The Reluctant Baker (The Greek Village Collection Book 10)

by Sara Alexi

  But it is so few days before she returns home. Does she really want to spend that time telling this beautiful man the mistakes she has made, the loneliness of her life, the future she will have to live out in order to be adult and responsible for the consequences of her actions?

  It is all so messy and ugly. Can she not keep this pure?

  ‘We can be friends,’ she says. ‘I would deeply like to be your friend whilst I am here. Just enjoy each other’s company, but don’t ask me for more.’

  ‘Tough. I do not ask for your friendship, I ask for all of you. I ask for your body, your mind, your soul, your temper, your love, and to kiss your chocolate mustachio.’ And he leans forward and does just that.

  Chapter 15

  She did not pull away and she did not slap his face. Her lips remained soft and, even though the sensation was slight, he is sure they parted.

  ‘Loukas…’ She doesn’t say any more but she shakes her head. Her eyebrows raise in the middle, a glistening on her lower eyelash. She may even be trembling.

  ‘Tell me Ellie, agapi mou, tell me why you tremble.’ He waits but no further words come from her. The café and square are so noisy. The women who sit drinking coffee around them shout their welcomes to those who join them. Several yiayias shriek commands at their grandchildren, causing him to wince. Even the boys playing football seem to be shouting louder than usual.’ Do we need to go somewhere quiet? Would that help?’ Loukas asks, but Ellie looks down and sadly shakes her head. ‘How can I help?’ He reaches for her hands but she draws them back. Looking up, she meets his gaze and she holds him there. The sounds recede, the smell of coffee and expensive perfumes are no longer recognised by his senses. There is only her.

  ‘I am nineteen.’ She says as if it were a crime.

  Relief rushes over him and he smiles, begins to laugh. So big a deal about no problem at all! But there is no visible relief for her and his own tension returns, his laugh dies on his lips.

  ‘Last year, I was still at school.’ The tone of her voice implies there is more. Wiping all expression from his face, he leans forward to listen as closely as he can.

  ‘There was a teacher.’

  Telling him everything is the only natural and honest thing she can do, but it must be all the tale, not just the outcome. Explaining the taunting and teasing of Penny and Becky when they were meant to be her friends is easier than she imagined. Loukas moves his chair closer.

  ‘So when Mr Cousins invited them into the stock cupboard and they excluded me, it hurt. I felt rejected. It felt like Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Sunday lunch?’ Loukas asks. Ellie gives a small sigh. Sunday lunch is going to be harder to talk about than Marcus.

  ‘Sundays after my dad’s service—he’s a vicar—we had a big roast lunch. He was always so full of himself from preaching that he would continue it at the dinner table. Mum was up and down, in and out, carrying things to the table from the kitchen. I often thought she left things in the kitchen on purpose so she could get away when Dad started on one of his sermons. I would even offer to help, but she would wave me away and Dad would tell me to sit down. Then he would begin.

  ‘All my schoolmates would be out on a Sunday, hanging around, going shopping, at each other’s houses, trying on makeup. I can see what they were doing now, finding themselves, deciding how they wanted to be in the world. A day of freedom whilst I sat at home. Dad’s congregation of one. And as he talked, his eyes bore into me and his remarks became more and more personal, spitting about good and evil and the ways of the world, the loose morals of today’s teenagers, the way the girls dress with their short skirts and crop tops. It felt like condemnation and rejection of everything I was, or could be.’ Ellie tries to glance up to get some sort of reaction from Loukas but she cannot meet his eyes. Her cheeks feel like they are burning and she wants to stop talking but the words just keep coming out.

  ‘Each statement he would enforce with a tangible example.’

  It was normal. Normal as in it happened every Sunday and she cannot remember a time it did not happen. Maybe when she was very small, but she can remember it when her eighth birthday fell on a Sunday, so from way back. Mum witnessed it and said nothing, so it must have been normal. It was one of the things in life that just is and if she doesn’t like it, then it is her making fuss. But now, speaking it out loud to Loukas, thinking about what happened, it seems far from normal.

  ‘When he spoke of skirts being too short, if I had a skirt on, he would lean over and around the table leg and say ‘Skirts up to here!’ and he would push my skirt up and pull a face as if he was disgusted. No love, no thought, it was as if I, as a person, did not exist, or if I did, I was disgusting to him. If I had trousers on, his hand would run up my thigh to show me how high.’ Ellie can remember the many times when the laundry had not been done and she had no trousers on a Sunday, so she would sneak into the utility room whilst Mum was cooking, pull out a dirty pair, wear winter tights underneath no matter how hot the day.

  ‘And crop tops! He had this thing about crop tops.’ Swallowing is not helping the words to come out and the cold chocolate looks thick and gooey. ‘He would show me how high those were, too.’ She can say no more, but the memory of the back of Father’s hand pushing up under her breast, the edge of his little finger digging into her ribs to show her exactly how high. As she developed physically, she felt increasingly ugly. Her right to her own body violated, her breasts her enemies just for being there. Woolly jumpers did not help. She would grow hot, her face would grow red and sweat, and he would tell her to stop being so silly and take them off, refusing to carve the joint until she did so. The cabbage growing cold, a skin forming on the gravy. Then he would complain that the food was inedible and he would push it away until Mum got up and boiled fresh cabbage, the meat keeping warm in the oven, and the whole procedure would start again. There was no winning.

  ‘That is not right.’ Loukas’ words shock her. She looks up at him, feels a sense of hope but she is not sure what for. There is anger in his eyes. It is the first time she can recall someone siding with her, and it is very satisfying to see. No one has ever spoken a bad word against her saintly father before. ‘But this was not your fault, agapi mou. This is something to recover from. But it does not change what we have. I will not be like your baba. I will be respectful.’

  She could leave it there, holding onto the salvation he has offered from her father. He has forgotten what she was saying about Becky and Penny and Marcus, Mr Cousins. If she says no more, she can have an amazing two weeks.

  ‘There’s more.’ Damn her honesty. His face says tell me, and that he will not judge her.

  ‘Yes, your unkind friends and your teacher?’ Loukas has not forgotten.

  ‘Mr Cousins was not like the other teachers. He talked to us like we were people. He told us jokes and he made us feel like we were pretty, like we were women. Well, Penny almost was. She was the oldest in the year. I was the youngest, and it showed.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, Marcus, Mr Cousins, invited them into the stock cupboard and Becky pushed me back out, shutting the door behind them. There was giggling and talking, but all I could feel was that they had the same disgust in me as Father had shown. They found me unacceptable as he found me and I stood outside that closed door for a couple of minutes until I ran to the toilets. I stayed in the last cubicle until after lunch.’

  ‘That is very sad,’ Loukas says.

  She could still back out, still not tell him. At the moment, her tale is just sad. If she tells more, he will reject her just like Father, Becky, Penny, and Marcus.

  Forcing herself to take a drink of the cold chocolate, the sounds of the crowds around her become noticeable again. She lifts her head up and throws her hair back. There. She has control; she is done. She will say no more.

  ‘But there is more, yes?’ His words pull her back down. The noise around her recedes again, her shoulders curl over, her head drops, her elbows rest on her kn
ees. Loukas bows his own head and their hair touches. If she breathes regularly and focuses on the table leg, she will not cry.

  ‘He invited me into the cupboard.’ Loukas’ fingers find hers. ‘Because I felt excluded before, I agreed. But there was no Becky and no Penny with me. I was alone with him.’

  Loukas’ grip on her fingers tightens and then releases her to stroke her fingertips.

  ‘Marcus, Mr Cousins, showed me some of the designs for pots he was working on. It felt personal, intimate. I felt special. We stood shoulder to shoulder as he turned his notebook pages, on the shelf with his own personal pottery tools, spatulas, old dentistry tools in a box beside it. Then his hand was on my shoulder. Loosely, just resting. It crept up to my ear and his fingers played with my earlobe. I did not feel rejected. I felt as if he cared. Then his hand was on my leg, below my skirt hem, where Father would start with his sermon. I looked in his eyes, ready to face his rage, the rejection that I saw in my father when he did the same thing, but there was none. Then he pushed up my skirt. No sermon. It was like a release, an acceptance. His hand came away from my skirt and to my blouse. But it was not the back of his hand. It was the palm of his hand and it felt gentle. He kissed me lightly on the mouth.’ Loukas’ grip has grown tight again.

  The kiss was like those she had seen at the cinema. She was not sure she liked it. His tongue too insistent, she thought she might choke. His hand rushed from blouse to skirt and back, releasing feelings she had not come across before. It was exciting and frightening. One arm encircled her, his hand dropping lower, and he pulled her in tightly to his body. That scared her. Father’s sermons rolled around her head. She tried to push Mr Cousins off, to speak out, but his tongue was in her mouth. Dropping her head backwards, she said, ‘No!’ and he laughed as if she was joking. She said it again, and he pulled away long enough to reply, ‘Oh yes!’ and then she tasted clay as he stuffed a natural sponge in her mouth and pinned her arms. It was the shock more than anything that held her rigid in that moment.

  And that was all it took, his trousers dropping to the floor, his hips pinning her against the shelves. The wooden drawing boards digging into her back, her head banging against an upright and then the pain. It shot like a bolt through her but as it subsided, something else happened. She had no choice.

  Her hands reached out for him now, her mouth responded to his, she understood his tongue, she pulled at his hips and the colours she saw inside her mind, the waves of nerves that tremored into compulsive response took her away from all the struggles of the world until something came upon her, the like of which she had never felt before and everything—Father, Penny and Becky, and her A levels all juddered into oblivion and she was transported to, to…

  The stockroom door opened suddenly.

  He was not in her year, but Ellie recognised the boy. His mother arranged the flowers in the church and he stood there, mouth open.

  Marcus turned his head.

  The boy was gone.

  Marcus’ trousers were up.

  She pulled the sponge from her mouth.

  And that was the beginning of the hell.

  She is shaking all over in the telling of it. No one has asked her side of the events before. The reality sounds worse than she has led herself to believe.

  Loukas says nothing. His silence feels like concern at first and then she wonders if it is disgust. His fingers release hers. Blinking away tears, she looks up at him.

  His face does show disgust. She has lost him.

  ‘He was prosecuted? This disgusting paedophile?’ he says.

  ‘I was seventeen, nearly eighteen.’

  ‘He was your teacher!’ Loukas looks around him, at the people nearby, worried that his words have come out too loudly. His eyes do not rest. Instead, they look from one person to another, losing their focus as he does so until they rest, staring. His fingers clenching into his palm, he cracks his knuckles. Then he calms, looks at her, his hand reaches out, around the back of her neck, and he pulls her head so their foreheads touch.

  ‘Such a thing will never happen to you again. Not as long as I am nearby.’ It sounds like a promise as much to himself as to her. The feeling starts like a bubble of wind in her stomach, bouncing, increasing violently before it surges up and fills her chest. Her whole scalp relaxes and there is a sensation of something warm and silky being poured over all her thoughts and worries and memories. The chair she is sitting in is there to support her, the waiter is there to serve her, and she has every right to be in and part of this world.

  A small gasp escapes her and tears of gratitude well but do not fall. Could this be love?

  ‘It was terrible afterwards. Accusations, finger pointing, laughing.’ It’s easy to talk now.

  ‘Shhh.’ He puts his fingers to her lips. With no hurry, his lips replace them. She melts into his being and submerges in his love. She knows she has not told him everything but she has told him all the ugly bits, all the parts that disturb her the most, all the bits that would make him run away in revulsion and yet he is still here! She will tell him the aftermath but for now, she basks in acceptance and care.

  After what seems like both a second and an eternity, Loukas pays and they wander the streets hand in hand. The shops they look in are of no consequence, the ground under their feet is nowhere near solid. The sky above is vast and blue and they soar with the seagulls.

  As the afternoon grows hot, he suggests they go back to the village to sleep, and they take a taxi. But they do not go to the hotel. They are dropped in the square and he leads her up the steep road that she climbed before to sit in the shade of the pines looking over the village.

  Leaning back on her hand, her face lifted to the sun, her beauty shines. How strong she is to rise above what has happened to her. Like a phoenix from the fire. A true goddess that the mortals tried to sacrifice. How could she think that what has happened to her would turn him against her?

  He moves closer, their arms touching. The village lays sleepy under the blanket of midday heat, and beyond, the land shimmers in the sun but all he can see is Ellie. His arm around her shoulders, his fingers caressing her hair, so warm, so alive.

  He is not sure who makes the move first, but her lips are on his again. Her face is in his hands, but her lips are moving fast. Are they eager or are they scared? Pulling away to look in her eyes, he seeks her hands with his own and holds her still. She gets the message. Letting go, she moves slower, as he does. Each moth-like touch is a sharing of tenderness, the delicacy of respect, the gentleness of love. He wants to know her, to give to her but there is no final aim, no conclusive place to which he wants to get. He is fulfilled exactly where he is; it is enough to hold her. That is all the fireworks he desires.

  They lay side by side. The heat of the day is making him sleepy and he drifts. With his eyes closed, all he can trust to be real is the sensation of touch, so he explores. His hands, his lips, her hand, her lips, the one becomes the other. His shirt is gone, her shoes kicked off, and he is lost, absorbed into her as she is into him. He offers his care, his strength, his honesty, his truth. In return, she becomes softer, like liquid running warmly through his hands, malleable to his every touch, so precious he feels honoured. Her dress lies amongst the pine needles, his trousers kicked by his shoes, the touch of their skin sending him to fly with the gods, her breath in his ear a thousand secrets of all the past lives they must have lived together. He wants to offer her more, offer all of himself.

  With slow movements, they shift and change until, with no expectation or effort, they fuse and at the moment of fusion they freeze, looking into each other’s eyes. He holds her gaze to reassure himself that this is what she wants, and the look she returns is asking, no, seeking affirmation that he is playing no game.

  ‘My love, agapi mou,’ is all he can find to say to express how deep his feelings run and then she moves and he recalls that they are one, the rhythm of life joining them, the mist in his mind swirling. He is on fire. He was born for this
moment. The fireworks are there, the lightning, the soaring, the quickening, the anticipation, and then, then he is lost and she is there with him.

  A dog barks. Its lonely sound echoes throughout the village. It receives no reply and the cicadas dominate. Seven years cicadas spend in the ground, as grubs, living no life at all, no sun, no warmth, no sight, just existing. That was him. A grub in the ground, just existing. Then the cicada grubs emerge from the ground and they climb, they climb anything they can find, the higher the better, up grass stalks, trees, walls, anything that takes them upwards to the light and there they cast off their old skins, their casings. The eyes uncover, and they can see; their new wings uncurl and they can fly. They are truly alive.

  He too can see now; he too has wings now. Like the singing, winged cicada, he is ready to fly. But unlike the cicada, poor thing, he does not only have a few brief days of summer to find his love and create their children. They, poor ugly bugs, have a few days and then life is snuffed out. That’s all the time the cicadas are allotted, then they fall from the trees, they even fall mid-flight. There is no reprieve. But he can fly for decades. They have years to create their children; there is no hurry. There is no need to sing at the top of his voice to find his mate. She is here. But he wants to sing anyway. He wants to shout. To let the world know that he and Ellie have met.

  He looks over to her. She is staring at the sky with a smile that reaches her eyes.

  ‘Marry me,’ Loukas whispers.

  Chapter 16

  She laughs, her back arching as she does so. Twisting on her side, she rests her head on her elbow and her merriment fades when she meets his eye.