by Sara Alexi
They could see it from where they were standing. There had been no need for the woman to make such an effort to show them; she could simply have pointed from inside her kiosk. They thanked her and were just about to set off when she bid them wait. From one of the boxes on the shelf by her serving window she selected two wrapped sweets and pressed them into Rallou’s hand.
‘Now, if you need anything Marina at the corner shop has almost everything.’ The kiosk lady pointed diagonally across the square and across the road. Three steps led to a small area where boxes of vegetables and more drinks cabinets jostled for room in front of an open door. ‘What she doesn’t have, I have, and if you do not want to cook you can go to Stella’s.’ Then she turned and pointed the other way, down, just out of the square, to a place with a few tables outside on the road. Here, a woman was sitting on one of the seats, legs stretched in front of her, noisily sucking through a straw the last of her drink. When she saw them looking she raised her glass in salute.
‘Thanks,’ Christos beamed, but his eyes were on the kafenio, which occupied a commanding position at the top of the square. Theo’s kafenio, presumably.
‘You want to go and see him first?’ Rallou asked.
‘No, no, we have time.’ Christos put his arm around her waist and they walked the way the kiosk lady had pointed. He was clearly excited at the prospect of seeing his second cousin, and she was flattered that he was putting her first. She responded by letting her head drop onto his shoulder and walking in step with him to Toula’s house.
The house was just as she imagined it would be: minimal and functional. However, through the back door was an unexpected delight in the form of a private little walled courtyard, with seating built in around three walls, which made sense of the deep, comfortable cushions that Rallou had found inside. While she was arranging these, Christos found and opened a folding table, placing it in the centre of the seating area. The whole space was shaded by a pale-blue plumbago canopy held up on weathered wooden supports. To Rallou’s absolute delight, just outside its shadow was a circular wall, in the centre of which was a grill that was laid with firewood. She had read about these firepits in a magazine at the hairdressers, and knew they could be used for heating as well as for cooking.
Inside, Toula’s larder was well stocked so Rallou made a frappé for Christos and one for herself, and settled beside him on the padded cushions in the dappled afternoon sun, and they talked nonsense to each other, rekindling the humour and silliness that years of child-rearing had eroded. That night it was as if they had just met all over again. The lifetime of knowing each other, predicting each other, dropped away and they became lost in their love.
The next day they went up to Theo’s.
Christos walked straight up to the man with the frizzy halo of hair in the kafenio and just stood in front of him, staring. For a second, Theo frowned and looked a little afraid. His recognition came slowly, and then: ‘Ella, Christo!’ Theo put down the cup he was carrying and opened his arms. His halo of frizzy hair, which was mostly grey, bobbed as he moved and Rallou immediately liked him. The similarities between him and Christos were apparent: the same litheness, the same broad shoulders, and the same lightness on their feet.
‘Eh, I’m sorry I did not make the wedding.’ Theo’s face looked sad as he hugged Christos, but Rallou could not follow what he was talking about.
‘Theo, fíle, it’s been twenty-eight years since my wedding, and besides, we are seeing each other now.’ Christos slapped him in a bear hug.
‘Twenty-nine,’ Rallou said, smiling, and Theo released Christos and took a good look at her.
‘Oh my, I am so pleased to meet you,’ he exclaimed, and kissed her on each cheek, then stepped back and held her at arm’s length. ‘Christo, you have picked well,’ he teased his cousin; then he released her hand and announced, ‘Now I make you coffee!’ and beckoned them into the kafenio.
Rallou felt a little uncomfortable in the kafenio. Apart from when she so briefly served in one in Athens, she has always seen the kafenio as a man’s domain. Across the road, in the shade of the palm tree, between the kiosk and a rather sad-looking dry fountain, were arranged painted wooden chairs and rusting circular three-legged metal tables, as found in kafenios all over Greece.
‘Theo, I think we will sit outside.’ Christos pre-empted her.
They sat the rest of the afternoon, talking to Theo when he wasn’t busy. The two men teased each other relentlessly and Rallou loved watching them act like boys again. Theo’s coffee was excellent, and he brought a second and even a third cup, and as time wound on she drank until the caffeine made her slightly dizzy. The sounds of the village were dominated by the continuous barking of dogs, and cockerels calling, much like in Orino but without the frequent sounds of donkeys. At one point, a dull clonking, which Rallou normally associated with Korifi, signalled the arrival in the square of a flock of sheep, with bells around their necks, being herded through the heart of the village. The lady from the kiosk came out to wave a rolled-up newspaper at the animals to protect her stacked boxes of crisps and racks of newspapers. The woman who was herding the sheep stopped to talk to the kiosk lady whilst her dog hurried the flock onwards.
‘So, you must be hungry,’ Theo came over to announce, and Rallou found that she was. By now, the sun was nudging the edge of the palm tree and would soon sink behind the hills, which were a dark purple in the distance. ‘Over there is Stella’s.’ Theo pointed. ‘You order whatever you like and tell Stella it is on me.’
Christos opened his mouth to protest.
‘Ah, ah,’ Theo warned, balancing a stack of dirty coffee cups on a tray. ‘This is my village now, and here you are my guest. But I would suggest the chicken and lemon sauce. It is the best.’
Leaving Theo, they walked hand in hand to Stella’s. There was something about having nothing – no house, no clothes, no money – that transported them both to a place of unrestrained hope, and it was a feeling she had not had since they first met.
But, although there was no tension between her and Christos – they were close, intimate –she did have just a little quiver of something that was not quite excitement in her stomach. It was a feeling that he was keeping something from her. In addition to that, she felt that all the thoughts she had been having, all the doubt and revelations about Harris, were about to accumulate into something. If she had spoken these thoughts out loud she would have thought herself crazy. This was her sister she was thinking about, the woman who had raised her like her own child. So she kept it all to herself and just walked on to the eatery.
Chapter 32
‘You want lemon sauce with that?’ Stella asked, holding a plate that overflowed with chicken and chips above the counter to indicate what she was talking about. They had chosen to sit in the shade of an umbrella, at one of the tables outside, next to a stunted olive tree whose trunk had been bound with a thousand fairy lights.
‘Theo says we must,’ Christos answered. Rallou watched as Stella twisted off the lid with her teeth whilst still holding the plate. The action ran contrary to the slightness of her frame. Her floral print dress did nothing to reduce the impression she gave of childlikeness, but the lines around her eyes and the almost hard contours from her nose to her mouth indicated she was no younger than Rallou herself.
‘So.’ Stella laid down the plates in front of them. Christos ate immediately and eagerly. Rallou dipped her finger in the sauce to try it before picking up her knife and fork. ‘You have been married, what? A year, two, maybe?’ Stella’s eyes shone in the light from the tree. Rallou smiled. What she was feeling on the inside towards Christos must have showed on the outside. She looked him over, not seeing the greying hair and weathered skin, but noticing instead his masculinity, his eyebrows dancing in delight as he savoured his food, and the twitch of a smile around his mouth that told her all was well in his world just at that moment, and she felt a strong urge to kiss him.
She mopped her mouth in case the lemon
sauce had dribbled.
‘Actually, we have been married twenty-eight years,’ she said.
‘Twenty-nine,’ Christos corrected. ‘This is really good,’ he added, pointing to his plate with his knife. Under the table he had slipped off his shoes and his toes were tucked behind Rallou’s calf. A phone rang and Stella skipped up the steps into the eatery to answer it.
The counter, and the grill behind it, were just inside the doors, so as they ate Christos and Rallou could hear the hissing and spitting of the split chickens and the sausages. Stella came out again to ask if they wanted more and if everything was fine. She was followed by a group of men, who were talking and laughing and rubbing their distended stomachs. Their rough serge trousers and rolled-up sleeves identified them as farmers. They thanked Stella kindly for her food and sauntered across the road, calling some piece of banter over their shoulders, and finally leaving the place to its silence. Once Rallou and Christos had cleaned their plates, Stella came and sat at the table next to theirs. The scent of jasmine filled the air, drifting from a cascade over the wall of the garden next door.
‘So, twenty-nine years! How many children?’ she asked.
‘Three,’ Rallou answered. The lemon sauce was amazing, quite unexpected. She wished that she wasn’t so full because then she could eat it all over again.
‘Ah, so lucky.’ Stella sighed and lit a cigarette.
‘That was good.’ Christos kicked his chair back and rubbed his flat stomach.
‘You want more?’ Stella was ready to stand again, serve them all over again.
‘I am so full,’ Christos said and then he looked up towards the kafenio.
‘Go, Christo.’ Rallou said. ‘You don’t ever see him, so take the chance. I am tired. I will have an early night.’
‘Are you sure? No, I cannot … You wouldn’t mind?’ He dithered.
‘Oh, go, will you? A goat is not always welcome in a sheep pen!’ It was Stella who spoke, a tickle of laughter in her voice – light, fun. ‘Go!’ And so he went, smiling. As soon as he was on the first step up to Theo’s kafenio, Stella was on her feet and heading inside, before returning with two glasses and a bottle of quality ouzo.
‘Here you go.’ Stella poured them each a drink. ‘Never had any children myself.’ She didn’t sound sad when she said that. ‘Just as well, really, because he was a – now what is a polite word? Never mind. I have a better husband now. One like yours. How lucky are we? Yeia mas!’
They drank, and Rallou thought she must have landed in some sort of dream. Stella was feisty and opinionated and passionate, just like she had been all those years ago. She made jokes at people’s expense but never with a hurtful edge, and she spoke on subjects that Rallou did not expect. It turned out that Stella, too, had been to Paris and London, with her new husband. In talking to her, Rallou found a part of herself that had been missing: the brave, feisty side to her nature. She became herself again! Or was it the ouzo?
‘Your children grown now?’ Stella asked.
‘Yes. We have just seen our youngest off to university.’ Rallou didn’t feel the usual need to brag about all her children had achieved.
‘Ah, so you are free again!’ Stella clinked glasses with her.
‘Yes, free,’ she agreed, but it did not feel like freedom, not yet.
‘You hesitate.’ Stella was certainly forward.
‘I do,’ Rallou admitted. ‘You see, the thing is you get so caught up in being a parent that when you stop it takes a moment to know where you are.’
‘Ah, you were a good mama.’ Stella pulled a chair out in front of her to put her feet up.
Rallou didn’t answer immediately.
‘You know, I think I was an overbearing mama.’ She said the words to see how they formed on her lips, and it was not a surprise to hear them ring with truth.
‘You smoke?’ Stella asked, offering a cigarette. Rallou shook her head. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘I think I focused so hard on my children’ – Rallou didn’t quite answer the question – ‘that I forgot about me and Christos.’
‘Ah.’ Stella blew smoke out of her nose. ‘The pressure to be a good mama.’
‘Do you wish you had children?’ Rallou asked, mostly to shift the focus elsewhere.
‘I wish I had children with the man I have now, but not the one I had before. This man would have made a wonderful baba. But you know, I believe life gives you what you need and that isn’t always what you want.’ She smiled but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘Someone else said to me recently … How did they put it …?’ Rallou tried to recall the words Toula used. It seems, what with free tickets and quietly departing ships, that life has plans for you. But instead she quoted what the ticket man said: ‘When life offers you something, it is because it has set a path for you.’
‘Ah, how true that is.’ Stella picked up the bottle again, but Rallou put her hand over her glass. ‘If you try to fight life you will lose. The trick is to see what life offers you and make the best of that. It might not be the exact course you planned, but it might be the best course you are offered, so go for it with everything you’ve got!’ Stella sounded triumphant. Rallou looked over the faded facade of the eatery and wondered how far Stella’s philosophies had taken her. Stella nodded and smiled.
‘This,’ she said, waving her cigarette end in the direction of the eatery, ‘is my fun. But’ – she leaned forward across the table, and Rallou realised that now they were both a little drunk – ‘I have a hotel on the beach because life offered it to me, and I have a candle factory, where we make beeswax candles that we distribute to orthodox churches worldwide. We also make Aromalite.’ Stella pronounced the name in a way that made Rallou presume she should recognise it. ‘They are scented candles,’ Stella explained, ‘that people use in some sort of therapy, very popular. So we ship worldwide. The factory is just down the road there, towards Saros. Used to be up on the hill.’ She pointed above the kafenio. ‘But it got too big. Now it is down there.’ She pointed the other way, her words just slightly slurred.
Rallou raised her eyebrows at this and reassessed Stella. She didn’t seem so small now; instead she had an air of authority.
‘Were your parents rich?’ The ouzo was making her tongue loose.
‘Ha!’ The one word said it all. ‘I am a gypsy!’ The last sentence was delivered in a proud tone.
Rallou looked her over again. Her skin was dark but nothing a good suntan could not achieve. Her hair was also dark and slightly frizzy, unruly and shoulder-length. She looked nothing like the gypsies of Athens with their long, plaited hair and flowing skirts. But then, that was a long time ago.
‘Long story,’ Stella said, before Rallou had a chance to ask for clarification. ‘The short version is, my baba, who brought me up, was Greek, and my mama was a gypsy. But it was my baba …’ She settled back and put out her cigarette in the ashtray, then arranged the condiments neatly before finishing her sentence. ‘It was my baba who first taught me to be myself, without labels. Then it was an English girl, the one I run the candle factory with. She’s only young, but she has shown me the only barriers are those I make for myself. The young are so smart these days!’ She tipped back the last of her drink. Her hand hesitated over the bottle for a moment, but returned to her lap. She leant her head back and looked up at the stars.
Rallou decided she liked Stella. She was honest and open and, as she said, herself.
‘You know, I think I have not been myself for much of my life,’ Rallou confessed, quietly. ‘I have tried to be what people said I should be, pressured me to be.’ She yawned without putting her hand over her mouth.
‘I think the people who are just themselves are very rare,’ Stella slurred as she lit another cigarette.
Chapter 33
Rallou got back to Toula’s house much later than she planned, but when she arrived, tired and a little drunk, having promised Stella that she would see her again the next day and also come bac
k to visit the village very soon, she was not surprised to see that Christos was not back.
She tested the bed, and found it to be very comfortable. Then she decided a cup of chamomile tea under the plumbago in the garden would be the perfect thing before sleep, to dilute the ouzo a little. The evening was pleasantly cool, and Rallou gazed up at the stars. Once she could name many of the constellations, but now she only recognised Orion’s belt.
‘Hey, you here?’ The sound of Christos clattering through the front door interrupted the peace, but Rallou didn’t mind.
‘Out the back,’ she called, thinking that it was just as well she hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Judging by the noise he was making just getting into the house, he must have drunk more with Theo than she had with Stella.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said, holding on to the wall for balance and leaning towards her to steal a kiss.
‘And why are we in the dark?’ He flicked a switch and the stars became invisible, the table and the seats all prominent.
‘Oh, please turn it off!’ she said, and he was happy to comply.
‘How about I light the fire?’ he suggested, and lunged over to the circular wall with the grill. He took logs from a stack by the wall, and arranged them in the pit, then splashed them liberally with petrol from a can by the back door, presumably there for that very purpose.
‘Sure, why not? But best, when we leave, that we clean it.’
‘You are the sweetest, most thoughtful …’ Christos leaned in for another kiss, lost his balance and missed. ‘I’ll find some matches.’ He righted himself, straightened out his clothes and tried to regain his dignity. She laughed, but quietly, so he wouldn’t hear. Looking again to the heavens, she wondered at her life. She now knew two people in this village, Toula and Stella, and it gave her a bigger world to think about than just the island. She would make a point of visiting as often as she could. It could be done in a day, and easily if she stayed overnight. If the confines of the island became too much, or if Harris’s remarks began to get under her skin, she would recognise it now, and she could take a well-timed break to see her new friends. The thought brought her joy.
