by Carol Mason
By the time I head back to the meeting point, I realise I’m going to pass out if I don’t get some water. I abandon any intentions of joining the tour and wander back out the way we came in. At a ‘mobile shop’ selling food and drink, I buy a Greek yoghurt, and a bottle of water, and down them while sitting on a bench, listening to a middle-aged American couple complaining about the heat. I deliberately wore my flowery tankini top, along with a denim mini, because I thought I’d breathe more in it. But it feels a bit underdressed now, for such a reverent place. The back of my neck is sticky. I happen to look down at my newly transformed feet in their flip-flops. When I woke up this morning, I thought my eyes were playing tricks. Mam was hovering at the end of my bed in her petticoat, carefully applying red varnish to my toenails that were sticking out of the covers. I felt the little tickle of the brush.
I’m still sitting there when I see the three Englishmen walking over this way. I feel a dart of pleasurable panic. Behind them I notice a raunchy-looking couple, maybe Turkish or Spanish. She’s got an enormous boob job, and a big jiggly bum that hangs out of tiny white terry-towelling shorts. Her boyfriend, draped in gold chains, is all over her like Godzilla on Viagra. It’s interesting because, with the built-in radar that men have for these things, the three Englishmen, who come and sit on the bench adjacent to mine, are tuned into her, and their gazes follow her as she passes them.
I find myself watching the nice one watch the girl. I don’t know if their quiet comments and grins mean they think she’s hot, or not, but for some stupid reason I feel the teeniest bit envious of her. I notice he wears a wedding ring. They all do. He’s married. Of course he would be.
Their fascination with the girl goes on too long though. As if that weren’t bad enough, the ginger guy pulls out his digital camera and aims it at her bum. Then they pass the camera between them, the blond one mucking around with the zoom. ‘Here mate…’ The ginger one waves Costas over. ‘Come look at this then!’ And I think, oh for heaven’s sake, grow up! Costas takes a look and smiles. Then he must say something to them because they all turn and look at me. I quickly snap my gaze away, but I feel the nice one’s eyes on me moments longer after the other two have looked away. But when I glance back again, they’re all fixed on the camera again.
I’ve seen enough of this silliness now. I get up, and as I am too self-conscious to pass them, I take off in the opposite direction, across a lawn. There’s a payphone, and I just bought a calling card this morning. It’s the middle of the night in Vancouver, so rather than ring Richard at home, I ring his office and leave a message on his voicemail, telling him that he’ll be pleased to know that I took his advice and I went on a vacation. Then I ask him if he’ll stop by my apartment, pick up my mail and deposit a check for me. Then I call Sherrie. Predictably, she picks up.
‘I can’t believe you had the nerve to go to Greece and not invite me along, you witch! I have to go to Bangladesh on a sales trip. It wouldn’t have been that far off!’
‘Yes, we all know they’re practically neighbours, Bangladesh and Greece.’
She chuckles.
‘You wouldn’t care for it here, Sher. It’s full of very attractive married men, and slimy, randy tour guides. Plus it’s, like, three hundred degrees. It’s so scorching that I had to leave Mam behind at the hotel. I was just on a tour of the ancient ruins of Olympia but I nearly became an ancient ruin myself.’
‘Slimy randy tour guides? I’m logging on to Air Canada as we speak…’ She chortles again. ‘But you’re having a good time my friend? That’s what I really want to hear you say. That you’re having a great time with your mom, and you’re happy.’
‘Funnily enough, Sherrie, I am having an okay time. Mam and I have nearly killed each other a couple of times, but we’re licking our war wounds today.’ I miss her suddenly and regret my testiness with her yesterday. The toenail-painting episode, I sense, was her way of making amends.
‘Has Jonathan sent you a lover yet?’
The question comes as a bolt out of the blue. I’d almost forgot I told her that night. Just as I’m about to reply, I see the Englishman walking my way, with his friends.
I follow him with my gaze, choreographing a sudden raunchy fantasy in my mind. ‘No. Not yet, Sherrie. Still waiting …’
Jonathan wouldn’t send me a married Englishman. Shame. Maybe my life could use the drama. I lean back against the wall, propping a foot up behind me, listening to Sherrie’s patter. As the Englishman approaches, I close my eyes and do a very good job of tilting my face, indifferently, to the sun.
~ * * * ~
Costas wants to sit beside me for lunch.
Oh no! This is not what I want. I don’t want to be bugged by anyone. Least of all a man I am not interested in. I’ve just snagged a nice table for two under an arbour, and I’m just reaching for the wine list, minding my own business. Now I’ve become somebody’s charity case. Or their fair game.
‘Actually, if you don’t mind… I really would like to just sit on my own.’ I pull a desperately pleading smile, trying, at the same time, not to be rude.
He says something in Greek to the middle-aged “Mama” restaurant owner. I try to go back to my wine list, but then the Greek Mama speaks to me. ‘You please join another table.’
Just when I think it’s nice of her to care that I have company, Costas explains, ‘This restaurant, it gets busy. Another tour bus is expected in ten minutes. One person cannot occupy a table alone, when they can give that table up for a couple who might want it.’
‘Well where am I supposed to sit then?’ I’m not amused. Is this supposed to mean that my good time doesn’t count because I’ve no one to share it with?
‘Here!’ Big Mama indicates to a long picnic-type bench that’s empty except for the three Englishmen seated at one end.
It seems I’m being ordered to relocate. So I get up and go and hover at the end of the table. The three guys look up from their bottled beers. Not sure what else to do, I sit down, making a point of pulling out the chair farthest away from them. It strikes me how odd I’m being. Why can’t I just sit and talk to them, like a normal person?
When I glance over, the fair-headed guy smiles and says a cautious, ‘Hiya.’
I give a tight smile, then bury my cringing embarrassment in the menu. The nice one couldn’t seem to care less about my arrival at the table, which disappoints me slightly. But why would he? He’s a married man enjoying a ‘guys’ day out. She’s probably back at the pool, frying herself in factor 8. She’ll have one of those lean bodies that still manages to have fair-sized boobs, a funky hairstyle and a belly-ring. And she’ll worship the ground he walks on. And despite the fact that he might casually observe a femme fatale in hot pants, or a thin blonde who doesn’t look like she has much of a personality, the feeling will be mutual.
I stand up sharply. The three Englishmen look up and say something to each other as I leave the table: something disparaging no doubt.
I walk up into the town, embarrassment dragging at my heels. What a performance! Why am I so bizarre sometimes? On an inconspicuous patio, in the shade of a tree, I wolf down a greasy spinach pie and an overly sweet baklava, then rather wish I hadn’t.
~ * * * ~
It’s a blustering ferry ride home. The five o’clock sun is quieter than it’s been all day, and I brave sitting outside on the top deck, my head tilted up to its rays, as we get bumped and tossed over a tempered Ionian sea. When I go inside to the toilets, I’m not even bothered that the Englishmen are sitting on the seats right outside the toilet door. I feel them watch me. Who cares if they think I am a nut-bar? When I come back out again, I’m aware of the three of them staring intently at my face.
‘Jesus,’ I hear one of them mutter once I’m past.
Large shots of Greek Brandy are only three euros. I buy myself a couple.
Jesus. I wonder what that was supposed to mean.
We board the double-decker coach that collects us off the ferry to de
liver us back to our resorts. I say good-bye to Costas and leave him a scant tip. I find a seat downstairs, and, by chance, find myself across the aisle from my three fellow day-trippers. The one who has some strange effect on me, directly faces me. At one point I tune in and hear the ginger chappie say to him, ‘it’s all going to be different though, isn’t it? When you move away.’
‘How so?’ my guy says. ‘Why does it have to be that much different? It’s a small world.’ The accent almost sounds Irish. I wonder where he’s moving to.
I sneak looks at him and note how the golden tan makes the whites of his eyes look fabulous. Even his hair has flecks of gold among the brown. He must sense me looking because he glances over. I look away before our eyes connect. There is something uncivil between us. The die has been cast though. It’s too late now to show that I actually am a nice person after all.
I stare out of the window, not knowing why I feel so spiritless. Maybe it’s because in a different set of circumstances I’d have gone for him; he’d have been my type. Still alive, for one thing. I could have been the one who waits for him now, with fresh new tan lines, wondering how his day out with his mates was. I bet she’s potty about him. I bet they make a lovely couple. I bet that could make a still-broken hearted widow really envious. If there were one around.
They talk quietly now, below the level of the droning bus engine. I try to look out of my window at the view, but I just keep seeing snatches of my desperate face. How did I manage to be sitting here on my own, on a bus in Greece, admiring a married man and feeling discombobulated by the thought that I’m never going to see him again? The absurdity of it almost makes me scream out in bewilderment.
‘Kalamaki,’ the driver announces the name of the resort, as the bus pulls to a stop and I recognize the fruit and magazine stall where a few of us joined the bus this morning. The friendly couple who boarded with me, and their son, come clunking down the stairs.
‘Phew!’ the father says to me. ‘Another one bites the dust. Are you going on the Athens trip tomorrow?’
I tell him I’m not. As I get up out of my seat, the Englishman’s head moves ever so slightly over his shoulder as I pass him.
The family and I step off the bus, into the early evening sunshine. The bus doesn’t pull away immediately and I am powerfully aware of the fact that he is still there.
‘Glad you put Costas in his place,’ the husband says to me. ‘Smarmy git. And that was a downright disgrace in that restaurant! Them not letting you sit where you wanted! We were going to ask you to sit with us. But then you sat with them fellas, and next time we looked, you were gone.’
The bus is going to pull away. I bumble some sort of smiling explanation that I sense they’re waiting for, and my eyes go back inside the bus again.
The Englishman is watching me, as though he has been watching me all the time. Our eyes lock, and neither of us looks away. And it surprises me what I see in his face. It’s a long, unsuppressed look of attraction. The sort you can give to a strange woman in Greece, when you’re married, when you know you’ll never see her again.
Six
There are no real paths to the Kiritsakis Olive Oil Company. Only very rocky, dry soil that looks well trodden by enormous tires. Mam and I get off the tour bus, relieved that it’s cooler today.
This day trip sounded like it’d be a good one—a visit to a real olive grove and a chance to see some of the true Zante. We all pile off the bus and find we’re in the middle of a hilly, olive treed, barren-earthed nowhere that has a single, fairly large apricot-coloured stone house that dominates the landscape with its sense of peeling, decrepit un-lived-in-ness. Instead of weathered Greek men hauling olives in sackfuls, there are about three charmless tanker trucks parked outside of the house.
But it’s who is talking to the three charmless tanker truck drivers that makes our jaws drop. Just as we notice him, he notices us. It must be the hats; we’re about the only two wearing them. My mother sends me three sharp elbow digs. ‘Oh… Be still my beating heart!’
‘This is going from bad to disastrous,’ I say. But I’m wondering why my own heart is ticking fast now.
Within moments he is walking over to us, and then he drops two kisses on our pretty tour guide’s cheek, and they exchange a few words in Greek, his eyes sliding playfully from me, to my mam.
‘Do you think he ever shaves?’ I ask her, while he chats to Stella. He’s sexier than I remembered him. Riskier-looking. More Greek.
As though he hears me, he rubs a hand over his jaw and looks at me with twinkling eyes. ‘The ladies with the hats.’
‘We don’t always wear them,’ my mam tells him. ‘Not the same ones, I mean. We have different ones for different occasions. If I’d known you had a thing for hats, we’d have packed our whole collection.’
His eyes coast over her, like a man who appreciates anything this feminine, no matter what age. But then he says, ‘You’ve come on the tour. Good idea! Well, I hope you enjoy it. There is much to see.’ And then he turns and looks as though he’s going to walk away. Mam and I exchange, don’t let him leave! looks, than he stops, mid-step, and turns around again. ‘Or, there is always another option. I could ask Stella if I could steal two ladies from her and I could show you around myself. Give you a private tour.’ He says it matter-of-factly, and there’s something very appealing about his casual demeanour.
‘Corr!’ my mother leans into me. ‘I’d like the private tour.’
He studies me with a hint of wickedness in his eyes, like he might have heard her.
‘How do we know to trust you? You might be a mad Greek rapist,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, we can hope!’ my mother says under her breath.
‘I promise I am to be trusted.’ He looks at our tour guide. ‘Ask Stella.’
Stella flirts with him a bit too cosily. And I bet that, whatever they’re saying, it’s to do with the fact that he most certainly isn’t to be trusted.
He extends a hand to my mam and then to me. ‘Georgios! Your personal tour guide for the day.’ His hand is big and warm and leaves an imprint on mine that sends pleasant little waves through me.
‘I hope we can afford you,’ my mam flirts from under the brim of her enormous hat. ‘And you might as well know, we’re English so we don’t leave very generous tips.’
Those raisin eyes twinkle like wildfire.
‘Vivien,’ she says. ‘Or Viv if you’d like to call me that. And this is –’
‘Angela,’ he supplies. He looks at me cryptically.
‘Don’t you have work to do?’ I ask him, wondering how he can suddenly afford to take the day off. ‘Won’t your boss be a little peeved if you just go AWOL?’
Before he can answer, Stella says, ‘One of the perks of owning Greece’s fifth largest olive oil export business is this type of thing.’
Now I do feel like a fool.
‘Give me a moment.’ He holds up a hand, walks backwards. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ And then he strides off purposefully in the direction of the truckers, and I notice he’s really only average height, but being lean and long-legged, he appears taller.
‘Today I met the man you’re going to marry!’ My mam quietly sings in my ear.
‘Get out! Why on earth would you say something like that?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel it. Just like I did when you brought Jonathan home that first time.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah! But Jonathan and I got engaged during that visit, didn’t we?’
‘Are you scoffing at me again?’
I narrow my eyes at her. ‘What? Mocking the afflicted, you mean? Me? Never.’
She gives me a withering look, and goes back to marvelling at Georgios as he talks to the men. ‘Be still, be still, be still my beating heart!’
‘Oh shut up, you’ve said that already.’
Stella tells us that Georgios will have to have us back here, in front of the house, no later than five, if we are to join the rest of the group for the scenic
ride back to the hotel. I must say, we get some very curious looks from the other day-trippers as we step out of the crowd and follow Georgios.
‘I’m having a good gloat, personally. Getting this special treatment. I bet they’re all wondering what we’ve got that they haven’t!’ She chuckles. ‘Oh, I love a good gloat. There’s nothing like it.’ She thrusts a kiss on my cheek. ‘I’m having a very nice holiday now. Are you?’
I swat her off. ‘What? You mean because of him?’
‘No! Girl!’ She sends an elbow through my ribs. ‘Because of you dear. All because of you.’ She digs in her handbag, takes out her compact mirror, peers in it, and twists her hat round to a more coquettish angle.
~ * * * ~
Georgios Kiritsakis knows a thing or two about olive trees. ‘In Greek legend, Athena—is goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon—is god of the sea—they two claim a city as theirs. There is big fight… The gods said that the deity who could leave behind the most important thing for the people would win… ‘ He looks at us to see if we’re following him. We are. He is melody to our ears. He smiles, a touch vainly, like he knows we’re really not listening to a word he’s saying. ‘Athena, well she produce the olive tree, symbol of peace and plenty. Poseidon, he produce a horse, symbol of strength and courage. So who win?’ He looks from my face to my mother’s. ‘The gods gave the city to Athena. And why? Because they think that the olive would be of more lasting use to humans than war.’ Georgios’ white Suzuki Grand Vitara navigates its way through dense terraces of olive groves, climbing higher and higher. He drives like a man who could feel his way blindfolded through these hills, swinging his gaze from the road, to my mother, to me in the back, as he talks. My mother chuckles skittishly and hangs onto her hat as we go over bumps so big they make your jaws slam together. From time to time she sends me her delighted, conspiratorial look over her shoulder, and I snap a photo, catching the exhilaration and young-womanliness in her eyes.
