by Jo Thomas
I suddenly feel very strange: nervous, excited, with an overwhelming feeling of homesickness and a longing for everything that is familiar. Even Gena’s laugh on the factory floor would reassure me of my rightful place in the world right now, rather than feeling that it’s slipped on its axis.
I look from the straight-faced welcoming committee, still standing in a row, to the view down the valley we’ve just driven up. It’s breathtaking. I have never seen anything like it. The sea is far off in the distance, sparkling like an intense dark-blue sapphire, and the mountains rise up on either side like the peaks on a baked Alaska.
I turn back to the three people staring at me. My driver is approaching them across the dusty driveway, pulling my case behind him. I push on the door of the cab, and it opens with a squeak and a creak again. I breathe in, waiting for the fragrance of wild thyme to slow down my racing heart. But it’s not there. The aroma that greeted me as I stepped off the plane, that transported me back to when I was a young woman, starting out on life’s adventure, has practically disappeared. How could that be? Is it that we’re just too high up here? In its place is the smell of pine resin and warm baked earth. And . . . goats, I’d guess, looking at the line of long faces staring at me from in between the fence posts to the left of the flat-roofed farmhouse. Or are they sheep? I have no idea.
I step out into the warm sunshine, suddenly feeling stiff from the journey. Beside the truck, two cats are lazing in the cool of a covered seating area. Six tree trunks roofed with long dried leaves provide shade for chunky carved wooden benches and a table made from another thick trunk. My bright purple case is now at the feet of the three people staring at me like the wise monkeys. My driver greets them, shaking hands, then glances towards me with a curt nod.
‘WWOOFer,’ he announces gruffly by way of introduction, before turning back towards his truck.
I notice that he walks with a slight limp on the same side as the scar on his face, his right. It obviously doesn’t slow him down, though, as he’s back in the truck quicker than I can rustle up the Greek for ‘goodbye’.
As the truck spins off in a cloud of orange dust, the little black and white dog yapping in the back, I turn to the three people standing behind my case, who look as unsure about me as I feel about them. They are staring at me as though I’ve just arrived from Mars. And frankly, that’s exactly how I feel.
‘Hi,’ I stammer, feeling like my mouth is full of the orange dust I’m covered in after my journey. ‘I mean, yassou!’ As I say the words, the reality of my situation sinks in. What seemed like a good idea on my bedroom floor with a head full of memories and a mobile phone in my hand is now looking like an absolutely mad one!
What good can possibly come of being here?
‘Yassou!’ The younger of the two women takes me by surprise as her round olive-skinned face suddenly breaks into a wide smile and she opens her arms warmly towards me. Instantly my fear melts away, like ice cream slipping from its cone and hitting a hot pavement. Clearly my clumsy attempt at Greek worked, though I can see they’re wondering what on earth I’m doing all the way up here on my own.
‘I am Maria.’ She grabs my hand and shakes it warmly, and then, as if unable to help herself, hugs me before she steps back and nudges the man in the ribs, chivvying him into action. ‘My husband, Kostas!’ She beams again.
He is slower to react, but now he too breaks into a smile. He has a large red mark on his nose and one on his cheek, and I wonder if it’s contagious, or a bad case of acne.
‘I am Kostas. Welcome to my farm and my home.’ He holds out a hand towards the building behind him, and then gestures to the field and outbuildings beyond. The whole place looks like it could do with a bit of TLC. To the other side of the farmhouse is a huge vegetable garden, bulging with vegetables and fruit: bright red tomatoes, figs and oranges. Then he too puts out his hand to shake. ‘This is my mother, Mi-te-ra,’ he says slowly, as if teaching me a new word and introducing us at the same time.
‘Mi-te-ra,’ I repeat. He beams and nods but she doesn’t smile. I offer my hand and she gives it the smallest of shakes, staring at me as if I have two heads. I run my hand over my mouth just in case I still have the remnants of my in-flight panini there. Maria instructs her husband to take my case, then leads the way into the house. I follow, taking a look around me: the goats or sheep to my left, the vine growing between two flat-roofed buildings on different levels. This is a farm on a hillside, literally. The silence, apart from the rhythmic baaing of the goats and sheep and the whispering of the wind in the bushes and trees dotted over the hillside, is noticeable. There is no one else around at all. No people, no buildings, other than the one I saw just higher up the mountain when we turned around.
I turn and take another look down the valley, through the mountains to the sea, feeling Zeus’s Vista holiday resort drawing me in, like I have a connection with the place. And I do. I loved it there. I was so happy then. I wish I was back down there now.
‘Let’s get you settled, and then my husband will show you around the farm and explain what we want you to do.’ Maria speaks really good English, I notice with surprise. ‘We need help, you see,’ she continues. ‘The farm, well, there’s lots to do, but no one is buying our fresh produce these days. The restaurants, there are no customers. The only money is with the tourists, and they’re not here. They are at the resorts.’ She nods down towards the coast. ‘So, we are going to reopen our honey farm. We need you to help us get it up and running again. It had to close a few years ago . . .’ She falters, and her smile drops. ‘But now . . . well, we have to find other ways to keep our farm going.’
I feel for these people, even though I’ve only just met them. They’re trying to make a living whatever way they can, by the looks of it.
‘Well, one thing I know about is factories!’ I say brightly. ‘One is probably much the same as another.’
Maria’s smile returns, slow and wide. ‘So you will help us get the honey farm ready and the factory cleaned, and hopefully the bees will be happy to help us too!’ Her worry turning to optimism, she gives a small clap. ‘And you will help on the lower part of the mountain, collecting wild horta . . . How do you say?’ She turns to her husband.
‘Greens, wild mountain greens,’ he explains, as if the more he moves his lips, the better will be my understanding of his English.
‘. . . when they are called for by the restaurants. It’s the two things we can grow here that none of the other farms can. Our honey used to be very special indeed. How do you say . . . magical?’ she smiles.
‘Medicinal?’ I offer.
‘That too,’ she answers with another beaming smile.
‘You speak very good English,’ I tell them both, embarrassed by my attempts at Greek.
‘We are taught it from very young.’ Kostas holds out a hand to waist height. ‘It helps, working with tourists,’ he adds, then looks at his wife and shrugs. ‘When there were tourists.’
‘Not now, Kostas. Nell has just arrived,’ she scolds. She smiles at me again, but still Kostas’s mother, Mitera, doesn’t say a word, just stares at me from the doorway to the kitchen.
Kostas ushers me inside. ‘The wild bees, up the mountain . . . you must keep an eye out for them.’ He scans the sky as if looking for World War Two bombers before pulling the door to firmly. ‘They are not very happy at the moment.’ He puts his finger to his lips. ‘Not happy at all. I want to make them happy again. Happy bees will make plenty of honey!’
‘Why are they unhappy?’
‘They are having to work hard to find their food,’ he begins, but before I have a chance to hear any more, Maria is leading me into the living room, with its tiled floor and big open fire. There’s a dark-wood dresser against one wall and old black and white photographs above the door frames and in every available space. Behind that is a kitchen with a wide window looking
out over the farm, which drops away steeply down a slope. On one wall there is an old black range. Kostas opens it up, reaches down to a woodpile beside it and feeds logs into the belly of the stove. I step back. The crackling flames and searing heat suddenly take me right back to the day of the fire at the factory. I shiver. Mitera lifts the lid of one of the three worn terracotta pots on the stovetop and beckons me forward to smell the stew bubbling away there. The aroma is amazing. Tomatoes, aromatic and herby; cloves, bay and cinnamon, making my mouth water.
‘Stifado,’ she says, and I nod, taking a couple more deep breaths.
‘Here we cook simply but everything is made special by the herbs that grow,’ Maria tells me, waving a hand towards the mountainside. ‘We cannot have everything in life, but we can live,’ she smiles.
In the corner of the kitchen is a bread oven, and Kostas picks up a long-handled paddle and pulls out a loaf, holding it up for me to smell. This time, not only does my mouth water, but my stomach lets out a loud rumble. Mitera breaks into a wide smile, revealing the gap where her teeth should be. Remembering too late, she reaches into her pocket, then puts her hand to her mouth for a second. When she drops it again, the full set is in place. ‘Wonderful smell,’ I tell her, understanding now why she doesn’t smile that often.
‘Dakos,’ Kostas tells me. ‘Twice baked.’
Maria gets out a teapot and four cups. She opens a tin and looks into it, her face falling slightly as if disappointed, but she shakes out the last remnants of the tin into the teapot and pushes a smile back on to her face. She pours hot water on to the leaves and carries the tray through to the living room, where she hands round cups of the steaming greenish-yellow brew.
‘Come, we will drink it outside, in the shade. It is cool there. We will show you to your room after.’
She leads me to the seating area. The cats haven’t moved. Kostas sits down at the long table with his back to the stone wall of an old low shed.
‘Tea,’ Maria tells me, ‘from the mountain.’ She waves a hand behind us. ‘Herbs that grow there that make us fit and well.’
‘Herbs that used to grow there,’ Kostas mutters. Maria nudges him, and his tea slops over the rim of his cup.
‘It’s the herbs that used to make our honey so special,’ she continues. ‘Sage and marjoram, wild thyme. Of course back then we had dittany too, lots of it all over the mountain. Nowadays, not so much. Everyone wanted Vounoplagia honey!’
The tea tastes and smells of . . . well, of grass cuttings, but I drink it out of politeness, watching their delighted faces watching me. I wonder why they stopped making the honey, but sense I shouldn’t ask.
‘Delicious!’ I lie, and smile, replacing the cup on the tray.
When everyone has finished, Maria leads me back inside, through the other side of the living room. It’s cool and dark here as we step down into what appears to be the older part of the house.
‘The bedrooms,’ she tells me, pointing to a room each side, and I suddenly wonder whether I’m going to be sharing with Kostas’s mother. But Maria beckons me on, beaming, back outside and across a path, the one covered in the huge bushy vine, then in through another door to a single-storey breeze-block building. Inside, it’s been clad with tongue-and-groove pine to match the two sets of yellow bunk beds there, bright and new, in stark contrast to the rest of the house. Maria gestures around proudly. ‘Your room!’ she announces. ‘Kostas, he made it especially.’
She shows me the small bathroom, and pulls up the handle on the shower in the corner to demonstrate how it works. But my eyes are drawn to the big window looking out over the valley, just like in the kitchen, and the mountain face beyond that, where the road stops and my driver turned the van around. I wonder who he is. A worker on the farm?
‘The man who picked me up – does he work here?’ I ask, wondering, if he does, where he sleeps.
Kostas has followed us in, and he shakes his head. ‘Georgios? No. He lives further up the mountain, . . . amongst the bees up there.’ He exaggerates the ‘b’, rolling his lips like they’re made of rubber.
‘He is a neighbour,’ Maria tells me. ‘The small stone house up there,’ and I realise it’s the house I saw when I first arrived, where he turned the truck around.
‘A good neighbour,’ she carries on, ‘helps if we need anything, like picking you up whilst he was in town, and so on, but . . . he keeps himself to himself,’ she says after consideration. ‘Most of us townspeople do these days, sadly. The young people, they are all leaving. Nobody stays. They are—’ But Kostas shakes his head again, and she stops.
How odd, I think. What on earth has changed round here? This used to be such a strong, close community. The farm is only a mile or so outside the town, and Stelios would talk about the place as if it was one big family. I’m about to ask Maria what has happened when she bustles me back towards the door and the farmyard, where the stretching cats are watching us with feigned interest.
‘Don’t mind Georgios, it’s just his way,’ she says, bringing my thoughts back to the rude man who drove me here. ‘You won’t see much of him; like I say, he keeps himself to himself.’
Good thing too, I think, feeling relieved and thinking that I might actually start enjoying myself here with these lovely people.
Mitera is sitting at the table in the shade of the covered terrace with a big pot of potatoes in front of her. She’s peeling them whilst looking out over the mountains and down the valley towards the sea, lost in thought. We’re so high up here, it feels like I’m standing amongst the mountaintops. Below us I can see the terracotta roofs of Vounoplagia, smoke from wood fires spiralling up through the pine trees and over the shrub-strewn mountains. I wonder if Stelios is down there right now.
I can hardly believe I’m here. I’ve done it. I’m back! And with luck, very soon I’ll finally find out the truth.
Having deposited my case on my bed, I rub my hands together and turn to Maria. ‘Right, tell me what I’m going to be doing.’ I’m keen to get stuck in to stop myself worrying about Demi and turning over all the possible scenarios in which I might see Stelios again.
‘So, you’ll be on the farm in the mornings, and then the afternoons are your own. You are welcome to eat with us. Everything we cook is grown here on the farm. We haven’t had any workers on the land for a long time, but now times are tougher than ever. We are so grateful to have you here.’ Maria puts her hands to my cheeks. ‘I hope you will be happy with us.’
I suddenly feel as though a fraud alert is going off in my head. Do they think I’m some agricultural specialist? The nearest I’ve come to horticulture is a hanging basket in the back garden. Maybe I should tell them. I stop in my tracks.
‘I haven’t got any experience with bees or anything. But I’m really hardworking, and quick to learn,’ I finish, hoping that I’ve put the record straight. I want to make it work here. I want to help these people. To stay until I’ve at least got a job to return to. I want to escape the emptiness I felt at home. And all the time I’m here, there’s a chance I’m going to see Stelios again. I have to make this work.
Kostas beams. ‘Come . . . follow me.’ As we walk away from the farmhouse, he looks left and right, searching the sky again. ‘The bees,’ he says. ‘We must watch out for them and be ready. There has been some commotion on the mountain. They are guarding their hives up there.’ I’m about to ask what sort of a commotion when he continues. ‘We must be careful. I get a reaction, you see. If I get stung . . . phew!’ He holds up his hands as if to show his head swelling, and puffs out his cheeks, then smiles.
I don’t have time to ask any more as Kostas sets off down the worn, rocky path to the side of the farmhouse in a manner that reminds me of the mountain goats in the adjoining field. The smoke from the wood stove in the kitchen is filling the slightly cooling air. I follow him down the slope and the goats trot alongside us
behind the fence, making an almighty racket, baaing and bleating as if calling to Kostas like he’s a returning friend. He stretches out a hand to greet them, stroking the noses that are snuffling and curling towards his hand.
The fence is home-made, constructed from wooden pallets, the sort used in the factory back home for piling packed boxes of decorations on, ready for shipping out. Here they’re on their sides and secured together with cable ties. Kostas shakes one, checking its sturdiness. Satisfied, he turns back to me. ‘Every morning we milk the goats,’ he points to an open-sided shed, ‘and take the milk to the cheese factory in town. Here in Crete we use a mixture of sheep’s and goat’s milk to make cheese. The factory sells it to restaurants and to tourists,’ he shrugs, ‘when they come. But again, there’s not much call for it these days.’
‘Really? No tourists? I’d have thought visitors would be flocking here,’ I say, looking out over the farm beyond the field of goats. This looks to be the real deal, a traditional Cretan mountain farm and the local town too. I remember tourists arriving in their droves in hire cars and on buses when I was here all those years ago. I even remember we got a lift on one of the organised trips taking tourists up the mountain for the day. Stelios was friendly with all the drivers. He seemed to know everyone. The coach dropped us in the town, on our day off from the resort and picked us up on its way back in the evening.
‘It’s different now. They want the free drinks in the resorts, the swimming pools, the fast food . . .’ Kostas explains. ‘That’s why we need to open up the honey factory again. The tourists in the towns will still buy honey.’
