All About Poros
The Private Sea. By Peter Mayne. (Murray, 18s.) PETER MAYNE'S island of Poros lies some three hours' sailing south of the Pirmus. When you arrive there you disembark under the clock-tower in the Plateia of the Heroes, where the whole population will be waiting to greet returning all friends and, more particularly, to spy out promis- ing strangers. But no one will be waiting more avidly than the island's young men, to whose sad predicament Mr. Mayne gives the greater part of his attention. For these young men, he tells us, life is an eternal and tormenting Sunday after- noon, a stifled and sterile process of frustration and face-Saving, of lolling and lotus. They have little to do on the island except 'messing about ,ior in boats.' Standards of propriety are rigid, professional ladies unheard of; so that even the most elementary of insular consolations is denied them. Small wonder, then, that they congregate so eagerly on the quayside : for they all share one last and desperate hope—that a lady tourist, comely and wealthy and (like all lady tourists) no better than she should be, will one day step down among them seeking their love and offering escape. Mr. Mayne followed the fortunes of such young men; and the resulting chronicle, part docu- mentary, part fiction, part travel diary (there is an idyllic interval on the most remote of all Greek islands), is loosely centred round an engaging Poriot called Georgios and the aspirations aroused in him by the beautiful chain-store heiress who arrives with six pieces of matching tartan luggage. This book is a wry piece of work, quiet and funny 4bael and rather sad. Everyone in the story behaves with •a ki consistent shabbiness throughout, but none of 1-hir them is lacking, for a single instant, in dignity, his , courtesy or charm.
SIMON RAVEN
Previous page
