Nights of Rain and Stars

by Maeve Binchy

  “Well, not really, my dear girl; you see, my patients only speak Greek, for one thing.”

  “Oh, I’m going to learn it,” Fiona promised. “It would be such a marvelous thing for Shane to come back and find me settled.”

  “And will he be upset that you miscarried?” Dr. Leros had heard something of Shane’s behavior before he left Aghia Anna. He knew that the general opinion was that Shane would not return. Poor, softhearted, mistaken girl. But there was really no way he could give her a job.

  “He will be upset in a way, but maybe it will be better when it’s properly planned. He will be so pleased to know your good news that I am healthy.”

  “Good, good girl.”

  “And about a job?”

  “It’s not possible, believe me. Could you try the hotel? The Anna Beach.”

  “Yes, but they close in the winter,” Fiona said.

  “You’re going to live here all year round?” His eyes were wide.

  “Vonni did,” Fiona said defensively.

  “Ah, that was different.”

  “Why was it different?” Fiona cried.

  “She was married to a Greek,” Dr. Leros said.

  “You knew him?”

  “Yes, Stavros was my best friend.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “I don’t know, he left the island.” His face was grim.

  Fiona was desperate to know. “And will he ever come back, do you think?”

  “Not now, too much has happened.”

  “But no one talks about it?” she asked.

  “It was too long ago. Too much has happened since then.”

  And he stood up to shake her hand and let her know that the consultation was now over.

  Georgi was driving around Aghia Anna. He knew he would see Fiona or one of her friends somewhere along the way. He saw her with a straw basket buying vegetables.

  “Oh, great, Georgi, just the man I need. What’s the Greek for watermelon?”

  “Karpouzi,” he said.

  “Good. Karpouzi. Karpouzi,” she said happily.

  “I have a letter for you,” Georgi said.

  “Shane! I just knew he would get in touch.” Her face was radiant.

  “No, it’s from your friend Barbara in Ireland.”

  He handed over the printed e-mail. She barely looked at it she was so disappointed. She just put it in her basket.

  “You can always come up to the station and send an e-mail back,” he offered.

  “No thank you, Georgi, but is there any way we could find out what’s happened to Shane in Athens?”

  He bit his lip as he looked at her. It surely couldn’t be right to keep from her the fact that Shane was in detention and would not be coming back for her. But there were pens and paper and telephones in Athens, he could get in touch if he wanted to, and he hadn’t wanted to. Leave things as they were.

  “Karpouzi,” he said, leaving.

  “Is that Greek for good-bye?” she asked glumly.

  “No, it’s watermelon,” he laughed. “You’ll have to try harder.”

  She sat down at a café and pulled out the letter.

  You must wonder how Sherlock Holmes Barbara tracked you down, but it was easy. Your mother had the number you phoned from, and Andreas told me his brother ran the cop shop. He said you and Shane had nice friends from all over the world. That’s great news.

  Oh, I miss you in the hospital, Fiona, really I do. Carmel is UNBEARABLE as ward sister. Frightening the patients, terrifying the nurses, upsetting the visitors. Stamping round the place like a madwoman on speed. We have two new Filipino nurses, gentle little things, they nearly fled back to Manila until we told them that we were all equally horrified by her.

  They were looking for more staff nurses in Orthopaedic, I thought I might apply. It’s great working with the new knees and new hips. Any news at all on when you and Shane are coming back?

  It’s just that if it were going to be at the end of the summer there are some really super flats coming on the market, you and Shane could easily get one of them, it would only be a ten-minute walk to the hospital. I’d just love one myself, but you’d need two to pay for it.

  In fact I was telling your Mam and Dad about them, I said that was probably the kind of place the two of you would want to live when you came back. They didn’t even flicker an eyelid. Remember when they wouldn’t hear his name mentioned? You’ve certainly laid down the ground rules okay.

  They were very pleased you called about that awful tragedy. It must have been terrible.

  Anyway, you have my e-mail address now, do tell me how you are and how you both like Greece.

  I always wanted to go there but never got any farther than Spain. Remember that time we went to Marbella and met the two English guys who got burned to a crisp and gave us the keys of their car? Weren’t we reckless then? You still are, of course!

  Love to you both, Barbara

  Fiona sat there stunned.

  Barbara sending her love to Shane? Her mother and father accepting the fact that she was going to live with Shane forever? The world was tilting slightly. She read the letter again and went back to Elsa’s apartment to make a soup and a fruit salad.

  Elsa stopped by Vonni’s craft shop and invited her to join them for an evening meal. “Fiona is cooking for us, we can have a ladies’ dinner,” she suggested.

  “No, thank you, Elsa, very kind of you both, but I have to work.”

  “Work? What on earth do you do?”

  “Every week I go to a group of blind people who make rugs. I choose the colors of the wool for them. Then I try to sell the rugs.” She shrugged as if this were everyday work anyone might do.

  “Did you always know about rug making?” Elsa asked.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “So why did you take it up, particularly with the blind?”

  “Oh, I had to give something back and I realized that the blind could weave with the best. They just needed someone to mark out which was pink and which was orange.”

  “What do you mean, you had to give something back?” Elsa asked.

  “This place was good to me. I was nothing but a nuisance for years, upsetting them all, howling and frightening their children. They put up with me until I recovered.”

  “I can’t believe this . . . you howling and frightening people!” Elsa laughed as if it were a joke.

  Vonni looked very serious. “Oh, I did, believe me. But I had an excuse. My husband betrayed me, you see. He played tavli in the restaurants and tavernas, that I didn’t mind. It’s the way. But then he saw a beautiful woman and he forgot everything we had. He was entranced by her. He would not come home to me. I had a little boy and the people here helped me look after him while I worked. I’ll never forget them. And it was hard for them to take my side. I was the foreigner. They would have been tempted to side with him rather than me.”

  “And what happened?”

  “A lot happened,” Vonni said. “He took my son and lived with her.”

  “No! In this small place!” Elsa was aghast.

  “The size of the place was unimportant, truly it was. It would have been as bad in a big anonymous city. He just would not return. I did a lot of stupid things; that’s when the people here were so tolerant and good.”

  “What kind of stupid things?” Elsa wanted to know.

  “Another time, possibly.” The shutters came down in her face.

  “It’s just that I’ve done some very stupid things recently, so it’s comforting to know others did and survived,” Elsa said.

  “Is this the man who was staying in the Anna Beach, calling out to the stars that he loved you?”

  “You know everything!” Elsa exclaimed. “Yes, it is, of course it is. And I still love him so much, that’s the problem.”

  “Why is it a problem?”

  “Well, it’s complicated.”

  “It’s always complicated,” Vonni said sympathetically.

  “I suppos
e it is. We forget that. His name is Dieter, he runs the television station where I work . . . used to work. He taught me everything and I became a sort of a star there, presenting the big news program at night. And anyway we fell in love, got together, whatever you’d call it, and have been together for over two years.”

  “You live together?” Vonni asked.

  “No, it’s not as simple as that.”

  “Is he married to someone else?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just awkward in the network if people know.”

  Vonni raised her eyes and looked at Elsa levelly. Somehow Elsa felt slightly flustered and defensive.

  “You don’t know what it’s like back there, Vonni, very hothouse. People would think I only got my good job because I was living with him. Easier for him to have his place and me to have mine.”

  “Sure.” Vonni was clipped. “So what are you doing here then?”

  “I discovered something very cold and unfeeling about him.”

  “More than the fact he just wouldn’t commit to you publicly?” Vonni asked.

  Elsa was annoyed now. “You really don’t understand, that was a mutual decision.”

  “Yes, of course,” Vonni said. “So what was the cold, unfeeling thing?”

  “I discovered that he has a child by a woman he knew years back.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘So’? He has a child that he has never acknowledged, he’s no part of her life. You don’t think that’s bad?”

  “I think it happens all over the world every day of the week. People survive.”

  “It happened to me,” Elsa said. “My father walked away, didn’t give a damn.”

  “And look at you! Did you survive, Elsa? So very beautiful, confident, successful at everything. It proves my point.”

  “It proves nothing. You don’t know what I feel, have always felt. I feel that I must be so utterly worthless that even my own father couldn’t be bothered with me.”

  “Grow up, Elsa. In the end we all have to rely on ourselves. Ourselves and friends, if we are lucky enough to make them. We are not tied to our children or they to us. There’s no huge law that says ‘Thou shalt love thy child’ and that ‘Thy child shalt love thee in return.’ Happy Families is a game people play with cards, it’s not any kind of reality.”

  “I don’t know what made you so bitter and cynical but I’m glad I don’t feel like that,” Elsa said.

  “You want him to play Saturday father to some child he probably never intended should exist.”

  “But she does exist, and that’s exactly what he should do.”

  “That’s not why you are leaving him,” Vonni said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re leaving him because you don’t trust him. You thought that he would eventually admit that he needed you as part of his life. You are such a beautiful young woman you are accustomed to getting your own way. If you truly loved him you could put this child out of your mind. But no, you can’t be sure that he loves you at all. That’s why you are seizing on this episode of his life which took place long before he met you. You are making it the excuse, aren’t you?”

  Elsa felt her eyes stinging at the injustice of the attack. “You’re so wrong, he does love me. You heard him yourself shouting it aloud. And he cried out to me again next morning as he got on the ferry. And I have such a huge lonely hole in my heart without him. I’ve decided that I’m going back to Germany as soon as I can to tell him that I love him too.”

  Vonni leaned forward. “You are never in your whole life going to get such good advice as this. Don’t go back there, keep going. Leave him be. Remain a beautiful golden memory for him. He’s never going to love you the way you want to be loved.”

  Elsa stood up, not trusting herself to speak.

  She thought she saw Thomas going up the side stairs in his silly baggy trousers. She didn’t want to talk to him. Or anybody. She wanted to get back to her own apartment. Fast.

  “You’re very quiet, Elsa!” Fiona said. “Don’t you like that lovely healthy soup I made you?”

  “It’s very good, I’m sorry, I just don’t feel too cheerful tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll get over it, I hate moody people.” She smiled a very bright smile.

  “Did something happen?” Fiona asked.

  “Well, yes, as it happens I had row with Vonni, of all stupid things,” she said.

  “A row with Vonni?”

  “I know it sounds impossible but that’s what happened.”

  “But what about?” Fiona was astounded.

  “She knows about me and Dieter; she wants me to leave him alone, stay away from him.”

  Elsa had mentioned nothing to Fiona about her situation up to this time. Fiona was wordless.

  “So we saw things a bit differently, if you see what I mean?”

  “But you still love him, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, most definitely, and he feels the same,” Elsa said.

  “Well, there’s no question about it then.” Fiona was matter-of-fact and businesslike about it. “You have to go back to him, Vonni or no Vonni.”

  They had all agreed to meet at the harbor café after dinner, and the four of them talked about their day.

  “Do any of you get the feeling that we are just marking time here, that we should be doing something else?” Thomas asked.

  “I’m happy here. I like it,” David said.

  “And I do too. Anyway I have to stay here until Shane gets back,” Fiona agreed.

  “I’ll probably go back to Germany next week,” Elsa said. “I’m just thinking it through. What about you, Thomas?”

  “Well, Vonni thinks I should go back to California to see my son. I haven’t worked it out either,” he said.

  “Vonni’s busy dispatching us all home! Once Maria can drive that van, Vonni wants me out too, back to make peace with my parents and work with my father.” David sounded gloomy.

  “She doesn’t think Shane is coming back; she says there are no jobs here, I’d be better to go back to Dublin.”

  “She’s actually more of a policeman than Georgi is; she says I should end my relationship with a man who doesn’t really love me,” Elsa said, giggling.

  “She never put it like that?” David said.

  “Almost precisely like that. Anyway I’m different than the rest of you, she wants me to keep on the move and not go home.”

  They pooled what they knew about Vonni. She came from the West of Ireland over thirty years ago because she loved a man, Stavros. They married and he left the island. She had owned a petrol station, where she worked night and day. She had one son whom she didn’t see now. And she had gone through a troubled time but the people of Aghia Anna had looked after her and she felt she owed them in return.

  “What kind of a troubled time?” Fiona wondered. “Maybe she had a breakdown when Stavros left?”

  “I think she was an alcoholic,” David said softly.

  The others were amazed. That quiet, capable, together woman a slave to drink? Impossible.

  “Why do you say that?” Elsa asked.

  “Well, have you noticed she never drinks any wine or ouzo or anything alcoholic?” David said.

  They looked at him with respect. They had all been with Vonni around many a table. Only the gentle, sensitive David had noticed what was now so obvious to everyone.

  TWELVE

  Vonni had been right when she said that the people of Aghia Anna would close ranks about her. They could get no information at all.

  “I believe that Vonni used to run that gas station over there,” Thomas said casually to Georgi.

  Georgi said something that was neither yes nor no.

  “Did she hate giving it up?” Thomas asked.

  “I don’t really know,” Georgi said.

  “Or it might have been a relief.”

  “You live in Vonni’s house, I’m sure that you could ask her all about it,” Georgi said politely.

&nbs
p; David got nowhere with Andreas either. “You must have known Vonni’s husband Stavros.”

  “Everyone knows everyone here.”

  “And I suppose you knew what happened?”

  “As I say, it’s a very small place.”

  “Their son, was he friendly with your son and with Manos?”

  “In a village every child knows every other child. He came to play here on that tree.”

  “You think I’m asking too many questions, don’t you, Andreas?”

  “You are interested in this place and the people who live here, that’s good,” Andreas said, but told no more.

  Elsa tried talking to Yanni in the delicatessen. He was a man of about sixty; he would have been around for all the drama. “It’s wonderful how Vonni is so much part of this town, isn’t it?” Elsa began.

  “Vonni is a very good woman, yes,” Yanni said.

  “I expect you knew her when she was married to Stavros?” Elsa said.

  “Does she talk to you about Stavros?” Yanni asked.

  “A little, yes.”

  “Then I suppose she tells you all she wants you to know about him,” Yanni said with a huge smile, showing many gold teeth but giving nothing away.

  And Elsa, who had been able to interview politicians, business tycoons, authors, and actors on German television and make them reveal their stories, had to admit defeat.

  Fiona walked out to Eleni’s house with sweets for the children. “I wanted to thank you for being so kind when I was sick,” she said to Eleni.

  “Are you good now?” The woman was concerned.

  “Yes, I’m fine, but I’m a bit sad because I’m waiting here for Shane,” she said. “If he comes back for me, you’ll be sure to tell him where I am staying.”

  “Shane, yes. I tell him, yes. If he comes back.”

  “Oh, he will come back, Eleni. He loves me.”

  “Yes.”

  There was an awkward silence between them. Fiona didn’t want to protest anymore. She changed the subject. “Did you know Stavros, the husband of Vonni long ago?”