by Sara Alexi
‘Stop panicking,’ she tells the wide-eyed Rallou in the mirror. ‘I am panicking,’ she whispers to herself. ‘I am panicking. I am panicking.’ Tears prick her eyes. ‘I am having the thought that I am panicking. I am having the thought that I am panicking. I am having the thought that I am panicking. I notice that I am having the thought that I am panicking. I notice that I am having the thought that–’
‘I am going to sleep now, Rallou,’ Toula calls out to her. ‘Let me know if my headphones are too loud and turn off the lights when you are ready.’
‘All right,’ Rallou calls back, and looks back to the mirror; the woman reflected there does not seems quite as panicky now, and there is just a trace of a smile left in her lips from when she answered Toula.
Back in the cabin Toula is lying on her back wearing an eye mask with Qatar Airlines embroidered across it, and the headphones, which look ridiculously big on her. Rallou climbs into her bunk, which is much more comfortable than it looks, and finds that the pillow is full and soft. She switches out the light and closes her eyes.
The boat seems so noisy and the rocking is more noticeable now she is lying down. It was perhaps not such a good idea to have drunk so much wine, but Toula was so fun to play cards with, like a child, so easily excited. And it was lovely to be distracted from the jumble of emotions that are battling for dominance within her.
‘All ashore!’ Someone is ringing a bell, walking down the corridor outside the cabin. ‘All ashore!’ they shout again. The sun pierces its way through the blinds, slicing the room into light and shade, and the boat is no longer rocking.
Bleary-eyed, Rallou sits up. Toula is lying on her back, her headphones still in place, her eye mask still on. Rallou felt close to her last night as they drank wine and played cards, as though she had known her all her life, and now, although there is very little that is familiar about her, the sight of her makes Rallou smile. ‘All ashore – Corfu.’ The bell is rung again. Rallou slips into her skirt and pulls on her blouse, hurriedly doing up the buttons before Toula awakes. She needn’t have worried because the old woman sleeps on, and Rallou debates whether to wake her and let her carry out her plan for finding Christos or just slip away. It almost seemed a good idea last night, but now it all feels a bit mad. She doesn’t even know the woman.
Taking a comb from her bag, she goes into the toilet cubicle to use the mirror there. Her hair is thick, and a brush would be easier. There is just a trace of white at her roots. She gets this stuff, herbal, natural, not really a dye, from the chemist every month or so and uses it to wash her hair. It just restores the natural colour, it says. It looks like it is time to do it again, as soon as she gets home. At this thought the face in the mirror crumbles. The mouth goes first, almost like a grimace, but as the eyes squeeze half shut and the tears flow her mouth looks more sad than angry. There is no home. It is so strange that she can be having these emotions and yet watch herself having them at the same time, almost as if they are nothing to do with her.
‘Have I overslept? Has the man been around with his bell?’ Toula calls.
‘No and yes.’ Rallou’s voice sounds completely normal so she washes her face and then steps back into the cabin.
‘Been crying again, eh?’ Toula says kindly. ‘Not really surprising, is it? You’ve been through a lot, losing a husband and a house. Well, the house I cannot do much about, but the husband we will restore to you.’ She is out of bed now and putting her blouse on, with her heels together, feet at ten to two, her toes splayed for balance. There is something just slightly comical about her and maybe that is what made Rallou laugh so much when they played cards last night.
‘Don’t worry, koukla, everything will be fine, just you see. I am a firm believer in the power of life. Life will give you what you need and take away what you don’t need, mark my words.’ And with this she gives a very pronounced wink which makes Rallou realise she was thinking about her own koukla, Dolly the donkey.
‘All ashore!’ The man with the bell is back.
Toula repacks her bag efficiently and with great speed, and the two of them step together into the corridor, which is heaving and jostling with people.
‘I can’t find Teddy!’ a little boy wails in English.
‘Did you get the toothbrushes?’ his mother asks her husband.
‘Mum, Mum, I can’t find Teddy!’ the boy wails again.
‘He’s here, look.’ The mother takes a soft toy from one of her many bags. Rallou squeezes past them, Toula following, and they make their way to the aft deck.
The air seems different here. It is nowhere as near as hot as Orino, more like spring than summer, and more humid.
Looking over the aft rail, the first thing that strikes Rallou is the amount of greenery. Trees are dotted between the buildings, big and tall and lush green giants, like the trees in the park in London. A little flutter of excitement grips her solar plexus. The people on the dock waiting to board mostly carry rucksacks and look like tourists. But there are Greek women too, with suitcases on wheels. Everyone looks so smart. Looking down at her blouse and skirt she wonders how many years she has been wearing clothes like these: practical clothes for cleaning in and feeding chickens in. What must it feel like to wear frivolous clothes? Do the wearers worry about them all the time, worry about snagging the fine material or dirtying them?
Maybe she can stretch out her savings to treat herself to a new top?
‘All ashore. Last call.’ The man with the bell is insistent and the people looking over the rails continue to make their way to the steps that lead down and out. Rallou allows herself to be taken with the throng, Toula right behind her. Down the metal steps, along the painted metal corridor, down the ridged metal gangplank and over the thick rope mat that allows the cars to roll off without scraping on the concrete.
Rallou looks across the road to a row of ornately decorated buildings.
Toula follows her gaze and points. ‘They’re lovely, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘It’s the Venetian influence, and one reason why Corfu is so popular with tourists.’ Toula walks slowly now, her head bobbing side to side slightly. ‘That, and it’s cooler and greener than the other islands. That’s why I prefer it in summer. Here in summer, the village in spring and autumn, and London in winter. My daughter’s central heating system works very well and I love Christmas in England, it’s so magical.’ They have not walked more than twenty paces when a car pulls up beside them.
‘Welcome home, Kyria Toula.’ The driver, a smartly dressed young man, leans out to greet her with a smile.
Chapter 24
‘Oh, Ilia, you are too kind,’ Toula says, giving the impression that she was not expecting him or the lift he is offering. The boy’s sunglasses are so dark they completely hide his eyes, and Rallou tries to get the measure of him from his oil stained T-shirt and notes that he is wearing a steel thumb ring like the youth in Patra. It must be a current fashion. Ilias springs from the driver’s seat to open the trunk of the car, his plastic flip-flops slapping his tanned feet. He swings Toula’s bag into the trunk as if it has no weight at all and slams the lid shut. Inside, the car smells of stale tobacco and hot plastic.
‘Ilia, this is Rallou, and you are going to help her,’ Toula states as he starts the car.
‘Sure.’ He laughs but does not ask for clarification. He glances back at Rallou, briefly lowering his glasses to look at her, offering just a glimpse of clear eyes and wrinkle-free skin.
‘Rallou,’ Toula continues, ‘this is Ilias, the newest recruit to the bike rental shop. Isn’t that right, Ilia? Been here – what, two years now?’
‘Yeia sou,’ Rallou says, relieved that Toula has not launched into the whole story. She would be so embarrassed. But worse than that would be if this boy actually found Christos and he and Toula were watching and waiting for the outcome. What would she say to him? It would look like she was hunting him down. The hunter being hunted; he would not like that. And what if she hunted him down and he did have a
new girlfriend?
‘Rallou’ – inside her head she speaks to herself sternly – ‘it is most unlikely that he has a girlfriend already, and if you did meet him then that would be for the best. Whether it is good news or bad news you need what Lori would call closure.’ She says this word to herself in English, unsure of the Greek equivalent. Her self-talk gives her some comfort, but the word ‘closure’ frightens her a little. She begins to sing the theme tune to a Greek soap opera inside her head using the word ‘closure’ over and over until its meaning is dissolved a little. But the tightening around her heart remains.
‘Did you hear me, kyria Rallou?’ Young Ilias is looking through the rear-view mirror and must be addressing her. A moped speeds past. The driver has on a leather jacket and leather boots but no helmet, and a cigarette is trapped between the fingers of his accelerator hand.
‘Sorry?’ Rallou focuses back inside the car. There is a St Christopher hanging from the rear-view mirror and a coffee cup on the dashboard.
‘Your husband, this Christos, I have not seen or heard of him, but I am sure we can find him.’
Rallou blinks and looks at Toula. In the space of such a small distraction she has blurted out the whole business to the boy. Her cheeks grow hot.
‘You can put the word out, right?’ Toula asks.
No! Rallou hears herself shouting the words in her head, looking at the boy’s face in the mirror, but nothing comes out of her mouth.
Toula turns to look at her.
‘Ah!’ She scans Rallou’s face. ‘That is one thing I am grateful for, now that I am old and grey.’ She gives a little laugh as if to say that this description doesn’t actually fit how she feels. ‘I no longer get embarrassed because I no longer care whether I live up to what society asks of me or not.’
Rallou is still digesting this when the car stops.
‘Here we are,’ Ilias says, leaping out with energy reserved for the young.
Another boy, with an open countenance, bright eyes and oily hands, is squatting beside a motorbike. He looks up from his work to greet them.
‘Yeia sas, Kyria Toula,’ he says. ‘Welcome home.’
‘Yeia sou, paidi mou,’ Toula responds warmly, as if he could be her son. ‘Coffee, anyone want coffee?’ she asks.
The apartment is not as Rallou had expected. It is on the top floor of an unpretentious whitewashed two-storey town house with a tiled terracotta roof. The entrance is up some steps at the back that lead straight into a narrow kitchen the length of the building. Off the kitchen is a door to the sitting room, and beyond that, at one end, are a bedroom and a bathroom. All the doors are wide open, everything on display. For some reason Rallou imagined Toula’s place would be fussy but everything is minimal, spacious even, and the furniture is worn and practical. There are no ornaments, no clock on the mantelpiece, no pictures on the walls, and not only the shutters but also the windows are wide open. The furniture is mostly wooden but where there are covers or cushions these are in bright, jolly fabrics. The dominant colours are yellow and orange.
‘How long have you been away?’ Rallou asks, pulling a chair out to sit at the narrow kitchen table that is up against one wall. A shock of pink bougainvillea frames the kitchen window, its translucent leaves lit by the sun. It makes a very pretty picture.
‘Oh, I have been in London for the winter, my daughter lives there. No, I told you that already. Well, I came back here a couple of weeks ago, to air the place, then down to the village for a long weekend to catch up with my friends. I am just coming and going all the time. Sometimes I get exhausted with it, but mostly … Well, I see people as my home so wherever I have friends I am happy.’
‘Toula,’ Ilias calls up the stairs. ‘Do you need more wood carrying up?’
Toula looks through to the neat front room, where a great deal of wood is stacked up beside a smart, shiny wood-burning stove that looks decidedly out of place.
‘No,’ she calls, and takes down a briki from a nail on the wall. She lowers her voice to address Rallou. ‘I got myself a stove from – er, Norway, I think it was. A nice man in a shop here in town helped me. Not that I am here much when it is cold, but it is nice to have the choice.’ She fills the briki with water and sets it on a portable gas stove. Her hands shake as she lights the match and Rallou wonders if she should offer to help, but then it is done and Toula adds spoonfuls of sugar and coffee to the water. The coffee granules float on top.
‘I’ll tell you who makes a great cup of coffee. Theo in the village! On your way back you should drop in, give him my regards and ask for a coffee. I don’t know how he creates so many bubbles on top and the grounds are never gritty.’
Rallou thinks of all the coffees she has made Christos in exactly the same way as Toula is making it now. One spoonful of sugar for him, though: he doesn’t like anything too sweet.
‘There!’ Toula says and pours the coffee into a waiting cup and then sets about making another one. Rallou is looking forward to the coffee now. With no breakfast and all that wine last night it would really help.
When the second cup is ready she prepares herself to stand, to carry both cups to the table, but Toula shouts ‘Ilia!’ and running feet can be heard on the steps and it is to him that she hands the cups.
The whole process of coffee-making is repeated as if Toula has all the time in the world, which she probably does. This time she puts a cup on the table in front of Rallou and then sits, smiling contentedly.
‘I won’t have one, dear,’ Toula says in response to Rallou’s questioning look. ‘Not this early, but maybe in the afternoon.’ No sooner is she seated than she is up again, wiping down the surfaces. ‘Apostolis liked his coffee, but do you know what, he preferred instant, he just didn’t know it.’ She chuckles.
‘Really?’ Rallou leans towards her, encouraging her to talk more.
‘Yes. I would make a Greek coffee first thing in the morning, and when he asked for a coffee later I would make him a little instant one and add some of the Greek coffee grounds. It saved me so much effort.’ She chuckles. ‘But now – and here is the funny thing – I make as many cups of real Greek coffee as the boys here can drink and I don’t mind doing it at all.’ She sighs and lays the dishcloth, folded, over the taps.
‘So, how are you feeling now you are here?’ Toula asks. ‘You know, I think you are mistaken to think he has run off,’ she says. ‘Men basically don’t like change or unnecessary effort.’
She has a point. If Christos was the sort of man who would stop bothering to harvest the olives because it was too much effort and because he knew they could survive on her wage, then he is not a man who is about to walk away and change his life, with all the effort that entails.
‘Toula.’ It is Ilias again. He strides into the kitchen with two cups and saucers neatly piled up. He is not wearing his sunglasses now but the sun behind him obscures his features. ‘I have to go up to the Bella Panorama Hotel,’ he says. ‘A bike has broken down. But we were thinking that if this Christos didn’t want an expensive hotel then this might be where he would go. So, you want to come?’ His last sentence is addressed to Rallou.
‘Oh!’ is all she manages to say before Toula answers for her.
‘Of course she will want to go! Anthea will be sure to help.’ Toula clears away her cup.
Rallou looks around for the car at the bottom of the steps, but it is nowhere to been seen.
‘Kyria?’ The boy calls, and Rallou is rather perturbed to see Ilias sitting on a moped, the engine running, indicating for her to hop on behind him. His shorts have ridden up as he sits and the tan line on his thin little legs is exposed.
After a pause, Rallou sits side-saddle behind Ilias, which seems more modest than the alternative, although not entirely secure.
They seem to wind through streets for ever, stopping a few times: at a kiosk, for cigarettes, and at a fast-food shop where Ilias conducts a shouted conversation with those inside without once dismounting or switching off the engine. A
fter that, they are out of the town and the houses give way to trees, and then to Rallou’s delight she can see the sea, which shimmers and sparkles in the sun. They travel parallel with the coastline, which seems to be nothing but sandy beaches, with not a cliff or jagged rock in sight. With no warning Ilias turns hard right up into a square and guides the bike along some very narrow paths between the houses, and finally comes to a stop in front of glass double doors at the end of one passage.
‘Hi there!’ A woman greets them with a wide smile in perfect English. She has energy in her movements and salt-and-pepper-coloured hair.
Chapter 25
‘Hi, Anthea! I am here to fix the bike and Rallou is here to find her husband,’ Ilias blurts out, sliding off the bike, taking care not to kick Rallou in the process. Rallou shrinks, her eyes darting. Who else is here? Who else may have heard? But there is no cause for concern; they are alone, apart from the woman. Meeting Anthea’s gaze feels invasive, makes Rallou feel vulnerable.
‘Oh, okay. The bike’s round the side,’ Anthea says, and Ilias nods and leaves. ‘So, your husband,’ Anthea adds without a trace of surprise or intrigue, or even much interest. ‘What does he look like?’
At first the question catches her by surprise. Rallou has never been in the position of having to describe what Christos looks like, or to consider which are his most prominent features. Everyone on the island knows him. Sometimes he has been described to her though. ‘So handsome,’ is a familiar comment. ‘Tall man?’ That is often the children’s point of view. ‘Like an ox,’ one foreign woman said with admiration when he rebuilt her garden wall.
It’s no use saying that he has dark hair or dark brown eyes, as that would hardly narrow it down.
