I will send you back to England a very different man

Alonissos, Greece

“No,” said the girl, somewhere in her thirties, and looking at me intently, “I do not want you to take your clothes off. But I do want you to put these on.” She stretched out her arm, proffering a pure white T-shirt top and raggedy maroon pyjama trousers. “I think they’ll fit,” she added. I could see her thinking for a moment, her tanned, Greek face studying me microscopically, “what are you? Large? Let me see…mmm…perhaps extra-large for you.”

There was no sense in my explaining that because I was already dressed, to put clothes on I had to take some off. What language should I use anyway? Greek, English, maybe Portuguese? Basically, there was no tongue that was appropriate. The girl before me was boss. Joke cracking? Forget it. Flirting? Not a hope. It was best to do what was asked and simply stop complaining.

This was Maria from the Sporades island of Volos. Maria the masseuse. Maria the therapist. Maria who had already talked me through the day and could read me like a book. “You are tight,” she had said, “so tight. You are carrying the problems of the world.”

“Who isn’t?” I thought. Problem carrying is the way of things these days and I know I am not alone. Society is crazy, the workplace is crazy, while mankind everywhere seeks to criticise, attack or complain. Maria was right. My shoulders were laden with troubles and Infinity Spa on the Sporades island of Alonissos was where I had chosen to unload them.

My treatment, if treatment it is, was a so-called Thai massage, but a Thai massage with a difference. I am no spa freak as my last health treatment was more than five years earlier when I had been beaten around the head with bamboo by a market stallholder in Shanghai. I still have a bald patch as memory and certainly cannot forget the pain. But now it was different. Infinity Spa was that difference. At the top of a hill, okay a small mountain, and surrounded by olive groves and pine, Infinity is as remote as they get. It is one serious way of forgetting responsibilities and yet surprisingly simple to reach. Anyway, it was time to escape and, for a change, to let others do the thinking. I am not very good at that.

So obediently, like some tiny dog, I changed into the extra-large pyjamas, realising with despondence that even they felt ever-so small. Within moments, Maria had me flat on my back on a black-and-white ribbed cotton mat and I was looking out at a pancake blue sea. We were in a tent, you might call it a small marquee, it was windless and the cicadas so active that the distant Oriental music coming from the speakers around me, and designed to relax, was essentially inaudible. I certainly could not hear Maria’s instructions.

“Turn on your fi..sai…mmm….,” she commanded. Note the word command, not query. Maria had big-time authority.

“Side?” I inquired.

“I didn’t say side.”

“I thought you did.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay, what did you mean? Like this?” I twisted a few degrees to my left. “Can someone turn off those cicadas, please?” I requested.

“No one turns off a cicada,” Maria added. “Anyway, they are the atmosphere here. Listen beyond them and you will also hear the birds. Now stay there and I will move you.”

I listened hard. Not a bird within range, but then I did not have Maria’s ear. All I could hear were noisy, disruptive cicadas. They say cicadas are especially noisy when they are mating. If so, there is serious mating at Infinity.

With an almost casual flick of her arm, assisted by a shove to my right thigh with her foot, Maria’s slight frame had flicked me onto my face with the authority of a ninja black belt. You didn’t mess with Maria. She had dealt with folk considerably heavier than me on frequent occasions and now made rapid light work of my otherwise flobbering form. At over 200 pounds I was a lightweight compared with many. Meanwhile I doubted Maria would have outweighed a butterfly. She was certainly barely bigger.

“And you are so knotted up,” she continued, this time kneading my collar bones like putty. I tried hard to be macho as all I wished to do was scream. Yet had I shouted there was no one other than Maria to hear me. At Infinity, they make you feel so terribly private and alone. Indeed, that is what you are. It is part of their skill.

“Really, you are so stressed,” Maria added, “what is it you do for a living?”

“You don’t want to know,” I replied, realising that the last time I had felt such pain was when I had been interrogated by Mr Bad, a Middle Eastern version, while strung up like a torso from a meat hook.

It took Maria two hours, two very long hours, to loosen me up, to break down the knots, the scars, the tightness that seize me all over. “Breath out,” she would say when she realised I was in agony, “always breath out when it is hurting.”

“But how can I breath out if I haven’t breathed in?” I asked, instantly regretting the flippant question.

Crack! Another adhesion, this time a painful left shoulder, breaking free after a decade of disuse. Crack! There was another. Crack, crack! And the shoulder was mobile.

“Stop being…stop being…stop being so English,” she replied. I could see tiny beads of sweat on her forehead as even Maria realised there was much she had done, but so much more ahead. “You are tight, so very tight,” she continued, “you need to be here for a fortnight.”

“A fortnight?” I asked, “not a hope. Two days maybe but two weeks? No way.”

“Well give me what you can,” said Maria, confident now she had the upper hand. “One thing is certain. You have plenty going on to keep me busy. I will send you back to England a very different man.”