A Saint for the Summer

by Marjory McGinn

  I have darker thoughts as well when I’m stuck here, though the family give me plenty to eat and sometimes a bit of wine they make themselves. I can spend time with them upstairs when there’s no one about. That’s braw, but up on the hill, I feel better. I take my notebook and scribble and draw. The family gave me clothes so I’d look Greek. I think I look more like a highland teuchter. They say my army kit has been well hidden, and I’ve ditched my ID discs down a ravine. Now nobody will know who I am. They’re right taken with my hair. I’ve let it grow, and I’ve a wee scruffy beard. They can’t say my name so they’ve given me a Greek one, Kostas. I like it. Kostas McKnight. I might even keep it when this flamin war is over.

  May 20

  Stayed the last three days in the house. I’ve not been out at all. The father said Jerries have been close by in villages below. I guess they might come up here some time looking for escapees, even though they’d be as skunnered with that mule track as we were. Or maybe they won’t find it. At night can’t sleep much. The basement floor is hard. I can light a candle though and scribble. The sound of the donkey snuffling nearby is right comforting. I miss Raymond’s company, even his mad bam talk. I wonder if he found a boat. Begin to wonder if I should have gone with him after all.

  I think about the old folks on the farm and Lily most of all. What I wouldn’t give to be back home. Wish I could get a letter to her. Tell her how much I love her and miss her bonnie face, her douce wee smile. I worry I’ll never see her again. It fires me up to move on. Can’t stay here forever. Panayotis’ map shows paths down through the gorge, up the other side and down the peninsula avoiding the coast road. Have to go. Can’t risk the lives of this family. They’ve been good to me. Like my own. The son Dimitris is a braw laddie, like a brother to me. If the Jerries find me here, they’re as doomed as me. That’s why I go up to the cave when I can. Keep out of their way, plan my next move.

  May 26

  I’m up in the cave. I’ve been coming up here a lot in the past few days. It’s quiet. No sign of Jerries. Panayotis and his sons are away today so I’m free to stay out all day if I want. I’m beginning to know every crack in this foosty old place. Here’s a wee sketch to prove it. (Kieran had included a small sketch of the cave underneath the entry. The inside of the cave and himself, sitting on the ground, his notebook on his knees.) It’s been dreich the day, rain first thing in the morning, not the soft smirring rain of Scotland. It was a proper load o rain, just dingin doon for ages. When it rains here, it rains. I poked my head out the cave just now and walked a bit to where you can look down the length of the mountains. My favourite spot. Deep grey sky but the sun broke through the clouds a minute. What a bonnie sight the mountains were, misty and lit up in places. Light and shade. I’ve just done a wee sketch of that as well.

  I’ve finally decided I’ll set off in two days’ time. I think the father understands what I’m wanting but he’s got another idea. Thinks he can smuggle me down the zigzag track on a mule, looking like a local and drop me at the town of Kambos to some of his family where I can hide a bit before I move further south. I don’t like that idea. If he gets caught with me, he’s finished. Even writing this notebook is a risk. If the Jerries found it, and just supposing they read English, they’ll know everything. I’ve got a secret place to hide it in the rocks, high up if I hear anyone coming. If I go ahead with my plan I know the father can give me supplies to take and addresses of some Greek folk on the way to help me. It will keep my mind busy. I need to do this. I have this feeling if I stay, something bad will happen. Och, there are some moments when I’ve never felt more feart and more alone in my whole life and I am

  The text stopped abruptly. It chilled me that he hadn’t finished the sentence. It must have been then that he heard the Germans approaching, got up and hid his notebook, then tried to make his escape. Too late! As I held the notebook, my eyes filled with tears. I felt desperately sad for this wonderful grandfather I had never met who, just a few weeks ago, had been a phantom in my life, but now seemed achingly real, so full of promise and longing and who, despite his fears, still thought of others.

  I put the notebook on the chest of drawers beside the icon of Saint Dimitrios. It seemed appropriate. In my mind, these were two brave souls, sired by the same life force many centuries apart. Both had aimed to be liberators but became martyrs. One has a cathedral named after him in Thessaloniki and his life is celebrated every October in a blaze of glory. The other had been stored away in a church ossuary on a Greek mountainside, never to be discovered – until now.

  I thought again about what Dimitris had pondered: why Panayiotis had put the notebook in the reliquary, as if to bury it forever more. I couldn’t figure it either, unless maybe Panayiotis wanted to bury the horrors of their past life in the war, before they embarked on a new one. Perhaps he wanted his younger son, in particular, to make a clean break with Platanos and the memory of what would have been one of the saddest experiences of his young life. Perhaps that was more important than hanging onto the notebook. I accepted that the Maneas family were simple farming people with no education and not much idea about the world. They’d had their own cataclysms, and Dimitris especially, fighting in the civil war. Once in America, as the years passed, they would have given little thought perhaps to the young soldier they had once known and to his clandestine ‘scribblings’, apart from lighting a candle in the village to his memory every so often.

  I didn’t really feel remorse for Panayiotis’s oversight. In the end, helped by fate, and good timing, I now held the notebook in my hands; my first real contact with my grandfather’s life, even if I bitterly regretted that he never got to flee through the mountains and onward to Crete; to make it home to his beloved Lily. How different our lives might have been if he had. But right at that moment, it didn’t matter very much. We had the notebook. We had brought Kieran ‘home’.

  Chapter 25

  Myrto’s landing

  On Sunday morning there was a loud knocking on the door. I looked at the clock: it was 10am. I had slept in after sitting up late poring over Kieran’s notebook. I reached for my dressing gown and went to the front door. Myrto was outside, dressed in her farm clothes. She looked me up and down.

  “Did I wake you, Bronte? You sleep late. You sick?”

  “No, no, come in.”

  She bustled into the sitting room, gazing about her. “Where is Angus?”

  “Ah, you haven’t heard. He went to the hospital last night. Chest pains. I feared he was having a heart attack, but he’s okay. He’s staying with … a friend in Kalamata.”

  “Po, po, po! I am sorry to hear this.”

  “Sit down, Myrto. I’ll fix some coffee.” She sat down at the dining table.

  “I know you prefer Greek coffee, but I can’t get the hang of it.”

  “It’s okay. I drink all the coffees. I am woman of the world,” she said, patting her chest.

  She sipped quickly, her eyes gleaming over the top of her mug. She seemed enervated.

  “I feel as if you have something to tell me, Myrto.”

  “I have news,” she beamed. “My land is bought finally. Guess who buys it?”

  “Not the German?”

  “No, thanks be to God.” She crossed herself and waited a moment to ramp up my interest.

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “LEONIDAS!” she shrieked. I was speechless. “You see. You react like Myrto. What the hell going on, eh? He calls me last night from Athens to tell me. He puts in better offer than German. And he doesn’t worry about boundaries and all that. He knows what he is buying. He says he wants it for a particular reason and that I can still do trees.” She smiled vibrantly.

  “So … he has done you a great favour,” I said, feeling pleased that Leonidas had apparently acted with honour despite Myrto’s antipathy towards him.

  She blew air through her lips, puffing them out. “I just don’ know, Bronte. Leonidas is a cunning man. He gets one piece and later he will wan
t the other bit with house too. He will push me out.”

  “No, Myrto, you judge him too harshly. He’s got other things in his life to worry about than doing a massive land-grab in the village. And he’s going to England soon.”

  She flipped her eyebrows up. No comment on that.

  “What does he have planned for the land? Did he say?”

  “He says he will tell me soon. But I still lost a piece of my land.”

  “But that’s not the fault of Leonidas, is it? And he’s got Hector out of your hair finally. Think positively!”

  “Okay. I try to think great bonza things like they say in Aussieland,” she said, skulling her coffee and bouncing out the door as if she’d just shrugged a great weight off her shoulders. I thought about her news and marvelled that Leonidas, yet again, had proved to be so contrary. I was now eager to learn what his plans were for the land. As it happened, I didn’t have to wait long.

  An hour or so later, there was another knock at the door. “Kalimera, Bronte,” said Leonidas, standing on the doorstep and wishing me good morning, dressed in a smart suit. He must have been to church.

  “I heard about Angus and I have come to see him. Is he okay?”

  “He’s not here. He’s in Kalamata, staying with a friend.”

  “With Polly?” Of course, he was shrewd enough to have sussed that out. I nodded.

  I invited him in. The place was untidy, though he didn’t seem to notice. We sat at the dining table. He refused any refreshments, apart from a glass of water. He couldn’t stay long.

  “Why didn’t you call me about Angus?” he asked.

  “I would have, but I knew you were in Athens.”

  “You could have left a message on my mobile,” he said, tipping his head slightly to the side, in a quizzical fashion.

  “I know, but I was in a panic.”

  “Is he all right?”

  I updated him on what the hospital doctor had said.

  “Well, I am not very surprised, but I am glad he didn’t have a heart attack. If he had, it might have been fatal. And he must make that appointment for the angiogram. It’s very important now.”

  “I’ll remind him when he gets back today. You can call back and see him later, if you like.”

  “I may not have time. Phaedra is flying back to London this afternoon and I will take her to the airport.”

  Well, that wasn’t bad news at least.

  “Myrto told me this morning that you have bought her land. That’s amazing news.”

  He smiled, with that little twitch of his bottom lip. “Not for her perhaps.”

  “I know you two don’t seem to get on, but this is much better for her, far better than the German buying it. And she says she can still harvest the trees.”

  “Myrto has always imagined I am against her, and I am not. She can be paranoid, I am afraid, about male intentions. Her husband was a ... ” For once he was lost for a word.

  “Malakas,” I said, filling in the gap. ‘Wanker’.

  He laughed. “You are learning all the worst Greek, I see. But you are right. And Myrto has some strange rural ideas. There are divisions in these villages, and Platanos, as you have discovered. Jealousy, resentment, anger. It’s all there. I try not to get involved in these things. Sometimes Myrto thinks I am malakas as well.” He shrugged majestically.

  “No! Not quite. But in any case, she is so happy about the olive trees.”

  “Good. But my main motive in buying was not to help Myrto, though I’m happy it does. My brother’s son, Angelos, who is 25, is drifting, like so many young people now. He had a job in Athens and then lost it when the company went out of business because of the crisis. He decided to come back to Kalamata, where my brother lives, but still he is drifting. My brother worries about him. Then Angelos decided he wanted to be a farmer for a while. Many young people are going back to their family’s roots, especially in the Mani, for security.

  “So I thought this was a good opportunity to buy Myrto’s land and do something to help my family. My brother also put some money in and we got it for a good price. Hector just wanted quick money. I haven’t discussed all of it yet with Myrto, but she is an expert at olive harvesting. Her problem is that she can’t do it all herself. There are about 600 trees. She never does all of them and many of them are in a wild state. My nephew will learn how to prune the trees, harvest the olives. It’s a big job but I think something could be made of it. They can sell the oil and divide the profits,” he said, smiling broadly.

  “It’s a great plan, Leo, for everyone. It’s just a pity you won’t get many opportunities to see how the olive venture is doing while you are in England.” Slogging it out in some dingy, over-subscribed health centre, I thought.

  He looked away and fiddled with his silver watch strap.

  “Well, actually, I’m not going to England now,” he said casually.

  “Really?” I didn’t have time to hide my surprise.

  “I’ve never been sure about it, to tell you the truth, but lately, less sure,” he said, pushing an errant curl away from his forehead.

  “Why is that?”

  “It may sound strange to you, but the experience in Platanos, that incredible outcome with Kieran. It caused me to think a lot. About my life here. Things I am not really able to explain to you. But I would miss Greece, I know that, and my son in Athens, too, whom I saw yesterday. Too many things. And I see how people like you and Angus, foreigners, love my country, and yet I was in a great hurry to desert it.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever said I was in love with Greece, but maybe some little infatuation was beginning to show.

  “I think you’re doing the right thing, Leo. Greece needs good doctors like never before. I am happy for you.” Except I wasn’t. “What about Phaedra?” I asked. “Will she return to Greece then?”

  He shut his eyes briefly, as if he were pained. “No! She likes life in England. We have decided to end things. It cannot work. Neither of us feels we can make enough commitment to be in the same place together.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, forcing a grieved expression. I wasn’t sorry at all.

  “I am relieved, actually. Now I have made a decision and I will have the satisfaction of keeping my eyes on Angelos and Myrto. It will be a nice project, I think.”

  “A perfect plan,” I said.

  “Almost, perhaps. But may I say my one regret will be that you will be leaving soon for Scotland. How nice if you were staying longer and I could finally show you around the region.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t fess up about my redundancy and that I’d be staying a bit longer. Maybe I just needed time to digest everything I’d heard that morning. The break with Phaedra had changed things. The incident on the beach now had a less negative spin on it than before, but for now it was safer to make him think I was leaving soon.

  “Maybe we still have time for sightseeing before you go?” he said.

  “Perhaps.”

  He got up to leave and took my hand, squeezing it lightly. He was about to say something when we heard keys rattling in the front door. Then it opened, with Angus and Polly breezing in. They looked surprised when they saw us.

  “Leonidas called around to see how you are, Angus. Now you can tell him yourself,” I said, moving off to the kitchen with Polly, while Leonidas sat on the sofa with Angus to talk about the health scare.

  “So, you’ve been busy, Bronte?” she whispered, her eyes flickering back towards the sitting room. There was a charming, minxy side to Polly that was coming to the fore the more I got to know her. But today there was something else in her look that I couldn’t quite place.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said. “He came over to find out about Angus.”

  “Oh, really? Well, it’s good that he did because your father wants to discuss something with him about Kieran. He wants to have an interment of Kieran’s remains in the graveyard in Marathousa. He will have to talk to the papas and will need permissi
on from the church since Kieran was not Orthodox, and from the village council. It will be good if Leonidas can help him with all the red tape, as you say in English.” Leonidas continued to be the go-to man for every eventuality and I wondered how we would ever have got anything done without him.

  He left not long afterwards and Angus went on chattering about the arrangements. He seemed to have had a sudden gust of energy since the hospital visit and was wasting no time in sorting out the fate of Kieran’s remains. We agreed the burial in Marathousa was a good plan and better than Kieran spending an eternity in a mountain ossuary so close to where he had spent his final tormenting hours.

  “We will have some closure at last, Bronte, and other people can come here in time and pay their respects if they want,” said Angus.

  Closure. It was a word I never thought I’d hear. Now the arrangements were coming upon us so quickly. I told Angus and Polly about Leonidas buying Myrto’s land. They listened with increasing amazement.

  “I did think all along he was the most logical buyer, to be honest,” said Angus. “I just didn’t think he’d do it in the end.”

  “Is he still going to England?” asked Polly.

  “No. He’s staying here. And he and Phaedra have called things off.”

  “Well, I never!” said Angus, exchanging a look with Polly. She got up and went over to the kitchen to pour some cold drinks. Angus leaned towards me, whispering, “I heard some even better news yesterday. Polly let slip about your redundancy. You should have told me before, Bronte. But no harm done. Best news I’ve heard for weeks. Now you can stay as long as you like.”

  “A little while, yes.”

  “She didn’t mean to tell me. An innocent slip.” But I wondered about that. I imagined Polly would have wanted Angus to know what I’d just given up to have this adventure in Greece.

  “No harm done,” I said.

  “Well everything’s slotting into place now,” said Angus, rubbing his hands together.