David felt a bit choked up, remembering his ‘dad’. He’d been a kind man, totally under the thumb – but he seemed to like it that way. He wasn’t exactly Mr Workaholic, but they’d lived happily without any fancy stuff or posh holidays. He would take young David fishing in the school holidays and they’d make a load of egg-and-cress sandwiches and big flasks of tea to sustain them through the day – and sometimes the night. David could never remember his mum and dad arguing, but then again, he couldn’t remember them talking to each other much either. Doreen went to bingo a lot, his father spent a lot of time in his shed. They co-existed, ‘rubbed along nicely’ some might have said – like he and Olive did. At least, he presumed she was content enough in their marriage; she didn’t moan about her lot, anyway.
But since Vernon Turbot had swept into their house two days ago, his mother had flowered like a long-dried seed that had suddenly found some water and a one-in-a-million chance to sprout at last. She had softened and blossomed and seemed to have dropped twenty years of her age. There was air under her feet when she walked across the room, and an uncreasing of the frownlines that had given her a grim look for longer than he cared to remember. Vernon Turbot was walking Botox for her.
‘I’m not leaving because I don’t love you,’ Doreen said suddenly. ‘I do, you know. I love you and Kevin very much, but especially you – because you’re my lad.’
Whoof. David’s eyes suddenly flooded and he coughed hard, trying to stamp firmly down on the rush of emotion.
Doreen went on, ‘You see, there are two kinds of people in this world, son: those who can live quite happily without passion and those who were never meant to. I’m one of those people who need to feel their heart beat faster for someone, and so is Vernon. Now Herbert, he didn’t. He was happy enough with his shed and his allotment and his fishing rod. My mum and dad were the same; she had her knitting, he had his spaniels. I think you must take after them.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know which I’d have picked, given the choice. It would have been so much easier, had I been able to settle for a life where the limit of my excitement was a new set of cable needles. But I’ve been thirsty for too long and now I’m going to drink my fill from Vernon’s pool.’
Another lewd image flashed into David’s mind which he shook away before it became an ingrained memory. Listening to his mum, David was half-glad he took after his easily pleased grandparents. Who the hell wanted to have the complications of all those feelings and dormant passions? Thank goodness he and Olive could do without that sort of rubbish cluttering things up.
‘You were a love-child in every sense of the word,’ Doreen smiled. ‘Not like these things on Jeremy Kyle where the mothers can’t remember who they took their drawers off for. You were born from our love. Herbert couldn’t have kids. He always knew you weren’t his, especially because you’re the image of Vernon as a young man, but it never stopped him loving you as his son. He never made mention of anyone else being your dad.’
‘Mam, stop,’ said David with a croak in his throat. Then he looked at her and noticed the tears glistening on her powdered cheeks. And big as he was, he went straight over to her and put his arms around her ample body. They squeezed each other affectionately, which segued into a slightly embarrassed patting on the back as they recovered their composure.
‘Anyway,’ sniffed Doreen, ‘we’ll see you tomorrow if Vernon is taking you around the shops. No doubt he’ll be bringing you up to the house with a parcel of fish and chips to share with me. He was always the best at making them. That Harry Ramsden looks like a nowt, compared to him.’
‘Aye, Mam, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said David, nodding, barely able to speak. ‘That’ll be nice.’
A puppyishly excited car horn sounded outside the front door.
‘Well, here we go,’ smiled Doreen, her eyes shining like jewels as she picked up her handbag. Turning to her son, she said, ‘One more thing – I haven’t been the best mother-in-law to Olive either. I’ve taken a lot of my frustration and boredom out on her, more than I have you. Tell her I’m sorry, will you? She’s a good girl. Anyway, now you’ve some money you can take her off on a holiday and buy her some nice things. Treat her like a woman should be treated.’
‘Yes, Mam, I will,’ said David. And he meant it. He had plans forming in his brain for them both. Big plans.
Chapter 54
It was less than a ten-minute taxi ride to Tanos and yet it felt like for ever. Olive asked to be dropped by the first farmhouse on the Tanos road. It was still delicately shabby and white with orange shutters on the windows – in fact, it hadn’t changed at all. It was just as if she had been transported back twenty years. Even the old sign pointing to the hamlet was still hanging off at an angle from the pole.
The taxi drove off and Olive had a moment of panic about the crazy thing she was about to do. Her legs were jelly by the time she rounded the corner. Two more steps and she would see the Lemon Tree. She took the steps – and there it was.
The sign had been repainted, that was the only difference she could spot. The outside tables were still square and wooden, the chairs rattan-backed. She could see, through the café window, that the juice-machine blades were stirring through lemonade on the counter. A few holidaymakers were drinking coffee and reading newspapers, and a young waitress was busying around clearing tables. Atho always kept the café immaculately clean, but he never chased away the tourist-friendly animals who came to try their luck. The old stray dog who had adopted the café had obviously long gone, but there was a contented scruffy grey cat lounging on a stool which seemed to have been positioned under the shade of an olive tree especially for him or her.
Olive’s heart flooded with fondness for the place. Once upon a time she was that waitress flitting around customers, delivering the generous plates of dolmades and moussaka which Atho insisted should be a portion and a half of what other cafés were serving. He was a generous man in all aspects of his life.
Then she saw him. He was there, in the shadows of the café interior. Atho Petrakis. He hadn’t become squat and bald and middle-aged, he was just as she remembered him – thick, black hair, straight-backed, his tanned strong arms pulling a coffee from a huge machine.
Olive’s head went woozy and the feeling spread quickly around her, weakening her legs and making her reach for a chair, scraping it back against the ground so she could sit on it before she fell. The waitress heard the noise and called to the man as she saw the woman sink down.
‘Atho,’ she called. And Olive just saw the tall dark man’s shape approaching before she slumped in a faint onto the café table.
Moments later, when Olive opened her eyes, she looked up to see it was not her Atho, after all, even if he did look extraordinarily like her old lover from a distance.
‘Lady, are you well?’ the man was asking, and his voice was different from Atho’s too – not as smoky or deep. And the hand that was resting upon her shoulder was lighter. Her Atho had large strong farmer’s hands.
‘I’m so sorry,’ excused Olive. ‘I was looking for Atho Petrakis.’
‘I am Atho Petrakis,’ said the man. ‘Or was it my father you are looking for?’
Yes, thought Olive, this must be his son. Atho has a son.
‘The Atho I’m looking for owned this place twenty years ago.’
‘Yes, that is my father.’
‘Is . . . is he here?’ she asked tentatively. She knew he wouldn’t be. When these things played out in real life, the sought-after person tended to have picked that day to be somewhere far away. Knowing her luck, he had probably gone on holiday to Barnsley.
‘My father is not here any more.’
The words crushed Olive’s heart. He was dead. She’d been a fool to leave, and a bigger fool to come back.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘How long ago?’
The waitress smiled, nudged Atho Junior and said something fast and Greek to him.
‘Oh no, he’s not dead,’ said Atho, waving
his hand. ‘He’s retired from the bar. He lives in the house at the back.’
‘Where his parents used to live?’ asked Olive. Her heart couldn’t take this stopping and starting much longer.
‘Yes. He is there now. You must be an old friend of his – yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Olive, her voice quavering.
Atho held out his hand to Olive and, when she took hold of it, he pulled her up from the chair. ‘Come with me, lady. I will take you to him.’
He tucked the tea-towel he was carrying into the waistband of his apron and led Olive down the old familiar path at the side of the Lemon Tree to the house where Maria-Grazia and Theo Petrakis had once lived. Now there were changes to see. The little cottage was no more. In its place was a beautiful new double-fronted, two-storey villa painted pale mimosa. The door was split, the top part open, the bottom half closed.
‘Papa,’ the young man called. ‘I have an old friend for you.’
And there, in the top half of the door, appeared a man. Atho. Her Atho. The same strong jaw, the same shock of hair, though flecked with far more white now, the same soft lips and dark, dark eyes. Those eyes were shock-wide now, the mouth drooped in disbelief.
‘Olive?’ he called. ‘No, you can’t be. It is a dream.’
Then Atho Senior threw open the bottom part of the door and lunged down the short path towards his son and the visitor. His big arms enclosed her, then he held her out at arm’s length to look at her, as if he could not believe she was really here, then his arms came around her again and crushed her to him. Behind her, young Atho seemed to be telling his father to be careful and not handle his guest so roughly. If that was the case, Olive hoped her Atho would totally ignore him.
‘This is Olive,’ Atho announced to his son in a soft and tender voice. ‘She is a very old friend of your papa. A dear and beautiful old friend.’
One arm stayed around Olive and he pulled her towards the house.
‘Go, Atti,’ he said to his son. ‘I have a lady to entertain. A lady from England who I have not seen for twenty years.’
And Atho Junior laughed and waved and said, ‘I am going, Papa. I am going back to be your slave in the café.’
‘Come, Olive, come into my house. Are you all right? Atti says I have to be gentle with you.’
‘I’m fine. I just felt a bit faint when I saw him. I thought he was you.’
‘How nice you think I am seventeen,’ said Atho, taking Olive’s hand now and turning to face her. His other hand came upwards as a gentle cup to her cheek and his brown eyes bored deep into her.
‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it is you. Twenty years and you are here. How long are you staying with me? Are you here for ever?’
‘I’m on a cruise. I’m just on the island for a few hours,’ said Olive, unable to stop herself pushing her cheek deeper into his hand. His skin smelled the same – soap-clean with the merest hint of sweet herb. She closed her eyes and the years between now and their last meeting disappeared.
‘Come inside,’ he said, his voice soft and low. ‘This is much different to the last time you were here, isn’t it? Probably the only thing in Tanos that is.’
Inside the house was a large open space – a sparkling white kitchen to the right, to the left cream sofas and thick rugs. A long table with eight chairs separated the two areas.
‘It’s lovely, Atho,’ said Olive.
‘I had it built for the family,’ he said. ‘Sit, sit.’ He reached for two glasses and a large jug on the worksurface and poured out two wines.
The family. It was a large house so he obviously had married and had sons and daughters and one day grandchildren – if not already. It was stupid to think he had waited on ice for her to return.
‘Do you have a big family?’ Olive asked, taking a sip of the wine.
‘Just my son. One day this will be his, but I don’t think he will want it. He prefers to stay at the room in the Lemon Tree. You remember it?’ He smiled intently at her. The little room above the bar with the thickly plastered white walls and the tiny windows. And the very creaky bed.
‘So this is just for you,’ Olive tried not to blush, ‘. . . and your wife?’
Atho’s hand came out and stroked a stray strand of hair back which had fallen across Olive’s face.
‘My wife died two months after Atho was born. She was a lovely girl but she had problems with her heart. We did not know this until she died.’
‘Oh Atho, I’m so sorry.’ Olive took his hand into her own. It felt so big and manly and firm.
‘It was a long time ago,’ said Atho. ‘Now tell me about you.’
‘I’m married, no children,’ replied Olive.
‘You are happy?’
Olive’s lips manufactured themselves into a smile, but it was a very poor effort. Atho lifted her chin with his finger and he saw the unspoken sadness in her eyes.
‘We will eat and you will tell me about the past twenty years,’ he said. He stood and dashed around the kitchen gathering plates and food with celebrity-chef-like gusto. Olive smiled, properly this time. She remembered how he always moved with such energy and purpose, every gesture expansive. It was not only Greek blood that flowed through his veins, but Italian. His grandfather was one of the unfortunate soldiers of the Acqui Division slaughtered by the Nazis. His Greek grandmother, Ariadne, was pregnant with her daughter Maria-Grazia when he was killed in 1943. Ariadne gave her daughter the name of her lover’s mother in honour of him.
Atho threw a loaf of bread at Olive to catch and slice. He tore salad leaves into a bowl, splashed them with oil and garlic which he crushed under the heel of his hand then added to it sun-dried tomatoes from a pot. He crumbled goat’s cheese, sliced meat deftly with an ancient but deathly sharp knife. He squeezed fresh lemon over a bowl of shiny plump olives and delivered it to the table with a flourish.
Over that rustic, delicious lunch, they talked. Olive told him about her friends and the cruise and what she did for a living. And Atho told her how over the years he had bought up lots of property and was a man of means, and that his mother and father had retired to Fiskardo in the north of the island to be near to their daughter, but only when Atho Junior had grown up. He told her that he had not married again after his wife had died. He had not been an angel – there had been women, but no one with whom he wanted to share his bed for more than a night or two.
‘I thought that maybe God was telling me I was meant to be alone,’ he said, taking a sweet baklava and sweeping up some honey with it.
‘You sound less alone than I am,’ said Olive sadly. Atho stopped eating and poured more wine.
‘I wrote to your mayor to try and find you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get a reply.’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course. He probably thought I was some crazy Greek after an English passport. Now tell me about your husband.’
Olive sighed. Where to begin? She hadn’t a clue, so Atho prompted her.
‘Does he look after you? Has he built you a nice house?’
‘We live with his mum.’
‘Does he work hard for you?’
‘Er . . . he has a sore back.’
‘Do you love him?’
Olive opened her mouth to answer and found that she couldn’t. To say ‘no’ would have been disloyal, unfair. But equally, neither could she say ‘yes’ to someone she had loved as she had loved Atho Petrakis. How could she compare the ‘love’ of her husband and his big hot-air promises to the love of a man with whom she had eaten picnics on the beach, made love in olive groves, kissed in the sea and sailed on the blue, blue waters of a magical lake? She had flowered in that one Cephalonian summer, quickened by the kisses of a man who knew that love was all about giving. Olive too knew all about ‘giving’; she had been hard-wired into caring for others from an early age, with her own wants and needs taking a rude second place. She didn’t know how to accept someone doing things for her without it feeling uncomfortable, without feeling that
she wasn’t worthy of their efforts. With two people giving each other all they had, life could have been so good.
Atho’s voice was heartbreakingly tender as he asked her, ‘Olive, why did you leave me? I thought we were happy.’
‘I was. That was the problem – I was too happy.’
‘How can you be “too happy”?’ His fists were clenched on the table.
Olive shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘I’ve asked myself this so many times, you know,’ she said. ‘Coming here was only ever meant to be one summer – for me. One summer when I knew my parents were well and I could get away. I never expected to fall in love with life so much here. I never expected to fall in love with you.’
‘So you did love me?’
‘Oh GOD, you’re joking!’ Olive laughed, but there was a spray of tears in that laughter too. ‘I thought . . . I thought that girls like me didn’t leave their families and move to Greece. Shirley Valentine was a story, a dream, it wasn’t what happened in reality.’
It sounded so weak and pathetic, but that’s exactly how it had been. Olive’s mum had been in her mid-forties when she had given birth to her, her father nearly sixty, and with her dad in poor health, her mother had relied on her far too much. And they hadn’t exactly been the type to encourage their daughter to spread her wings.
‘And so who looks after you now, Olive?’
It was such a simple question, but wounding in its aim. People like Olive did the caring, they weren’t cared for.
Atho reached across the table, took Olive’s hand gently and tugged her to her feet. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’
He led her out of the back door of the villa and swept his hand across the sight there. Olive gasped as her eyes focused on pots and pots of white roses.
‘They don’t grow well in the ground, but here in the pots, they bloom. Year after year they get bigger and stronger with more scent. Yorkshire roses. I planted them to remind me always of you.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ scoffed Olive. But Atho had never been a man with a line in false seduction. He didn’t need to. He only had to look at Olive and her knickers fell off. ‘Did you?’
Here Come the Girls Page 28
