Literary couple Charmian Clift and George Johnston’s island escape

Charmian Clift and George Johnston’s move to the Greek islands was the epitome of bohemian daring.

Charmian Clift and George Johnston in 1964.

PEEL ME A LOTUS

By Charmian Clift

“Today we bought the house by the well.” So opens this narrative of new lives, the first I can recall reading of a total transplant to a destination of old-fashioned ways, strong communities and time-honoured beliefs.

It was the early 1950s, long before Peter Mayle took on Provence or Frances Mayes did Tuscany. Australian journalists and authors Charmian Clift and George Johnston moved from London to the Greek islands of Kalymnos and Hydra at a time when such relocation seemed the epitome of bohemian daring.

Peel Me A Lotus by Charmian Clift.

To be completely correct in one’s reading, it’s best to start with Clift’s Mermaid Singing, set on the sponge-divers’ ­island of Kalymnos, but it’s Peel Me a Lotus that I find more captivating, with its deeper and more comfortable appreciation of the Greek way of life.

After signing the “incomprehensible” real estate purchase papers on Hydra and spending their “last little bit of capital”, the couple were left with two typewriters, two children, a hoped-for supply of book royalties to keep them going, and sustaining views of the “high, harsh beauty of the mountains soaring up from the jewelled crescent of the port”.

The island’s “marvellous ruins”, just begging to be restored, were out of their price bracket so their one-time sea captain’s abode on a cobbled square may have been humble, but Clift’s evocative writing suggests it was romantic and charming, too.

“The key is a huge, medieval instrument that weighs two pounds, nine ounces … the floors are grey stone flags, worn silk smooth … double doors like those of a fortress …”

From a high window, the sea captain’s wife had been known to “fire off two small cannons on sighting his ship entering port”. Unlike self-congratulatory books about expatriate life, Peel Me a Lotus dwells on domestic details and feels more authentic for this small-picture approach.

My 1987 paperback edition, yellowed with handling, was a gift from my father who replaced Johnston in 1954 as AAP/Fairfax’s Europe bureau chief on Fleet Street. “To a daughter who loves being somewhere else!” reads his inscription.