Being Shirley

by Michelle Vernal

  The pair had been a great source of entertainment for Carl and Annie and now, as she thought back on his comments as a zooped-up version of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” had blared out and Blondie threw herself about the dance floor—“God help us all if she ever takes up Irish dancing,” followed swiftly by “If Alexandros’s nose dives any further down her top he will most likely lose consciousness”—she felt a pang. She missed him already, although with Carl about to wing his way home, she had quickly settled into her own routine. As her attempts at paying for her lodgings had been thwarted by both Mama and Kassia, she had decided that rather than fall into the freeloading bracket of Alexandros, who had far more right to do so than she did, she would make herself useful.

  It wasn’t difficult to do at this time of year. Kassia, Mama, and Spiros were run off their feet with a full house and two young boys to look after. There were the breakfasts to prepare and clear away, the beds to be made, a never-ending pile of towels to wash, as well as the guest’s laundry and bathrooms to scrub. There were booking requests to be responded to, tours to be organised, accounts to be maintained, a garden to upkeep, fishing excursions and day trips to Spinalonga. The list went on and on. It was all hands to the deck, so to speak—apart from Alexandros, who was hit-and-miss most days. It was as though he sensed just how far he could go with his mama and when he had stretched the cord far enough, he rallied round and became indispensable, if only for a few hours. Those few hours, though, were enough to have her beaming with delight as she elbowed Kassia. “You see, my Alexandrosaki mou, he does work hard. You need to stop being so hard on the boy.”

  “What does it mean when she adds ‘aki’ to the end of his name?” Annie had asked.

  “It means my little Alexandros. He’s hardly little or a boy, and I don’t think it is a good thing to always be the reliable ones in this family.” Kassia muttered, “The more you do, the more is expected.”

  Annie would be happy for them to take her for granted, she thought as she stretched out on the lounger with the languor of someone who right at that moment in time didn’t have to be anywhere else in the world. It was a lovely feeling and she did feel a little sleepy. This morning, she had woken just as the sun tried to sneak in through the worn patches of her calico curtains. Adonis was curled up in the crook of her knees once more and she’d lain in bed for a moment to watch the shards of light penetrate the faded spots of fabric and grow ever brighter before she roused herself.

  The family’s bathroom, as she’d tiptoed down the silent, still darkened hallway, was empty, which gave her the chance to wake herself properly under a hot shower. Afterwards, she had padded back to her room to make herself presentable. If she was to be serving breakfast, she’d have to make sure she tied her hair up. There could be no random hairs in the eggs of paying guests, she thought with a rueful flashback to the night of the Playboy Bunny outfit incident. As she pulled her damp hair back into a ponytail, she was pleased to find the sting had gone out of that episode now. She wondered fleetingly as she rummaged in her make-up bag how Tony was getting on. She had made a point of steering clear of all social networking sites for the simple reason that although she wanted to know he was okay, she had no need to know how or maybe even with whom he spent his weekends these days. She swept her mascara under her lashes before she finished off with a swipe of lip gloss. She stepped back from the mirror and decided she was ready to face the day. As for her black skirt and white T-shirt—well, that was the closest thing to waitressing attire she’d brought with her. It would have to do.

  Nobody had surfaced by the time she pushed the door to the kitchen open, though she had noticed a light peeping out from under the crack of Mama’s door. She wouldn’t be too far away, Annie thought as she switched on the light, but in the meantime she’d pop the pot on and grab a much-needed cup of coffee.

  Mama appeared just as Annie drained the dregs from her cup. She helped herself to a cup of the steaming brew in the pot before she sat down heavily at the table opposite Annie. “You are up early, Annieaki.” She took a sip from her cup. “I hope you are sleeping okay?”

  “Like a log, Mama.”

  She looked at her blankly. Her English was good but like Kassia’s, it didn’t always stretch to idioms, Annie realised. “I have been sleeping very well, thank you.”

  The old woman beamed. “Good, good.” Then she yawned and held her plump hand to her mouth, her thick gold wedding band still firmly embedded in the folds of flesh. “I am sorry; it is Nikolos. He is still waking in the night. I hear him sometimes.”

  She did look tired. Annie noticed the paunches under her eyes and the pinched look around her mouth. As much as she obviously loved being surrounded by her family, having little children in the house again at her age must take its toll. Though now that she thought about it, she didn’t actually know what age Mama was. She could be anywhere between sixty and eighty—she just had one of those faces. The living arrangement probably wasn’t easy for any of them at times, something that was becoming evident from her vantage point as an outsider looking in. Still, now that she was here, perhaps she could help ease the load a bit for them all. “Um, Mama, the reason I am up so early is that I’d like you to put me to work this morning. I want to earn my keep.” Annie smiled at the older woman, who smiled beatifically back at her before doing just that.

  By the time Annie had finished setting the tables for breakfast in the dining room the way Mama had shown her how to, Kassia, Spiros, and the children had trooped into the kitchen. An air of chaos circulated as Nikolos loudly let it be known he was hungry. Mateo, not to be beaten, grabbed his spoon and banged it down on the table in anticipation of food. His weary-looking father rubbed his hand over his layer of stubble as he told him to stop it. Kassia, looking marginally more awake than her husband, sidestepped Mama in order to sort the boys’ breakfasts before she tended to her and Spiros’s own desperate need for coffee. Mama was busy cracking eggs into a bowl and asked Annie whether she could go find the bacon in the fridge because she couldn’t see it.

  “Mama, it might help if you wore your glasses.” Spiros snatched the spoon from Mateo’s hand, which caused his oldest son to wail.

  She threw her hands in the air. “Pah, I don’t need them. My eyes are fine.” She blew kisses over to Mateo. “Agoraki mou.” He stopped crying and smiled at his Yaya as though butter would not melt.

  “It means my little boy.” Kassia rolled her eyes at Annie before she carried the two bowls over to the table and banged them down in front of her sons.

  Eleni’s served breakfast between eight a.m. and ten a.m. With the twelve guests currently accommodated and trickling through at different times, Annie knew it was going to make for a busy morning. There was a moment’s blissful silence as the boys tucked into their food, broken by the bell ringing in the room next door, which signified the first guests’ arrival to the dining room. Right, Annie, she told herself as she smoothed her hair back and picked up the notepad and pen from the bench. It’s show-time!

  Kassia gave her the thumbs-up as Mama placed toast in front of her grandsons and fussed over them. Annie pushed open the door and spied a dourly elegant, elderly couple sitting at the prime table by the window. She paused for a split second to admire the view they were being treated to. It was bound to lift anyone’s spirits, even this pair who looked completely miserable in each other’s company. She walked towards them, her brightest smile firmly in place.

  “Er, good morning, sir, madam. I’m Annie. Are you ready to order?” She hoped her bright breeziness might be infectious. It wasn’t and neither he nor she raised a smile as they stared blankly at her before he put in a request for two full English breakfasts and a pot of Earl Grey. His British accent was clipped and his posture ramrod. Annie imagined him having either been a colonel in the Army or a headmaster at a public boy’s school in his former life. She couldn’t help but think as she jotted down their order that a full English with a pot of tea was a bit of a sad thing to breakfa
st on when in Greece. Assuring them they wouldn’t have to wait long, she turned her back to walk away and felt a sharp pinch on her bottom as she did so. She swung round instantly to object but found the couple both gazing woefully out to sea and wondered whether she had imagined it. Perhaps she had just experienced some sort of weird bottom spasm in her right cheek. She marched back into the kitchen, tore off the piece of notepaper and handed it to Mama, who launched into action with the fry pan.

  Still seated at the table with a teaspoon in her hand and trying to coax Nikolos into tasting what was on it, Kassia glanced up from her task. At Annie’s disgruntled face, she burst out laughing. “Let me guess—you have had your bottom pinched, yes?”

  Annie stared at her. So she hadn’t imagined it after all. “He’s done it to you? You could have warned me, Kas.”

  “Ah, but then I wouldn’t have had the enjoyment of seeing the look on your face right now. You will learn as I did to take his order and then back away a safe distance before you turn around.”

  Annie poked her tongue out at her friend. “Humph! Dirty old sod! I don’t know how he manages to stay so poker faced.”

  “He is, how you say, well-practiced? His poor wife, I think she knows nothing. This is the only reason I did not slap him.”

  “Yes, you’re right. She looked miserable enough without adding to her woes. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, though.”

  “No, I agree but what do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something, though.”

  Alexandros wandered in, freshly shaved and showered so his bleary eyes could be forgiven.

  “How lovely you could join us this morning.” Kassia greeted him with more than a tinge of sarcasm before she nibbled at her toast.

  He ignored her. He pulled out a chair at the table and sat down next to his oldest nephew, who after receiving a hair tousle, gazed up at his uncle with adoration. With a smile at Annie, she flushed as his eyes lingered a moment too long. Unnerved, she dropped the box of Earl Grey she’d been holding and bent down to pick it up. She felt foolish for her reaction to him. As she set about making the pot of tea, she overheard him inform his brother he was taking the Austrian couple from Room Four over to Spinalonga for the day. They were leaving in fifteen minutes.

  “They haven’t requested packed lunches, have they?” Kassia’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yes, yes but it is simple—just a couple of rolls and some fruit. It won’t take long to put together.”

  Kassia let rip with what could only be a Greek expletive as Mama’s hand flew to her mouth in feigned shock before she told Spiros to cover the children’s ears. She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

  Alexandros shrugged, indifferent to the panic he had just caused his sister-in-law, who had left her toast half-eaten and now frantically rifled through the freezer for a packet of rolls. As his mama placed a cup of coffee down in front of him, she gave him an affectionate pat on his shoulder. “Not to worry, Alexandrosaki mou.” He smiled up at her, not worried in the slightest and said, “Thank you, Mama-mou.”

  Mama beamed before she frowned at her daughter-in-law’s back, which was stiff with indignation as she slammed the microwave door shut. Annie marvelled at Alexandros’s ability to wrap his mama around his little finger and felt a frisson of sympathy for Kassia. She was up against it with that brother-in-law of hers, she thought as she carried the tea through to the dining room, both cheeks clenched defensively.

  Thankfully, there was no more bottom pinching or further upset behind the scenes in the kitchen that morning. Although Blondie and her mousey-haired friend’s arrival in the dining room at three minutes to ten o’clock did cause some mutterings and a lot of pot banging from Mama. The two women were looking worse for wear, Annie noted as she took in Blondie’s puffy, pig-like eyes. She couldn’t see what Alexandros saw in her. Well, that was a lie; she could see exactly what Alexandros saw in her. It was impossible to miss them resting on the table top as she gazed at the menu. As she scribbled down their requests for scrambled eggs on toast and a bacon sarnie respectively, she overheard Blondie mention that they should finish their packing after breakfast before squeezing an hour in down at the beach. So they were off, then, she thought, not knowing why she felt so pleased.

  ***

  Annie didn’t know how long she had been asleep on the sun lounger nor did she enjoy the bizarre dream she was in the middle of. For some reason, she was herding goats in a G-string and as she roamed the hillsides, it had become clear that things were moving that had no business doing so. Despite the hard ground, she had gotten down on her hands and knees to kick her leg back, an exercise sure to tone those stubborn glutes, when she was woken by rain. Startled, her eyes flew open and her mouth simultaneously snapped shut. She blinked and expected to find the beach deserted and herself under siege by black clouds. Instead, she saw Alexandros shaking the remnants of water from his hands.

  “Did you just tip water over me?” she asked indignantly as she wiped the sticky line of drool from her mouth and tried to ignore his cheeky grin.

  “I couldn’t resist it. You were so sound asleep. But if you don’t move your umbrella around, you will turn into a lobster in a short while.”

  Annie could feel a telltale stinging on her shins. He was right. Groggily, she got to her feet and shifted the umbrella, which if he was so concerned about her burning, he could quite easily have moved for her. There had been no need to douse her in water. It was an excuse to check her out, she realised. She sat back down in a hurry and spread her towel out over her legs. Still, she was secretly pleased that her post-flight bruises had all cleared up and that she was no longer as lily white as she had been the first time she’d aired her togs on a Greek beach. Carl had shielded his eyes and made out he’d been blinded by the glare.

  “How was Spinalonga?” She wished he would go away but saw he had no intention of doing so just yet.

  He shrugged. “It was okay. Me—I don’t like the place. Too much sadness there but the guests, you know, they all want to go there to see what it’s like for themselves.”

  She was surprised to hear him say this, not really having him down as the sensitive type. “I think it’s a good thing people want to go and see it for themselves. It’s like the concentration camps in Germany and Poland. They are a visual reminder that such things should never happen again. Not that the leprosy sufferers were sent to Spinalonga with any evil intent, but still—” She knew she sounded self-righteous, but then rightly so.

  “Yes but these days it seems an inhumane way to treat people.”

  “Yes.” Annie shaded her eyes and looked up at him. His eyes really were the colour of maple syrup.

  “I could take you out for a ride on the boat. I have a couple of hours before I have to drive Sharon and Tracey to the airport. Maybe we could go to another bay I know around the peninsula? One where the water it is even clearer than here.”

  That culled her sweet thoughts because she was not silly: oh no, she had seen Shirley Valentine too many times not to know that taking her for a ride on his boat literally meant taking her for a ride. Give the girl a few smooth, sensitive lines and she’d be putty in hands; that was his modus operandi. He was lining her up now that his little—well, not so little—blonde friend was headed back to the UK. “Um, well, I am pretty busy at the moment,” she muttered.

  “Yes, it looks like it.” He smirked down at her. “We do it another time then.” This he stated with such certainty before he turned and walked up the beach that Annie was left with her mouth hanging open at his audacity.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Annie wandered across the car park, careful to look left and right then left again—or was it the other way round? She tried to remember the words her mother had drummed into her as a little girl. She was learning to mistrust the holiday-makers on the roads nearly as much as the Greeks. Something about the carefree vibe of being
on holiday spilled over into the way they whizzed, helmetless, around the streets on scooters that seemed to make it okay to employ no road sense whatsoever. Over to her left was an inlet filled with boats of all shapes and sizes and monetary value. She wondered idly whether one of them might belong to Leonardo. Perhaps he was even on one of the luxury yachts moored there right now, with his latest supermodel girlfriend, sipping champers or whatever it was movie stars and their gal pals drank. To her right, she could see Elounda’s beach with its cluster of umbrellas and sun loungers filled with tourists lapping up the vitamin D.

  The taverna Annie headed towards was called Georgios’s, according to the sign out on the street, and it was to be her fourth port of call in her morning’s quest to find work. She spied a group of people who lounged around one of its outside tables, sipped beers and ate pizza as she drew closer. An early lunch, she thought. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of all that food. Oh well, there would be plenty of time to eat when she’d found herself a job. She smiled over at the merry group and received a leer from a paunchy chap with no hair and a thick gold chain round his neck for her trouble. That would teach her to be friendly. She ducked her head under the grapevine that entwined its way over the entrance, stepped inside and was instantly grateful for the cool respite from the relentless sunshine outside.

  A handful of couples sat scattered about, tucking in to their brunches. Annie paused for a moment to soak in the atmosphere afforded by the dim interior. From the low wooden beams of the ceiling, various seafaring paraphernalia dangled. There was a lifebuoy, lanterns, and thick, gnarly ropes coiled and draped. In one corner a fishing net was slung low, sagging in its middle. In the other corner by the door to the restrooms, a barnacled anchor made its presence known. Annie made her way up to the counter at the far end of the restaurant and stood in front of the till for a moment. She toyed with the idea of stealing a mint from the jar while she waited for someone to appear. Feeling a bit foolish when no one did, she called out a tentative, “Hello!”