“’Ow stupid of me,” Bald Yannis replied, slapping his head in an exaggerated fashion to indicate he ought to have known better. His voice dripped with sarcasm as he continued, “I was forgettin’ Astakos is awash with young beauties that can’t wait to come and skivvy for yous at below minimum wage.”
Lukas harrumphed in acknowledgment the village may not exactly be bursting at the seams with nubile young things lacking any sort of ambition beyond cleaning up after cantankerous old men. Casting another glance over the two women he whispered,
“Well the short one is not to my liking at all, she’s too plain and lame. I could take the taller one off your hands I suppose. Her figure’s not too bad with that fulsome bosom and at least she’s not fat like the short one.”
“That’s very generous of yous Luka. I’m very ‘appy to ‘ear yous don’t want to get yous hands all over my pregnant wife but that ‘er sister will do.”
“Very funny, Yanni,” Lukas mocked; before it dawned on him the hardware shop man was serious. Having the grace to blush, Lukas finally stuttered, “How was I to know you’d gone and got yourself tied to a ball and chain Yanni? It’s a risky move; she might be after half of your shop.”
“’Ave yous ‘eard yourself? Does my wife look like a gold digger? I may ‘ave been late to marriage, but I’m more than ‘appy with my Soula an’ more than ready to turn my trusty chainsaw on any malaka who makes unwanted advances to ‘er.”
“It’s admirable the way you defend your wife,” Lukas said, desperately trying to dig himself out of the hole he’d dug. “I’ve never been lucky enough to experience your matrimonial good fortune.”
“Yous mean no woman would put up with yous perving around,” Bald Yannis pointed out.
“By remaining a bachelor I am in the position to create employment opportunities for women to keep house for me. Now does your sister-in-law want the job?” Lukas asked brusquely, worried Bald Yannis was about to deprive him of the only willing housekeeper in the village.
“Voula will take the job, but yous ‘ave to pay ‘er properly and give ‘er time off. If I ‘ear yous is harassing ‘er or getting too handy I’ll be back with my chainsaw,” Bald Yannis threatened. About to leave he turned back to the older man, warning him, “An’ keep yous hands off the piglet.”
Bald Yannis and Soula waved goodbye to Voula and set off for home. Soula turned to her husband saying, “I ‘eard what yous said Yanni, that I ‘ave made yous happy.”
“Of course yous ‘ave Soula, it goes without saying.”
“It might do Yanni, but it does a woman good to ‘ear it now and again,” Soula sighed.
Bidding goodbye to her sister and brother-in law, Voula took stock of her new home, having never imagined a house as fine as this one existed. Marble floors stretched from the entranceway, leading into a magnificent sitting room furnished with elegant pieces. The kitchen was fitted out with all the latest appliances, worrying Voula who had no idea how to operate them. A grand staircase with an ornate iron balustrade swept upstairs where the balconies overlooked a tiled patio decorated with statues of naked nymphettes.
“You can have this room,” Lukas told her, opening a door leading off from the kitchen to a room furnished far more simply than the rest of the house. The servant’s quarters suited Voula perfectly, being free of damp patches and religious icons, and equipped with a single bed big enough for herself and the piglet. The en-suite bathroom brought joyful tears to her eyes when she realised she wouldn’t need to venture outdoors to an outhouse as she’d done in Osta.
“Your duties will be keeping the house clean and tidy, and cooking meals. You can have the afternoons off during siesta hours,” Lukas said, not wanting her around during the allotted hours he dedicated to watching the porn channel.
“I’ll be kept busy with a house this size,” Voula said, thinking the job would be a doddle once she got to grips will all the new-fangled gadgets and without the pressure of a farm to run on top of the housekeeping. She’d have spare time to spend with her sister and help with the babies when they arrived, and if she didn’t need to work evenings she could perhaps sign up for a course and earn some qualifications.
“Will you need me in the evenings?” Voula asked.
Lecherous Lukas had to bite down a suggestive remark, remembering the new housekeeper was out of bounds unless he wanted to risk getting up close and personal with Bald Yannis’ chain saw.
“Your evenings will likely be free as I like to socialise and eat my dinner at the taverna. This very evening I will be treating my niece Stavroula to an evening out. It will make a nice change for her as she runs a taverna and must be sick to death of eating her own cooking,” Lukas boasted.
Reassured to know her new employer was such a thoughtful and upstanding family man Voula smiled pleasantly, grateful for her change of fortune. Hugging the piglet she skipped down to the kitchen and filled the dishwasher with Lukas’ dirty laundry.
Chapter 28
Impatient Patients
A lump the size of a newly laid egg adorned Tall Thomas’ luridly bruised forehead as he lay stretched out on the examining table in the new clinic. Doctor Konstantinos wound a bandage around his mangled head, relieved to finally have a human patient with a genuine ailment to experiment on.
“I saw an angel, a sweet vision with a goodly smile,” Tall Thomas sighed.
“The bump on your head may have caused you to hallucinate,” the doctor assured him. “You had a nasty accident and are suffering from shock and concussion.”
“It seemed so real,” Thomas insisted.
“Thoma, you fainted and although you are convinced you saw an angel I can assure you there was nothing more than a gaggle of peasant women without any medical training hovering over you.”
“’Ang on, are yous saying I imagined the donkey giving birth as well?”
“Oh no, that was real enough,” Doctor Konstantinos shuddered; mightily relieved he hadn’t been called upon to assist in the donkey’s delivery. “Now try to rest and recover your strength.”
“’Ow’s the patient doin’?” Gorgeous Yiorgos demanded, bursting into the clinic. Without waiting for a reply he told Tall Thomas,
“Adonis the mechanic ‘as managed to pull yous mobile refrigerated fish van out of Stavroula’s annex. Yous is lucky the annex ‘ad more damage than yous van and Adonis reckons he’ll be able to fix it. Stavroula was hopping mad until Slick Socrates told ‘er she should be able to make a killin’ on the insurance.”
“Did yous see an angel?” Tall Thomas asked his friend.
“Yous will be meaning Soula’s sister Voula what rushed to ‘elp yous an’ delivered the donkey. She impressed everyone with ‘er calm demeanour and no nonsense ways,” Gorgeous Yiorgos told him.
“The vision of loveliness I saw ‘ad kind hazel eyes. See Doctor, I knew I wasn’t hallucinating; the angel I saw must ‘ave been Voula.”
“Well ‘appen yous will ‘ave chance to thank ‘er for ‘elping yous. She ‘as taken up employment as the live-in housekeeper of Lecherous Lukas,” Gorgeous Yiorgos revealed.
“She is too goodly to be under the same roof as that pestering pervert,” Thomas cried in alarm.
“’Appen Bald Yannis will ‘ave warned the old devil off getting too handy with his sister-in-law,” Gorgeous Yiorgos suggested.
“I must go and thank her at once,” Tall Thomas announced, swinging his legs off the examining table and collapsing in a heap on the floor.
“You are in no fit state to go courting just now,” the doctor objected as Gorgeous Yiorgos hauled Tall Thomas back onto the table. Thomas closed his eyes, trying to recall the four sisters he had briefly encountered on his trip to Osta with Bald Yannis at the instigation of the matchmaker. He remembered being so repulsed by the bullying coarse loud-mouthed ogre of a father that he had barely cast a glance at his daughters. He determined to put things right as soon as he recovered his strength.
“Make way, sickly people comin’ throug
h,” Fotini shouted, pushing Gorgeous Yiorgos out of the way.
Fotini had returned home to discover an English woman vomiting in the garden, the parrot clamped fast to the scalp of a greasy haired English man, and Nitsa colliding into things in the kitchen, complaining she’d suddenly gone blind.
“Yous eye looks really nasty,” Fotini told her, alarmed by the black oozing mass stuck between her cousin’s eyelids. Realising Nitsa was too blind to drive the taxi Fotini dashed next door, but there was no sign of Quentin.
“Typical, no sign of the gormless malaka when he’s needed in an emergency. There’s nothing else for it, that tourist chap will ‘ave to drive the taxi to take ‘is vomiting wife and poor sightless Nitsa to the clinic,” Fotini complained.
Nitsa’s resistance to handing over control of her precious taxi to the reluctant English man was well founded as the ‘parrot topped’ Clive proved incapable of driving the short distance on the right side of the road. Fotini forced Cilla to sit with her head sticking out of the window, knowing Nitsa would be furious if the taxi ended up stinking of sick. Fortunately they arrived at the clinic without any mishap. Fotini insisted the doctor give Nitsa his full attention, dismissing the English woman as drunk rather than possibly poisoned by drinking a parrot contaminated bottle of curative.
“I absolutely refuse to treat that blasted bird again,” Doctor Konstantinos stubbornly announced as soon as he saw the parrot.
“The parrot isn’t the patient, Nitsa is,” Fotini snapped.
“I should be seen first, I’ve been poisoned by their curative,” Cilla demanded.
“But I’ve gone blind doctor, I can’t see anything,” Nitsa wailed.
“Perhaps it would help if you took off those dark glasses,” the doctor suggested, deciding the old crone constituted the greater emergency. Peering closely at Nitsa through his scope he exclaimed,
“Good grief woman, what is that grotesquery in your eye?”
“It’s my false eyelashes stuck on with superglue. I thought I was just ‘aving an allergic reaction, but now I can’t see anything,” Nitsa cried hysterically.
“You have a putrid mass lodged in there. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say it is the rotting corpse of something nasty that has swollen up with noxious gases as the decomposition process begins. It must be removed at once,” the doctor pronounced, swinging around to grab a long needle.
“Now hold still, you won’t feel a thing,” he said, injecting the skin around the eye with a local anaesthetic as Nitsa screamed like a banshee.
“Calm down you hysterical hag, otherwise I won’t be responsible for where these tweezers end up,” Doctor Konstantinos snapped, poking around in Nitsa’s eye with his surgical instruments. Just as he tweezed out the rancid caterpillar corpse, Cilla raised her head out of the sick bucket long enough to threaten to sue Nitsa and Fotini for poisoning her with the contaminated curative. Taking a good hard look at the doctor Cilla couldn’t believe her eyes.
“I know you,” she shrieked. “Clive look, isn’t that Doctor Konstantinoupoleos who was struck off from the local hospital for being a fake?”
Chapter 29
Shaking off the Chaperone
Thea missed out on all the excitement at the tourist tat annex by returning home before the grand opening, hoping to catch Toothless Tasos out in some compromising behaviour. She discovered her fiancé engaged in the very aberrant activity of ironing a shirt and chatting innocently to Sofia. Before she had chance to quiz Tasos on his sudden ability to wield a household appliance she received a telephone call from Gorgeous Yiorgos saying her supposedly medic tenant in the harbour-side house was being interrogated by Pancratius the village policeman for possibly impersonating a doctor. Alarmed at the prospect of losing the rent money she dashed off.
“I do ‘ate keeping secrets from Thea,” Toothless Tasos lamented to Sofia. “If only I could tell ‘er we are to be wed on Friday she might stop looking at me as though I am up to no good.”
“Your big surprise wedding won’t be a surprise if you go and tell Nona what you are planning. I must run now Taso, I have to go to Tassia’s house to try on my bridesmaid dress,” Sofia lied.
The teenager felt a tad guilty for leaving Tasos so down in the doldrums, but she was already late for her secret afternoon rendezvous with Iraklis. She knew she really ought to go and check her bridesmaid dress out but she couldn’t be in two places at once. She just had to trust that Tassia hadn’t plumped for a ghastly dress that would make her look as stylish as a sack of potatoes.
Rushing outside she exchanged a chaste kiss on the cheek with her ever awkward boyfriend Iraklis who was looking much more attractive these days. His usual pasty skin was bronzed by the sun since he spent so much time tricycling his deliveries throughout the village. The curative had worked wonders on clearing up his acne and his chest had even managed to sprout three manly hairs.
“Did you manage to sneak away without being seen?” Sofia asked.
“Yes indeed,” Iraklis replied. “I don’t think Mrs Kolokotronis will be playing gooseberry today. I must confess I did something wicked and hid her knitting in the refrigerator. You know she never goes anywhere without it.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Sofia sighed in relief. “Much as I like the old dear it does get so irritating when she follows us to the beach. She’s so determined to play the good chaperone she even insists on joining us in the sea with her knitting. The constant clacking of her needles drives me mad; she makes more noise than an olive grove full of cicadas.”
“I can never understand why she does that, it makes the wool go all soggy and then she insists on lighting the fire in the evening to dry out all the wet bits. The house has been like a furnace with the wood burner going in this heat wave,” Iraklis complained as they strolled to the beach.
“How was your morning in the beauty salon, Sofia?”
“As dull as usual,” Sofia replied. “I did get to cut my first bit of nostril hair and one old dear who came in for a perm was practically dead, so she was excellent practice for styling corpses.”
Sofia had shared her ambition with Iraklis of one day styling corpses in her uncle’s ‘Cosy Coffins Funeral Homes’ business. Iraklis, loathe to lose his girlfriend to the bright lights of Athens had tentatively suggested that with his clerical training they could perhaps one day open their own funeral parlour business right here in Astakos. With a joint ambition to strive for the young couple felt very close and enthusiastically saved their wages towards a sensible future together.
“How was your morning at the supermarket, Irakli?” Sofia asked.
“Exhausting. Fat Christos was crazed when he saw Bald Yannis displaying a load of vinyl beach inflatables at the hardware shop and had me blowing up plastic ducks and flamingos all morning. I wouldn’t have minded but he couldn’t find the foot pump so I had to revive them to their full glory with mouth to mouth resuscitation.”
“Your poor lips,” Sofia giggled, planting a soft kiss on his mouth.
“When I finally got round to my deliveries I nearly came a cropper when Nitsa almost drove into the tricycle with the taxi,” Iraklis continued.
“Gosh, thank goodness she missed you. I heard the dreadful commotion when Tall Thomas crashed into Stavroula’s annex. I was almost convinced my customer with the perm was actually dead until she jumped out of her seat at the sound of the crash,” Sofia confided.
“Race you to the sea Irakli,” Sofia called, running ahead as they reached the beach and stripping off her long floaty sun dress to reveal a blue and white polka dot one-piece skirted swimsuit Mrs Kolokotronis had gifted her for swimming. The older lady had presumed the sight of Sofia in a bikini would be a temptation too far for her young charge. Sofia was delighted with her choice of swimwear as it was actually the height of beach fashion and she was grateful Mrs Kolokotronis hadn’t gifted her a hand-knitted swimsuit. Eager to feel his arms around Sofia in the sea, Iraklis raced after his girlfriend, pausing to exchange a frie
ndly greeting with Quentin and Deirdre who were soaking up the sun on a pair of plastic sun loungers.
“Don’t they make a lovely couple, Quentin?” Deirdre observed, sitting up to watch the young lovebirds frolicking in the water.
“I think I might join them in the sea,” Quentin said, wiping an arm across his sweaty brow.
“Quentin, don’t you dare. It looks as though they’ve finally managed to shake off Mrs Kolokotronis and they won’t thank you for playing gooseberry,” Deirdre chided.
“I think you may have spoken too soon dear,” Quentin said, pointing to Mrs Kolokotronis slowly wheezing her way across the sand with her dress tucked into her bloomers and her arms flapping wildly to attract the attention of Iraklis. Plonking herself down next to Quentin and Deirdre, a very red in the face Mrs Kolokotronis fanned herself with an official looking envelope, struggling to catch her breath.
“Ooh, I’m too fat to be runnin’ around in this heat,” Mrs Kolokotronis wheezed wearily. “Would yous go and fetch young Iraklis out of the sea K-Went-In. I ‘ave an emergency letter for ‘im that he must see at once.”
“Anything to oblige,” Quentin replied, squealing in pain as the hot sand scalded the soles of his feet. Finally locating his flip flops he set off to drag Iraklis out of the sea.
“So much for shaking off our chaperone,” Sofia complained when Quentin delivered the message.
“What is it Mrs K? K-Went-In said it was an emergency,” Iraklis asked in concern as the threesome joined Mrs Kolokotronis and Deirdre.
“Ooh Irakli, I’ve been dreading this moment,” Mrs Kolokotronis cried. “Yous ‘ave ‘ad a letter. It looked important so I opened it, I knew yous wouldn’t mind.”
“What is it?” Iraklis asked, panicked by Mrs Kolokotronis’ visible distress.
“It is yous Call Up Papers lad. Yous ‘ave to report to the army for yous mandatory national service.”
Float the Goat Page 13
