by Sara Alexi
‘Yes, and look, it has taken three and a half weeks, to be exact, for that help to come.' Juliet laughs, her head tipping back. The sun finds a way through a gap in the vines that wind around the pergola above her head and she closes her eyes, enjoying the warmth on her face.
'Well, sometimes we all need excuses instead of asking for what we want,' Miltos replies, and she can tell without even looking at him that he is smiling as he talks.
'And what is it that you want?'
It is a little direct for banter, but why not push him, see what he is made of?
'We are discovering – are we not?' He doesn't miss a beat with his reply.
'Smooth,' Juliet says, and she takes a sip of her drink, keeping her eyes on him as she does so. He is grinning in return, his dark eyes so full of mischief. It would be easy to let their relationship go further, but, she comforts herself, she is no longer that foolish. Take it slowly – after all, where is the rush?
'So, back to Poppy,' she prompts.
'Well, if she is not wanting to learn English, what does she want?' Miltos says.
'I don't know – what?' Juliet expects him to have an answer.
'I don't know either, but there is only one way to find out.'
He is waiting for her to say something. She won’t. He wants her to say, 'How do I find out?', but she knows how he will reply. He will say go and see her. And maybe she will. Maybe if Poppy has struggled to ask for what she wants, that means it is important. Also, Juliet is curious: what could Poppy possibly want from her, a total stranger? It makes no sense. But the last and most important reason for going is to apologise. What she did was rude; that she had been woken from a deep sleep is no excuse.
Miltos sucks on his dry straw, oblivious to the noise. 'You know what? I think I could do with a bit of lunch. What do you say I take you to Stella's?'
'How very kind, but I have some salad and some fresh bread.'
She does, in fact, have tomatoes and cucumbers in the fridge, as well as olives and fresh red onions, and a block of feta in brine, but the truth is she is not sure if she is ready to be seen in the village eatery with Miltos yet. It might imply that they are a couple, and then if it goes wrong she will get a reputation for having flings, or whatever name they give to brief affairs these days. No, she is not ready for all that yet.
'Oh.' His shoulders drop and he looks quite sad.
'Perhaps you would like to stay?' she offers.
'Oh!' He sits up straight, his face all eager now. 'How can I help?’
It is like having a puppy.
Chapter 3
Down a narrow corridor at the back of the shop is Poppy's kitchen, a small room with white walls and pale-blue woodwork. It looks a little tired now, the blue paint pulling away from the surface here and there around the door frame, and worn away by Poppy’s hand from the top edge of her chair. The tabletop is particularly worn, but Poppy does not really notice, and in any case it is home. A window in the door by the sink lets in a shaft of sunlight from the smallest of courtyards, which is filled with greenery, the sun bouncing off the many leaves. In the middle of it, Poppy has placed her wickerwork chair, which she also painted pale blue all those years ago, the intricate spaces between the cane filled with paint so the definition is lost. The plants that surround it were in individual pots until recently, and the courtyard is such a suntrap that the soil dried so very quickly and she would have to water the plants morning and night in the summer. How kind it was of her neighbour, the postman, to build tubs to fit around the walls last year. It meant she could pile in so much more soil and now the moisture is retained for much longer. He also cut holes in a length of hose so that now all she has to do is turn on the tap and the water flows and drips under each plant; and the mesh he put to stop her cats practising their gardening means she no longer has to put up with either the smell of their business or the hateful job of finding and scooping out their little messes. Yes, Cosmo has been a godsend: such a kind and considerate young man, and inventive too.
Just inside the door that leads to the courtyard, on a hook, hangs Poppy’s sunhat, now somewhat battered and with the straw slowly unravelling. She is very careful with it these days, to avoid further damage, and she has painted the fraying edges with some clear nail varnish she found in her shop.
Lifting it from the hook, she places it on her head, opens the door and breathes in the greenery. Grey Maulkin, as usual, pushes past her, eager to claim the cushion on the rocking chair. He knows she will lift him off and gently replace him on her knee. It is her throne and when she sits there, if the hose is on, the soil and the plants smell even more strongly, and with her eyes shut she could be in the garden of the big house on Orino Island. She closes them now and indulges for a moment. In her mind the space around her is the walled garden, and she can almost hear the children laughing as they play with the dog. But the dream is cut short as a tractor rattles by on the road in front of the shop, bringing her unwillingly back to the village. There were no vehicles on Orino Island then, and to her knowledge this has not changed.
The grey cat keeps scratching at its ears. He is so old now, and missing most of his teeth, and when she picks him up to pet him he dribbles on her skirt. Perhaps he needs some drops. He jumps off her lap and goes indoors; he stops to scratch again, his body against the edge of the small table, which rocks with the movement, knocking the chair, which in turn rubs the wall, teasing at the edge of the photograph that hangs there in its frame. How many hours has she spent staring at the photo? It is a faded picture of the twins, with a friend from next door, playing in the garden. What was the friend’s name? She forgets so much these days. The dog has the ball in his mouth. Binka, or was it Binki? A good-natured creature, in any case. The children are so sweet, and her looking so young. The snapshot is only spoilt by that woman watching them, with her arms folded and her face so hard. The woman's hair was blonde, flecked with gold just like that rude foreign woman’s. How wrong she was to go to speak to Juliet this morning. She should have known, really. It’s something about western culture, it creates a bit of an attitude, an arrogance. They all have it, these foreign women. She looks back to the picture, so faded now. How many times has she thought of cutting that woman out of the picture, snipping around her with a fine pair of scissors, erasing her once and for all? But every time she thinks this, she still decides not to. Idly, she tries to recall who took the picture, but the memory escapes her. It was probably him.
'Oh, hello, you’re back are you? And is your ear still itching?' Grey Maulkin jumps on her knee and lifts his head to rub his jaw along her chin. He turns a circle on Poppy's knee and she can hear the crinkling of the letter in her pocket as his paws pad on her old skirt. Before he settles himself, she leans back to reach inside her pocket. Just the sight of the letter causes a pricking at the back of her eyes.
'Stop it now,' she tells herself. Her fingers begin to fuss with the envelope. 'Reading it again will solve nothing. It will just start you off all over again.'
But her fingers have a will of their own and she fumbles the crisply folded paper out into the light, opens it with shaking hands, finger and thumb running down the edge to straighten it. How foolish she was to think Juliet could help. Or maybe she hoped there was safety to be found with Juliet because she is one of the few people who does not appear to be involved in the rounds of gossip that this village seems to float on?
'Dearest P.' She reads the opening of the letter again and stops to stroke the cat, to comfort herself.
Tap, tap, tap. A harsh metallic sound echoes down the corridor that leads from the shop.
'I'm closed,' Poppy shouts, but she knows full well that her voice is too weak to travel from back here to the shop.
Tap, tap.
'They will go away,' she tells Grey Maulkin. But the tapping continues at intervals that suggest the visitor is not going to give up.
'All right, all right, I am coming.'
The cat jumps down as she stands, and
the letter is carefully replaced in its envelope and in her pocket. Poppy fights to get her left foot back into her slipper, but it won’t cooperate so she abandons it and limps into the kitchen, where her purple pair are under the kitchen table. One purple, one black. She watches her feet as she makes her way out of the kitchen, past the stairs that lead up to the bedroom and along the corridor to the shop.
Juliet peers through the shop window, shielding her eyes from the sun. She came down this short lane on perhaps a couple of occasions when she first arrived in the village and got lost, but the narrow street is so tucked away that she has never had a reason to come here since. The postman’s motorbike is parked across the street by a metal gate. Perhaps this is where he lives. The yard is small but tidy, with a neat row of lettuces down one side.
In the window of the shop is an aged mannequin with no feet and only one hand. The doll’s make-up suggests it is from the eighties and its wig is messy and matted in parts. It is dressed in a skirt and matching jacket that are obviously of good quality but many years out of fashion. Leaning against the mannequin’s legs is a plastic container with a hose attached, and a nozzle, and straps so that it can be worn over the shoulders. Juliet has seen farmers use this apparatus to spray their crops and it seems strange to see it here. A pair of roller skates – the old-fashioned sort with four wheels and a nut to adjust the length – sits on top of a tennis racket that is missing several strings. A multicoloured crocheted tank top is laid over a jigsaw box that is propped on its edge, and leaning against this is a crudely painted icon. The whole display feels like it is lost in a time warp. It occurs to Juliet that were this shop in Camden Town in London it would be one of the trendiest haunts bargain hunters could find, but here in Greece, with no one to appreciate its idiosyncrasies, it feels a little pointless. Beyond the window display, the interior is in shadow. Juliet can make out clothes racks, piles of clothes on the floor, and by the wood-framed glass counter is a diving suit, complete with a brass helmet that has big tap-like handles to screw it to the shoulder plate. In the back corner, two more mannequins point at each other, and over their arms hangs a curtain. Presumably the space behind it serves as a changing room of sorts. Between this and the counter is what Juliet would call a picnic chair, the sort that folds flat. The stripy plastic material of the seat has sagged with age and weight. Maybe this is where Poppy sits, but there is no Poppy now. All is quiet. Maybe she should leave; she has tapped a few times, and she doesn't want to risk being so persistent that she annoys the old woman all over again. One more tap and she will leave. Maybe Poppy is out anyway.
Poppy shuffles through the door at the back of the shop, watching where she puts her feet, holding onto a mangle first, then a very worn rocking horse, as she passes. She has learnt the hard way to hold on; how many times has she tripped in her shop in the last month? She doesn't look up to see who is knocking until she is quite close, and when she does she sees Juliet turning to leave. She could stop her, hurry her steps, open the door and call out. But what for?
Juliet turns at the corner of Poppy's road. She has tried; maybe that is enough. But her Anglo-Saxon sense of propriety tells her it is not enough, that she must apologise in person.
'Isn't that the English way?' Juliet mutters to herself. 'We apologise for being in the way if someone walks into us, and I have even apologised to someone when they stood on my foot! Maybe it is time to stop apologising for everything.'
She walks on with this thought, but it feels most uncomfortable.
Chapter 4
The following day an email arrives from a local estate agent with a contract that needs translating into English. Juliet has done many of these before and, although the language is technical, she has now done so many that it is a relatively simple job – boring, even. But however dull the work, she can do it sitting at her desk in her bedroom looking out over the beautiful garden she has created at the back of the house. No longer is she stuck in that tiny one-bedroom flat in Bradford watching the rain form droplets that chase each other down the windows. Not a day goes by in which she does not appreciate how lucky she is, or brave, or perhaps both.
The translation will have to wait till later, however, as today is market day in town and the kitchen cupboards and fridge are low on just about everything.
Saros is a hot, dusty hour’s walk or a cool ten-minute drive from the village, and arriving there always gives Juliet a bit of a shock; the three-storey apartment blocks are so crude and solid compared to the picturesque low, whitewashed cottages in the village. This morning, the market is in full swing. As usual, the roundabout in the centre near where the market is held is jammed with cars, everyone trying to cut in, sounding their horns, gesturing through open windows, some just stopping to exchange a word, snatch a casual chat, as each tries to find a parking space or make an escape.
Twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, one of the main streets in Saros is closed to traffic so that the market can be held. Producers from the surrounding villages begin to arrive before dawn in pickup trucks weighed down with endless crates of fruit and vegetables. Others bring olive oil and local wine, or creamy feta, or fresh fish. Stalls are erected on either side of the street, each with a canvas awning reaching out towards the middle of the road, to create a tunnel of shade down the centre.
Just as she despairs of finding somewhere to park, a rust-riddled green Opel pulls out of a perfect spot in the shade of a tree and she pulls in. She locks the front door but leaves the boot open. Faced with the rich, colourful variety of the fruit and vegetables on offer in the market, she inevitably buys too much and this results in her making many trips back to the car to offload her purchases. Leaving the boot open means she doesn’t have to fight for the key each time.
The noise of the market is already reaching her above the growls of the cars and the tooting of horns. The bus from the village arrives, stopping across the road, and Juliet, not for the first time, reminds herself that using public transport is an option too. She does intend to, every time, but then she thinks of the weight of the potatoes, or the watermelon she will surely buy, and the car seems easier, if less sociable and certainly not as environmentally friendly.
The sun is overhead and the shade between the stalls is a relief. The shoppers bustle and jostle, chat and gossip. Those selling call out their wares. The senses are filled with the smell of sun-warmed apples, fresh green leaves picked this morning, the sweet aroma of peppers and such a variety of other scents, not all of which Juliet can identify. She inhales deeply to appreciate them. For a moment she is dazzled by the colours – the yellows and greens of the peppers, deep-red bottles of local wine lined up like soldiers, bright orange mandarins, green leaves in every hue and texture, and fat, shiny purple aubergines. When she is at the market, Juliet wishes she were a better cook so she could justify her desire to buy everything she sees. Two women block her way as they stand and chat. One has a shopping basket on wheels; the other pushes a buggy, the child in her arms. Here is the best place to gather everything that is new in the world and to rehash all that is old, if you have the time.
When Juliet first moved here, the market was one of the first delights she discovered, and the vendors with their broken English singled her out for playful banter. Now they know her, and they ask her how she has been and whether she enjoyed last week’s melon, beans or apples. She has her favourite stalls now: one man for fruit; old Dimitra in her black headscarf, who picks wild greens in the mountains; Constantinos, who grows carrots without any pesticides; and, when he is there, a man who sells orange blossom honey, and of course his wife, who makes her own olive oil soap. Try as she might, Juliet cannot budget in the market, but then with everything as cheap as it is, it is not really necessary.
'Hey, there, I have strawberries this week!' Her fruit man calls her over.
'Lady – fresh oregano, dried beans.' A new vendor tries to tempt her in. But over by the fish stalls Juliet spots Stella, who owns the village eatery, and
Georgia, her neighbour, whose garden is always so full of flowers. They are locked in an animated discussion.
Slight Stella is colourful as always in a sleeveless floral dress, and her frizzy shoulder-length hair is scraped back into a ponytail, which tells Juliet she has come straight from the eatery. Georgia has on the floppy sun hat that she wears when she is tending her flowers. Either she has forgotten she has it on or it is the time of the month when her roots need doing, their pure silver stark against the dark brown of her hair dye. Juliet feels very lucky to have Georgia as a neighbour; she has given nothing but warmth and kindness since Juliet moved into what was then a dilapidated farmhouse at the end of the lane.
'Did you hear?' Stella greets Juliet before she has reached the pair. 'With no warning, the end wall of the infant school in the village collapsed last night.'
'But I just drove past there,' says Juliet. ‘I didn’t notice anything.’
'I told them two years ago that would happen,' Georgia says. 'That’s why I got my house done.'
Juliet looks from one to the other, trying to make sense of what is being said. 'I take it no one was hurt?'
'Lucky it was a holiday,' Stella says. 'Can you imagine if the children had been there!'
'What do you mean, “done”?' Juliet asks Georgia.
'You know, plastered, concreted, whatever it is they do to make the old walls more solid.' Georgia has a fish wrapped in paper nestled like a child in the crook of her arm.
'Rendered,' Stella interjects.
'My house was plythra,' Georgia continues. 'Oh, the dust it made inside. I was forever cleaning. But outside you could see how the weather wore away at the mud bricks.'
'The problem with the school was there for all to see. The corner that collapsed was facing west, just all eroded away. It was a matter of time,' Stella agrees.
