The Gypsy's Dream

by Sara Alexi

  The whole place is bright and inviting.

  ‘You want to try one?’ A man walks from the counter to the open door. He wears a purple T-shirt with ‘Real Men Eat Cupcakes’ splashed on the front. Stella has never seen a man in a purple T-shirt before. He has an open countenance, friendly eyes.

  Stella is drawn by his positive attitude and steps inside. The shop smells of warm sugar and fresh coffee.

  ‘I am Alex’, he states. ‘The shop is named after my wife Liz. Liz’s Cupcakes.’

  All her disturbing thoughts swim away. She blinks. She is drawn by the brightness, of the place and Alex himself, the feel of cleanliness and of success. She is hungry to absorb it all.

  Alex is easy to talk to. Liz comes out from the kitchen at the back wiping her hands on a tea-towel. To Stella’s delight, she is English.

  ‘Timer’s on for fifteen minutes. Oh hello!’ she smiles at Stella.

  Within seconds the conversation grows animated, Alex’s humour makes Stella laugh as she enquires about the business

  ‘So we had weekends here and loved it, but I was training to be an architect and Athens was our home,’ Alex relates as he fiddles with a camera he has set on a tripod on the counter. ‘Smile.’ He puts his eye to the camera. Stella grins, thinks of the gypsy lady and holds her head high.

  ‘What do you do with the picture?’ She asks.

  ‘Facebook, if you don’t mind, or just here on the wall.’ He points to one wall which is covered with pictures of smiling faces and cupcake cases with goodwill messages written on them.

  ‘You opened the shop instead of being an architect?’ Stella asks.

  ‘No, well, yes, I had this kind of shop in my mind as a dream,’ Liz says. ‘So when the economy turned bad and there was no work to be had in Athens we followed our dreams - make or break, do or die.’ Liz turns to Alex who grins.

  Stella feels slightly jealous at the way they smile at each other. She thinks of Mitsos. Even on a bad day, when he needs his crook to walk, she still relishes the sight of him. It makes no sense.

  Liz takes out a magnificent lemon-coloured cupcake from the glass counter and offers it to Stella. It looks delicious, rich, creamy, beautifully presented in its own little bun case. ‘Hand-made this morning,’ Liz adds. Stella shakes her head. Her stomach is still churning, upset with the earlier emotions. She says how lovely it is to look at and orders a coffee. They all sit on the transparent green perspex chairs. Stella feels she has entered another world, a world of clean and shine, a modern world.

  ‘Yup, these desperate times have called for desperate measures, and so we came here. We had nothing to lose.’ Alex jumps at the sound of an alarm and trots into the kitchen. When he comes out he greets a new customer.

  Liz looks around and gives the new customer a warm smile.

  ‘Make or break,’ Stella mulls over the words until she understands. She pauses and sips her coffee. ‘But to be selling cakes in this time when people have no money, how you do this?’ she asks.

  ‘With energy and enthusiasm. Facebook, Twitter, and getting into the press.’ Liz smiles as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Stella wonders what Twitter is. Behind Liz on the wall are photographs of press releases, pictures of Liz in glossy magazines and Greek newspapers.

  She soaks up the atmosphere and Liz’s words, like blotting paper. This is what she wants to do. If Liz and Alex can put this small town on the world map with energy and enthusiasm then she can make a restaurant in the village known in the town. That would be enough, for now.

  Her secret dream of an international business comes unbidden. She pushes it away, an unreachable fantasy. She takes the last sip of her coffee and tells herself not to be so ridiculous. If she hasn’t got an international business at the age of forty-six it isn’t likely she ever will. But the restaurant, she could do something there.

  The immovable Stavros hovers into her thoughts.

  Liz is tidying the shelves of books provided for customers to read.

  ‘Did you have big, er, embothia?’ Stella asks Liz in English.

  ‘Obstacles?’ Alex translates, smiling as he gives the change to his customer.

  ‘Oh yes, many,’ Liz finishes, neatening the books.

  ‘What did you do?’ Stella wants to hear a solution.

  ‘We went round them, through them, over them or under them.’ Alex wipes down the counter top. The place is spotless.

  ‘They are only obstacles if you focus on them. Keep your eyes on the goals and they are just part of the path, no big deal. Just kept focused, didn’t we, Alex?’ Liz stands and reties her apron.

  Ideas pop into Stella’s head for the ouzeri. Abby’s idea of fairy lights round the tree outside does not sound too crazy sitting here with Alex and Liz. She begins to fidget with her napkin.

  A girl bursts into the shop, laughing and greeting everyone, and orders a coffee and a cupcake. She sits opposite Stella and says hello. She too is full of energy. The place seems to generate positivity. She came on her bicycle, wearing a huge yellow helmet, and a pair of Doc Martin boots. She chatters to Alex and Liz, switching from Greek to English and back as the conversation demands. Stella feels transported and excited, she can follow all the conversation and speak as an equal. The girl with the yellow helmet is telling of a film she has seen about Bulgarian gypsies and their Romany music, the wailing clarinets and excited violins. Before Stella has thought she speaks.

  ‘Oh, I am gypsy.’

  ‘Really, how fantastic!’ The girl with the yellow helmet says. ‘Gypsies have been recycling things a long time before it ever became fashionable, in fact I think the gypsies are the only people who are doing any large scale recycling in Greece these days, collecting scrap metal and so on. Something to be proud of.’ She smiles openly. ‘And I love your music.’

  Stella shuffles in her seat. Being proud to be a gypsy has not ever been a consideration before, but all three of them look at her with admiration.

  The conversation drifts to other subjects, each one discussed as energetically and positively as the last, and Stella feels recharged.

  The shop is still mesmerising her. If someone else has done it then she can too. She will put lights on the tree, open the second door, have tables on the pavement. Her energy rises within her, she bids them all farewell and promises to return. She knows she will, if for no other reason to charge her batteries, stay connected with the modern world.

  She is a little way down the street when Alex catches up with her. She has forgotten the folded paper Mr Kleftis gave her. She thanks him and renews her promises to visit soon.

  The gypsies are still under the pine trees. The woman who she spoke to earlier is walking towards one of the vans, her back straight, her head high.

  Stella smiles to herself.

  In the back of a taxi, on the way back to the village, she looks at the paper.

  It is a surprise but it fills a missing piece. Her Baba had left her a goat shed up behind the hill top, she has a vague recollection of its mention when the will was read. It must be the place she remembers, behind the bushes somewhere. It will all be fallen in by now. She scans for the size of the plot. Too small to build: there are laws about land outside the town limits. It must be over a certain size to qualify for planning permission. This plot is far too small and she has no need of a goat shed, in any condition. There is no land with it; it is on forestry land, scrub land. It is worthless. No wonder the lawyer overlooked it.

  Maybe the shed would be useful to Mitsos, if he still has his goats.

  Chapter 16

  The taxi paid, Stella waves at Vasso, who looks up from a book, chewing the end of the pen she is holding. She appears to be really struggling with her accounts. Stella continues to the ouzeri. Through the window she can see the outline of Stavros, and her smile disappears. He is talking to someone.

  At least he is back from wherever he spent the night, and the shop is open. She moves toward the glass and sees he is talking to is Abby. Stella ex
hales, her shoulders relax, she looks forward to Abby’s company for the rest of the day, she will find the time to talk to her, explain. She checks her sleeves and the hem of her dress to make sure the bruises are covered. Abby will not understand everything, she is too young. She looks through the window again. Abby is in new clothes from head to foot. Stella knows she did not bring them with her, which means they are bought. Is that why Stavros took her into town? A fury passes through her. Their money spent, by him, on her. Stavros raises his hand. It is an odd movement and Stella pauses to watch. The hand moves slowly towards Abby. Stella’s heart stops. The hand momentarily strokes Abby’s hair, goes behind her head to her neck and he pulls her towards him roughly, his lips meeting hers, his belly pressing against her slender frame.

  Stella pulls away. Her vision blurs, ringing in her ears. Her world silently implodes and the implications spread into the past and future, colouring all she knows with an acrid hue. She takes a breath and tries to clear her head but the image of them remains. Until now she had a choice, she could ignore his general behaviour or demand he leave. Now that choice has been taken away. He has already left her.

  It had all felt a bit unreal until this moment, too big to be true, the shaking, the fight. Only the bruises kept it from slipping into a fantasy. Hovering in the world of half-truth, Stella had not felt the weight of the reality. She felt she still had a choice, some power. His actions towards her could have been a mistake. He might have apologised, begged for forgiveness, become a new man. The trip to the lawyer could have been an overreaction.

  Her world splinters into shards of pain; her heart heaves and her throat closes. The misguided love that remains for Stavros billows with the possibility of its loss until there is only the Stavros of the past, her Adonis, the man who saved her from the village teasing, the bullying.

  The true Stavros, the overweight, neglectful, disrespectful slob, fades from her reality in the pain of rejection.

  Another breath brings her relationship with Abby to the forefront; the betrayal, the hurt. It is beyond her understanding that people could deliver such pain to a supposed friend just out of … out of what? Is she angry, is this payback? Does she think he would just up and leave with her, erasing twenty-five years of marriage to walk into an unknown world with no job and no money? Or worse, does she expect her, Stella, to be cast out into the world, a woman of an uncertain age with no skills and no savings, into the unstable Greek economy where youth employment is at fifty per cent and anybody over thirty stands no chance of getting any job anywhere if they become unemployed?

  Does Abby wish this upon her, is this what she deserves or is this just unthinking youth? Or is she not what she appeared to be, has Stella been deceived? Maybe the British live that way. Maybe the language alone is not enough to understand these people. Maybe in the British culture this is an expected and acceptable way to behave. Maybe they are a cruel and selfish nation.

  Well, not in her world! She has spent too long working hard to make the shop work, overcome personal fears of ridicule and torment to be the life and soul - the hub of the farmers’ social world - to give it away without a fight, to her or to him.

  But what if Stavros wants a fight too, what if he wants her gone, to be alone with Abby? What then? She has no rights over the shop. As his wife, the social pressure is to do as he says. She will be an outcast.

  She stands rigid by the wall between window and door, hidden to those inside.

  Stella battles with her feelings, then, with steady steps, she quietly enters the shop. She hears the sounds of a table leg being scraped against the floor. She imagines the worst, the lovers splayed over the furniture. Then she hears a squeal. Stella’s cheeks colour. There is a second noise. She cannot go through, face the humiliation. But then, the noises, they don’t sound quite right.

  Without warning Stavros storms out of the back room and pushes past Stella onto the street.

  Stella looks from him to the room he has come from, her mouth slightly ajar. She looks out at Stavros who stands lighting a cigarette, before she looks back inside again. Abby appears, her hair messy, her mascara run.

  Stavros strides back into the shop and stops short when he sees them standing opposite one another.

  He throws an apron at Abby and points her to behind the grill. His movements are brisk, strong. He brings a new sack of potatoes in, which he dumps at Stella’s feet before going outside for a smoke.

  Stella looks from the sack, to Abby retreating behind the grill, to Stavros smoking. His shoulders are up, tense, his smoking rapid.

  A farmer bustles in and asks Stella how soon his lunch will be ready. She looks at him unhearing.

  ‘You are cooking sausages today? I haven’t come into the chemist’s by mistake, have I?’ He laughs, pulling his loose, dirty, trousers up and running his hands around the waistband so it will straighten.

  ‘Oh, er, yes sorry. I mean no. Sausages, yes, should be ready in …’ she turns to look at the grill. ‘Now, they are done now. Eat in or take away?’

  ‘You are not with it today, Stella. When do I ever have the time to eat in?’

  Stella laughs a brittle laugh and puts four sausages between two pieces of thickly cut local bread. She reaches for the silver foil.

  ‘Am I not to have sauce on today then?’ the farmer teases.

  Stella takes her eyes from the back of Stavros.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. She takes the top layer off, generously sauces the innards before closing the bread, squashing it flat and wrapping it in foil.

  He pays and leaves.

  Before Stella has a chance to look at Stavros again, a boy comes in and orders an iced coffee - frappé; the sandwich shop frappé whisk has broken. Stella slips into the familiar actions, her mouth saying the words, her heart dissolving, alone, unloved. The cupcake shop is an unreal dream. Her reality is grim, cold.

  Abby stays behind the grill, washing and cleaning.

  Stavros sits outside and smokes, his presence permeating inside.

  Abby, behind the grill, is shaking, her hands trembling, a fine sweat on her brow. She nearly marched out on the spot but he still has her passport.

  She wonders if Stella knows he has her passport.

  If she were to leave now, how would she get it back?

  What would happen if she couldn’t?

  She takes a step towards the sink, then stops. She throws the apron at the pots and takes a stiff step back out. She stops again. ‘I can’t,’ she whispers, and faces the sink. She picks up the apron. Its tying ends are soggy, having fallen to the bottom of the sink where the water sits, stinking in the heat.

  Surely holding her passport is illegal, but how can she tell anyone? If she does, and they confront him, he could say anything he likes: she wouldn’t understand.

  She rests on the edge of the sink. She has really screwed up. How can she tell Dad? He will be furious. He might even want to come and get her, which would be a serious failure. He would never trust her, maybe never allow her out again.

  But this is scary stuff. Perhaps it would be best if he came to get her. Even going back and not doing her A levels would be better than this.

  She starts to cry but holds back any noise. If Stella hears her she will have to explain, tell her what sort of husband she has. Stella might blame her, say she was leading him on. Stella might believe him.

  The tears come stronger. She reaches in her bag and brings out her keyring and rubs the teddy’s soft body against her face. She should have gone to Saros as soon as she had the money.

  She can hear the rhythmical noise of Stella peeling potatoes in the next room.

  If she calls Dad and he decides to come and fetch her, what will Sonia say? Dad wouldn’t want her to know because of the stress it will cause, the impact on the baby. If anything happens to the baby they will always feel it was because of her. Ringing Dad is not a good option.

  She needs some tissue and looks around for the roll of kitchen paper. There is none.<
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  She tries to walk casually from behind the grill. There is no kitchen paper on the counter either. Stavros is sitting smoking outside, his back to the shop. She starts to shake and the tears flow. She puts her hand over her mouth to stifle the noise and backs towards the room with the tables. She turns. Stella looks directly at her, hands paused over the bowl of potatoes, her long sleeves trailing in the cast-off skins, her eyes wide.

  Abby looks to the floor hurries past to the toilet where she noisily blows her nose and sits on the lid to think.

  She waits. She can think of nothing else to do.

  Stella calls something, but not to her. It is in Greek.

  It sounds like Stavros’ voice from outside answering.

  She hears a car door opening, creaking on rusty hinges. The engine coughs, pebbles under the tyres grind, and the sounds heighten then recede as it drives away. Abby breathes out and relaxes her head into her hands, her elbows resting on thighs. All is quiet outside the toilet door. She waits; there is not a sound.

  She washes her tear-stained face and, as quietly as she can, she unbolts the door and walks out.

  Stella is sitting facing her. No potatoes. No knife. Just sitting.

  Abby is rigid. She waits.

  Stella looks at Abby from head to foot, her eyes resting here and there, and then she rolls up her sleeves.

  Abby watches her eyes.

  Still sitting, Stella slowly pulls up the hem of her skirt. Abby blinks. Then sees. Her legs. And her arms. The bruises.

  Abby wraps her right hand around her left arm, where it throbs, where Stella’s gaze had paused.

  Stella stands. Abby takes her hand from her own arm to show Stella the bruise but Stella is nodding her head, she knows. She holds out her arms and, sobbing, Abby runs into them. Her head rests on Stella’s shoulder. She is easily the taller, but, at the moment, the smaller of the two.