Nights of Rain and Stars

by Maeve Binchy

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Nights of Rain and Stars

  A Dutton Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by Maeve Binchy

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1029-1

  A DUTTON BOOK®

  Dutton Books first published by The Dutton Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Dutton and the “D” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: March, 2005

  ALSO BY MAEVE BINCHY

  Light a Penny Candle

  Echoes

  London Transport

  The Lilac Bus

  Firefly Summer

  Silver Wedding

  Circle of Friends

  The Copper Beech

  The Glass Lake

  Evening Class

  Tara Road

  Scarlet Feather

  Quentins

  Aches & Pains (nonfiction)

  For dear good Gordon,

  who has been such a supportive and kind person

  that nobody would believe it if I were to write him into a book!

  Thank you with all of my heart.

  ONE

  Andreas thought he saw the fire down in the bay before anyone else did. He peered and shook his head in disbelief. This sort of thing didn’t happen. Not here in Aghia Anna, not to the Olga, the little red and white boat that took visitors out to the bay. Not to Manos, foolish headstrong Manos whom he had known since he was a boy. This was some kind of dream, some trick of the light. That could not be smoke and flames coming from the Olga.

  Perhaps he was not feeling well.

  Some of the older people in the village said that they imagined things. If the day was hot, if there had been too much raki the night before. But he had gone to bed early. There had been no raki or dancing or singing in his hillside restaurant.

  Andreas put his hand up to shade his eyes, and at the same time, a cloud passed overhead. It wasn’t as clear as it had been before. He must indeed have been mistaken. But now he must pull himself together. He had a restaurant to run. If people came all the way up the hilly path, they would not want to find a madman, someone crazed by the sun fancying disasters in a peaceful Greek village.

  He continued fixing the red and green plastic-covered cloths with little clips to the long wooden tables on the terrace outside his taverna. This would be a hot day, with plenty of visitors at lunchtime. He had laboriously written the menu on the blackboard. He often wondered why he did it . . . it was the same food every day. But the visitors liked it; and he would put “Welcome” in six languages, they liked that too.

  The food was not special. Nothing they could not have gotten in two dozen other little tavernas. There was souvlaki, the lamb kebabs. Well, goat kebabs really, but the visitors liked to think they were lamb. And there was moussaka, warm and glutenous in its big pie dish. There were the big bowls of salad, white squares of salty feta cheese and lush red tomatoes. There were the racks of barbouni, the red mullet waiting to be grilled, the swordfish steaks. There were the big steel trays of desserts in the fridge, kataifi and baklava—nuts, honey, and pastry. The chilled cabinets of retsina and local wines. People came from all over the world and loved what Andreas, and dozens like him, could provide.

  He always recognized the nationality of any visitor to Aghia Anna and could greet them in a few words of their own language. It was like a game to him now, after years of knowing the way people walked and reading their body language.

  The English didn’t like if you offered them a Speisenkarte instead of the menu; the Canadians did not want you to assume they were from the United States. Italians did not like being greeted with a Bonjour, and his own fellow countrymen wanted to be thought of as important people from Athens rather than tourists from abroad. Andreas had learned to look carefully before he spoke. He was a tall, slightly stooped man in his sixties, a thick head of gray hair and big bushy eyebrows.

  And as he looked down the path he saw the first customers of the day arriving.

  A quiet man, wearing those shorts that only Americans wore, shorts that did nothing for the bottom or the legs, but only pointed out the ridiculous nature of the human figure. He was on his own and stopped to look at the fire through binoculars.

  A beautiful German girl, tall, tanned, with hair streaked by the sun or a very expensive hairdresser. She stood in silence, staring in disbelief at the scarlet and orange flames licking over the boat in Aghia Anna bay.

  A boy in his twenties, small and anxious-looking, with glasses that he kept taking off and wiping. He was openmouthed in horror, looking at the boat in the bay down below.

  A couple exhausted after the walk up the hill, they were Scottish or Irish, Andreas thought—he couldn’t quite make out the accents. The boy had a sort of swagger about him, as if he were trying to tell some imaginary audience that the walk had not been difficult at all.

  “That’s the boat we were on yesterday.” The girl had her hand over her mouth in shock. “Oh my God, it could have been us.”

  “Well, it isn’t, so what’s the point in saying that?” her boyfriend said firmly.

  And then, for the first time, Andreas realized that it was true. There was a fire. Not just a trick of the light. There was the sound of an explosion from down in the bay. The others had heard it too. He could not put it down to an old man’s failing eyesight. He began to tremble and hold onto the back of a chair to support himself.

  “I must telephone my brother, Georgi, he is in the police station . . . maybe they don’t know about it, maybe they cannot see the fire from down there.”

  The tall American man spoke gently. “They see it; look, there are lifeboats already on the way.” But Andreas went to make the phone call anyway. Of course there was no answer from the tiny police station up the hill from the harbor.

  The young girl was peering down at the innocent-looking blue sea where the ragged scarlet flames and the black smoke seemed like a grotesque blot in the middle of a painting. “I can’t believe it,” she said over and over. “Yesterday he was teaching us to dance on that very boat, Olga, he called it after his grandmother.”

  “Manos—that’s his boat, isn’t it?” asked the boy with the glasses. “I was on his boat too.”

  “Yes, that is Manos,” said Andreas gravely. That fool Manos with too many people on the vessel as usual, with no proper catering facilities but insisting on pouring drink into them and trying to make kebabs w
ith some outdated gas cylinder. But none of the people of the village would ever say any of this. Manos had a family here. They would all be gathered now down by the harbor, waiting for the news.

  “Do you know him?” asked the tall American with the binoculars.

  “Yes, indeed, we all know everyone here.” Andreas wiped his eyes with a table napkin.

  They stood as if transfixed, watching the distant boats arriving and trying to douse the flames, the bodies struggling in the water hoping to be picked up by smaller craft.

  The American lent his binoculars to anyone who wanted to see. They were all at a loss for words; too far away to go and help, there was nothing they could do, but still they couldn’t stop looking at the tragedy unfolding below on that innocent, beautiful blue sea.

  Andreas knew he should make some move to serve them but somehow it seemed crass. He didn’t want to leave what was left of Manos and his boat and the unsuspecting tourists who had gone out for such a happy holiday cruise. It would be too commercial to start telling these customers about stuffed vine leaves and seating them at the tables he had been preparing.

  He felt a hand on his arm. It was the blond German girl. “It’s worse for you—this is your place,” she said.

  He felt tears come to his eyes. She was right. It was his place. He had been born here, he knew everyone in Aghia Anna, he had known Olga, the grandmother of Manos, he knew the young men putting their boats out into the tide to rescue the victims. He knew the families who would be standing wailing at the harbor. Yes, it was worse for him. He looked at her piteously.

  Her face was kind but she was practical too. “Why don’t you sit down? Please do,” she said kindly. “There’s nothing we can do to help them.”

  It was the spur he needed. “I’m Andreas,” he said. “You’re right, this is my place, and something terrible has happened here. I will offer you all a Metaxa brandy for the shock and we will say a prayer for the people in the bay.”

  “Is there nothing, nothing that we can do?” asked the English boy with the glasses.

  “It took us about three hours to get up this far. By the time we got back I guess we’d only be in the way,” said the tall American man. “I’m Thomas, by the way, and I think we’d be better not be crowding the harbor. See—there are dozens of people there already.” He offered his binoculars so they could see for themselves.

  “I’m Elsa,” said the German girl, “and I’ll get the glasses.”

  They stood with tiny glasses of the fiery liquid in their hands and raised a strange toast in the sunshine.

  Fiona, the Irish girl with the red hair and a freckled nose, said, “May their souls, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace.”

  Her boyfriend seemed to wince slightly at the expression.

  “Well, why not, Shane?” she asked him defensively. “It’s a blessing.”

  “Go in peace,” said Thomas to the wreck, where the flames had died down and they were in the business of counting the living and the dead.

  “L’chaim,” said David, the English boy with the glasses. “It means ‘To life,’ ” he explained.

  “Ruhet in Frieden,” said Elsa with tears in her eyes.

  “O Theos As Anapafsi Tin Psihi Tou,” said Andreas, bowing his head in grief as he looked down on the worst tragedy that Aghia Anna had ever known.

  They didn’t order lunch, Andreas just served them. He brought them a salad with goat cheese, a plate of lamb and stuffed tomatoes, and afterward a bowl of fruit. They spoke about themselves and where they had been. None of them were two-week package-tour visitors. They were all in it for the long haul—several months, at least.

  Thomas, the American, was traveling and writing an article for a magazine. He had a year off, a proper sabbatical from his university. He said that they were much sought after—a whole year with their blessing to see the world and broaden his mind. Teachers of every kind needed a chance to go out and talk to people of other countries. Otherwise they could get caught up in the internal politics of their own university. He looked somehow a little far away as he spoke, Andreas thought, as if he were missing something back in California.

  It was different with Elsa, the German girl. She seemed to miss nothing she had left behind. She said she had grown tired of her job, she realized that what she had thought of as important was in fact shallow and trite. She had enough money saved to finance a year’s travel. She had been on the road for three weeks and never wanted to leave Greece.

  Fiona, the little Irish girl, was more uncertain. She looked at her moody boyfriend for confirmation as she spoke of how they wanted to see the world and find somewhere to settle where people wouldn’t judge them, want to improve them, or try to change them. Her boyfriend said nothing either to agree or disagree, just shrugged as if it were all very boring.

  David spoke of his wish to see the world while he was still young enough to know what he liked and maybe join it. There was nothing sadder than an old man who found what he was looking for decades too late. Someone who had not shown the courage to change because he had not known what opportunities for change there were. David had only been a month on his road of discovery. His mind was filled with all he had seen.

  But even as they talked and told each other a little of their lives in Düsseldorf, Dublin, California, or London, Andreas noted, they said nothing of their families they had left behind.

  He told them of life here in Aghia Anna and how the place was rich today, compared to his childhood when no tourists ever came by and a living was earned in the olive groves or minding goats on the hills. He spoke of brothers long gone to America and his own son who had left this restaurant after an argument nine years ago and who had never come back.

  “And what did you argue about?” asked little Fiona, with the big green eyes.

  “Oh, he wanted a nightclub here and I didn’t—the usual thing about age and youth, about change and not changing.” Andreas shrugged sadly.

  “And would you have had a nightclub if it meant he would have stayed at home?” Elsa asked him.

  “Yes, now I would. If I had known how lonely it would be to have my only son in Chicago, far across the world and never writing to me . . . then, yes, I would have had the nightclub. But I didn’t know, you see.”

  “And what about your wife?” Fiona asked. “Did she not beg you to get him back and open the club?”

  “She had died, you see. Nobody left to make peace between us.”

  There was a silence. It was as if the men were nodding and understanding completely, and as if the women didn’t know what he was talking about.

  The afternoon shadows got longer. Andreas served them little coffees and none of them seemed to want to leave. Back down at the harbor there was a hell of other people’s lives. Through the binoculars, they saw bodies on stretchers and crowds gathering and people pushing to see if their loved ones were alive or dead. They felt safer here, up the hill, and even though they knew nothing of each other, brought together like this they talked as if they were old friends.

  They were still talking as the first stars came into the sky. Now, down in the harbor, they could see the lights of flashing cameras and of television teams recording the tragedy to tell to the world. It hadn’t taken long for the news of the disaster to get to the media.

  “I suppose they have to do it,” said David with resignation. “But it seems so ghoulish, monstrous, like preying on people’s lives in a tragedy.”

  “It is monstrous, believe me, I work in it. Or worked, anyway,” Elsa said unexpectedly.

  “A journalist?” David asked with interest.

  “I work on a television current affairs show. There’s somebody like me now, at my desk in the studio, asking questions at long distance of someone down there in the harbor—how many bodies have been recovered, how did it happen, are there any Germans among the dead? What you say is true—it is monstrous. I’m glad to be no part of it now.”

  “And yet people do have t
o know about famines and wars—otherwise how can we stop them?” Thomas asked.

  “We’ll never stop them,” Shane said. “It’s a matter of money. There’s big money in this kind of thing, that’s why it’s done, that’s why anything’s done in the world.” Shane was different from the others, Andreas thought. Dismissive, restless, anxious to be somewhere else. But then he was a young man, it was natural that he would want to be with his attractive little girlfriend, Fiona, just the two of them, rather than having a conversation with a lot of strangers high on a hill on a hot day.

  “Not everyone is interested in money,” David said mildly.

  “I didn’t say you had to be, I’m just saying it’s what gets things going, that’s all.”

  Fiona looked up sharply as if she had been down this road before, defending Shane for his views. “What Shane means is that that’s the system—it’s not the God in his life nor mine. I certainly wouldn’t be a nurse if it were money I was looking for.” She smiled around at them all.

  “A nurse?” Elsa said.

  “Yes, I was wondering would I be any use down there, but I don’t suppose . . . ?”

  “Fiona, you’re not a surgeon, you’re not going to amputate a leg down there in a harbor café,” Shane protested. There was a sneer on his face.

  “But you know, at least I could do something,” she said.

  “For God’s sake, Fiona, get real. What could you do, tell them in Greek to keep calm? Foreign nurses aren’t in high demand at a time of crisis.”

  Fiona flushed darkly. Elsa came to her rescue. “If we were down there, I’d say you’d be invaluable, but it would take us so long that I think we’re better off being up here, out of people’s way.”

  Thomas agreed. He was looking through his binoculars. “I don’t think you’d even be able to get near the wounded if you were there,” he said reassuringly. “See, there’s such confusion there.” He passed her the glasses, and with trembling hands she looked down at the distant harbor and the people jostling each other.