You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  ‘Tomorrow I finish at eleven.’

  We stared at each other for a moment. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say to that.

  At that moment, a bright-red Englishman arrived at the checkout with a basket of goods. On the top was a bottle of factor-seven sun cream. Judging by the state of his face, I thought he needed at least a factor fifty. The man looked at Baruch, I think to try to understand why nothing was happening, and then he followed his gaze to look at me.

  Baruch snapped out of it and, seeming embarrassed, started to ring up the man’s purchases. ‘Have a great day,’ he said flatly, without even looking up at me. ‘You can tell me about it tomorrow maybe.’

  So I gave him a little wave and stepped outside. ‘Wow,’ I said quietly. ‘Just, wow!’

  Nick had only one bike left, a knackered-looking Honda C90 with battered white fairings that were presumably designed to protect your legs from rain. I wondered if they ever actually had rain in Santorini.

  I rode it once up and down the dusty street but was dubious. It had weird gears that lurched when they changed and a back brake you had to press with your foot. But Nick insisted that it was far better for two people than the aerodynamic-looking scooters I’d seen everywhere. It was something to do with it being a four-stroke, he said. I had no idea what that meant, but in the end, when he gave me 10 per cent off, I caved in and, despite being under the distinct impression I was being ripped off, I signed the paperwork and handed over my cash.

  As it turned out, I think Nick was right. Once Mum and I had thrown our beach towels in the top case, the ancient little Honda carried us with ease up and down the hills. We regularly overtook couples on their pretty but noisy modern scooters.

  We got lost a couple of times leaving Oia as the road signs weren’t so good, but eventually we found ourselves on the long straight road towards Fira.

  ‘Don’t go so fast,’ Mum said almost immediately.

  ‘I’m not!’ I shouted back.

  ‘You’re doing fifty,’ Mum said. ‘That’s too fast.’

  ‘They’re kilometres, Mum! Not miles! We’re doing, like, thirty miles an hour!’

  We’d chosen Baruch’s favourite beach as our destination. Its major attraction was that it was at the exact opposite end of the island. Plus Mum had never been there. The road took us through Fira, which was just crazy with tourists (they even had a traffic jam), then on to Megalochori, which we promised to stop at on the way home. And finally through Emporio and down to Perivolos Beach itself.

  We rode through dusty, scrubby villages where goats limped across the road. They all seemed to have two feet tied together to stop them going too far or too fast. That seemed so cruel that I seriously considered stopping to untie them. But I didn’t dare. Instead, I did my best to convince myself that they were probably happier limping painfully through the Santorini countryside than locked in a dingy factory-farm building like most dairy cows back home.

  In places, we rose over desolate rock formations and as the road redescended, the views were quite unbelievable – wall-to-wall blue sky and sea with tiny islands floating in the mist. We stopped so many times for selfies that the journey took us two hours instead of the forty-five minutes Baruch had predicted. It was all really good fun.

  As we pulled up in the sandy car park of Perivolos Beach, I knew Baruch’s advice had been sound. Because with its enormous swathe of soft, black sand, rows of pretty thatched parasols and its sparkling turquoise sea, Perivolos looked, to my eye, like paradise.

  We pulled off our crash helmets and popped them in the top case. Mum’s cheeks were streaked with tears.

  ‘Ha! You look like you’ve been crying,’ I laughed, as she brushed them away with one hand.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Mum said. ‘It’s just the wind.’ Something in her voice made me wonder if that was really true.

  We took off our shoes and walked along the water’s edge to the furthest end of the beach. It was here that the sunbeds were widely spaced and the ambiance was the most chilled. Having chosen our spot – two beds at the water’s edge – we paused.

  ‘How does this work, do you think?’ I asked Mum. ‘Do you have to pay first? Do you remember?’

  ‘I think you just sit down,’ Mum said, ‘and they come to you.’

  A smiling youngster was jogging towards us. ‘Sit anywhere,’ he said on arrival. ‘It’s free.’

  ‘Free as in nothing to pay?’ I asked, suspicious as ever. For some reason, I always expected the Greeks to try to scam me but it never happened once.

  He nodded. ‘If you drink something I’ll be happy. But even if you don’t, it’s free.’

  ‘God, I love it here,’ I said. I’d just got back from a swim and the salt water was still trickling down my back. It was almost midday and the sun was so strong that the air above the sand seemed to shimmer in the heat.

  Mum looked up from the novel she was reading. ‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Totally gorgeous,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s like those photos you get in holiday brochures, only you never think they really exist. You always assume they’ve been Photoshopped, you know?’

  Mum winked at me. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re liking it,’ she said.

  ‘You know when we went to Bergen?’ I asked. I’d been thinking about Bergen during my swim for some reason.

  Mum laid her novel across her chest. She looked puzzled. ‘I thought you didn’t remember that,’ she said. ‘You’re forever saying you don’t.’

  ‘Well, other than you forcing me to eat prawns,’ I told her, ‘I don’t much. I was just wondering why.’

  ‘Why I made you eat prawns?’

  ‘No, silly. Why you chose Bergen. I mean, it can’t have been cheap.’

  ‘No. No, it was very expensive.’

  ‘Then we could have gone anywhere. We could have come here instead.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So why Bergen?’

  Mum shrugged. ‘I thought it would make a change, I suppose.’

  ‘From all of those lovely sunny holidays we weren’t having?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if you didn’t like—’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I just mean, well . . . what did you do? Cover your eyes and stick your finger on a map or something? Because I’ve never met anyone who’s been to Bergen.’

  ‘I had a photo of it on my bedroom wall when I was a girl, if you must know. It’s very famous for its fjords. And you know how I love a fjord.’

  ‘I didn’t know that actually. Was it pretty?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Mum said unconvincingly. ‘It rained rather a lot unfortunately. In fact it rained the whole damned time. But yes, it was very pretty.’

  ‘Did you buy me a plastic mac?’ I asked. The physical sensation of sweaty polythene had just sprung into my mind as if from nowhere.

  Mum nodded. ‘And one of those see-through umbrellas. You loved that umbrella. You cried like crazy when it didn’t fit in the suitcase on the way home.’

  ‘I wish I remembered more of it,’ I said. ‘It seems like a waste, really.’

  ‘Well, like I said, it rained pretty much the whole week. So I’m not surprised you don’t remember it. Other than the hotel room and a few walks in the rain, there wasn’t that much to remember.’

  ‘Did you regret it, then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it was the only holiday we ever had, wasn’t it? Did you regret not coming back here instead?’

  ‘Oh, I try not to regret things too much,’ Mum said. ‘Unless you’re God and you know everything, including the past and the future, most of life is pretty much a question of closing your eyes and stabbing at a map. You have to try not to give yourself a hard time when things turn out to be not as good as you’d hoped.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true really. That’s quite wise.’

  ‘Can I get you ladies something to eat?’ Our beach guy had returned and was standing right behind u
s. ‘Would you like to see a menu?’

  Mum shifted in her seat and looked back at the restaurant part of the beach where people were seated, dining. ‘Do we have to go over there?’ she asked. ‘Or can we eat right here?’

  ‘Oh, you can eat anywhere you want,’ the man said.

  Mum turned to me. ‘That would be quite . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?’

  ‘Extravagant?’ I offered. ‘Lazy?’

  ‘Opulent,’ Mum said deliciously. ‘Service on the beach . . . Yeah, let’s do it.’

  TEN

  LAURA

  I woke up in the morning feeling dreadful. Though I had managed at some point to fall asleep, I’d slept so badly that I didn’t feel refreshed at all. I crept to the bathroom where one glance at the mirror confirmed that this was not a mere impression. I looked no better than I felt.

  On returning to the bedroom for my make-up and clothes, I was surprised to see that Olav’s bed was empty. I had assumed the boys were still asleep.

  Though I clearly needed to see Conor to get my stuff back, I was equally terrified of seeing him, especially alone. So as I nervously climbed the stairs to the hotel, I really couldn’t decide if I wanted to bump into him or not. But he wasn’t on the stairs and he wasn’t in the restaurant either. I did spot Leif however, on the far side of the room, so I wove my way through the tables to join him.

  ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘You find me! I was wanting to leave you a note but I couldn’t find a pen in the dark.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, glancing nervously around the restaurant again.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Leif said, picking up on my stress. ‘I ask at reception and he didn’t come home.’

  I fetched croissants and a yoghurt and returned to the table. A waiter filled my cup with coffee. Leif was eating a selection of cheeses and some smoked salmon, which struck me as a strange kind of breakfast, but when I asked him he said it was perfectly normal where he came from.

  ‘Where’s Olav?’ I asked, once I’d sipped at my coffee and decided that it was too hot. ‘Walking already?’

  Leif nodded. ‘They are walking from Perissa to Megalochori, today,’ he said. ‘A big walk. But a good one.’

  ‘You sound sad,’ I told him. ‘Is looking after me driving you insane?’

  ‘No, I’m just tired,’ Leif said. ‘I didn’t sleep so well.’

  ‘Olav’s snoring?’ I asked.

  He nodded and shrugged at the same time. ‘He kept kicking me,’ he said. ‘In the face.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I told him. ‘It won’t happen again. We’ll sort something else out by tonight. But you really could have gone walking, you know. You don’t have to stay with me all day.’

  ‘Today we will get your passport back,’ Leif said. ‘And tomorrow I will walk.’

  ‘I might even come with you,’ I said. ‘If you’re not sick of me by then.’

  ‘That,’ Leif said, ‘I don’t think is possible.’

  I wasn’t sure whether he meant that it wasn’t possible to be sick of me or whether it wasn’t possible for me to walk with them. But I was too embarrassed to ask.

  After a leisurely breakfast we returned to Leif’s terrace where we sat in the shade of the parasol and chatted. It was windy that morning and considerably cooler than it had been. The parasol flapped in the wind and almost blew away once or twice.

  Leif told me a little about himself. He said he was studying to be an engineer. ‘I’m a bit of a geek really,’ he said. ‘You know, computers and physics and stuff.’

  He told me a little about Bergen in Norway, where he lived, too. He said it was very beautiful.

  When the conversation ran out, Leif retrieved a book he was reading from indoors. I asked him to read to me in Norwegian and laughed quite uncontrollably when he did.

  ‘It sounds that funny, huh?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but yes. It sort of does. You sound like the Swedish chef in The Muppets.’

  His book, he explained, was a history book. It told the story of Greece during the Second World War. ‘They had a terrible time here,’ he told me.

  ‘I think everyone had a terrible time,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but here, in these islands, they had a really terrible time. The Greeks were very resistant, you know? And the Germans killed many, many Greeks.’

  I nodded. I tried to imagine these beautiful islands in wartime and failed.

  I fetched my own novel and, until lunchtime, we simply read side by side. Occasionally Leif would look up at me and if I paused reading and looked back – when I wasn’t too engrossed – he would tell me something from his book: facts about how Churchill promised to defend Greece but was overruled by Roosevelt, or how the Germans had rounded people up and shot them in retaliation for a British landing on Santorini.

  I’d sit and imagine all of this for a moment before, feeling strangely comfortable, as if we were an old couple in armchairs by the fireside rather than strangers on a remote Greek island with a bloody past, returning to my book.

  Conor never did come back that day, and by evening I was biting my nails and obsessing that I was never going to get my passport back. Leif refused to discuss what would happen if I couldn’t get it before I had to travel home. He continued to insist that everything would be fine. ‘He has to come back to the hotel,’ he told me. ‘Even if it’s just to get his own passport back – even if it’s just to pay the bill and get his stuff. He must come back.’

  But I was terrified we would miss him – that one morning the concierge would announce that he had been and gone, and had taken my passport with him.

  Leif convinced me that it was not such a good idea to add any more meals for two to Conor’s bill, and even though I was angry, I understood that he was right. There was no point in provoking the guy when I needed something essential from him.

  So, under pressure from me (because I was feeling bad about the cost), we picnicked on Leif’s terrace for both lunch and dinner. And again, popping up to the little shop together, rinsing salad leaves and slicing tomatoes side by side . . . it all felt strangely domestic. I was starting to feel as if I had known him forever.

  When Olav got back at eleven and collapsed without saying a word (or even taking a shower) on his bed, I insisted I’d sleep on the armchair with a blanket. And after a brief tussle, Leif caved in and let me do so.

  By the following morning I was feeling quite ill. My head seemed to spin whenever I stood or sat down, or bent over. I had dark rings under my eyes that even my make-up struggled to cover.

  ‘This Mike guy,’ Olav asked over breakfast, ‘where is he?’

  ‘He’s in Fira,’ I explained. ‘I know where he drinks, but I don’t know where he’s staying.’

  Olaf nodded.

  ‘You think Conor’s still with him?’ I asked.

  Olav shrugged and wrinkled his nose. ‘Maybe he knows where to find him,’ he said. ‘Because waiting here doesn’t seem to be working.’ He sounded annoyed and I guessed he was becoming frustrated that I was taking up all of Leif’s time. It suddenly crossed my mind, for the first time ever, that perhaps Leif and Olav were gay. Perhaps they were a couple. But then why would they top and tail it? Just for my benefit? But that would be crazy, wouldn’t it?

  ‘Where do you live, Olav?’ I asked, trying to explore my theory.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said, apparently confused by the conversational jump.

  ‘I was just wondering where you live,’ I said.

  ‘In Bergen with Leif!’ he told me, as if this was utterly obvious.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  Once we’d waved Olav on his way – he was walking from Emporio to Kamari – Leif said, ‘We give him until lunchtime and then we try Fira, OK?’

  I nodded. My ticket home was in less than four days, and I was starting to get nervous enough that I was becoming selfish. I didn’t try to persuade Leif to go walking. I couldn’t find it in me to even pretend I didn’t need
his help that day.

  We left the hotel at one thirty. It seemed obvious that Conor wasn’t coming home for lunch and I thought we might just catch him at the taverna if we didn’t hang around too long. So I climbed, once again, onto Leif’s little scooter and we went whizzing off along the mountaintop. The gusts of wind blew our little bike from side to side and I think I must have shrieked more than once.

  The taverna in Fira was packed solid but neither Conor nor Mike was there.

  I went inside to see if I could find the waiter who had served us but he wasn’t there either. I attempted to ask the elderly man at the cash till if he remembered me or Conor, but he just looked at me blankly. I wasn’t even sure he understood what I was saying.

  As we walked back towards Leif’s scooter, he asked me what I wanted to do next. Just then, a man caught my attention and as he passed I turned back to look at him and saw that he was doing the same.

  ‘Don’t I . . . ?’ I said. Then, more loudly, running to catch up with him, ‘Excuse me! Don’t I know you?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Didn’t I see you the other night?’ I asked, once he’d stopped walking away. ‘Weren’t you with Mike?’

  ‘Huh,’ the man said, wobbling his head from side to side in a strange manner. ‘Not with Mike, no.’

  ‘But you’re Paolo, aren’t you?’

  ‘Pablo,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry. Um, do you know where Mike is, Pablo? Or Conor? We’ve been looking for them but they haven’t seen them.’ I gestured towards the restaurant.

  Pablo raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘They’re not allowed in there any more.’

  ‘They’re not allowed in the restaurant?’

  Pablo shook his head. ‘A fight,’ he said. ‘Mike hit a man with a chair. And Conor broke someone’s nose.’

  ‘God,’ I said. ‘When? When did this happen?’

  ‘Last night,’ Pablo said. ‘Well, this morning really.’

  Leif had appeared at my side and when Pablo gave him a quizzical glance, Leif reached out and shook his hand. ‘Leif,’ he said.