“You know the best thing about this church, about sitting here?” he said at last. I shook my head, assuming he was trying to change the subject. “All you see is Kalamata and the gulf. It’s peaceful. You can’t see Platanos. It’s out of the frame. Even though I was not born there and didn’t suffer the hardships there, I had no pull towards it. In some ways, it has shadowed me throughout my life.”
“But you’ve allowed it to do that by not being honest, surely. From the beginning you tried to discourage Angus and me from digging around in Platanos. You wanted to hush up the truth. And Pavlos from the pantopoleio. He knew something of the story, didn’t he? At least that an allied soldier had been shot there, even if he didn’t know all the details. But he told us he knew nothing.”
“I can’t speak for Pavlos. Perhaps he did not want to open up a difficult subject and with foreigners he did not know. The villagers are loyal and they are reserved. I think I told you that. But I was wrong to try to influence you. I have been wrong about many things, Bronte. I have been guilty of feeling too proud. My grandparents were too old to talk about such things, but I, and my father, should have been honest, you’re right. We should have confessed the whole story of the betrayal because it was bound to come out in the end. Nothing is secret forever in Greek villages, as you know. I think Myrto has always known the truth, somehow. And perhaps it’s why she dislikes me and my family.”
If that was really true, it maddened me that even Myrto had pretended to know nothing about soldiers being hidden in Platanos when I asked her one day. But I knew so little about Greek feelings of honour and shame. I knew so little about any of this. How could I judge anyone?
“I understand what you say, Leonidas, I do. I just wish you’d told me before Polly did.”
He looked chastened. None of this could have been easy for him, and I began to feel a tiny bit sympathetic, or perhaps my anger was abating. He sensed that moment of weakness and put his hand over mine. I pulled my hand away.
“I am sorry if you feel I deceived you. I hope we can put this behind us. It was an unforgivable thing Nikos did, but it’s in the past. You know, if every Greek were to be punished for the sins of their ancestors in our long, turbulent history, there would be no-one left untouched.”
I smiled at that comment. I guessed that was true enough.
“I hope that we can continue to see each other before you leave for Scotland. Will that be soon?”
I decided to finally confess the redundancy and how I would stay in Greece long enough to get Angus sorted before I went back to find another job.
Leonidas said, “Well, since we’re talking about honesty, I must confess that your father told me today when we met to discuss the burial, about you losing your job.”
“Oh, did he now? That old goat!” I said, shaking my head. He smiled, but no more than the little twitch of his lower lip.
“I’m sorry about your bad news and even sorrier that you’re still leaving Greece … just when I have decided to stay,” he said with a light shrug.
His comment pleased me and the fact that he felt something for me perhaps. But my mind was made up.
“I believe you would have told me the truth about Nikos in the end. I believe you’re an honourable man, Leo, but I’m still leaving, soon. The timing is all wrong. I feel that our friendship is doomed by these historic events.”
“Doomed?” he said, turning towards me, looking perplexed. A lock of hair danced over his wrinkled brow. “I don’t see it like that. On the contrary, I find it all very favourable. And the timing – amazing!”
“How so?”
“How can I explain this …” he said, rubbing his chin and muttering in Greek, one of the very few times he seemed stuck with his English. “Don’t you see? The fact that you and I … our destinies have been entwined from the time of the war when Kieran came here. It was set down. Your grandfather and Nikos, tangled in the mess of history in Platanos. Angus and then you, finally coming here at this time … We were meant to meet. Our destinies have been drawing together even before we were born. Not just in a haphazard way, but very specific. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? No, it is katapliktiko, fantastic!”
He stared at me, his eyes imploring me to see the logic, the beauty in it. And I did. Fate had definitely had a starring role all along. It also occurred to me that, ironically, if Panayiotis had kept Kieran’s notebook instead of placing it in the reliquary in 1949, and if he had managed to trace our family and somehow return it, I wouldn’t be sitting here at this chapel talking with Leonidas. It was one of the curious twists and turns of fate.
“Okay, I admit the whole thing is amazing, spooky almost, but I thought you didn’t believe in fate, Leo? You once told me you were a man whose head ruled his heart. You said, ‘I can’t say I put much faith in destiny’. Remember?”
He shut his eyes and sighed. “Yes … I think I did say that once when I spoke of Phaedra. As a man of science, I have had a more pragmatic view of life. I have believed in the law of cause and effect, not chance, or destiny. But since Friday, I have changed my mind.”
“Are you serious? You really believe everything you’ve just said about us, and destiny?”
“Yes, of course. And it just confirmed what I felt anyway. I’ve liked you since I first met you, even though I didn’t want to. There was Phaedra and it was muddled, but I kept wanting to see you. And the day on Kitries beach. I confess − it was not a ‘thing of the moment’, Bronte. I tried to justify my lack of control. That was wrong. For me it was something very special. When Phaedra came back to Kalamata recently, I knew it was never going to work with her and I already had strong feelings for you, Bronte. I also realised that I could never leave Greece. My destiny is also tangled up with this country, even though some of it is difficult – like Nikos’s betrayal.”
I flinched this time when he said that name. I thought back to what Polly had said, that it would always cast a dark shadow over us. Leonidas seemed to pick up on my mood, and sighed heavily.
“I know that everything that happened to your poor grandfather is very raw for you still. But I believe you should not carry the past around like a burden. You have to let it go. There are things I don’t understand about the past, about Greece, about my family, things that make me furious and ashamed, like Nikos’s unforgivable act, but if you let it take a hold of you it will ruin your whole life. These past events that we didn’t cause, they are not worthy of robbing us of our present, or future. Don’t you agree, Bronte?”
After a heartbeat of silence, I told him, “Yes, I think I do.”
I didn’t look at him. My eyes began to prickle with tears, not for the first time in these past few days, as if the water table of my miseries had been sitting far too high of late. Leonidas sat quietly, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the gulf again and the way a sudden easterly wind had brought in a phalanx of silver-tipped waves. Close to the eastern shore, a large fishing boat trailed past on its way to Kalamata and in its glittering wake, a flock of hungry gulls swooped over discarded fish.
With all the rancour spent, it was peaceful sitting side by side, not feeling the need to talk any more. It was enough just to be there, on that hillside. I might have liked that moment to last much longer, but Leonidas finally checked his watch. “I should go. I have to return to Kalamata soon.”
“I’ll walk down with you.”
We stood up and yet neither of us was eager to leave. I touched his arm. “What you said, Leo, about our tangled destiny. It was really beautiful. But … I need time to really think about it … about everything.”
There was a challenging look in his eyes. “Ah, that’s the difference between non-Greeks and Greeks. You must push a thing aside until you’re ready to make a decision, while we Greeks make one straight away and act on it. We live in the moment.”
“But I can be Greek, I assure you,” I said.
He laughed, as if the idea was slightly ridiculous. “Prove it then.”
&
nbsp; I stepped towards him and kissed him. His lips were sun-warmed and sweet. He put his arms around me and kissed me back, but with much more passion, like the day at the Kitries cove: a kiss I had played out in my mind many times since then. But in reality, this was unimaginably better. If this glorious scene was meant to be, as he so eloquently put it, then fate was a saint in my eyes.
We left the church and descended to the village, walking back to Villa Anemos. When we were level with his house, I found I didn’t want to say goodbye.
“What do you have to do in Kalamata? Another surgery?”
“No, something else, but it can wait, I think,” he said, with a wink. “Come to the house. We will have an afternoon swim. It’s warm and sheltered in the garden.”
I didn’t have my swimming costume with me, of course. But would I really need it?
“And there will be no talk of leaving Greece, okay?” he said, leading me towards the imposing front door of his house.
“Not today perhaps,” I said with a smile, looking behind me towards the mountains, where small fluffy clouds were hovering over the highest peaks. Platanos was up there but I couldn’t see it. Just like Leonidas, I didn’t care. Platanos had played its part. We were done with it.
Chapter 27
A saint rides on
“You look fantastic, 10 years younger, and nothing like a Greek papas,” I said when Angus walked into the sitting room, dressed in a well-cut black suit, his ponytail finally shorn, his hair bobbed to just below his chin and soft and shiny.
“Not bad, eh? The make-over was Polly’s idea: the suit, the hair, of course. I went along with it. I thought she’d probably ditch me in the end if I went on looking like a clarty old bam.” We laughed and I told him that at least he looked more presentable for his appointment the following week at an Athens hospital. He groaned and I knew it was only the fact that Polly had offered to drive us there that took the edge off his anxiety.
For Kieran’s interment, Papa Lambros from the village had agreed to perform a small service in the church of the Anastasis in the plateia, and then a blessing later in the nearby graveyard. We had been offered a corner plot by the villagers. Plots in the small graveyard were scarce, but Kieran would be honoured as a hero of the Battle of Kalamata. We were assured he would rest there for an ‘eternity of eternities’. He would have a headstone finally, instead of a name scrawled on a box in a mountain village. We agreed to have his name carved: Kieran ‘Kostas’ McKnight and the word ‘filellinas’. ‘Friend of Greece’. I think he would have liked that. Marcella had already written to say that she and Shona would come out in the spring to visit the grave and to see how Angus was faring. Or to quote Marcella, “If Odysseus won’t go home after 10 years, then home must come to him.”
We stood by the front door for a moment before we left. “You look lovely, Bronte,” he said, running an eye over my patterned grey dress and black jacket. I felt a sense of calmness I hadn’t felt for a long time.
“I can’t believe this day has come. It’s a miracle really,” Angus said.
“I can’t either, Dad.”
He looked at me, his eyebrows arching in surprise. “You just called me ‘Dad’.”
“Yes, I believe I did.”
“Thank you, Bronte. Despite what you might have thought, I have always been your Dad. I have always thought about you.”
“I know. We’re over all that now. We’re moving on.”
“I’m so glad you decided to come here. Greece suits you. You look transformed. And maybe it has something to do with Leonidas as well. Am I right?” he said, with a wink.
I laughed. “You’re going to embarrass me now.”
“Well, he’s a great guy. I always said that. Despite what his great uncle – that feckin’ traitor – did to Kieran.”
“I know, but don’t upset yourself.” I’d had to tell Angus about Nikos Pantazis before Kieran’s burial service because I didn’t want him to hear it from anyone else.
“Och, it’s all history now, anyway,” said Angus, with a shrug.
“Come on,” I said, guiding him outside. “Let’s go and put Kieran to rest.”
We walked arm in arm along the road. The sky was an azure blue, but it was slightly cooler now, with a northerly wind. The Little Summer of Saint Dimitrios, as the Greeks describe an Indian summer in October, had finally ended.
As we walked, our shoes kicked up the dust. Wild purple cyclamen were growing amid the rocks at the edge of the road. A church bell tolled: a deep mournful note. It was like a re-run of my first day when I heard the funeral bell. Now it was tolling for my own grandfather. Angus must have thought the same. He squeezed my arm a little tighter.
“You know something, Bronte. You’ve been asking me so many times why I ran off to Greece, and I told you I didn’t absolutely know, and that’s the truth. Yes, it had something to do with Kieran, but not as much as you might have thought. But now that we’ve found him, I feel vindicated. The past 10 years have meant something after all. And I haven’t just found a father either. I’ve reclaimed a daughter as well. I must be the luckiest man alive. Give me a hug, pet.”
And so we did, on the road to the village. A big, powerful hug. Angus’s words touched me. I felt that it had taken a foreign land for me to discover that I loved my father more now than at any time in my life. That I loved my life more now that I had lost the things I considered had value, like ambition, career and my small place in the world, and found greater happiness in simple pleasures.
The church was packed and an overflow of people had spread out onto the plateia. By now everyone knew what we had been doing in Platanos. They knew about Kieran’s fate. They even knew about Leonidas’s great uncle. He had said that everyone should know the whole story of what happened in the past and that it was another example of how bad times in Greece could harden the hearts of men and turn ordinary villagers into monsters. I wasn’t the only one in the village who admired his sense of honour, his filotimo, as the Greeks would say.
There had been much talk and excitement in the village about this special service. Nothing like this had happened for quite a while and some people who had left Platanos years ago for neighbouring villages and towns had made the trek to Marathousa to pay their respects. A young reporter from a local paper had turned up with a photographer to record the event.
In the church I saw all the people I had come to know in the village: Miltiades and his family, and Myrto, who now looked less like a goat farmer and more like a Sydney matron in a dark tweedy suit with a string of pearls at her neck. Elpida was also smartly dressed, her eyes roaming the assembled crowd for some interesting lapse of propriety that she might spool into a piece of gossip later on. Why waste a great occasion?
We sat in the front row with Polly and Leonidas. Dimitris was there too. He had changed the date of his return flight to America. Adrianos Zografos was also present. He had been ecstatic that our contact with Orestes had been the catalyst for this great day. I had no idea what the service was about, only that it was sombre. On a table before the ornamental screen, a new carved box, containing Kieran’s remains, was set alongside a photo of him and some flowers. Angus stood on one side of me, and Leonidas on the other. I felt a rush of gratitude for this day of closure that had been 71 years in the making.
While it was a ceremony defined by closure, it was also underwritten by exciting new beginnings. During a particularly devotional piece of the service my hand brushed against Leonidas’s and he entwined his fingers delicately through mine.
Papa Lambros swung his censer towards the congregation. A swirl of incense funnelled its way up to the dome of the church, where an imposing fresco of Christ the Pantocratoras, ‘the All Powerful One’, kept vigil. From every wall in the church, the Byzantine frescos of saints looked down with stoical benevolence. Then my eyes fell on one in particular: the image of Saint Dimitrios, gallant in his blue cape, riding his russet-coloured horse, spearing his own particular ‘dragon’. I had spe
ared quite a few of my own in the past weeks, and I felt his triumph amid my own in the happiest little summer of my life.
Epilogue
On the Monday after the service, Angus was admitted to a hospital in Athens for his heart scan, which showed that two of his coronary arteries were almost completely blocked. It was a miracle, the cardiologist said, that he hadn’t yet had a heart attack. It would have been very imminent. But after some intervention to his arteries, he was discharged, with a few more pills added to his collection. Angus has been hard at work on his book about the Battle of Kalamata and is happier than I could have imagined. While I agreed in theory to be a co-writer, I left him to the project and he’s making good progress. I wanted time to explore the region with Leonidas, as he promised, and to swim in secret coves before winter set in. I needed to discover how many more interesting cures there might be for jellyfish stings.
I didn’t go back to Scotland. After one of my freelance stories on the Greek crisis was published in the Sunday magazine of a London newspaper, it led to more commissions, which meant that for the foreseeable future, I would be busy. Sybil wrote to me from Australia, saying she wondered why she hadn’t moved there years earlier. She is now engaged to a wealthy sheep farmer who owns a quarter of New South Wales.
Myrto is now ‘bladdy happy’ for once. She took Angelos, the new harvesting rookie, under her considerable wing, teaching him how to spot a dud olive. He’s taken to the new job with gusto and has learnt not only how to swear like an Aussie, but also to ride Zeus the donkey, with no arguments.
Marathousa is my home now. I have no need of any other, unless a second, errant Greek saint decides to have a funny turn and take up residence in my handbag, sending my life on a different trajectory. But what would be the likelihood of that?
Sto kalo.
Go to the good.
THE END
Acknowledgements
A Saint for the Summer Page 29
