a Dodecanese chronicle
Day Two
Chalki → Rhodes · the Dodecanese
Sixty-six photographs, and a day in two halves: a morning walk in Chalki before the boat had woken up, then a passage to Rhodes and an afternoon inside its walls — a street the sign calls the Street of the Knights, a courtyard of arches, chandeliers, gelato, a neon sign about a Negroni, and dinner ashore. Beck captioned the morning in five instalments; Mark filed the two places in the Black Book at half past nine that night. A new name on the log today: Craig, who was up first.
Craig was on the quay at 6.38 photographing a blue-and-white fishing boat with the town still asleep behind it, and by 7.11 he was up a road out of the harbour with the sun coming over the ridge. Beck was on the same road at 7.51, where she met the lamb — the saddest little lamb we ever did see — and at 7.54 she found Mark at a beach shower, one hand out towards the coin box. Her caption is the whole story. By 8.21 there was a bell tower over a lane, and between 8.41 and 8.44 two phones photographed the waterfront from the boat: the church, the pink and ochre houses along the quay, the water gone glassy.
Craig and Mandy both photographed the table at ten to nine: fried eggs on a platter, a board of fruit, pastries, sliced meat, juice in a jug. Both plates are in The Galley. At 10.03 Maria took the town from the water with a yacht in the foreground; at 10.04 and 10.06 Mark took the last two frames of Chalki from the deck — the ones he filed that night in the Black Book under its name — and by 10.08 the party was under the bimini and the harbour was going astern.
Beck’s photograph at 10.38 — three of the party on the cockpit bench, one of them Roger — is the one she chose as the day’s hero, and it is at the top of this page with her caption. At 10.49 and 10.50 she caught the helm: one man in the seat, another standing over him. Captain Mark monitoring Captain Nick, she wrote. At 1.29pm she found Craig flat on the saloon bench beside the flowers with his hat on the table, and filed that too.
Maria photographed lunch twice: at 2.11 a tray of squares of pie on the blue-and-white plates, eight of them waiting, and at 2.15 her own, golden on top with a small salad alongside. At 2.41 the table under the awning, the sea going past behind it. Both plates are in The Galley, waiting for a star.
Everything written on Day Two, in the order it arrived. The log has added nothing.
Beck’s chart at 3.38 shows the marina, and at 3.40 Maria photographed Serenissima at the dock, bows to the quay. By 4.03 they were through a stone gate with a carved coat of arms over it, and at 4.10 on a long cobbled street between walls the colour of sand — the sign at the end of it, photographed at 4.20 with two of the party under it, says Street of the Knights. Three faces in a selfie at 4.11; two men in a lane at 4.18; carved shields over a doorway at 4.19. At 4.28 the whole party stood in front of a pair of towers for one photograph, and at 4.34 on a flight of steps for another, which Roger sent under places. Mark photographed a courtyard of arches at 4.38; Mandy went inside: chandeliers, a mosaic-topped table, a vaulted hall, a stone window, a rack of candles and a long arcade, one frame a minute until 5.04.
Maria’s frame at 5.57 is a neon sign in a wall of greenery — Leave me alone, me & my Negroni — and at six o’clock two of them with gelato, pink spoons and all. A lane full of pot plants at 6.09; a street of leather shops at 6.24, sent by Mark; a man on the edge of a fountain at 6.38. At 6.56 a taverna had its tables out on the cobbles and at 7.03 the sun was going down over the harbour wall. Mark’s last Black Book frame, at 7.06, is the gate at dusk with bougainvillea over it and the party walking through. Dinner started at 7.19 with warm bread and a dip with oil and paprika on it, photographed by Craig and Maria from opposite sides of the table; then a tomato salad with onion, a baked dish in a clay bowl, and at 7.39 a plate of small fried fish with a lemon. All four are in The Galley, filed under Rhodes.
