Chapter 16
Happy as Hades
When I got out of the taxi at Villa Anemos that evening, I was just in time to see Myrto leading her donkey Zeus towards the farm. She stopped beside me on the road, rubbing my arm affectionately. “Ah, Bronte, where have you been these days?”
“Sightseeing,” I lied. “Where have you been with Zeus?”
“I take some firewood to friends in the village. They are piling up the shed for winter.”
“We’re a long way from winter, surely?”
“Yes. But you’ll see. Bladdy cold winds in autumn blow down from the Taygetos at night. Have to be prepared.”
“I won’t be here in autumn, Myrto.”
She looked me up and down, as if she didn’t comprehend what I was saying, as if the idea of having any kind of deadline was an outrage. That was a Greek aversion, I was sure, and charming in its way.
“What’s happening with your piece of land, by the way? The sale?”
“Ach! Hector has an agent now and put it on the market. Nothing I can do. Soon I will lose my trees.”
“That’s terrible, Myrto,” I said, shaking my head. But I could offer no other consolation.
“Come see me soon for a coffee. We talk.” She waved me goodbye, pulling the donkey along the road.
Back at Villa Anemos, I found Angus sitting at the balcony table, drinking a beer. He had a Kalamata phone book on the table. He looked up and smiled. “So, how was the shopping?”
“Very good. I was thoroughly pampered − and there was time for ouzo and plenty of gossip.”
“What gossip?”
“Never you mind,” I said, eyeing up the telephone directory. “What are you doing?”
“Looking up all the people called Maneas. There’s plenty of them.”
“Are you going to call them all?”
He shrugged. “Well, I will if I have to, but I live in hope that something else will turn up.”
“Polly’s going to contact a few people herself. She’ll probably have better luck than you.”
“She’s a treasure,” he said, not looking at me, but flicking pages of the phone book, running his finger down columns of names.
“What a lovely apartment she has, so many books. And I also found an interesting photo on her bookcase, kind of hidden. You and Polly on a beach ...” I had his full attention now. “It’s a nice picture. Must have been taken a few years ago, because you both looked younger. It’s quite romantic, even a bit sexy.”
“I know that photo. It was at someone’s name day, a party at the Gorgona taverna, actually. I don’t know if romantic or sexy is the right way to describe it,” he said, pouting. “From memory, we’re just standing side by side on the nearby beach.”
That’s not how I saw it, however. He had his arm around her back, pulling her in close, their bodies wedged together. She was turned slightly towards him, smiling, her head thrown back a little, as if someone had cracked a joke. It was more than just a friendly picture. Or so it seemed to me. Polly looked lovely, her dark hair flowing round her shoulders. She was full of life and so was Angus, handsome as well, his hair darker and shorter, thick and wavy. There was an unmistakable intimacy about the shot.
“You and Polly have been more than just casual friends, and for a long while, haven’t you?” I probed.
His eyes flickered towards the olive groves and back. “Well … yes, we became good friends over the years, but that’s all,” he said evasively. “And perhaps there was a frisson of attraction there from time to time, but she was still married then.”
I knew he was lying. Even before I saw the picture I had suspected something more intense. It was implied in their easy, bantering manner and their mutual affection. Polly had also lied in her way as well with the pretence of just being friends, but it seemed easier to overlook this failing in her, and in any case I didn’t know her well enough to judge.
“Does Polly know you found the photograph?” he asked, not looking at me, his fingers running down more columns in the phone book.
“No. But if she did, would she be embarrassed?”
He shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Look. You don’t have to panic over it. I like Polly a lot. I just wondered, that was all!”
“There’s nothing to wonder about. And I hadn’t seen Polly for months, as it happens,” he said with a dismissive shrug. I knew he didn’t want to discuss it. He probably thought it was none of my business. Except it was, because if they had been lovers, and for a long while, it was one reason why he didn’t come back to Scotland and forgot all about Marcella. I adored my mother but knew that she was no match for Polly, who was not the kind of woman Angus would sit up with all night, conjugating verbs. I was steaming a bit over the photograph but decided to let it go for now. However, I wasn’t about to let Angus off too lightly.
“By the way, I forgot to tell you that Leonidas has asked us out for a drive on Saturday, down the Mani, sightseeing and lunch,” I said.
Angus pulled a massive face and girned. “Flippin’ hell! Socialising with the landlord. Next he’ll be moving in with us.”
“Not into Villa Anemos, I imagine. Not quite his style,” I said sarcastically.
“Aye, you’re right there.” His eyes strayed towards the phone book again. He was itching to get on with his research. “Look, I don’t think I’ll go. I’ve got no urge to play the tourist. I’ve been down the Mani. It’s lovely, but it’s you he’s really inviting,” he said, flicking his eyebrows at me suggestively.
“Don’t start with that old chestnut again. I’m just trying to be polite.”
“I’ve got other plans for Saturday. I want to get the four-wheel drive again and go back to Platanos to speak with Pavlos in the pantopoleio about Panayiotis and Dimitris.”
“Drive up there on your own? What if you suddenly get chest pains, up a bloody mountainside? Be sensible! Go another day and I’ll come as well.”
He sat for a while, drumming his fingers on the table top, plotting. “Okay. Here’s a good solution. How about we ask Leonidas to take us up to Platanos on Saturday, instead of touring the Mani. He gets the pleasure of our company, yours especially, and in return he will be very helpful to us.”
“Now you’re really acting like a bampot!” I said, raising my voice. “Dragging Leonidas up to the old village when he’s offered to give us a nice day out? He will think we are totally mad – obsessed.” Furthermore, I had just bought coastal outfits, not hiking gear.
He merely shrugged. I felt exasperated with him. “Look, I’ll think about it, Angus, but it seems selfish – on our part.”
He gave me a churlish look. “Oh, you’ve come round now. A while ago you thought Leonidas was a bit too haughty, I seem to recall. Now you’re feeling sorry for him. You’re not going soft on him? Which, incidentally, I suspected you would, right at the beginning, remember?”
I shook my head. “Now stop it right there. I’m just trying to be pleasant to these people in the village. He’s generous with his time. He deserves a medal as a landlord for putting up with you, that’s for sure,” I said, raising my voice again, but stopping short of an argument.
“Och, don’t get crabbit. And remember my heart,” he said, in a simpering fashion.
“How could I forget your friggin’ ticker!” I snapped.
“That’s enough! I’m going out for a drink! If you don’t want to come with me on Saturday, it’s fine. You can go on your tour with Leonidas. I don’t care.” He stormed off.
I was relieved when he left the house because I felt guilty, remembering that it had been a fairly emotional day hearing Orestes’ story. I didn’t want an argument but I was piqued over that photograph. Nothing was ever straightforward with Angus. Then I began to realise that applied to almost everyone I knew here. Nothing was ever simple. Lives were bound up in layers of protection and obfuscation. The aphorism Leonidas told me about Greek rural life − “the trees have ears”, that everyone’s l
ife was being lugged into by others, up for grabs − wasn’t the whole story. People here believed what they wanted to believe. They saw what they wanted to see. It was Freudian editing at its very best.
I awoke early the next morning after a surprisingly deep sleep. Angus was still in bed. I decided to go for a walk in the village before he got up, to stave off a morning stoushie with him. The road into the village was quiet. It was warm, with puffs of cloud scattered over a deep-blue sky. It promised to be another splendid day. I would perhaps talk Angus into a swim to douse our aggravations.
As I walked through the plateia towards the back steps, people waved: Elpida from the kafeneio, and Miltiades as he wiped tables outside his taverna. Myrto was in the square, talking with some women, and called ‘good morning’. I walked up the steps and onto the Palios Dromos. A few women were sweeping the front of their houses and also wished me good morning, kalimera, as if I had been here for months.
I had not yet been to the famous bakery on this road, where the volcanic loaves were fashioned. The bakery was an old-style place with a large wood-fired oven commanding one wall. On the counter were baskets of loaves in different sizes. Thekla, the owner, looked as nippy as Angus had described her, with a gaunt face and a long bony nose, made slightly comical by over-large, black-framed glasses. I hovered about the counter, squeezing loaves in baskets.
“Kalimera sas,” she said, rattling off a few Greek sentences.
“Sorry, I don’t speak much Greek. I want horiatiko bread, village bread,” I told her, which was the volcanic stuff, for Angus. He had taught me the word, as well as giving me a well-thumbed phrase book to advance my ailing Greek.
“Village bread,” she said, thumping a loaf down on the counter.
“Ah, you speak English?” I said, though I wasn’t surprised. In a place with a contingent of expats with little Greek, but with a lot of dough of their own, it paid for a shopkeeper to have a smattering of English.
“Horiatiko, keeps all week,” she said, pointing at the loaf. “Good. Kalo.” I didn’t doubt it would last a whole century.
“Fine, I’ll take it. And can I have another loaf as well? Something a little more soft?”
She made a face like a suck on half a lemon, as if asking for a soft loaf was an insult. However, she turned and rummaged around on a wall shelf, searching the loaves.
“Here. This one soft,” she said, slapping the loaf on the counter and squeezing it, by way of illustration, so energetically that the shape of her surprisingly big hand left a doughy imprint.
“Okay,” I said, feeling the start of a nervous giggle bubbling up from my stomach. I coughed instead.
“You kori of Angus?”
“Yes.”
She looked me up and down with laser-like eyes and then opened the back of a glass-sided display case and cut two slices of the famous honey cake. She put them in a small box, touching her heart at the same time. “From me to you,” she said, smiling, showing a row of gappy teeth. It was as if the mere thought of her own honey cake had magically sweetened her temperament. She put everything in a plastic bag, including the soft loaf, which still had the hand print.
I left with a spring in my step, very pleased with my first shopping expedition in the village. I walked back to the kafeneio to check emails, as I had my laptop with me. I also had Angus’s mobile because I wanted to call Polly to suggest we meet for coffee one day. Perhaps I could sound her out about her relationship with Angus. Surely one of them could be honest? It would either clear the air or end my friendship with her, which would be a pity. But I needed to know.
Just as I sat down in the plateia, the mobile rang. It was Leonidas.
“Kalimera, good morning. I am calling just to check if you and Angus are still free on Saturday for our drive?”
“Em …yes.” That was quick, I thought. We had only discussed it a few days earlier. “We’d love to go on a drive, Leo, thank you. It’s just that … Angus is set on going somewhere else and I can’t change his mind. And I don’t want him to go on his own.”
I told him about the proposed trip to Platanos, without telling him all the details, or all of the story that Orestes had shared. While I was talking, I heard a dull sound like fingers drumming on a desktop.
“I understand,” he said at last. “But you have already been there with your father, yes? And you want to go again? But there are so many other things to see in the Mani, and you have such little time left.”
“I know, but it’s just that we need your help with something, if you can spare the time. We’ve made a bit of progress about my grandfather and we need to track down a certain person. We’ll explain when we see you.”
“I see.” The fingers drummed again.
“And it would be very helpful to have you there. Angus struggles with his Greek.”
“I will try to help, Bronte, but I am afraid I don’t keep up contact with the village. I rarely go there.” He didn’t sound keen at all, but he was impeccably polite. I admired that.
“You will understand when we explain our difficulties.”
“If you have your heart set on Platanos, I am happy to help. Perhaps we will see the other places another time.”
“Of course. I would like that. And thank you. It’s very kind of you.”
“Okay. I will be at your house, 10 in the morning on Saturday. Goodbye.”
I had just opened my laptop and was tapping into my email account when I saw Cynthia, the expat, approaching.
“Can I sit with you a moment, Bronte?” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down without waiting for a reply. She was wearing a voluminous kind of dress, with her hair in another odd up-do, the ends of it springing loose about her head. She looked like an exotic parrot.
“No, not at all. Would you like a coffee? I was just about to order one.” I managed to get Elpida’s attention as she cruised about the plateia, picking up empty cups and gossip. I ordered two instant coffees.
“I wondered if you’d heard the awful news about poor Myrto and the dreadful stepson Hector, trying to sell the land. What will she do?”
I quite liked Cynthia, she was genial and caring but I was in no mood to talk about village news. My mind was mulling over the trip to Platanos and whether I had done the right thing or not, or if it would have been so much nicer going around the Mani with Leonidas – smartly attired! I was warming to his generous nature.
Cynthia was prattling on about Myrto and I was half-listening. My eyes trailed down the emails and I saw one from Crayton.
“I have no idea what Myrto will do. The law is not on her side,” I said.
Cynthia leaned in across the table. “I know, but …. Greek women, even in the recent past, have been so oppressed by men. I’ve heard terrible stories,” she said, just as Elpida brought the coffees to the table, taking more than her usual amount of time to set the cups down and the plate of rivani cake. Cynthia waited until she had gone. “Well, it was worse when the dowry system was still legal, when women were often expected to hand over family property in marriage. But even now there are ways of coercing women into giving over their possessions to greedy husbands. What does Angus think about it all?”
“I don’t know, Cynthia. I imagine he would say that we shouldn’t interfere. The foreigners are just passing through. I think that’s how he feels.”
Her up-do quivered. “I’m not passing through, Bronte. I’m here for the long run.”
But I knew exactly what Angus would have said to that. He would have got mad at her. There’s a crisis here, Cynthia. None of us is here for the long run. Even the Greeks.
“The other expats and I were talking last night about Myrto, and we think that a group of villagers, including the expats, should try to stump up enough to buy her land, so she can continue to do her olive harvest, which is her main source of income. And it will stop the land from being developed for something probably out of character.”
I gave her an incredulous look. “I don’t think the
Greeks will manage that in a crisis, do you?”
“They all have money stashed away, Bronte. They always have, for little emergencies. Not that I blame them, especially now. I’m sure some of them could help.” Was poor Cynthia mad?
“Are the expats cashed-up enough to buy the land?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “I’m not, that’s for sure, but some of the other Brits here are, and some of them without much land are often saying they’d like to do the olive harvest. A few of them have agreed it might be possible to pool their funds.”
I hope she didn’t want Angus to contribute. He would blow a gasket over that. “Do ask Angus what he thinks of the idea,” she said.
“Sure, I will, but maybe it will resolve itself. My guess is that Hector probably won’t go through with it, or he won’t get a good enough offer for the land.”
When a few other expats walked through the plateia, Cynthia excused herself and fluttered away, no doubt to continue the discussion on how to save Myrto. I had never actually met these other expats properly, but they didn’t look much like olive harvesters, at any rate.
I clicked on the email from Crayton, fearing he may have changed his mind about the extra three weeks, but it was a short note asking me to file the story ASAP with photos. I told him I would do my best but I still had people to interview.
The next email was from Sybil:
“Hello, Grecian Hen. How is life in the sun? Wish I was there. Wish I was anywhere – but here. Management is offering redundancies and tapping certain people on the shoulder, like two of the older sub-editors and a photographer. Jason Peregrine has lost his travel editor’s gig and some young colt brought up from London has taken his place. Truly mingin’. I’ve thought of putting my name in for redundancy. What do you think of that? Ach, I can see it’s going to be shite working here. All these little hammer blows to the editorial operation have an effect. Did I ever mention my uncle Harry in Australia? He keeps telling me to get over there. Plenty of work. I fancy something different, like wrangling on a sheep farm. Anything but journalism.
A Saint for the Summer Page 17
