A Saint for the Summer

by Marjory McGinn

  He picked up his towel and dried himself, rubbing his own hair quickly so that it looked slightly menacing. His thick curls, which had been weighed down by the seawater, started to spring back into life, twisting and turning in the sun, I fancied, like restless serpents intent on some minor felony. Unconsciously, I began rubbing the sting on my arm.

  “Still sore?” he asked, pulling my hand very gently away so he could inspect it again. I gave in like a meek patient.

  “It is definitely not life-threatening, I assure you,” he said, with a playful hint of sarcasm. He kept his hand on my upper arm for a moment, but instead of letting it go he moved his hand to the back of my neck and pulled me gently towards him, kissing me lightly on the mouth. It was a whisper of a kiss, nothing more, and yet I felt my stomach lurch. I let him kiss me again, stronger this time.

  How attractive this man was! Even as a boy in that old village photo he radiated beauty and vitality. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t secretly imagined this moment. It was better in reality, so much so that a daft gremlin in my head took hold of my reason, trying to convince me that a summer romance wasn’t such a bad idea really. He kept on kissing me, hotly this time, our bodies leaning into each other as we stood on the sand. I could sense he was very aroused and my urge to resist was − in equal and opposite measure − flagging.

  When his hand started to edge towards my right breast, I had all but surrendered. Then, suddenly, from nearby came the sound of a dog barking, followed by an angry Greek tirade. The perfect moment was shattered. We both turned to see an old man in a baggy suit and black hat with a small white dog on a lead. We hadn’t heard him approaching – of course. He was shouting something and brandishing a walking stick, as if he might give us a good thrashing.

  Leonidas, his face flushed, unhooked himself from our embrace and turned, trying to placate the interloper. After a short exchange, the old guy looked at me, smirked, a little salaciously, and left with a big windmill wave of his arm, dragging the dog with him.

  Leonidas shook his head. “I am sorry, Bronte. That was unexpected.”

  “What, the man or the other thing?”

  “Both. I am sorry.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s a crazy old guy. He said he couldn’t walk the dog any more without seeing people having ‘sex’ on the beach.”

  “But we weren’t …”

  “Well, his old mind was getting ahead of things.” So had mine.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Ha. Well, that will have to be my secret. I think,” he said, looking coy.

  “Intriguing!” I said, wondering with what piece of male blagging he’d fobbed off the old guy. Whatever he’d said, the incident had the effect of a bucket of cold water dropped from a great height. We lay down on our towels, side by side, staring at the sky, not talking for a while. Then he levered himself up on his elbow and stroked the red welt on my arm.

  “Me sighoreis. I apologise, Bronte, for the lack of control. It is the fault of the jellyfish, of course.”

  “Is this how you routinely treat jellyfish stings in Greece?”

  He laughed. “If it works, why not. I expect your arm feels much better. Am I right?”

  “Yes, much better. I doubt I’ll require further treatment,” I said in mock snippiness.

  He was still leaning on his elbow and I struggled not to turn and look into those dark eyes because, if I did, I’d want to kiss him again. I got up and walked to the water’s edge, paddling about. I couldn’t think what was going to be worse now, dealing with the fact we had lost our heads for a moment and it would be hard to go back to the ‘friendship’ we had, or wondering forever what it would have been like making love to Leonidas on the beach, if the old man and his yappy dog hadn’t come along. I unconsciously ran my tongue over my top lip. I could still taste the sweetness of his lips. The tang of regret was all mine.

  He walked down to the water’s edge and dived in, uttering something in Greek I couldn’t understand, though it was spirited. He did a few easy strokes in the water and got out, standing beside me at the shoreline, his hair dripping wet again, the snakes for the moment becalmed.

  “Leo, it was as well we were interrupted. I mean, I have to leave in a few weeks. You have Phaedra in the UK.”

  His face was unsmiling. “Yes, you are right.”

  “When I said at lunch that it seemed you were leaning more towards England now, you never said anything. I’ve noticed you’re always rather evasive about the subject, if you don’t mind my saying. But I think you’ve definitely decided to go, and very soon probably. Am I right?”

  He ruffled his hair with his hand and pouted. I feared he was going to pull out another ‘no comment’, but finally he said: “Yes, you’re right. On both points.”

  “Okay. Now we understand each other. So, what happened just now was pleasant, but it would be madness for us to get involved, wouldn’t it?”

  “Only pleasant?” he said, looking wounded.

  I said nothing. Best not to.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to kiss you … not like that, Bronte. I like you very much. But what happened was a thing of the moment perhaps. A lovely lunch, wine, the swim. The way you look. Fantastic,” he said, his eyes flickering again over the ‘Hollywood’ costume. “I am sorry.”

  But I wasn’t sorry. I was more than that. I was mortified he’d called it just a ‘thing of the moment’: a caprice, nothing of any importance. To me, it seemed he had been moving towards this since lunch: the warm squeeze of my hand, the frisson of interest he gave out. How easy it might have been, after all, to have a holiday affair with a handsome Greek doctor. There would have been no complications really, no guilt, no heartbreak. Easy. Maybe that was all the invitation for lunch had been leading to anyway. Perhaps he had been more predatory than I imagined.

  We stayed a while longer, drying off in the sun. The chatter changed to easy subjects, but the magic of the day had evaporated. Time to go. We packed up our beach bags and strolled to the car. I admired him for his good grace in trying to maintain the friendship, at least, if that were possible. When we got back to the village, he stopped the car in the driveway of his house.

  “Thank you for a wonderful day, Bronte. You are very good company. I hope you are not angry with me,” he said.

  “Thank you too. And no harm done,” I said, not looking at him. I slipped quickly out of the car. I didn’t want Angus, or any of the village gossips, to see us having a cosy chat in the parked car. I waved him goodbye.

  Chapter 19

  What Greek men want

  Angus was sitting outside in his usual spot, his ‘office’, on the back balcony, with books and notebooks spread around him. He looked up when he heard me approaching.

  “So, how was lunch?”

  “Fine. We went to a taverna in Kitries.”

  “Oh! I meant to take you to Kitries. It’s one of the places where the allies hoped to find escape boats.” Then he talked on about the Battle of Kalamata, but I wasn’t really listening. I had a view of Leonidas’s back terrace. I wondered if he would stay at the villa tonight, or return to Kalamata.

  “Did you hear me, Bronte? I asked if you’d been swimming. You’ve got a nice glow about you.”

  “Yes, after lunch. A small cove nearby. Lovely!”

  “Good,” he said, tapping a pen on his front teeth, watching me.

  I was dreading his usual impish wind-up when it came to Leonidas, but his eyes merely trailed to his notebooks. He seemed eager to get back to whatever it was he was doing and I left him and went downstairs. I had a long cool shower. It didn’t take long to rinse the salt away, but no matter what I did, I could still feel and taste those kisses. I still had the sensation of his body pressed against mine. No amount of water would erase that.

  Afterwards, I slipped easily into a siesta. It was deep and restful, but when I awoke I had thoughts chasing around in my head. I replayed the incident on the beach. Despite Leonidas b
lethering about it being a ‘thing of the moment’, it surprised me, the ease with which he might have been unfaithful to Phaedra. While he’d seemed a bit haughty when I first met him, he had never struck me as the insincere, philandering type. Perhaps the truth was that, although he believed he and Phaedra were well matched, he didn’t really love her. That was why he had dithered so long over going to England, and why he still didn’t sound absolutely certain. That idea sat quite well with me, yet it was messy. I would forget it. It would be easy now to leave when the time came. One rickety heart in the family was quite enough, without mine being broken as well.

  I got up in the early evening and dressed. I was going to the kafeneio to send yet another pleading email to Crayton, even if it was Saturday. I knew he sometimes checked his work emails from home. Sad bastard! I found Angus sitting at the kitchen table this time, drinking beer.

  “Do you want to come to the kafeneio? I need to use the wi-fi.”

  “What’s that, Bronte?” he said. I noticed the notebooks around him again.

  “Didn’t you have a siesta?”

  He shook his head. “I tried to sleep, but my head was buzzing.”

  “What with?”

  “Just thinking about Kieran and this Dimitris guy. Wondering what I can do if he doesn’t turn up. Also, it’s curious, isn’t it, that you find that wee icon in your bag of Saint Dimitrios, and our best lead turns out to be a guy called Dimitris, and a plan to meet him at the feast day of the same saint. Spooky or what?”

  Funny how that had escaped my mind until then because I had heard it was a common name, but now Angus mentioned it, it was kind of interesting.

  “I told you in the beginning, remember, that you’d probably still be here for the saint’s day. And we saw it all in the coffee cup reading: the mountain, the cross. And Saint Dimitrios, I should add, was known for a few miraculous acts in his lifetime,” he explained.

  “Good, because it might take a miracle to get Crayton to give me another holiday extension. I have a feeling this time he’ll have a proper strop. And by the way, what are you doing with all those notebooks? Research?”

  “Just getting a few ideas down.”

  “For what?”

  He gave me a ‘no comment’ gesture, with the eyebrows flicking up.

  “Did you see Polly today?”

  “No, I didn’t go out in the end.”

  It was just what I thought, an excuse not to bother going out with Leonidas and me to lunch. It would probably have been better if he had.

  “I thought we should meet up with Polly when we go to Kalamata for the cardio’s appointment next week. I think I’ll call her,” I said.

  “If you like,” he said, sipping his beer with a vague expression on his face, as if his mind had been hijacked by aliens.

  I set out for the kafeneio. As I passed Leonidas’s house I noticed his car was still in the driveway. All the shutters in the house were closed. Probably sleeping still.

  Walking to the village in the hour just before sunset had become one of my favourite activities for its sense of wound-down magic. The sun, descending behind the Messinian peninsula opposite, had turned the sky pink and purple, and the sea glimmered a dark burgundy. It was still warm enough, with a jacket on, to sit outside in the plateia. There were a few tables with Greek families eating outside the taverna, the usual collection of expats chattering away over carafes of wine, and a table with an old Greek man dressed in black and the village papas, in his black robe and stovepipe hat. How normal it seemed for a priest to be engaging with a villager over a glass of wine and a few small plates of food. It was oddly comforting. I would need some comfort when I came to deal with Crayton.

  I took a table outside the kafeneio and Elpida came to sit with me and remarked on how good I looked.

  “You have colours now, Bronte,” she said, scrutinising my face closely, as only a Greek woman can, looking me up and down, all but taking my temperature. “Greece suits you.”

  I laughed. “You think so?” Like father, like daughter, I thought.

  “You a bit plump too, from good Greek food and olive oil, eh?”

  “Plump?” I didn’t feel plump but, for a picky eater, I was eating a lot more than I would normally. Too many cakes. I looked down and noticed I now had a bit of a tummy.

  I asked her what was happening about Myrto, as I hadn’t seen her for a few days.

  “Ach, Myrto, kaimeni! Poor woman! People coming to look at the land now. I hear someone is interested in buying it.” She lowered her voice and darted a look around the plateia. “You never guess … It’s a German, looking for a place to build nice holiday house.”

  In God’s name, how could she know that already? But I didn’t doubt the veracity of her sources.

  “We are already under the German boot with the austerity, the crisis, and now they want to buy up our village land too,” she said, with a lemony expression.

  I didn’t know why she was making such a fuss when there were already a few Germans in the village with holiday homes, unless it was an excuse to vent the national dislike of Germany. Naturally it had been sired during the devastating occupation of the Second World War, but stoked up again and growing every day because of the punishing role that Germany had taken in the economic demands foisted on Greece in return for bailout funds.

  It must have felt to the Greeks that their country was being occupied by Germany all over again. Many Greeks now believed the severity of the austerity measures was little more than the German payback for the Greek resistance during the war years. It was unfinished business and the antagonism had increased even more just the previous week, when Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Athens, on a goodwill mission ostensibly. But to locals it felt like she was flexing her muscles at the same time the Greek government was debating a new austerity package. So the idea of a German buying Myrto’s land would be anathema to many villages, I supposed.

  “Poor Myrto. How will she cope with all this?” I asked,

  With her arms crossed tightly over her chest, Elpida shrugged, her shoulders up to her ears. “Not so good. I hear that the German is being difficult. There are arguments with Hector. The German wants to cut down the price too. Everyone in the village is talking about it. She should have stayed in Australia. Should not have come back.”

  Elpida left for a short while and returned with a carafe of wine and a little plate of appetisers, which would suffice for dinner. I poured a measure of wine into the squat wine glass and drank it, firing up my laptop. I glanced towards the road and noticed Leonidas’s car was now parked near the church. Then I saw him walking towards the plateia. He looked in my direction and for a moment I thought he was about to come over. I glanced at the wine carafe. I would offer him a drink. Nothing wrong with that, to show there were no bad feelings between us from lunchtime.

  I glanced up again just as he was heading towards the back steps of the plateia. He waved in my direction and disappeared. Well, that was that! Had I really expected him to drop by after the embarrassment of the beach incident?

  I tapped into my message list and hit the reply button on the last email I’d had from Crayton and started typing. I drank wine and chewed the edge of my thumb. What lies could I tell now? Did I really want to jeopardise my job by asking for even more time off? Had I had too much Greek sun? I bit my thumb again. I had to go to the yiorti for Saint Dimitrios. Had to!

  Dear Crayton,

  This is just to let you know that I’m still researching that feature for you, working as fast as I can. I’ve got some fantastic material. It will be a cracker. You can’t imagine what the situation is like here, what Greek people are going through. However, I have to ask you a huge favour again. It’s to do with my father. We have had another appointment with the cardiologist and my father must now go to Athens straight away for a heart scan. They have no such equipment in Kalamata. Can you believe that – the capital of the southern Peloponnese? I will need to go with him. It means that I hav
e to stay here until the end of October, at least. He will certainly need treatment. God forbid he should require something like a heart bypass. I am very worried about him, so please let me know soonest if you can clear an extension with the editorial manager, and once again I apologise for leaning on the company’s generosity over this family problem, but it has become more serious than I thought.

  Kindest regards,

  Bronte

  I needed another drink after writing that piece of bogshite. That lie about the possible bypass! Good God, I now had Angus practically at death’s door! I hoped I wasn’t tempting fate. I sat and chewed my thumb a bit more and poured more wine into the glass. I downed that and poured another. Just as I was skulling it, I looked over the glass and caught sight of Leonidas again, walking back across the plateia, carrying what looked like a bakery bag. Volcanic loaves? His head was turned in my direction, a curious look on his face, his dark eyebrows mincing together. He didn’t wave this time but went straight to his car and roared off down the main road towards the sea, back to Kalamata, no doubt. I didn’t blame him. What a pathetic figure I must have cut: the prim woman who thinks a holiday romance is a punishable offence but is happy to sit alone with her computer on a Saturday night and get blootered on cheap village wine. Oh, what the hell! I poured another glass.

  I read Sybil’s email next.

  Dear Grecian Hen,

  Well that’s it! Sent out yesterday to do a news piece about neds putting traffic cones on Sir Walter Scott’s feckin head at the Princes St monument. Did you know it’s begun to rival the Wellington statue in Glasgow for number of cone misdemeanours? Who friggin cares, hen! I was doing this kind of shite 10 years ago. Writing to my Aussie uncle straight away. I’ve had it with the Alba. How’s it going in Greece? It must have been a hard decision eh? Giving up Edinburgh for all that sun and retsina. LOL. How’s it going with the Greek doc? If you haven’t made a move yet, you’re a bloody disgrace.

  Sybil XX