Sixty Summers

by Amanda Hampson

  ‘We were going to stay in our van,’ said Rose, with a nod towards the Beast.

  Spyros shrugged. He pointed to the parking area. ‘Put here. Use bathrooms. If you want. No charge.’

  ‘That parking was your vineyard when we were last here,’ Fran reminded him. ‘There were no cars down here on the beach then.’

  ‘Now cars come here. They need parking. Why stay in van? Is hot. Too many womans. My sister has room in the house. Very cheap.’

  ‘We can’t even afford cheap right now,’ Rose told him. ‘We’re broke.’

  He looked bewildered. ‘You come with no money?’

  ‘We were robbed,’ explained Maggie.

  He shrugged philosophically. ‘You married? Children?’

  ‘Maggie here married a Greek,’ offered Rose.

  Spyros’s face lit up. ‘You married Greek man? Is good man?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘Yes, he is a good man.’

  ‘He not here?’ he asked with a frown.

  ‘He’s at home, working,’ said Maggie, and felt herself blush with guilt.

  Spyros wanted all the details: how many children they had, the names of the children, what their husbands did. He called Delphine to bring some baklava, which was sticky and stale, and they talked about the past and present, the changes – good and bad – that had arrived in Agios Papadakis in the past decades.

  There had been around twenty people sleeping on the beach that summer of ’78. Brits, Germans, Americans and Australians: an international community of travellers. Everyone ate at the Blue Moon. There was no need for a menu. Spyros only cooked one dish each night: either meatballs, moussaka or fish.

  After dinner, they would buy wine from him to take down onto the beach. His question was always the same, ‘How many peoples?’ He would fill a demijohn, encased in a plastic basket, with enough wine to keep them happy but not enough to cause him grief in the early hours with drunken singing or naked running through his vineyard.

  It occurred to Maggie that although that time was special for them, for Spyros, every summer brought a new menagerie of young travellers – backpackers and hippies from around the world – all with the same dream of escaping the realities of adulthood for as long as possible. This was his world, and life was hard for him. Between summers there would be no income at all.

  ‘What Greek food you cooking?’ Spyros asked Maggie.

  Maggie listed them. ‘Dolmades, souvlaki, tzatziki, spanakopita, baklava.’

  ‘Delphine, she not good cook. People complaining. You help her in the kitchen. Stay in my sister house. No charge.’

  ‘We’re not here very long,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m not sure how much I can help.’

  ‘Is okay.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe you teach her. Or not. My daughter come in … hmm … maybe one week. Is very good cook.’

  ‘It would be nice to have a room to sleep in,’ ventured Fran hopefully.

  Maggie felt there was room for negotiation. ‘We’re really here on holiday, Spyros. It’s a lot to give up to work in a kitchen.’

  Spyros was unfazed. ‘Is very nice room. You have no money.’

  ‘I am a very, very good cook. My baklava …’

  ‘Okay. I pay you five euro for the hour and the room of my sister.’

  Maggie gave it some thought. ‘Plus all our meals.’

  ‘Buh, the crazy one eats like man …’ He then scrutinised Fran, as if assessing her appetite. ‘With the little one, is okay.’

  ‘I’ll do lunch and dinner service only. Not breakfast,’ insisted Maggie.

  ‘Okay, okay, arketá – enough. You eat tonight. My guest. Work tomorrow.’

  Maggie shook his hand. ‘And now we need a tractor.’

  Spyros’s sister, Mrs Halikiopoulos (immediately nicknamed Mrs Helicopters) was a stout woman dressed in mourning black, with a shock of white hair, who spoke no English. The room, dubbed the Helipad, was spartan as a cell, with whitewashed walls, pale floor tiles and four narrow single beds, one against each wall, but the windows opened wide and looked out to the sea.

  The bathroom was basic but clean. The bath had an inbuilt seat, but no hot water. ‘I’m just grateful to have a bed and running water. It could have been worse. We might have had to carry buckets from a well,’ said Rose.

  ‘I can’t believe you still can’t flush toilet paper here,’ said Maggie. ‘They’re used to it, I guess.’

  ‘Let’s hope no one gets the runs,’ said Rose, pulling a face.

  Early in the afternoon, Spyros sent a man with a tractor who towed the Beast off the sand. They were able to park it in the yard outside, unpack and settle into their new home. They had cold baths and lay on their beds in the afternoon heat and reassessed the situation.

  ‘In summary, team, good progress,’ said Maggie. ‘We have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. If we can get online, maybe we should order another lot of replacement cards?’

  ‘Let’s not get them sent here,’ said Rose. ‘I doubt they have a daily mail delivery.’

  ‘Even if we get thirty hours of work, I don’t think that’s going to cover our airfares. Besides, it will be in cash. I could get Kristo to wire some money or he could even book our flights to Rome,’ suggested Maggie. ‘Spyros is bound to know someone who wants the Beast.’

  ‘Good on you for taking the cooking challenge, Mags,’ said Fran. ‘It got us out of a spot.’

  ‘I’ll probably regret it. I’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen but I’d like to give it a go.’

  ‘We’ll be at your side. It’s not going to be just down to you,’ Rose reassured her. ‘Only having one pair of glasses could be a nuisance. We’ll make it work. Hey, do you remember when I worked for Spyros, he gave me three pieces of advice? “Don’t wear revealing clothing, don’t sleep with the local boys and don’t sunbathe nude.”’

  Maggie laughed. ‘I don’t think we’re at risk this time around.’

  ‘Must have gone right over my head,’ admitted Fran. ‘I wandered around in a bikini all day – I remember an old woman rushing out of her house with a blanket to cover me. I slept with a very handsome Greek boy from up the hill and sunbathed naked with the Germans.’

  Rose shook her head in admiration. ‘Bloody Fran, eh? The quiet achiever.’

  On the way to the Blue Moon that evening, they noticed the mini-mart had a sign in the window offering internet access. Rose and Fran waited outside while Maggie went in and made a voice call on the computer to Kristo. The shop was empty, apart from a teenage boy behind the counter. He was staring at his phone, but his interest was piqued when Kristo began the conversation by shouting, ‘Where the fuck are you?! I am out of my fucking mind!’

  ‘Kristo, please. Stop it. And stop swearing. There is no reason for you to be out of your mind. I’m really quite capable —’

  ‘I haven’t heard from you in three days. Where are you?!’

  ‘Corfu. It’s a long story. We bought a van and —’

  ‘You bought a van!’ he squeaked. ‘Are you a gypsy now? Or a hippie? Who’s there with you? What in the hell is going on?’

  ‘Kristo, stop! You’re making things so much worse.’

  ‘What could get worse than my wife going nuts and roaming around the world thinking she’s a teenager with no responsibilities?’

  ‘Okay, I get it. Right now, I need you to send me some money —’

  ‘What? You just said you were capable. I know what you’ve been doing, Maggie. Yannis is not as stupid as he looks. He’s worked it out. I didn’t believe it. He showed me the evidence of what you’ve been up to. Evidence, Maggie! We need to talk. You need to get back here.’

  Maggie felt breathless with panic, wanting nothing more than to get off the call. ‘I’m going to go now, Kristo. I can’t talk to you like this …’

  ‘Okay. Okay. I’ve calmed down. A bit. I want you to come home now. I’ve had enough. More than enough. I can’t deal with any more.’

  Maggie took deep breaths and tried to cal
m herself. The teenage boy behind the counter had given up any pretence of looking at his phone.

  ‘We’ve run out of money, and we had the new cards delivered to the hotel in Rome.’

  ‘Well, that was stupid. Why didn’t you go to Rome? How in the hell are you living without money?’

  Maggie knew this wasn’t going to go well. ‘I’ve got a job cooking in a taverna.’

  Silence. Then a sob, either laughing or crying, and the line went dead.

  Maggie went outside and reported that there would be no funds coming from Kristo at this point. Rose went in to call Peter but there was no answer, so she sent a message to Max.

  ‘I could try Elliot,’ Rose said as they walked down to the taverna. ‘I’ve never asked Elliot and Prya for help. I’ve been trying to give them the impression that I’ve got my shit together. I don’t really want to undo all my good work.’

  ‘Desperate times,’ said Maggie unsympathetically. ‘If I’ve got to put up with Kristo bellowing at me, that’s no big deal.’

  ‘Why is he bellowing?’ asked Fran worriedly.

  Maggie brushed off her concern. ‘It’s just what he does. It doesn’t take much. He’ll be fine when he calms down. I think.’

  ‘I wish I could do something,’ said Fran. ‘I don’t know how to call Louis from a computer. And I’m not sure he would help, anyway. He wouldn’t know how to wire money or anything like that.’

  Maggie was only vaguely aware that the sky was streaked with pink and gold. She barely heard the twittering of thousands of swallows swarming in the trees. She regretted calling Kristo.

  The Blue Moon was only half full when they got there. Apart from Delphine, there were two boys of about twelve helping with preparations and serving tables. Spyros was enthroned at his corner table, drinking ouzo and handling the financial transactions. He gave them a wave. ‘Yiá sas, kalispera! Sit anywhere, Aussie sheilas!’

  The laminated menus were sticky with fingerprints. The plastic cloths on the tables were limp with age. The place was run-down but no more run-down than many others like it. ‘Was it always grubby like this?’ asked Maggie as they looked over the menu.

  Rose nodded. ‘There weren’t any table cloths or menus but it was clean; probably Delphine being a bit slack with the cleaning. She’s only young.’

  ‘I think our standards were lower back then,’ said Fran. ‘More accepting of squalor.’

  Maggie laughed. ‘We had the luxury of creating squalor when we were young. Since then, we’ve spent our days managing other people’s and we’re less tolerant.’

  Maggie ordered the moussaka, which turned out to be lukewarm on the outside and cold in the middle. Fran had the Greek salad, limp but edible. Rose went for the fish of the day, which came encased in a thick batter with lukewarm chips.

  ‘I can see why they’re not busy,’ whispered Rose. ‘I get that the Greeks like their food lukewarm, but cold chips?’

  Spyros sent over some baklava, which had the consistency of old newspapers soaked in sticky sugar, probably made in a factory on the mainland. Maggie usually made her own filo, but that was probably impractical here. And at that pay rate, she wasn’t planning to make it any harder than it needed to be.

  Earlier in the day, Spyros had told them that the kitchen had been completely updated. Once the food service was over, they went to have a proper look at it. That update was a long time ago. Rose said it was much as she remembered it: a large alcove in the back of the restaurant with sink, oven, gas burners, deep fryer and bench for preparation. The only new addition was a microwave. The two boys, Angelos and George, were washing up by hand, no dishwasher. There was no cold room, just three rusting fridges lined up in a makeshift room leading off the kitchen to the yard. The freezer was stacked with foil containers of moussaka and frozen fish. One of Rose’s jobs had been grating the cucumbers to make the tzatziki dip fresh every day. These days it was in a bulk container in the fridge. Worse was the disorganisation in the kitchen: open shelves with odd-shaped bowls and pots stacked in teetering piles, and packets of paper serviettes spilling out under benches.

  On the walk back to the Helipad, Maggie said, ‘This could be a nightmare. Delphine doesn’t seem at all cooperative. I have absolutely no idea how to cook for a restaurant.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Mags. Half the restaurants in the world have no clue. Basically you cook food, hand it out, get money. When I worked there, Spyros did all the cooking and shouting. His wife, Phyllis, pulled it all together. I did the prep and dips, cut up bread and washed up. And flirted with the patrons, obviously.’

  ‘It’s not as simple now there’s a printed menu,’ argued Maggie. ‘There’s an expectation.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Fran reassured her. ‘We’re all in this together.’

  ‘Spyros is getting quite the deal, all three of us for five euro an hour,’ said Rose. ‘You know that’s like two dollars fifty an hour each?’

  ‘Plus food and board,’ Fran reminded her. ‘And we’d be in trouble now without that.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you, the crazy one is going to eat like two men.’

  Rose had planned to try Peter again, but the shop was closed.

  ‘Next time he’s open, let’s check airfares to Rome. It must be only an hour or two from here,’ said Maggie. ‘Maybe not that expensive.’

  Rose linked arms with her. ‘Mag, let’s put our energies into being here, not just trying to escape. It will work out somehow. I’ll handle it.’

  Maggie agreed. Kristo had rattled her and she wondered exactly what Yannis had found. She had been so careful. It was impossible to imagine Yannis keeping her deception to himself. There would be repercussions. Possibly serious ones.

  Fran and Rose were asleep within minutes but Maggie felt restless and unsettled. She got up and went to the open window. Leaning on the sill, she looked out into the night. The village was dark, the night sky alive with stars. The only sounds were crickets, cicadas and the odd bird call, short and sharp. Perhaps owls or night birds out hunting. There was a tall cypress tree beside the house, giving off the fresh smell of pine. She thought about how little they had here, and how much she had at home. She had everything she had ever wanted, apart from time to stop and smell the night.

  She felt an unexpected pang of homesickness, wishing Kristo was here with her. Not the shouting, cursing Kristo but the gentle, loving one. The memory of their time in Kythera played in her head like a romantic movie with long walks at sunset, tender kisses and hand-holding. Times that could never be recaptured. They were long gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  At breakfast, Spyros’s corner table was empty. Rose had talked to Delphine about supplies the evening before and been told that Spyros would go into town first thing in the morning and pick everything up for the next three days. Everything seemed to be running to plan, except that Delphine was nowhere to be found.

  A woman they hadn’t seen before was running the kitchen. Maggie went in and introduced herself in Greek. The woman said her name was Jocasta and she did not speak English. Remembering the casual staffing arrangements of the past, Rose suggested Maggie ask about Delphine. Jocasta went into a detailed explanation; the only word Rose recognised was Athena. Delphine had gone back to Athens? Maggie did her best with the language until she ran out of steam. ‘She’s gone back to Athens. A boyfriend, I think.’

  ‘We should have seen that coming,’ said Rose. ‘It might even be easier without her.’

  Maggie wasn’t so sure. ‘I just wish she’d told us, so we could be better prepared.’

  Jocasta brought fruit and yoghurt out to the terrace for them. They ate in silence, gazing out across the blue bay.

  ‘The condemned ate a hearty breakfast,’ said Maggie, finally.

  ‘I’m not sure you could call yoghurt and fruit “hearty”,’ said Fran.

  ‘You don’t disagree with the condemned part, I notice,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll be fine. The only thing is that when Spyros goes
to town for supplies, he’s gone for hours. He spends an hour on the shopping and three drinking coffee and catching up with all his buddies.’

  Angelos and George turned up, both with backpacks, and stood waiting beside the road. Within minutes they were picked up by a school bus that headed off up the hill.

  ‘So that’s them gone too,’ said Maggie. ‘Not that I was relying on a couple of twelve-year-olds to save us.’

  ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ asked Rose. ‘We get fired?’ She laughed to demonstrate how absurd that was, but neither Fran nor Maggie was amused. Rose felt reasonably relaxed about the job ahead. Both she and Fran had worked as kitchen hands and waited tables, even if it was a few decades ago.

  They had barely finished their breakfast when Jocasta came outside and beckoned to them. Dragging themselves away from the glorious morning, they entered the dark realms of the kitchen, where, after a quick tour, Jocasta handed over and went off to her job cleaning holiday flats.

  Maggie suggested that the first thing they should do was an audit, so they knew what ingredients they had to work with and didn’t get caught out. Since last night, several large iceberg lettuces had appeared in the fridge, probably from Spryos’s garden, along with a bucket of fresh tomatoes and figs. There was a vat of olives and two industrial-sized blocks of feta in tubs of brine, and plastic containers of dolmades. Frozen fish and chips, moussaka, pork and beef mince and pastry. No chicken to be found anywhere.

  Rose gave Maggie a comforting pat on the back. ‘Don’t fret. There’ll be a dozen for lunch, maximum. That’s half the number that come to your place for Easter, and you don’t have Yia-yiá running interference.’

  It was agreed that Fran would help in the kitchen because Maggie needed the reading glasses for health and safety reasons. Rose would have to take down the orders in her largest printing. There were no credit card facilities to worry about. The cash was kept in a box under the counter.