by Sonia Paige
‘Quite a floorshow, if that was what it was…’ said Mimi.
Hugh glanced at his watch again. ‘So how do you feel about margarine?’
Mimi looked at him full on for the first time across the restaurant table. ‘Greasy,’ she said. ‘Cheap and greasy.’
Wednesday 19th December 11.45 am
‘You see,’ Anthea was saying as she settled back into the wicker chair and finished drying her hands on her skirt, ‘All my problems seem to begin and end with Greece. And all the best things in my world as well. The very first time I went there was the first time in my life I felt real danger.’
Ren checked the tape recorder and looked up at her. ‘Bright light can create shadows.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to talk about that first visit?’
‘You want me to tell you how it all started…? Talking to you like this, all the bits and pieces are coming together in a way I never realized. But who knows if they’ll ever make a whole? Or a coherent picture, a pattern…’
Ren shrugged. ‘Real life can be untidy. The bits don’t always fit together neatly.’
‘I have to go way back…’ said Anthea. ‘Where to start?…’ She looked at her feet and wriggled her toes, then began:
‘I’ve always loved Greece ever since I was little. I got a translation of Homer’s Odyssey when I was eight. It was on the bookstall at a local fete. A paperback, one of the old Penguins, the cover had a brown border. I paid for it with a threepenny bit, all my pocket money for that week. I loved the world it described. “It’s not natural,” my Mum used to say when she found me with my nose in it. “Why not read comics like the others?”
‘I did the 11-plus and got in to the local grammar school. Greek wasn’t on the syllabus, but the Latin teacher taught me after school hours. I did it for A-Level, then, like I said, I left school and went to work in the bank. Later on, when I was at university, I started learning Modern Greek in my spare time. But it wasn’t ’till I saw that film ‘Z’ that I realized what had happened to modern Greece. I saw it at some society at college. The right-wing coup. The Junta. The colonels. The prison camps. At that time I didn’t know anything about politics, but I was shocked. At the film showing they were giving out leaflets about a group trying to help the families of the people in prison. I took one. I wrote to them. Is there anything I can do to help? Yes, they said. That was how I got involved in doing something secret and dangerous in Greece.
‘Shall I tell you about it?’
‘Tell me whatever you want to,’ Ren replied. ‘Whatever you think is relevant.’
‘I’m not sure what’s relevant, so I’ll tell you the whole story.
‘It was the summer of 1972, the first summer of university. July. I used the money I’d saved and I set off for Greece. It was my first time abroad. The journey wasn’t quite what I’d imagined. On the boat from Dover there were hopeful signs pointing to the “Sun Deck”, but it was damp and cold. Then there was a long overnight train journey leaving Ostend at 10 o’clock at night. I slept in a couchette and I kept getting woken by different officials at intervals all through the night. In the morning I had a memory of having been prodded many times in different languages and asked to produce documents. Each time I put them back under my pillow and I slept fitfully. I was already anxious about the assignment I was going to carry out, although I hadn’t fully realized what I’d taken on.
‘The Hellas Express left Munich at 9 o’clock the next evening and there was another broken night, then a whole day travelling through some very flat bits of Yugoslavia. My back itched, my legs felt stiff, my bottom got cramp and I couldn’t find any comfortable way to sit. At times like that you forget where you’re travelling from and travelling to, and even why you’re travelling at all.
‘Then a group of Greeks came into my apartment and started singing. I listened to them, cheered up and started on the Modern Greek novel I’d brought with me. I got through that, and through most of a Modern Greek detective story. I had read a ‘Teach Yourself…’ book; and Modern Greek isn’t so hard if you know Ancient Greek. My mother’s picnic lasted really well. I ate the last chicken joint when we were still in Yugoslavia.
‘That night I slept in my seat, struggling to find a comfortable position, and the next morning I woke up aching and feeling very old. Then it gradually filtered through to me that we were in Greece and the sun was shining and my body sort of uncurled. The Greeks woke up and started singing again, and the last day just floated by. I ate the last of my mother’s pasties and the last egg sandwich – it was a bit the worse for wear by then. I nibbled the last of her home-made ginger biscuits as we rolled in to Athens. As we came into the station everyone in the carriage got excited. And there were crowds of people waiting for the train, screaming and jumping up and down on the platform.
‘I was staying with Mr and Mrs Petrakis, the family of a Greek girl Sofia I’d met at college. She’d gone for the summer to work on some Mesopotamian dig. They’d never met me before, but they welcomed me as if I was her long-lost sister. They were there on the platform, and they greeted me as only the Greeks know how. I had arrived. It was a dream come true.
‘How could I ever tell you about the light…? E M Forster described it as hard and brilliant. That’s true, but it’s also nourishing, and with the heat it’s like a giant embrace that envelops you all day long. The English weather can be mild and distant, but the Greek summer is omnipresent. It’s in your eyes and on your skin and kind of caressing your soul at every minute. I’d never experienced such light and such heat. And I went to the Archaeological Museum and saw statues and vases and seals and inscriptions that spoke to me across the thousands of years.
‘Every day I travelled from the Petrakis’ house to the centre of Athens. I set up a routine of spending half the day visiting museums or sites, and the other half working at my studies in the British Council library. I was trying to read the whole of the Odyssey in the original Greek. It was slow going because the Ancient Greek dictionary was enormous: two volumes, each about one foot thick. There were types of people in that library that I’d never met before in my life. English women with plaits up behind their ears asking in plummy voices for books “for the children,” and pompous learned old men who stared at me as if I didn’t belong there.
‘Then the Petrakis family invited me to go with them for a short holiday to their second home on one of the islands. That was when I started to understand the effect the Junta was having on people’s lives. As we arrived, the steamer brought us round a corner of rock into the harbour, and there was a welcoming nest of whitewashed houses glowing pink in the sunset. But in front of them was a row of blue neon letters shining out over the water: “Greece for Christian Greeks”, and underneath in smaller letters “Long Live the Revolution!” Further along and less conspicuous, there were two neatly-painted placards with slogans saying “Long live the Army” and “Long Live our Race”. They were on the front of the Mayor’s building, and they were partly blocked out by a big luxury yacht drawn up along the quay. Beside it was a string of fishing boats rocking gently on the water.
‘The quayside was full of Americans wearing Bermuda shorts or Levis, parading their midriffs, blond hair and earrings. They mingled with the Greeks who milled up and down with a kind of excited calm on their evening stroll to see and be seen. Walking along the ‘parallia’ is a favourite ritual. Men in string shirts and winklepickers whistling under their breath at the foreign girls; smart couples from Athens; generously-built mothers with children; the odd policeman; old ladies in black; respectable gentlemen with moustaches; all passing and turning, joining and parting in the soft dark air. A breath of coolness soothed your skin after the furnace of the day. Somewhere, behind the brightly lit tables that spilled out from the café fronts, two men were arguing with raised voices. A large group stood in silence round a television set. An old man went by leading a donkey loaded with sticks.
‘The Americans were everywhere. Some were wealthy and some were stu
dents or hippies.
‘I remember one evening soon after we arrived, the Petrakis family and some friends were sitting at their favourite café on the harbour front. Next to them was a large group of scruffy young Americans. They had a guitar and they were sprawled over half of the remaining seats, singing and discussing the best place to swim, in loud accents.
‘Kyria Kefti, that’s Mrs Kefti, she was a middle-aged woman in our group, looked at them pointedly and said “Po, po, po” a few times with a rotating hand gesture that expressed her disapproval. They were oblivious.
‘She was a large, bold woman with slightly bleached hair that rose stiffly from her forehead and she had the confidence of her class. When the Americans didn’t respond, she turned to them and said “Excuse me,” loudly. They went quiet. “You have not order anything,” she told them. Her English was very clearly-enunciated. They looked taken aback, but she went on, “Maria who own the café want tell you, but she does not speak English. She depends to make her living on the summer, and if you use all her chairs and take half the café so you need should order something.”
‘The Americans looked at the ground. One boy shrugged. A girl said, “We’re very sorry”.
‘“If you are sorry, then you order some thing,” said Mrs Kefti, and turned back to our group. She raised a hand covered in rings to adjust her wide-rimmed glasses.
‘“I told them,” she said in Greek to our group.
‘“I told them,” she called to the café proprietress Maria, a small, flustered woman wearing a much-used green overall. Maria gave a quick grateful smile and disappeared into the café with a tray of dirty crockery.
‘“I told them,” said Mrs Kefti again, “and it seems to have worked.” The guitar had stopped and half a dozen of the Americans were drifting away from the table down the waterfront.
‘Captain Kefti, her husband, felt sorry for them. “Ka’eemenni, poor things,” he said, “Perhaps they didn’t have any money to pay for anything.” I knew enough Greek to follow their conversation.
‘“No money?” Mrs Kefti says, “Me horo’eethevvees?” That’s an expression that means, are you pulling my leg? And she rattled on in Greek, “All Americans have money, even beggars in America have gold teeth, a whole set of them sometimes. At 500 drachmas a piece.”
‘Captain Kefti, he was smaller and gentler than his wife. He was a officer in the navy, but after the Colonels came to power he refused to transfer his loyalty to the military Junta, he said he’d sworn his allegiance to the King. So as a result he’d been demoted and his twenty-five years of steady progress upwards in the navy had been stopped. Now he was a captain without a ship – and the small advantage he’d held over his wife had been lost. He gave way to her over the Americans – he settled for gesturing to their table and mumbling, “They’re students, after all.”
‘“The trouble with them,” Mr Petrakis said, pointing a finger at the emptying table, “the trouble with them is that they start out from America with 20 dollars in their pocket and hope it will take them round Europe, Greece, Turkey and the Far East. All with 20 dollars.” He pulled a knowing face and drew decisively on his cigarette. “All with 20 dollars,” he said again, as if to end the matter. He was a big man who must have been good-looking when he was young. He always saw issues in black and white, and he wasn’t one to be disagreed with.
‘But his wife Mrs Petrakis ventured a comment: “Perhaps they do well to try and see the world while they’re young.” They all turned to her. I remembered that Greek women didn’t get many chances to see the world at any age.
‘There was a pause, and at that moment a figure walked past the table. She was a young woman, can’t have been much older than me. She had bare feet and her blond hair hung down her back. She was thinner even than I longed to be. She wore a pale blue dress with some faded lace around the bottom and she seemed to breathe despair. She carried her sexuality as a fact of life which she neither flaunted nor bothered to hide. It emanated all around her, but in a tired way, as if she no longer cared about it one way or the other. I envied her the freedom she had to show who she was. And at the same time I feared what she must have been through. She passed like a ghost. I don’t know if the rest of the party saw in her what I saw, but the conversation stopped to watch her pass.
The stillness was broken by Maria, who had brought drinks and mezedes. “Ah! The girl from the beach,” she said. “English!” She looked after the sylph-like figure, and turned back to whisper to us. “Two men,” she mouthed, “Two! Foreign!” and she rolled her eyes in a way as if to say she could say more but she wouldn’t.
‘I was left in shock. It wasn’t that she looked vulnerable, more that she looked as if she had already lost everything. I wondered how she had ended up on this island.
‘Mr Petrakis was drawing his breath to continue the argument about the Americans when his fourteen-year-old daughter Vassiliki turned up. She’d been to the cinema and she had a slightly younger boy Andonis in tow.
‘She greeted us in a loud voice: “Hello! Hello, everyone! Where can we sit? There’s no room for us! Move up, can’t you? Where do you expect us to sit?” She tossed her long black mane theatrically. “You’ve started eating already, have you? Oh, don’t wait for us. I see! Just start eating without us!” Greek’s a good language for expostulating in. Is that the right word?
‘Vassiliki was tall with a thickening of puppy fat still on her. She had a handsome face, but it was puckered with peevishness. “Oh, do sit down, Andoni, you get on my nerves,” she scowled at the boy who was with her. Andonis sat down quickly. He was a well-brought-up boy from a rich Athenian family; he had been invited on the holiday to keep Vassiliki company and he seemed out of his depth.
‘“How was the film? Do you want anything to eat?” asked Mrs Petrakis.
‘“Nothing.”
‘“You ought to eat something, Vassiliki.”
‘“I told you, I don’t want anything. Are you going to force it down me?”’
Anthea glanced at Ren and smiled. ‘That’s a nice expression the Greeks have: “Meh to zori, theelathee? – You mean by force?” Vassiliki always said it about anything she didn’t want to do, flinging her arms down in a dramatic gesture of outrage.
‘“What about Andonis?” asked Mrs Petrakis.
‘“He doesn’t want anything.”
‘“How do you know?” said Mrs Petrakis, “Can’t he speak for himself?”
‘“No,” said Vassiliki, “he only knows how to nod and laugh. Isn’t that right, Andoni?”
‘Andonis nodded and laughed.
‘“What did I tell you?” said Vassiliki. “Strange, really to laugh like that for no reason. A strange person – Periergos anthropos.”
‘“Perhaps he sees a joke that the rest of us don’t see,” said Mr Petrakis.
‘“Andonis doesn’t talk,” said Vassiliki. At that everyone laughed.
‘“He doesn’t have a chance to get a word in edgeways,” said Mrs Petrakis and gave Vassiliki a look.
‘Vassiliki pulled a rude face back and popped an olive into her mouth.
‘“Vassiliki…” said Mrs Petrakis in a warning tone. She was a dainty, aristocratic woman and when her dark brows frowned it terrified me.
‘But her daughter came back with: “What do you mean, ‘Vassiliki’?”, putting on an innocent face. She knew her mother wouldn’t let rip in company.
‘Mr Petrakis stepped in. “So our little Vassiliki went to the pictures…!” he pinched her cheek with a big smile. “Did you have a nice time?”
‘“Oh, it was all right,” said Vassiliki, turning away from her mother. “It was an American film with Doris Day and somebody or other. The best part was the newsreel. Twenty minutes of rubbish. We saw the fatface Colonel Pattakos as usual blessing some tractor or goatcart or something, and then he bent down to lay some foundation stone and his backside filled the screen. I bet you’ve never seen a bum as big as Pattakos’s!”
‘The adults a
ll laughed. Everybody hated the propaganda newsreels starring the Colonels of the Junta. Mrs Petrakis looked around to see who could hear and then she cut through the laughter. “I tell you,” she said – she had a clear low voice – “I tell you, they do it deliberately.” She stopped a moment for suspense and looked over her shoulder again. “The men who have to film those events for the newsreels. I’ve heard. If they get a chance to film Pattakos’ backside or Pattakos slipping on the steps, they do. They know which side they’re on.”
‘Vassiliki interrupted; she was cross to see the conversation leave the subject of herself. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m bored with Pattakos.” Her voice was very loud.
‘The others looked round nervously and her father said, almost in a whisper, “Vassiliki moo, if you have to express your opinions so loudly you will land us all in a place where ‘you hear people but you don’t see people’”.
‘“What on earth’s that?”
‘“That’s an old expression for the prison, so just keep your voice down, will you, my love – ayappi moo?” and with a playful-sweet smile he lifted his ouzo glass and clinked it with the others. They all cried, “Your health!”, and then drank.
‘It was because of Vassiliki that we went to the night club. After we’d all eaten, she launched a campaign. “I’m young,” she said, “not like you old people,” she included me in her gesture. “I have my life ahead of me, not behind me. I want to have fun.”
‘I think it was partly to avoid a confrontation, and partly to monitor Vassiliki, that in the end the Petrakis’s decided that we would all walk up the road to pay a visit to the island’s only night club.
‘I don’t really know what I expected, but when we got there, it was more than half empty. It was an open garden with trees, seats grouped round small tables, and a spectacular view over the harbour. There was a little wind coming in from the sea, and coloured lights made it all rather dreamlike.
