by Maeve Binchy
Thomas yearned to be beside his boy. It was a real ache. But he had to remain cheerful, otherwise what was the point in all this?
“Nowhere’s a long way away these days, Bill. The phone is always there. Listen to you! You could be in the next room!”
“Yeah, I know. And you always liked to travel,” the boy agreed.
“I do, and so will you, one day.”
“Sure, and I called Grandma to tell her you were okay and she said you are to take care.”
“I will, Bill, believe me, I’ll take care.”
“Bye, Dad.”
He was gone, but the sun had come up and the day was beautiful. His son had called. Thomas felt alive, and for the first time in a long time he felt how good everything was.
When the sun came up on Aghia Anna, Fiona went to the bathroom and suddenly realized that her period was six days late.
When the sun came up on Aghia Anna, Elsa walked down toward the harbor. She passed by the church, which had become a temporary morgue; then, as she rounded the corner, she saw with horror that among the crowds of people arriving from Athens was a German television team from her own network setting up shots of the still-smoldering wreck, which had been towed into the harbor.
She knew the cameraman and the soundman. And they would have known her had they seen her. And then Dieter would have known where she was and would have been there in a matter of hours.
She backed carefully into a little café and looked around wildly.
Inside were old men playing a form of backgammon—no help there. Then at a table she saw David, worried David from yesterday, the kind English boy who had said there was no pleasing his father.
“David!” she hissed.
He was overjoyed to see her.
“David, can you go and get a taxi and bring it here for me, I can’t go outside. There are people out there that I just don’t want to see, can you do that for me, please . . .”
He seemed alarmed that she was so different from yesterday, so out of control in comparison. But, mercifully, he seemed to understand.
“Where will I tell it you’re going?” he asked.
“Where were you going today?” she asked wildly.
“There’s a place about fifty kilometers away, a little temple and an artists’ colony. It’s called Tri . . . Tri . . . something. It’s on a little gulf. I was going to get a bus there.”
“We’ll take the taxi there,” she said firmly.
“No, Elsa, we’ll go out and get on a bus, a taxi would cost a fortune, believe me,” David pleaded.
“And I have a fortune, believe me,” she said, handing him a wad of notes. “Please, David, just be full of guts and act now, this minute, and take a chance this once . . .”
She looked at him and saw his face fall. Why had she spoken so cruelly and harshly, telling him she thought him a weakling?
“I mean, it’s a crazy thing for someone you hardly know to ask, but I need your help, I’m begging you. I’ll tell you all about it when we get to this place. I haven’t committed a crime or anything, but I am in trouble and if you don’t help me now, then honestly I don’t know what I’ll do.” She spoke from the heart, not acting, not with the intensity she summoned up so well for the camera.
“There’s a line of taxis in the square. I’ll be back in five minutes,” said David.
And Elsa sat down in the dark café, unconcerned that every eye in the room was directed toward the tall blond goddess who had marched into such an unlikely place, offered a nervous young man with spectacles what looked like a year’s wages, and was now sitting waiting with her head in her hands.
FOUR
Fiona had quite a long time to wait until Shane woke up.
He lay there in the chair with his mouth open, his hair damp and stuck to his forehead. He looked so vulnerable when he was asleep. She longed to stroke his face, but she didn’t want to wake him until he was ready.
The room was hot and stuffy. The people of the house had left their clothes in it and it smelled like a secondhand shop.
Downstairs she could hear the tired Eleni, whose eyes were red with weeping over the tragedy, calling to her three little sons. Neighbors kept calling in, obviously telling the story over and over to each other, all of them shocked by the tragedy.
She wouldn’t disturb these people by going down, not until Shane woke, until he was ready to go.
When he did wake he was not in good humor.
“Why did you let me sleep in the chair?” he asked, rubbing his neck. “I’m as stiff as a bloody board.”
“Let’s go and have a swim—that will make you feel better,” she tried to encourage him.
“Easy for you—you’ve been sleeping in the bed all night,” he grumbled.
This was not the time to tell him that she had been awake most of the night, thinking about poor Manos, whose body lay in the local church, beside that of his little nephew and so many others who had died on his boat. And it was certainly not the time to tell him that she could very possibly be pregnant. That must certainly wait until he was awake, alert, and not complaining of pains in his shoulders.
Anyway, they were going to Athens today. So he had said; he had a man to meet, something to do.
“Will we pack before breakfast?” she asked.
“Pack?” he said, puzzled.
Perhaps he had forgotten the whole idea.
“Don’t mind me, I don’t know where I am half the time,” Fiona said with a laugh.
“You can say that again . . . Here, I’m going to bed for a bit and you could go and get us a couple of coffees, okay?”
“It’s a long way to the café—it would be cold by the time I got back.”
“Oh, Fiona, ask them for it downstairs. It’s only coffee, after all, and you know all those please and thank-you words that they like.”
Words that most people like, Fiona thought to herself, but didn’t say so. “Sleep for a couple of hours, then,” she said to him, but he didn’t hear her, as he was asleep already.
She walked along the beach back toward the town, her bare feet kicking the warm sand at the edge of the water and letting the Mediterranean tickle her toes. She could not believe that this was happening.
Fiona Ryan, the most sensible of her whole family, the most reliable nurse on the whole ward, had given up her job to go off with Shane, the man they had all warned her against.
And she might now very possibly be pregnant.
It wasn’t just her mother who had rejected Shane as the other half of her life, it was all her friends, including Barbara, her best pal since they had been six years of age. And her sisters, and her fellow nurses.
But what did they know?
And anyway, love was never meant to be uncomplicated; think of any of the great love stories and you realize that. Love had nothing to do with meeting a nice suitable person, someone who lived nearby, who had a good job, who wanted a long engagement and to save a deposit on a house. That wasn’t love, that was compromise.
She thought about the possible pregnancy and her heart lurched. There had been a couple of times fairly recently when they had not been careful. But there had been that in the past too and nothing had happened.
She felt her flat stomach. Was it possible that a speck which could become a child was growing there, someone who would be half Shane and half her? It was too exciting to imagine.
In front of her on the beach she saw the strange, baggy shorts and overlong T-shirt of Thomas, the nice American man they had spent the day with yesterday.
He recognized her and called out, “You look happy!”
“I am!” She didn’t tell him all the reasons, and the way her mind was filling up with wild, wonderful plans of living here in Aghia Anna, bringing up a child with these people, Shane working on the fishing boats or in the restaurants, she helping the local doctor, maybe even as midwife. These were all dreams for the future, dreams that would be discussed later when Shane had his coffee. She would tel
l him.
“My son called me from the States. We had a great conversation.” Thomas couldn’t help sharing his own good news.
“I’m so very glad.”
This man seemed to care about only one thing: the little boy called Bill whose picture he had shown them during their long time together. A little boy like any other, with blond hair and a toothy grin—but the most special child in the world to Thomas, as to any parent.
She dragged herself back from that train of thought. “You know I thought he might call you back last night—I felt it when you were telling us about him.”
“Let me buy you a coffee to celebrate,” he said, and they walked together to a small taverna near the beach. They talked easily, as they had yesterday, about the tragedy, about how hard it was to sleep and to believe that all those people had begun yesterday with coffee in a taverna like this and now were lying dead in the church.
Fiona explained that she had walked into town to buy bread and honey for their breakfast, and she would give some to the people in the house where they were renting a room so that she could go into the kitchen and make a cup of coffee for Shane when he eventually woke up.
“We were meant to be going to Athens today, but I think he’s too tired,” she said. “But in some ways I’m actually rather glad Shane’s too tired. I like this place. I want to stay on.”
“So do I. I’m going to walk up in those hills and I want to stay for the funeral, for some reason.”
She looked at him with interest. “So did I, and it’s not just ghoulish wanting to see it all firsthand. I wanted to be part of it.”
“Wanted? Does that mean you’ll not stay?”
“Well, we don’t know what day it will be and, as I said, Shane says he wants to go to Athens.”
“But surely if you want to . . .” His voice trailed away.
Fiona saw the look on his face. The same look that eventually came over everyone’s face when they met Shane.
She stood up. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll go now.”
He seemed disappointed, as if he had wanted her to stay. She too would like to have stayed, talking to this easy man. But she couldn’t risk Shane waking up and not finding her there.
“Thomas, do you think I could give you some money for flowers, in case . . . well, in case people do have flowers for them all.”
He put up his hand. He knew she didn’t have much money. “Please—I’d love to get flowers and I’ll put ‘Rest in peace’ from Irish Fiona.”
“Thank you, Thomas, and if you see the others, David, Elsa . . .”
“I’ll say that you and Shane had to go to Athens and you said good-bye,” he said very gently.
“They were very nice, you were all great people to be with . . .”
He watched her go and buy the great warm bread and the little pot of local honey to take back to that selfish young man, and he sighed.
A professor, a poet, a writer—and he didn’t understand the smallest thing about life and love. Such as why Shirley found him cold and distant and found the empty-headed Andy a delightful companion.
Thomas remembered their conversations as the sun had set yesterday. He hadn’t understood the lives that were being described there either. Why did David’s father, who should be so proud and happy to have such a son, keep the boy at arm’s length and manage only to say the wrong thing, the hurtful thing.
Thomas had no idea what could have happened to that gorgeous German girl Elsa that had her running away from her homeland with haunted eyes. He would never begin to understand such things, he told himself with resignation. Better not to attempt it.
He looked up and saw Vonni crossing the street.
“Ya sou, Thomas,” she said.
“Ya sou—isn’t it such a tragedy? I expect you knew him—Manos?”
“Yes, I knew him as a toddler, a schoolboy. He was wild then, wild always. He would steal things from my garden, so I gave him a job working in it. That sorted him out.” She seemed pleased with the memory.
Thomas felt an urge to talk to her, ask her why she had come to this island—but there was something about Vonni that discouraged any intimacy. She was always too quick with a jokey remark that headed you off.
“Anyway, he has to deal with God tonight, and knowing Manos, he’ll get by on charm.” She shrugged and moved away. Thomas knew that was the end of the conversation.
He watched Vonni continue down the street toward her craft shop. There would be little business today. And he wondered if she would even open her little shop. He saw her shake hands with passersby, easy and at home in this place.
Elsa bent down in the taxi and hid her head under a scarf until they had left the town. Only then did she straighten up. Her face looked strained and anxious.
“Why don’t I tell you what I know about this place we are going to?” David offered.
“Thank you. That would be perfect.” She lay back and closed her eyes while his words rolled over her. Apparently it was the site of a minor temple that had had some excavation work done, but the money had dried up; so it had been left in a semi-exposed state. Nobody knew all that much about the temple; the excavations had yielded little in the early stages. But there were those who said it was well worth a tour.
And there had been an artists’ colony there years ago, which was still going strong; even today there were silversmiths and potters who came there from all over the world. It wasn’t at all commercial, so the artists brought their wares to town to sell.
David looked at her from time to time as he spoke. Her face was relaxing. Obviously, she didn’t want to tell him what she was frightened of, so he wouldn’t ask. Better to go on burbling away about this place they were visiting. “Am I boring you?” he asked her suddenly.
“No. Why on earth do you think that? You are restful and soothing,” she said with a great smile.
David was pleased. “I often bore people,” he said simply. He wasn’t self-pitying or asking to be contradicted. It was as if he were stating a matter of fact.
“I doubt it,” Elsa said with a smile. “I think you are a very peaceable person to be with. Is that the right word or should it be ‘peaceful’?”
“I like peaceable,” David said.
She patted his hand and they sat back companionably in the taxi, looking up on one side to the rugged hillside where goats clambered, and down on the other at the sparkling blue sea. The sea that looked so friendly and inviting now, but had taken the lives of so many yesterday.
“When will the funeral be?” Elsa suddenly asked the taxi driver.
He understood the question but didn’t know the words to reply. “Avrio,” he said.
“Avrio?” she repeated.
“Tomorrow,” David said. “I just learned fifty words,” he added apologetically.
“That’s forty-five more than I learned,” Elsa said with a trace of the old smile coming back to her face. “Efharisto, David, my friend, efharisto poli.”
They drove on along the dusty road. Friends indeed.
Shane felt a lot better after the coffee, bread, and honey. He said that they would have one last day in this crazy place and leave for Athens on the following day. Boats to Athens left the harbor every couple of hours, it was no big deal. He wondered where they would find a place around there with some action.
“I don’t think there’ll be much going on today or tonight. The whole town is full of press and investigators and officials. You know the funeral is tomorrow, the people downstairs told me.” Fiona longed to ask if they could leave after the funeral. But she had so much to tell him during the day, she could let that question wait awhile. “There’s a lovely little place I saw out on a point—they catch fish and grill them straight from the sea. Will we go there, do you think?”
He shrugged. Why not? The wine was probably cheaper there than in the fancy places by the harbor anyway. “Come on, let’s go there then, Fiona, and don’t spend hours and hours struggling to say ‘Me going, you staying
’ to all these people downstairs.”
She laughed at herself good-naturedly. “I don’t think I’m quite as bad as that. I just try to say thank you to Eleni for being so nice to us, and that I’m sorry about what happened to all their friends.”
“It’s not your fault, for Christ’s sake.” Shane was in one of those moods where he would fight about anything.
“No, of course it isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to be polite.”
“They’re being well paid for our staying here,” he grumbled.
Fiona knew they were paying practically nothing; if the family had not been so poor they wouldn’t have moved out of their bedroom.
But this was not the time to argue the point with Shane.
“You’re right, we should go now, before it gets too hot,” she said, and they walked down the shabby stairs and through the crowded kitchen, past the family who sat bewildered by the scope of the tragedy.
Fiona longed to stop and sit there, to murmur consoling phrases to them, little Greek sentences she had heard everywhere . . . Tipota, Dhen Birazi. But she knew that Shane was anxious for his first cold beer of the day. She had so much to tell him today, this was no time to delay. It would soon be noon and it was very hot. They should go to the taverna on the sea straightaway.
The day was indeed becoming very hot.
Thomas decided against going up into the hills. He should have left much earlier in the morning for that kind of trip.
He looked into the craft shop on his way out. He had been right. Vonni had not opened for business. She had put a notice in the window in Greek. Black-edged and short, he had seen similar ones in other places. He had been told that it said “Closed out of respect.”
Vonni was asleep in her chair. She looked tired and old. Suppose she really slept in the shed with the hens, when there were two empty bedrooms in the apartment. She could easily sleep in one of these, but he knew better than to ask her.
If the truth be told, Thomas didn’t want to move far from the little town that was shrouded in grief. He would walk along the coast to a simple place on a point that he had seen last week. There had been a wonderful smell of grilling fish when he passed it a few days back, and it would be just the spot to sit and look out to sea and think. He was glad that he had remembered it. There had been some raggedy umbrellas there that would protect him from the sun, and a cool breeze coming in from the sea. Just the place to go.
