by Maeve Binchy
“Yes, you’re right, I see,” Fiona said in a small voice.
“It must be wonderful being a nurse. I think it means that you’re never afraid,” Thomas said, trying to make Fiona feel better. “What a great career. My mother is a nurse, but she works long hours and doesn’t get paid enough.”
“Did she work while you were a kid?”
“Still does. She put my brother and me through college and we got careers out of all that. We try to thank her and give her a rest, a place to live, but she says she’s programmed to keep going.”
“What career did you get out of college?” David asked. “I have a degree in business studies, but it never got me anything I wanted to do.”
Thomas spoke slowly. “I teach nineteenth-century literature at a university. I write a little poetry.” He shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal.
“What do you do, Shane?” Elsa asked.
“Why?” He looked back at her directly.
“Don’t know, probably it’s because I can’t stop asking questions. It’s just that the rest of us said. I suppose I didn’t want you to be left out.” Elsa had a beautiful smile.
He relaxed. “Sure, well I do a bit of this and a bit of that.”
“I know.” Elsa nodded as if this was a reasonable answer.
The others nodded too. They also knew.
Just then, Andreas spoke very slowly. “I think you should all call and tell them back at home that you are alive.”
They looked at him, startled.
He explained what he was thinking. “As Elsa says, this will be on the television news tonight. They will all see, they may know you are here in Aghia Anna, they will think that you might be on the boat of Manos.” He looked around him. Five young people from different families, different homes, different countries.
“Well, the mobile phone doesn’t work here,” Elsa said cheerfully. “I did try a couple of days ago and I thought so much the better, now it’s a real escape.”
“It’s the wrong time of day in California,” Thomas said.
“I’d get the answering machine, they’ll be out again at some business function,” David said.
“It would only be another earful of ‘. . . dear, dear, look what happens when you leave your nice, safe job and go gallivanting round the world . . . ,’ ” said Fiona.
Shane said nothing at all. The notion of phoning home had just never occurred to him.
Andreas stood up at the table and addressed them. “Believe me, when I hear there has been a shooting in Chicago or a flood or any disaster, I wonder to myself could my Adonis be caught up in it. It would be so good if he were to ring . . . just a short message to say that he is safe. That’s all.”
“His name was Adonis,” Fiona said in wonder. “Like Adonis, the god of beauty.”
“His name is Adonis,” Elsa corrected.
“And is he an Adonis, with the women, I mean?” Shane asked with a grin.
“I don’t know, he doesn’t tell me.” Andreas’s face was sad.
“You see, Andreas, you’re the kind of father who does care. Some fathers don’t,” David explained.
“Every parent cares, they just have different ways of showing it.”
“And of course, some of us have no parents,” Elsa said in a light voice. “Like me, a father long disappeared, a mother who died young.”
“But there must be someone in Germany who loves you, Elsa,” Andreas said, and then thought perhaps he had gone too far. “I tell you, my telephone is there in the bar. I will open a bottle of wine to celebrate that we are here tonight with all our hopes and dreams still left to us as we sit in another night of stars.”
He went inside and could hear them talking out on the terrace.
“I think he really does want us to use his phone,” Fiona said.
“Well, you just said what you’d be letting yourself in for,” Shane objected.
“Perhaps it’s making too much of it all,” Elsa wondered. They looked again down at the scene below. And there was no argument.
“I’ll call first,” said Thomas.
Andreas stood polishing glasses and listening to their calls. They were a strange little group gathered today in his taverna. None of them seemed at ease with the people he or she called. It was as if they were all running away from something. Each of them sounded like someone escaping from a bad situation.
Thomas’s voice was clipped. “I know he’s at day camp. I just thought, no, it doesn’t matter, believe me I had no agenda. Shirley, please, I’m not trying to make trouble. I was just . . . All right, Shirley, think what you like. No, I haven’t made any plans yet.”
David was apprehensive. “Oh, Dad, you’re at home, yes, well of course you should be. It’s just that I wanted to tell you about this accident . . . No, I wasn’t hurt . . . No, I wasn’t on the boat.” A long silence. “Right, Dad, give my love to Mum, won’t you. No, tell her there’s nothing definite about when I’m coming back.”
Fiona’s conversation was hardly at all about the boat tragedy. No one seemed to let her talk about it. It was, as Fiona had predicted, some kind of plea to come home. “I can’t give you a date yet, Mam, we’ve been through this a million times. Where he goes I go, Mam, and you must make your own plans for that—it would be much better that way.”
Elsa left two messages on answering machines. Andreas spoke German and he understood perfectly. The first was warm: “Hannah, it’s Elsa. I am in this glorious place in Greece called Aghia Anna, and there was a terrible accident today. People died in a boat tragedy. In front of our eyes. I can’t tell you how sad it was. But in case you wondered if I was involved in it, I wanted to tell you I’m one of the lucky ones. Oh, Hannah, I do miss you and your kind shoulder to weep on. But I weep a lot less now, so possibly I did the right thing to come away. As usual, I’d prefer you not say that you heard from me. You’re such a friend, I don’t deserve you. I’ll get in touch soon, I promise.”
Then she made a second call, and this time her voice was ice-cold. “I wasn’t killed on that boat. But you know that there are times I would not mind if I had been. I don’t pick up e-mails, so save your energy. There is nothing you can say, nothing you can do. You’ve done and said it all. I only call you because I imagine that the studio is hoping that I was either burned in that pleasure-boat fire or that I am standing on the harbor waiting to give an eyewitness account. But I am miles away from it and even more miles away from you and that’s all I care about, believe me.”
And Andreas saw the tears on Elsa’s face as she replaced the receiver.
TWO
Andreas knew that none of them wanted to leave his place. They felt safe here on his terrace, far from the tragedy unfolding far below. And far from their own unhappy lives back home.
He wondered, as he had wondered so many nights before, about families. Was it just the argument about the nightclub that had driven Adonis away? Was it a need to be free, away from the old ways? If he had to do it all over again, would he be more free and giving, support his son’s wish to go and see the world before he settled down?
But then, these young people were all doing that and yet they were still having problems at home. He had heard that in all their conversations. He left their wine on the table and sat in the shadows with his worry beads moving from hand to hand while they talked. As the evening came and wine was poured, they were relaxed and seemed to want to talk. They were no longer secretive about their home lives. Poor little Fiona was the most eager of all.
“You were right, Shane . . . I shouldn’t have called, it just gave them another chance to tell me what a mess I was making of my life, and how they can’t get their silver wedding plans organized until they know where I am going to be. Five months left, and my mother, who thinks that a takeaway Chinese meal is entertaining, is now worrying about a party! I told her straight out that I hadn’t a notion of where we’d be then, and she starts to cry. She’s actually crying about a party and here we are with all those pe
ople down at the harbor who really do have something to cry about. It would make you sick.”
“Told you.” Shane inhaled. He and Fiona were smoking a joint; the others didn’t join in. Andreas didn’t approve, but now wasn’t the time to make heavy rules.
Thomas spoke up. “I had no luck either. Bill, my little boy, who might actually care about me, was at day camp. My ex-wife, who would love to think that I had perished on Manos’s boat, was less than pleased with the call. Still, at least the boy won’t have to look at the news and worry about me.” He was philosophical about it. He reached into his wallet and showed them a photo of a smiling boy—they admired the child politely.
“How would he know that you were even in this area?” Shane obviously thought the phone calls home were a waste of time for everyone.
“I send a fax with my telephone numbers for the week. Shirley is meant to put it up on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”
“Does she?” Shane asked.
“She says she does.”
“But has your son called?”
“No.”
“Then she doesn’t, does she?” Shane had it all figured out.
“I guess not, and I don’t imagine she’ll call my mother either.” Thomas’s face was set in a hard line. “I wish I had thought of calling my mother instead. But I wanted to hear Bill’s voice, and then Shirley got me so upset . . .”
Finally David spoke quietly. “When I called, I was getting ready to leave a nice calm message on the answering machine—but they were at home and it was my father . . . And he said . . . he said that if nothing had happened to me what was I ringing about?”
“He didn’t really mean that, you know,” Thomas said soothingly.
“You know how people always say the wrong thing, just because they’re relieved,” Elsa added.
David shook his head. “But he did mean it, he really didn’t see the point, and I could hear my mother calling out from the sitting room, ‘Ask him about the award, Stanley.’ ”
“Award?” the others asked.
“It’s a pat on the back for having made so much money, like the Queen’s Award for Industry. That sort of thing. There’s going to be a big reception and a ceremony. Nothing else on earth matters to them except this.”
“Is there anyone else at home who could go to the ceremony in your place?” Elsa asked.
“Well, there’s everyone in Father’s office and his friends from Rotary and the Golf Club, and Mother’s cousins.”
“You’re an only child then?” Elsa said.
“That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem,” David said sadly.
“It’s your life, do what you want to.” Shane shrugged. He couldn’t see what the problem was.
“I suppose they just wanted to share the honor with you,” Thomas said.
“Yes, but I wanted to tell them about the tragedy and people dying and all they could do was to start talking about this function and wanting to know if I would be home in time for it. It’s monstrous.”
“It might be a way of saying come home, mightn’t it?” Elsa suggested.
“Everything’s a way of saying come home, but come home and get a good job and help your father in his business is not what I am going to do, not now, not ever.” David took off his glasses and wiped them again.
Elsa had said nothing about herself. She sat looking far out to sea over the olive groves, at the coastline of the little islands where all those people thought they would be spending a sunny holiday afternoon. She felt everyone looking at her, waiting for her to talk about the phone call she had made.
“Oh, what response did I get? Well I think that there’s nobody at home in Germany! I called two friends, got two answering machines, and they’ll both think I’m mad, but what the hell?” Elsa gave a little laugh. There was no hint that she had left a vague, cheery message on one machine and tense, almost hate-filled words on the other.
From the shadows, Andreas looked at her. The beautiful Elsa, who had left her job in television to find peace in the Greek islands, had certainly not found it yet, he told himself.
They were quiet again on the terrace now, thinking about their phone calls and wondering how they would have played the scene if they had to do so all over again.
Fiona might have said to her mother that there were so many anguished mothers and daughters looking for each other down at the harbor, it had made her need to call home, and that she was sorry for all the anxiety she was causing, but just because she was a grown-up woman and had to lead her own life it didn’t mean that she couldn’t love her mam and dad as well. They couldn’t have gotten so upset if she had said that, if she had talked about her mother’s plans and just said over and over that she did care about them and that she would try to be home for the silver wedding. They would have to wait and see.
David thought he might have said that he was visiting many places and learning a lot about the world. He could have told them that today there had been this sad tragedy on a beautiful Greek island, and it certainly made him stop and think about how life was so short and how it could end so unexpectedly.
His father enjoyed proverbs and sayings. David might have told him that there was a proverb which said, “If you love your child, send him on a journey,” and he would have said that his plans weren’t firm yet, but he felt every day was a learning experience that would make him a better person. It might have worked: it couldn’t have been worse than the empty chasm he had created.
Thomas realized that he should have called his mother, not Shirley. It was just that he had been so hoping to talk to Bill and hadn’t been able to resist the possibility that the boy might have been there. Mom was the one he should have phoned. He would have told her that he had not been involved in the tragedy and asked her to tell Bill. He could have told his mother that as he sat with people he had never met, he had told them what a great woman she was and how grateful he was that she had paid for his education by taking on extra night work. Mom would have loved that.
Elsa alone thought that she had handled her calls well. They both knew she was in Greece, but they did not know exactly where, and she had left them no way of getting in touch with her. She had said exactly what she wanted to say to each of them. She had been vague and gentle to one; she had been curt and cold to the other. She would not have changed a word.
The phone rang and Andreas started. It would be his brother Georgi, calling from the police station. Georgi had said he would ring when they knew the final count, let him know about the dead and the casualties.
But it wasn’t Georgi, it was a man speaking German. He said his name was Dieter and he was looking for Elsa.
“She is not here,” Andreas said. “They all went back to the harbor a while ago. How did you know she was here?”
“She can’t have left,” the man said. “She only called me ten minutes ago. I have traced the number she called from . . . Where is she staying, please? Forgive me for sounding so urgent, but I really do need the information.”
“I have no idea, Herr Dieter, no idea at all.”
“And who was she with?”
“A group of people—I think they leave this village tomorrow.”
“But I must find her.”
“Sincerest regrets at not being able to help you, Herr Dieter.” He hung up, and turned to find Elsa standing looking at him. She had come in from the terrace when she heard him speaking German on the telephone.
“Why did you do that, Andreas?” Her voice was steady.
“I thought it was what you would want, but if I was wrong the telephone is still here—please telephone him again.”
“You were not wrong. You were absolutely right. Thank you very much, very much. You were very right to turn Dieter away. Usually I am strong, but tonight I could not have had that conversation.”
“I know,” he said gently. “There are times when you will say too little or too much. It’s best then not to have to say anything at all.”
The phone rang again.
“You still don’t know where I am,” she warned.
“Of course,” he said with a bow.
This time it was his brother, Georgi.
Twenty-four people dead.
Twenty from abroad and four from Aghia Anna: not only Manos but also his little nephew, who had gone out for the day proudly to help his uncle. A boy of eight. And the two local boys who had worked on the boat, young men with their lives ahead of them.
“It’s a very dark time for you, Andreas,” Elsa said, her voice full of concern.
“They are not bright days for you either,” he answered.
They sat there, thinking their own thoughts. It was as if they had always known each other. They would talk when there was something to say. Elsa spoke, eventually.
“Andreas?” She looked outside: the others were sitting in a group; they couldn’t hear.
“Yes?”
“Will you do one more thing for me?”
“If I can, yes, of course.”
“Write to Adonis. Ask him to come home to Aghia Anna. To come back now. Tell him that your village has lost three young men and a boy. That you all need to see the face of someone who left, someone who can come back.”
He shook his head. “No, my friend Elsa, it would not work.”
“You mean you won’t try to make it work. What’s the worst that can happen? He can write and say no, thank you. That’s not the end of the world, compared to all that has happened here tonight.”
“Why do you want to change the lives of people you don’t know?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Andreas, if you knew me in my real life, that’s what I do all the time, I’m a crusading journalist—that’s what the television station calls me; my friends say I’m just interfering, meddling. I’m always trying to keep families together, get children off drugs, get litter off the streets, get integrity into sports . . . It’s my nature to change the lives of people I don’t know.”
“And does it ever work?” he asked.
“Sometimes it works. It works enough times for me to want to keep at it.”
