooms were added, until in the 1970s, the simple two-storey hotel was erected. Little has changed since, the minuscule elevator still plays Zorba’s dance (as a child I would ride up and down repeatedly practicing my dancing). However, time does not stand still. The matriarchal owner has been carried away by cancer and her daughter now runs the hotel. When I explained the reason for the loss of my long blonde hair, she was philosophical, ‘As the Greeks say “Where you have been I will go. Where you are I have been “’.

I took the dancing lift to the second floor and flung open the shutters to look out onto a view that has burnt its way into my soul: the ramshackle jetty reaching out into still waters, clear as gin. From this perspective, the bay is untouched by development.

We found my aunt downstairs, seated on the terrace overlooking the sea. She looks smaller but her spirit is undiminished. It takes her about five minutes before she gets onto her favourite subject. ‘It’s ruined. Barbati poof, Nissaki poof. You will never get me going there – it’s all ruined.’ Followed by her other favourite subjects, ‘They all have mobile phones now – they look mad talking to themselves and they are obese.’ She takes out a small sketchpad filled with beautiful hand-drawn sketches of Greeks spilling out of their clothing and weighing down motorcycles.

While the island has developed haphazardly around her, Theresa has taken refuge in her memories - the Corfu so beautifully depicted in The Durrells, ITV’s current serialisation of Gerald Durrell’s Corfu Trilogy.

The series has created considerable anticipation on the island. The crew and cast apparently stayed in a nearby hotel in Dassia and during filming regularly came to the simple terrace where Christo and Theresa had once sat with Laurence Durrell. While some of the expats on the island choose to view the series with highbrow disdain, the locals are looking forward to a bumper year of tourists lured by the portrayal of this Hellenic idyll.

I wandered out on the jetty and watched the fish circling below. As a child this jetty inspired a thrill of anxiety that made it irresistible. My aunt once told me a story about a swimmer who had emerged from the waters with an octopus wrapped around his leg. It amorous grasp could only be dislodged with the application of burning cigarette end and the man had writhed in agony while a helpful bystander poured vinegar over the round weals left by the mollusc’s suckers. As an adult I still give a wide berth to the shadows beneath the pontoon.

I stepped into the water but my feet freeze, so instead I sit on the pontoon wrapped from head to toe in white to protect from the hazy sun which I have to avoid after radiotherapy. But as the warmth penetrates the layers of cotton, I feel a renewed sense of well-being and thank God that I have made it back to this place.

When evening comes, we sit on the terrace. A television set shows the Good Friday celebrations in the main town across the bay. We appear to be the only guests and have to go in search of food. We follow the aroma of lamb and rosemary and find the only open taverna.

Later we are accompanied home by a stray dog. Fireflies light our way, blinking in the undergrowth.

My aunt is determined that we will cross town to visit her studio and flat in Kanoni. I also want to witness the procession of St Spyridon, the patron saint of Corfu whose mummified remains are paraded around the streets once a year in a silver coffin.

Twenty years previously, my husband and I had joined the crowds thronging into the incense-filled interior of St Spyridon church and bent in veneration to kiss the feet of the Saint. I had prayed for a child – an unlikely prospect at the time - but not long afterwards my daughter Aly had emerged -something for which I gave the St Spyridon some credit. Now it didn’t’ seem like a bad idea to pray for my continued remission – even if it did mean kissing a wrinkled digit.

When the bus arrived it was packed to the rafters and we spent an hour and a half sweating profusely in queues of traffic heading for the capital accompanied by Theresa’s running commentary on the desecration of Corfu. ‘There were only ten cars on the island when I arrived,’ she bemoans.

A couple of miles outside of Keryara, Theresa points up to the skyline, to the ‘strawberry pink villa’, the first island abode of the Durrells in the 1930s, and down to the shoreline where Margo would bathe.

‘There used to be olive groves here. When NATO came to build the road during the Junta they used great bulldozers. I remember an old peasant man who stood in tears watching the destruction. He said “When I see an olive tree fall it is like watching a man die.”’

‘Before Gerry died, he came back to the island in a wheelchair. When he was driven around the island he cried,’ she told us.

By the time we finally rolled into town and the bus disgorged its passengers the procession was over. Wilting from the heat we headed for the shade of a tavern and ordered a coffee and water. Then at precisely 11.00 a.m. the air explodes. A canon is fired and it begins raining pots - small bright red jugs, large terracotta water jars, thrown from windows above our heads. We take refuge under an awning. More cannon shots are fired into the air and the waiters came out and begin to thrown down pottery onto the pavement beside us.

I have no idea where the tradition came from but the wanton destruction of crockery is as much a part of Greek Easter as roast lamb but given the level of noise you would be forgiven for thinking – as some early tourists did – that a revolution had broken out. According to Theresa, the whole exercise is meant to bring good fortune – so we buy brilliant red pots and add to the shards littering the pavement.

Suitably insured against misfortune, we board the bus to Kanoni. Theresa has lived in Kanoni since the 1960s; first in a tiny cottage surrounded by olive groves and later, as the island developed, on the ground floor of a squat apartment block. After Christo’s death, she moved up a tiny ‘penthouse’ apartment with a balcony terrace.

The apartment is as dark and intense as an Orthodox chapel; the walls covered with her paintings, drawings, lino cuts, tapestries and faded black and white photographs of the Nicholas antecedents - my grandfather Nick in his top hat, grandmother Gladys in operatic stage gear - and Christo, brooding.

The small kitchen has been transformed into a studio, and is so bursting with creativity that we call it ‘Prospero’s Cell’. Theresa potters about pulling out sketch books which burst with life; old men carrying baskets of wood up dusty mountain paths, black-clad widows perched on crumbling stone walls, donkeys tethered outside tavernas where men smoke and drink ouzo beneath the bougainvillea.

We sit on her balcony surrounded by an eclectic array of found objects; old faded shutters hung like masterpieces, driftwood and shells. Large lazy bees buzz around pots of wildflowers. We eat ripe oranges and Theresa produces oil paintings and tapestries saying, ‘You have to take some. I need the space for others.’ I choose an oil painting of the White House at Kalami – where Lawrence Durrell once lived and a Van Gogh-style depiction of dancing olive trees.

I throw open the shutters and proclaim ‘Christo Anesti’. The sky is grey but nothing can dent my mood - Christ is risen.

We walk along the beach, dotted with fire pits for roasting Easter lamb. In the village, the butcher has several sheep rotating waiting for collection, releasing their rich rosemary-tinted juices into the atmosphere. A number of families disgorge from cars in their Sunday best and head into tavernas.

Winding our way up the verdant hillside, we look down through an olive grove onto the calm horizontal sea and the vertical black Cyprus that guard the shoreline like sentinels. The floor is littered with lemons and oranges.

The air brims with life; the hum of insects and symphony of bird song. Two cockerels crow in dialogue across the hillside. This is the Corfu of my childhood. The only thing that is missing is the song of the cicadas.

We walk through a wrought iron archway and find a pale ochre chapel in a clean swept courtyard. A set of steps runs up the side of the church to a low white-washed low spire with two ancient bells.

We step into the dark, incense-filled, deep red interior; every surface covered with images of Christ Pantocrator and the Virgin Mary. The silver-beaten icons, ornate candle sticks and ancient thuribles glint in the candlelight. The atmosphere is thick with His presence. I light a candle for my family.

As the day progresses, the skies darken and we watch the monsoon-like rain fall like a veil. As we eat lamb, several soggy cats seek shelter under our table.

By night, we are joined by another English artist who had come to the island in the 1970s. She had recently sold her property in England, thereby severing her ties with her homeland for ever. ‘It was my last link. I will never live there again now.’

At one time, Theresa, concerned about old age, looked into coming back from England but my father was right when he said that she was more Greek than English now. She will stay here to the bitter end and has already bought her plot in the crumbling British cemetery.

When morning dawns, I walk out onto the jetty. The sky is still grey and a light wind whips across the surface of the water. Out in the bay an elderly man crosses the horizon in lazy strokes.

I look back on the shoreline and can almost see my younger self playing hide and seek with Christo among the trees and Theresa proud and beautiful with her long dark hair tied in a bun at the nape of her neck, her arms across Christo’s shoulders, moving in rhythm to the music, powerfully pacing out the dance of the mountains.

In the last few moments of solitude before I resume my journey, I say a silent prayer of gratitude. I thank God for the vagaries of life that brought Theresa and subsequently myself to this island, for the childhood memories that inspired a life time of exploration, and that we have survived long enough to meet again.

Christos Anesti.