The three women sat on the rear deck, their luggage piled about them like defence fortifications. They were fortysomething. "Friends from uni," they explained. "We always promised we would take a holiday together. Twenty years on, we've finally managed it."
Twenty years on, freed from the enthusiasms of youth and a shared dislike of early Anglo-Saxon, it was clear life had taken them on dramatically different paths. They now looked like people who would have trouble sharing a taxi, let alone a villa for a week.
The first woman was the human version of an advertising hoarding. Everything about her seemed to shout - the wild orange hair, the rainbow spectacles, the T-shirt with a slogan about GM foods, the flamenco skirt. Her earrings could have been melted down to provide gun casings for a rebel army on the Upper Nile.
The second woman was obviously a career professional, a banker, perhaps - slim, sophisticated, understated in linen trousers and an ash-grey blouse. "Marlene has been to Paxos before," she said. "Paxos was Marlene's idea."
Marlene, the third woman, peered up at me over the top of her spectacles. She looked so absurdly like the stereotypical librarian - the sensible shoes, the calf-length beige skirt, the earnest expression, the spectacles on a strap - she might have been sent from central casting.
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"Paxos has a special aura," she explained. "Partly it is the Venetian period, but the Ionian islands were also a British protectorate for 50 years, and that has left its imprint."
"We are hoping the men are more Venice than British colonial," the Billboard guffawed.
The engine of the boat dropped a notch. We looked round. We were approaching the harbour. Paxos was ready to draw us in.
The tiny horseshoe harbour of Loggos was lined with pastel-coloured houses, shops and cafes with outdoor tables. When the local bus trundles through, diners at one of the cafes are obliged to draw in their legs to let it pass.
A hire car was waiting on the quayside and I drove to my villa, 10 minutes away on the east coast. The housekeeper was just leaving. She turned out to be an English girl from Devon who came to Paxos some years ago on holiday and fell in love with the island and an island fellow. "It gets under your skin," she said. "It's dangerously romantic."
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From the terrace by the pool, I gazed across to the mainland, where mountains brooded among baroque clouds. In the straits, white sails caught the westerly wind. In the other direction, olive groves clothed the hillside above the house, their leaves turning silvery green. Through the trees, I could just see the three women disgorging from their car at another villa. The hectoring voice of the Billboard drifted down to me on the breeze: "I have not come all the way to Greece to sit on my butt round the pool all day."
At first glance, Paxos has little to recommend it. It is the smallest of the Ionian islands, and there is the sense that most Lakka things have passed it by. It has no classical ruins and no great historical sites. It has no sandy beaches, little nightlife and few hotels. It has no airport; connections from Corfu take 2½ hours by boat. Experienced Greek hands will recognise this as the recipe for the perfect Greek island.
For the first few days, I didn't see much of the three women in the neighbouring villa, or anyone else, for that matter. I walked between tiny hamlets in the interior, through olive groves steeped in sun-flecked shadow, threaded by dry-stone walls and silent but for the rising drone of cicadas. Olives are the key to the Paxiot character. Olives have meant that, for centuries, nobody had to do very much.
It was all down to the Venetians, who ruled the island for 400 years until the Napoleonic wars. The Venetians had created an inflated market for olive oil by persuading the women of North Africa that nothing would make them so beautiful as bathing in the stuff. To take advantage of this market, they tried to persuade the Paxiots to plant olive trees. When persuasion didn't work, they offered them one drachma (the equivalent of about £75 in today's money) for each tree. The islanders promptly planted a quarter of a million.
They have been living off this burst of industry ever since. "In the old days, if you had 300 trees," a man told me over coffee one morning in Gaios, "you didn't need to work. Now the price of olive oil has fallen, people need jobs. They call it progress."
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If olive trees were cathedrals, the Paxos trees would be Notre Dame - elaborate, vast, gnarled, ancient and heavily buttressed. They sprawl, fantastically. Apparently, their owners bother with pruning only every other decade at most. Paxos's approach to the whole olive business is not so much laid-back as completely horizontal. In most parts of the world, olive harvests usually take six to eight weeks. In Paxos, they can take seven months. The islanders don't pick olives. They spread nets and wait for them to drop, venturing out now and again to collect the windfall and send them off to press. It is an admirable approach.
On the third day, I abandoned the olive groves for the sea, renting a motorboat in Loggos and touring round the coast. The west and east coasts of Paxos are different worlds. The east is low and forgiving, offering harbours to the three island towns - Lakka, Loggos and the miniature capital, Gaios, with its Venetian square. The west coast rises to dramatic cliffs that tower above small pebble beaches cradled in aquamarine bays and caves where Poseidon used to hide his lovers.
Mooring in one of the isolated west-coast bays, I came across the women stretched out on the beach. The Billboard's greeting echoed off the cliffs: "Where the hell have you been?"
They waved me over to share a basket of grapes. The Banker, slim and permatanned, wore a neat bikini. Marlene was in a one-piece that she might have inherited from her mother. The Billboard was topless. Her breasts were like independent provinces. She was eyeing the boatman, who was doing something nautical with the mooring ropes.
"Will you look at those buns?" the Billboard sighed.
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I lunched on Antipaxos, a tiny neighbouring island about a mile to the south, which is reputed to have the bluest coves in the archipelago and some of the best snorkelling in Greece. The Bella Vista restaurant sits above Voutoumi beach, offering magnificent views across the water to Paxos and beyond to the mountains of the mainland.
Half an hour later, the Billboard arrived with the boatman in tow.
With a wave to me, she sat him down at a corner table on the terrace. There was no sign of the other two women; I wondered momentarily if she had thrown them overboard in order to get the boatman alone. Over lunch, she was in expansive mood, hardly pausing for breath, while her companion hunkered down over grilled kebabs and a bottle of retsina. As they left, she winked at me behind his back.
The following evening, I ran into the Banker in Loggos, at Taxidhi's bar. She was alone on the outside terrace, gazing across a dark sea. The university friends seemed to be splitting apart. I found her in reflective mood. The island's slow rhythms, the sea, the night sky, the meandering sun-struck days, with no particular purpose, had all chipped away at her enamelled assurance.
"I have been looking at houses," she said. "It is time to stop running and do what I really want to do. I could spend four months a year with my feet in the Mediterranean."
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The next morning, I met Marlene, the Librarian, atop the campanile of Ipapanti church, deep in the olive groves. Far below us lay the harbour of Lakka, and beyond, across a white-capped sea, was a distant Corfu.
Something had happened to Marlene. She was like those librarians in films who remove their spectacles and shake out long locks of hair. She looked vibrant and alive. Her face glowed with sun and her whole body seemed to have become graceful and animated.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she sighed, gazing down over the olive trees to the harbour of Lakka below us. "It's Byzantine, you know - this church. Paxos feels so remote, so set apart in its own little world. Yet here is a building that connects it to the wide currents of the Mediterranean."
Someone was calling from the olive groves below us. "I must go," she said. "It's lunch. Are you coming to Lakka this evening? The Paxos Cultural Society are putting on a musical performance. There will be dancing." And, with that, the formerly mousy librarian skipped away down the curving stairs of the campanile as lightly as a girl.
Two days later, on the boat back to Corfu, I found the Billboard alone on the upper deck, her blouse unbuttoned to get the last of the sun on that formidable cleavage.
"They have both stayed another week," she said, before I had a chance to ask. "Looking for properties in the hills overlooking Loggos."
"I didn't realise Marlene was into buying houses abroad."
"Marlene?" she said. "Oh, no. She is into a different kind of viewing altogether. She has run off with the boatman." Stanley Stewart travelled to Paxos as a guest of Greek Islands Club
Travel brief
Getting there: there are direct charters to Corfu from 17 UK airports. Flights Direct (www.flightsdirect.com ), Charter Flight Centre (0845 045 0153, www.charterflights.co.uk ) and Avro (0871 423 8550, www.avro.co.uk ) have returns from about £150. From Corfu, there are regular boats and hydrofoils to Paxos, costing about £5, one-way.
Getting around: for independent car rental, contact Ita's Cars (00 30-69734 01658); from £160 per week. For scooters and bikes, try Scooter and Bike Rental, in Gaios (26620 32598). There are several boat-rental offices along the harbourfront in Loggos and Lakka; prices start at about £40 per day.
Where to stay: most visitors stay in villas booked through tour operators (see below). There are a few B&Bs: try Zakspitaki (26620 31243), less than a mile from Loggos, with doubles from £50 per night. In Gaios, the Paxos Club Hotel (26620 32450, www.paxosclub.gr ) has self-catering studios and apartments from about £700 per week.
Tour operators: usually the best option, as they provide flight, boat and villa at a cost that would be hard to match independently.
Greek Islands Club (020 8232 9780, www.greekislandsclub.com ) has three-bedroom, three-bathroom villas with a pool from £587pp per week, based on four sharing and including flights, boat transfers and car hire.
Other operators include Travel a la Carte (01635 33800, www.travelalacarte.co.uk ), James Villas (0800 074 0122, www.jamesvillas.co.uk ) and Simpson Travel (0845 811 6500, www.simpsontravel.com ).
Where to eat and drink: Loggos, the smallest of the three harbours, has several tavernas on the quayside, with Nassos probably the best. Meals start at about £12.
Taxidhi's is a wonderful bar, with front and back tables overlooking the harbour and the sea respectively. The best bread on the island - possibly in Greece - is sold at the bakery two doors along. For predinner drinks, don't miss the trendy Sunset Bar, near Erimitis, which has spectacular views over the cliffs of the west coast. It's not to be confused with the nearby, and excellent, Sunset Taverna, where you can dine in the garden or up on the roof terrace from about £10 a head.
Lunch at the Bella Vista restaurant, on Antipaxos, with its lovely views above Voutoumi beach, starts at £12.