Free Under a Croatian Sun by Anthony Stancomb Page B

powerful pressure group. Besides, who knows, given a few more years of island living, even Imight learn how to exchange the intimacies of my bodily functions with my fellow beings in the full light of day.
    Something to look forward to, then.

CHAPTER 9
CHILDREN AND GRANNIES
    A fter a month of being on the island, we could still remember the state of euphoria we were in when we returned to London after deciding to sell up and move. Euphoria had put our house on the market, euphoria had found us a tiny flat and euphoria had got my company ready for sale. Though when it came to breaking the news to our two children, it failed us.
    Now in their late twenties, our children had serious doubts about our ability to cope with such a change. Like most treasured offspring, they had started life as dear sweet little things, and after a few ghastly years of teenage strop they mercifully reverted to the endearing people they used to be, but they had recently started on a new phase of treating their parents as old duffers who needed a watchful eye kept on them. They considered our decision irresponsible and were clearly worried about what it might lead to next – joining the Moonies, running amok, spending their inheritance? The lectures camefrom all angles, and, when I was foolish enough to let slip that I was looking for a boat, things got worse. Knowing that their mother’s argumentative powers were more than a match for them, they didn’t start right away, but, as soon as Ivana left the kitchen, they closed their chairs on me in a pincer movement like two of Rommel’s tanks.
    ‘Now,’ said Milena in a voice she borrows from her mother, ‘this boat. You
are
going to have it properly serviced, aren’t you?’
    (Both my wife and my children have an unfairly jaundiced opinion of my DIY expertise. I should never have tried to fix the hot water system in 1983; it’s given me a reputation that’s dogged me ever since.)
    Milena continued, ‘Because, unless you have it properly serviced, none of us will be able to sleep.’
    I held my ground. ‘I’m quite capable of doing it all myself, except for the electronic stuff.’
    Milena shot a look at her brother.
    ‘Dad,’ said Christopher, ‘Vis is the last island before the open sea. If you’re out there with Mum and the engine packs up, you’ll drift over to Italy and no one’s going to save you. Did you ever see
Dead Calm
?’
    ‘Yes, I did,’ I said testily, ‘but conditions in the Adriatic aren’t anything like that. And I do know how to look after an engine on my own, thank you very much.’
    ‘You could always just do trips around the island or go to the mainland,’ said Milena hopefully. ‘You’d be safe enough then.’
    ‘But the whole idea of a boat is to explore. I can drop anchor in hidden coves and Mum and I can sit on deck with a bottle of wine watching the sun go down. And we’ll sleep with the hatch open and look up at the stars to marvel at the wonders of the universe.’
    Irreverent giggling from both my offspring.
    ‘Has Mum been giving you the magic mushroom pills again?’ asked Child One with a smirk.
    ‘And what about poor Mum having to listen to your poetic outbursts?’ Child Two chortled.
    ‘Dad, I’m sure you’ll look terribly romantic reciting poetry on your poop deck, but imagine Mum with a force eight gale coming up and you beside her going on about the wonders of the universe!’
    ‘You are talking to your father to whom fear is a stranger. I’m a man who can look into the eye of an approaching storm without flinching – or into the eye of a charging elephant, for that matter!’
    ‘Dad, be sensible. This isn’t Rudyard Kipling.’
    ‘It’s all very well for you playing Captain Pugwash, but Mum will be really frightened.’
    ‘But there are so many islands to explore,’ I countered. ‘And they’re right on our doorstep. We could even go over to Italy. Mum would love that.’
    ‘Mum won’t if she knows you’ve been