by Maeve Binchy
Thomas was tidying up his sitting room and getting out glasses. David walked around looking at the books. “Did you carry all these from California?” he asked, amazed.
“No, a lot of them are Vonni’s. I do really wish that she’d sleep here, you know.”
“What?”
“She sleeps down there at the end of the yard, in a shed where there are hens and Lord knows what else in it.”
“I don’t believe you.” David looked in amazement at the dilapidated building.
They chatted easily for a while as they set out paper napkins and little plates. Eventually David said what they were both thinking. “Elsa is a very long time getting the olives, isn’t she?”
There was a long pause.
“I suppose she met him,” Thomas said.
“And went off with him,” David said.
Elsa saw Dieter as soon as she came out of Yanni’s delicatessen. He was talking to Claus, the chief cameraman, and looking at his watch. Elsa knew they would have hired a helicopter; they could not wait for slow ferries to take them back to Athens. The pictures and commentary would already be in Germany by modem.
She moved back into the doorway of Yanni’s shop but not quickly enough. Dieter had seen her. She could see him running toward her.
“Elsa, Elsa,” he called, pushing past the people in the narrow street. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright.
She had forgotten how handsome he was, like Robert Redford in his early years.
There was no escape. He was beside her.
“Dieter?” she said uncertainly.
“Darling Elsa, what are you doing here, what did you mean by running away?” He stood with his hands on her shoulders, admiring her, drinking her in. Any attempt at discretion had been abandoned. But then Claus had probably known anyway. Like half the television company had probably known.
She said nothing, just looked into his very blue eyes.
“Claus heard you were here. Someone from the other networks saw you yesterday, but I didn’t believe them. Oh, my dearest lovely Elsa, how very, very good to have found you.”
She shook her head. “You haven’t found me, you’ve just met me by chance. Now I must go.” She saw Claus move back discreetly; he wanted no part of this lovers’ quarrel.
“Elsa, don’t be ridiculous. You leave your job, you leave me, no explanation for either . . . you think there is nothing to discuss.” His face was working with emotion. She had never seen him so upset.
He called out to the cameraman. “Claus, I’m going to stay the night here, you go back to Athens with the others. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t stay for me, Dieter, I beg you. And if you try to force me or threaten me, I swear I’ll get the police. They’ve locked up one man yesterday for threatening a woman here, they’ll have room in his cell for another.”
“Threaten you, Elsa?” He was astounded at the idea. “As if I would! I love you, Elsa. Is it so demanding and mad that I ask you to tell me why you left me, with no explanation?”
“I wrote to you,” she said.
“Twelve lines,” he said, reaching into his jacket. “I carry it everywhere. I know it by heart, I am always hoping one day I will read it and it will make sense.” He looked so confused, she felt herself softening.
“It’s all there,” she said.
“Nothing is there, Elsa. I’ll go away, leave you alone, I swear, if you tell me. Just tell me why you threw away two years like that. You know why . . . I don’t. We have always been fair with each other. Be fair now. You owe me that much.”
She was silent. Perhaps she did owe him more than a twelve-line letter.
“Where are you staying? Let me come to your place,” he asked quickly.
“Not my place, no. Where are you staying? The Anna Beach?”
It was the one vaguely touristy, comfortable place. She would have expected him to stay there.
“Yes, exactly,” he agreed.
“Right. I’ll go there with you, we can talk in a corner of the café, the sort of verandah looking over the sea.”
He seemed to expel a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said. “First I have to leave a message,” and he produced his cell phone to make a call.
She went back to the counter and gave the olives back to Yanni. There was some discussion, and it was agreed: Yanni’s little brother would bring the bag of olives and a note to the apartment over Vonni’s craft shop. She scribbled something on a piece of card.
“You didn’t even write this guy twelve lines. I suppose I should be flattered,” Dieter said.
She smiled at him. “No, it’s not a guy. Well, it’s two guys actually, but you know what I mean.”
“I love you, Elsa,” he said with great intensity.
“You were so helpful today, Fiona. The parents said to thank you very much.”
“It was nothing; I love children.” Her voice was sad.
“You will have your own one day.”
“I don’t know, Vonni, I really don’t. Did you have children?”
“One,” Vonni said. “A son, but it wasn’t what you’d call straightforward.” Her tone meant that the subject was now closed. But that she was not shutting Fiona out. She was prepared to talk, but not about her son. “I meant it—you are good with children. It doesn’t matter that you don’t speak their language.” Vonni was praising Fiona.
“Vonni, I could be pregnant now,” Fiona said in a rush. “In fact I’m certain I am and . . . well it’s not what you’d call straightforward either.”
“And the young man who has gone to Athens—does he know?”
“Sort of. I told him badly, you see.”
“You shouldn’t be on your own now,” Vonni said. “I’d ask you home, but I’m living in the henhouse.”
“I’ll go to Elsa’s place,” Fiona said. But there was no answer there when they called. When they tried to find David, the people there said he had not come home.
Vonni escorted her to the craft shop. “Let’s find Thomas,” she said. “I’ll wait here until I see you have someone to be with.” She stood in the street as Fiona went up the steps to the apartment.
Vonni saw Thomas open the door and welcome her in, then Vonni went back to the harbor.
She was going to go to help in the kitchen of Manos. There was plenty of food but nobody to serve it or wash up afterward. Vonni would stay there as long as she was needed.
“They sent him away to Athens, before I could see him,” Fiona wept.
“Maybe it was all for the best,” David said. Then he saw the expression on Fiona’s face. “What I mean is, it gives a cooling-off period for everyone. He’ll be back or he’ll write or something,” he finished lamely.
“Or he’ll phone,” Thomas added doubtfully.
“Where’s Elsa?” Fiona asked suddenly. Elsa might say something helpful, unlike these well-meaning men.
There was a silence. Then Thomas said, “She was coming back here but she met someone . . .”
“The German guy,” David said.
“And she went off with him?” There was naked envy in Fiona’s voice.
“Apparently,” Thomas and David said at exactly the same time.
SEVEN
At the Anna Beach, most of the journalists were at the checkout desk. Another job was over, another disaster recorded, and now they were heading off to the next one. They’d pick up the story again when the investigators reached their official conclusion and produced their reports.
Dieter and Elsa went to the big rattan chairs and low tables of the conservatory. Below them, the dark blue sea lapped innocently against the rocks. It was impossible to believe that this very sea had taken the lives of so many people in the bay this week.
Dieter ordered coffee for two.
“Sorry.” Elsa called the waiter back. “He is having coffee, I’m not. He ordered for me by mistake . . . I would like an ouzo and water, please.”
“Please don’t be difficult,” h
e begged her.
“Difficult? Choosing what I want to drink?” she asked, amazed.
“No, you know, scoring points,” he said.
“Oh, I’m way beyond that now. Anyway, Dieter, you wanted to talk, so here I am. Talk to me.”
“No, I wanted you to talk. I wanted you to tell me why you disappeared, ran out on everything, to hide secretly in a backwater like this.”
“I’m not hiding,” Elsa said indignantly. “I resigned my work formally, I am here under my own name. When you asked me to come and talk with you, I came, so where’s the secrecy bit? And why do you call it a backwater? Look over at that desk—half the world media are here . . . plenty of action, I’d say.”
“I hate it when you’re flippant, Elsa; it’s an act, and it doesn’t suit you.”
The waiter arrived. Elsa poured some water into the aniseed drink and watched it go cloudy. Then she drained it in one gulp.
“That was fast!” He was startled and amused as he began to sip his coffee.
“Well, why don’t you finish yours too, then we can go to your room?”
“What?” He looked at her, astonished.
“Your room,” she repeated, as if he were a little deaf.
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“Dieter, isn’t this what it’s about? You said talk, but you don’t mean talk, do you? You mean screw.”
He looked at her openmouthed. “Well. I . . . Oh, come on, Elsa, there’s no need to be crude about it all. That’s not what we had.”
“Sorry, I thought that’s what we had every night you came to my apartment, and lunchtime too, when it could be managed.”
“Elsa, I love you, you love me, why on earth are you reducing it all to such coarse words?”
“So you don’t want me to go to bed with you?” She looked at him innocently.
“You know I do.”
“Well, finish your coffee and get your key,” she said.
“Thank you, Vonni, nobody but you would think of coming here to wash dishes on a night like this.” Maria, the widow of Manos, stood in her kitchen looking at all the clean dishes and the polished glasses.
“How are you managing in there? Are the relations being a help?”
“Most of them, yes, but some say he was irresponsible, and that’s no help.”
“Oh, there are always people who say the very wrong thing, they sort of specialize in it,” Vonni assured her.
“You sound as if you have had experience of it.”
“I could write a book about it. Who has upset you most?”
“My sister, I think. She told me I should look for a new husband soon before I lose my looks. Manos is not cold in his grave and she tells me this.”
“This is the sister married to the miser at the other side of the island?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she’s hardly a world authority on love, ignore her. Who else?”
“My father-in-law, he says I’ll never manage to raise his grandchildren here, that we should all go to Athens to live with him. I’d hate it, Vonni, really I would. I couldn’t go.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Tell him you’ll think about it for a year. Say you heard that no one should make a decision for twelve months after a bereavement. Say it’s an old custom.”
“Is it?” Maria asked.
“It is back in Ireland, but you don’t need to tell him where the tradition came from. Just say it’s well known.”
“He’ll start making plans if he thinks I might.”
“No, be very firm, say no plans until a year from now. In a year you can say the children can’t leave their school or whatever.”
“Did you really have things like this to worry about, funerals where they say the wrong thing? You always look so calm.”
“After my mother’s funeral, my sister wrote and told me that I was a scourge and a lash for my mother’s back, that she never slept easy in her bed because of me.”
“Oh no, Vonni, you are so kind and good, that can’t have been true.”
“I was wild when I was young, much more irresponsible than your Manos ever was. I was very hurt. I thought for a long while that it might indeed be true, but then I remembered that I made my mother laugh too, something my boring serious sister never did, so I cheered up then.”
“And do you stay in touch with your sister? I would like to go back into the other room and slap my sister’s face,” Maria said.
“Yes, so did I for a long time, but life is much easier if you don’t slap them. Believe me. I send her a birthday card and a Christmas card every year.”
“And does she reply?”
“She sends me cards when she goes to the opera in Italy or a classical tour of Spain, just to show me how cultured she is. But she is lonely, she has no real friends. I am a million times better off in this warm, welcoming place. I can afford to send her polite greetings. You too, Maria, you are so lucky not to be married to that miser your sister chose, rejoice in it every day, and hang on in there; she’ll be back with him counting coins in two days. Don’t slap her this time.”
Maria laughed. “You make me feel much better. I didn’t think I would laugh again,” she said, putting her hand on the older woman’s arm.
“Yes, you will,” Vonni promised her. “Cry a lot, but laugh as well. It’s how we survive.”
David didn’t want to go back to the house where he was staying. The family were wiped out with grief over their dead son; he felt in the way.
Fiona didn’t want to walk all the way out to Eleni’s house to sleep there alone in the knowledge that Shane had left her with no explanation, no letter, no message.
“Why don’t you both stay here?” Thomas suggested suddenly. “Fiona can have that room at the back, David can have the sofa bed.” He looked at their faces, both of them very grateful and relieved.
They nodded their acceptance; it was a great idea, they said.
It wasn’t a night to be alone.
“Can I stay here in the station?” Andreas asked his brother, Georgi.
“I was just going to suggest it.”
“It’s just that it seems a long way to go the whole way up that mountain road tonight, I’m not quite sure why.”
“Nobody wants to be alone on a night of such a sad funeral,” Georgi said, reaching out and patting his brother’s hand. “I don’t want to be alone either. I’m glad you want to stay.”
Neither of them mentioned the reason why they were alone. They talked about the people who had come out today to mourn. They talked about their sister, Christina, and how she would have come to the funeral but she had to look after her family far away. No word was spoken about Andreas’s son, Adonis, who lived in Chicago and was in contact with neither his hometown nor his father. Adonis, who would have gone to school along these roads with Manos.
No mention was made of Georgi’s wife, who had left him over an incident many years ago. His wife always said that she was just being friendly to a tourist. Georgi had seen it as being a great deal more than friendly. Words had been said that could never be taken back. She had long gone back to her own people in Crete.
Georgi went to one of the filing cabinets and brought out a bottle of Metaxa brandy and then he got some clean sheets and pillows.
“Are you giving me a cell?” Andreas asked.
“No, brother, you and I have spent enough years as boys sharing a room, it won’t hurt us to do it again, two lonely old men, on a sad night.”
Vonni had served coffee and baklavas to the family of Maria and Manos, and she was preparing to leave quietly, when Maria came back into the kitchen.
“Vonni, can I ask you a favor?”
“Anything, Maria.”
“Could you stay here for the night? Just one night. I don’t think I can manage on my own tonight.”
“Of course I will.”
“You are such a good friend; the bed is too big, too empty for me.”
“I snore a bit, I’d better warn
you,” Vonni apologized in advance.
“So did Manos, every night, even though he denied it loudly.”
“Dear Manos,” Vonni said fondly. “I’m sure he would be pleased if I snored for a night or two in his place.”
The Hotel Anna Beach had little bungalows facing the sea. Dieter opened his bungalow door with his key and stood back to let Elsa go in first.
She didn’t sit down, but stood and looked at the pictures on the walls, big blown-up photographs of the coast along Aghia Anna.
“Very cool,” she said admiringly.
“This is not what I had expected,” he said.
“But we have agreed that it’s what you’d like.” She smiled.
“That’s not a real smile, Elsa,” he began.
“You taught me to smile for television. Teeth and eyes, you said. Teeth and eyes, I remember it well.”
“Please, my love, you are my love. Please don’t be brittle.”
“No indeed, and let’s not waste time either.” Elsa had already taken off her navy jacket. Now she drew the cream linen dress over her head and laid it neatly on the back of the chair.
He was still very unsure.
She removed her lace bra and panties and placed them on top of her dress, then finally she stepped out of her smart navy sandals.
“You are so beautiful, and to think I believed I’d never see you again.” He looked at her in open admiration.
“Not you, Dieter, you get everything you want.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. And suddenly it was as if they had never been apart.
In the apartment over the craft shop, Fiona had gone to bed in the small white room that Vonni had furnished with a turquoise bedspread and bright blue chair. The little white chest of drawers had a blue-framed mirror and some shells and pottery on top. It was cool and welcoming.
Fiona was weary and sad. It had been a nightmare of a day, and further nightmares were ahead. She didn’t think she would sleep. Too much had happened, and the future was too frightening.
