A Saint for the Summer

by Marjory McGinn

  It all echoed what Angus had told me on my second day.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated. The longer you stay away from Britain, the harder it is to go back. Some of the expats would rather walk over broken glass than go back. You should talk to them. You’re a journalist, right? You will get some good stories, believe me. I can introduce you to all of them.”

  I groaned inwardly at the thought of spending my last week or so listening to expat escape stories, though I had no doubt they would be fascinating.

  “Thanks, but I just don’t have enough time left.”

  Cynthia gave me a sympathetic smile. “Let me know if you change your mind,” she said, excusing herself and wandering off to speak to a few of her Greek friends. It seemed to be the custom here that as soon as the meal was over, there was much socialising between groups. I stayed alone, however, preferring to watch others. I looked towards the top table. The papas was still holding everyone’s attention. Leonidas was not there. He was striding through the olive trees, straight towards my table. I took another gulp of wine and tried to look casual.

  He pulled out Cynthia’s chair. I caught an aroma of wine, something herby, the tang of lemon, like an aftershave. He gave off a charge of good health and energy. I felt rather self-conscious. I wasn’t so ignorant of Greek ways that I couldn’t imagine a lot of villagers turning their heads in our direction, wondering what Leonidas, the doctor/landlord, was doing with the lone foreigner. I sensed Elpida’s eyes on us, tight like wing nuts.

  “I am glad you could come, Bronte. Have you enjoyed our celebration?”

  “Very much,” I said, pushing my wine glass around the paper tablecloth. He took the nervy mannerism to be a call for more wine and poured me some from the carafe and some for himself, clinking his glass against mine.

  “Good health!” he said. “And talking of that, I have spoken on Friday with Dr Protopsaltis, your father’s cardiologist, and he expects the results back this week. His secretary will call you.”

  “I don’t suppose anything will be conclusive yet.”

  “The doctor will have a better idea by now of some of your father’s main risk factors, but he will need more tests, I imagine.”

  “I won’t be here for the tests, unfortunately. I have to return in 10 days.” Making that point now made me realise how quickly the time had gone already and nothing much had been achieved.

  “You can’t stay a bit longer?” he asked.

  “Not really. The newspaper I work for doesn’t usually like us taking more than two weeks at a time. And I’ve already twisted my boss’s arm to get an extra week off.”

  He didn’t say anything. He was rubbing the side of his chin with his left hand. I looked at the long fingers. They were elegant and on the little finger was an engraved gold signet ring. It looked classical and certainly expensive.

  “But your father’s health. It’s more important, yes?” he said, his eyes darkening a moment, as if a cloud had crossed the sun. He was judging me, I felt.

  “Than work, you mean?” He nodded. “Of course,” I said, though it was only partially true. In the time Angus had been living his own merry life here, my career had come to have huge significance in my life. I wasn’t going to jeopardise it now, but I couldn’t share that with Leonidas. He wouldn’t understand. But I added, “We have a more rigid work environment in Britain. And I have to work.”

  “I understand. My girlfriend, Phaedra, tells me her work life is very different in England. Many rules, I think.”

  “Does she like living in England?” I asked, just to shift the emphasis from myself.

  He started to answer the question, about how she liked this and that, and hated other things and so on, and my eyes started to wander around the other tables. It’s hard to listen to an attractive man talking about his girlfriend, even a man you have no real desire to snare. He must have finished talking about Phaedra. I turned towards him and realised that he had been asking me a question.

  “Sorry, I didn’t quite hear that.”

  “Why don’t you ask your boss if you can extend your holiday? Tell him Angus’s cardiologist has recommended you stay because your father needs you at present.”

  “Don’t tempt me now, Leonidas,” I said, as a kind of throwaway line.

  “Are you easily tempted?” he said, after a heartbeat of silence. He stared at me, and in the depths of those big dark eyes I perceived a glimmer of mischief, augmented by one thick curl of hair bending over his right eyebrow. Yet again I marvelled at how, beneath the carapace of Greek propriety and medical blethering, there was a gremlin at work, or so I imagined. Each time, it took me by surprise.

  “It depends … what I’m being tempted by,” I said, with a coquettish flap of my eyelashes that was wholly unintended and made me feel rather foolish, as if I’d been possessed by some yammering sprite of my own, emboldened by too much wine and goat meat. He smiled as if he’d just caught me out.

  To hide my embarrassment, I changed the subject and decided it was time to mention Kieran. I told him briefly about Kieran’s involvement in the Battle of Kalamata, and how he’d fled the city, and what Angus had discovered from his recent research: the slim possibility that Kieran and another soldier may have trekked from the coast to Platanos to avoid capture by the Germans. I told him we didn’t know the outcome of his escape, but he was later officially listed as missing, presumed dead. He looked astonished by the time I’d finished the story.

  “Your father has never told me this story. I had no idea your grandfather fought in the Battle of Kalamata. I am very sorry to hear that he lost his life fighting for us. And how curious …” he said, trailing off, as if he’d lost his train of thought.

  “Curious?”

  “Yes, that he might have gone to Platanos, of all places. Amazing! My own family come from this village.”

  “Have you heard of British soldiers hiding out in Platanos? Perhaps some of your family may have spoken about it?”

  He shook his head. “No … I am afraid I have never heard about this. My family were simple farming people. My grandfather kept goats. In the sixties – before I was born – he moved the family down to Marathousa for good, as many people did, for a better life. Some of the more distant family members stayed on a while but now they have all gone. So, you see, our links with Platanos have been broken.”

  “It must have been a hard life in those days.”

  “Yes, it was. Before the family moved, they spent the summers in Platanos and came down in the winters, often with all their animals, for the olive harvest on my grandfather’s land in Marathousa and went back up in the spring.”

  “They came down on the kalderimi, right?”

  “Ah, you know that word now. And you’ve seen it?”

  “Yes, we have, from the village of Ayios Yiorgos.”

  He nodded, but said nothing, his long, thin fingers folding and refolding a paper serviette, like a macramé experiment.

  “I realise it’s going to be difficult to find anything out. We need to talk to someone who is now old enough to have been there during the war as a kid at least. Or someone who knows something, anything,” I said.

  He pursed his lips. “The difficulty for you and your father is that many of the mountain people are shy talking about the past, and about life there. They had a difficult time, even before the war and the German occupation. And after the war we suffered the civil war in Greece, which was actually worse. Even if some of the villagers in Platanos could remember British allies escaping, they might not want to talk about it. Perhaps they also feel some guilt because, in the end, they couldn’t help them. The Greeks put up a good fight against the Germans, but we were too small a force, so we were very relieved to see the allies here. We saw you as liberators. And then there was the catastrophe of many of you being left behind and killed or taken prisoner. Greeks felt bad about that.”

  “Perhaps if you can think of anyone from Platanos who might be able to help us,
you can let us know.”

  “Of course, Bronte. I will ask my father, Gregorios. He lives in Kalamata now. But, to be honest, I don’t think he will have any useful information.” He shrugged and raked his hand through his hair, repositioning the errant curl.

  “Thank you.”

  “By the way, where is Angus? Did he come with you?”

  “Yes, he’s over with the men by the oven.”

  He turned and looked for a moment and I could almost read what was going through his mind: Angus knocking back wine, having the sly cigarette, as if he had the arteries of a newborn baby. But at least he made no comment.

  “I am afraid I must go now, Bronte,” he said, looking towards the top table that was beginning to empty. He got up and shook my hand firmly, saying “Chronia polla”, many years. I watched him striding back to his friends and thought how much he improved on acquaintance; a few layers were peeling back just a little. But it was time to fetch Angus and head home, as the tables were being cleared up. I walked over to the table by the oven. He was having a laugh with the men but when he saw me he got up. He looked slightly sheepish but definitely tipsy, but no more than the others.

  “Did you have a good meal, Bronte?”

  I nodded. “I think I might leave now, but you stay if you’re having a good time.”

  “Och, no. I better not. I’ll only get blootered. I’d like to have a swim today. What about you?”

  “I’ve been desperate for a swim. Let’s go then.”

  We set off back to the house. He was in a good mood and I didn’t want to tell him the blood test results were imminent or that Leonidas was no help with ‘Mission Kieran’.

  Chapter 10

  The wisdom of the coffee cup

  The pebbled cove we picked was near the village of Paleohora, hidden from the main road, down a narrow track. In Paleohora, the area around the clifftop had been settled even in ancient times and Homer had referred to this region in the Iliad as Iri. There had also been a Byzantine fortress on the clifftop, which had since crumbled, but nevertheless the village had history − and in modern times. Angus believed that this was one of the small coves on this stretch of coastline where the allied soldiers had gathered in April 1941, looking for an escape boat. The notion that Kieran may have come to just such a place on his tramp south gave it extra poignancy, though the beauty of this shoreline must have meant little to desperate troops fleeing for their lives.

  Kalamata sparkled in the distance at the head of the gulf, but back in 1941 it would have been ripped apart by air attacks, gunfire and chaos. To the right were the peaks of the Taygetos and the nearest, Mount Kalathio, towered over the eastern edge of the city, with the village of Ano Verga near the top. Some of the allies were said to have hidden out in this village for a time, but their fate would have been perilous, as the village was clearly visible from below and too close to the city. Platanos, on the other hand, was further south and much further back.

  As I swam in the gulf, a fair way out from the shore, while Angus slept on the beach after his boozy lunch, I had the best view of the hinterland behind this stretch of coastline, and the mountains. While the olive groves all the way to Marathousa were visible, and some outlying hamlets, there was no trace of the high mountain villages. After a while I forgot about the past and just enjoyed the feeling of complete solitude, swimming in the cool, clear waters. I could get to like this aspect of my Greek sojourn. Even the sun on my skin felt good, in a way it never had before.

  When I got back to the beach, Angus was sitting on his towel, dripping with water from a quick wake-up swim on the shoreline.

  “Let’s go and grab a coffee,” he said, drying himself.

  We got dressed, and walked around some rocks to an adjacent cove, where a kafeneio had a narrow patio beside the water covered with a bright awning. It was pleasant to sit at the edge and watch fish darting about below.

  “I once caught an octopus here,” he said. “Actually, ‘caught’ is the wrong word. It simply crawled out of the sea and attached itself to the seawall. A young one, I think. The owner here prised it off and cooked it up for lunch. It just shows you that even the shrewdest beast can lose its radar now and then and get marooned.”

  “Is that your allegory for the day, professor?”

  He laughed. “I do miss teaching. You know I gave English lessons to Greeks after I arrived here. It was enjoyable. I was offered a job in one of the big frontistiria in Kalamata − a kind of tutorial college. But I turned it down. I preferred to freelance. I did a lot of olive harvesting too. There was always plenty of work if you wanted it. Different now, and the price of olive oil has dropped.”

  We sat for a moment without talking, while the waiter put our coffees on the table: a Greek one for Angus, of course, and instant for me.

  “If I can say so, Bronte, you’re looking much more relaxed.” He gave me an appraising look. “When you first came, you looked so pale and rather stressed, if I can say that.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, you’re probably never stressed because you lead a different kind of life to the rest of us.”

  He frowned. “Don’t start now.”

  I didn’t respond but I could never resist an opportunity to vent my bubbling frustrations on Angus.

  “I spoke to Leonidas today. I told him all about Kieran and that we’d been up to Platanos, as I assumed you’d not got round to telling him,” I said.

  “Aye. To be honest, I haven’t seen as much of Leonidas as you think.”

  “Anyway, he was shocked to hear about Kieran, but he wasn’t hopeful we would find what we’re looking for. You know something? I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it, like the others we met. That’s what we’re up against.”

  Angus drank his coffee, then stopped and turned his cup upside down on the white saucer, tapping the bottom of it. I frowned, watching, as black liquid began to seep from the rim of the upturned cup.

  “I’ve got less than 10 days to go, to help with Mission Kieran, and you’re doing … whatever it is you’re doing ….” I said, waving my hand at the cup.

  “I’m reading my fortune. Greeks read the future in the images the coffee grounds leave as they drip back down the sides of the cup,” he said matter-of-factly. A few moments later, he turned the cup the right way up and peered inside, making small appreciative noises.

  “See that,” he said, shoving the cup in front of my face.

  I peered inside. All I could see was a mess. “See what?”

  “Look more closely.”

  “Don’t be daft!”

  “Go on, you might be surprised.”

  “Ach, give it to me then,” I said, just to keep him quiet. I peered around the mess of coffee grounds. I could see a few shapes: a jagged mountain peak and, beside it, something resembling a tiny star, or perhaps a cross. Maybe. Or was it what I wanted to see?

  “I see nothing,” I told him.

  “You’re lying. You saw what I did, a mountain peak. I know you did.”

  I laughed. “No I didn’t!”

  He gave me a churlish look.

  “Okay. I saw a mountain peak − and a cross.”

  His eyes lit up. “A cross too? Well that is a good omen, Bronte,” he said, scanning the inside of the cup again for the thing he’d missed.

  “I wish you’d be sensible now instead of carrying on like some wannabe mystic. Ten days to go, I told you. What do you think we’ll achieve in that time?” I snapped.

  He didn’t answer. He put the cup back and crossed his arms over his chest and stared out over the water. Despite my small strop about the time I had left in Greece, a certain resolve had already begun to creep into my head while I was swimming in the blue waters of the gulf earlier. It had been so relaxing that I had the urge to swim there again and again.

  “This might surprise you, Angus, but given the task ahead of us, I have considered emailing the features editor to ask for an extension to my holiday, using your health as the excuse, of course.
”

  “That’s grand, Bronte. I think you’re finally hooked on the hunt for Kieran.” He rubbed his hands together.

  “Somewhat, of course.”

  “And you’re starting to like the place, I can tell. You’re getting over your sunburn phobia and looking very healthy, my dear. And your food phobias, especially the foreign stuff. Don’t frown ...!” He was enjoying himself now.

  “Okay, leaving my phobias aside a minute, I might have asked for more time off in the beginning if you’d told me the truth about what you were doing here, about your quest to find Kieran.”

  “Sorry, you’re quite right,” he said, feigning some seriousness and rubbing his hands over his stubbly chin. “But we’ve been through that issue already. I didn’t want to put you off.”

  “I’m not saying I’ll get an extension. The features editor will go mad when I ask for more time off. I’m not looking forward to it, to be honest.”

  “Try it, and see what happens. Say I’m at death’s door. Another three weeks or so would be really helpful.”

  I was actually thinking another week or so, but what the hell! The more I considered it, the more I liked the idea, for all kinds of reasons.

  “Apart from the mission, it’s nice having you here, Bronte. I know you think I haven’t missed you, and Shona, over the years, but I have, believe me,” he said, with a catch in his voice, the light-heartedness of a few moments ago swept aside.

  “Then why didn’t you come back, years ago? Why maroon yourself here?”

  “I don’t feel marooned.”

  “I know I’ve asked you this before, but was your odyssey all about Kieran really? Tell me, please!”

  He hesitated a while before he spoke. “No, not all about Kieran … I don’t think so, not in the beginning, anyway. Marcella and I hadn’t really been close for years. I think you all knew that, even if we never actually talked about it. I was bored, jaded. I just wanted to do something mad before I got too old.”