by Maeve Binchy
“I don’t speak English good. I tell this Shane where you stay if he comes back. Thank you for the karmeles for the children. You are a kind, good girl.”
“Vonni, come upstairs for a portokalada when you’re through. Okay?”
“So you’ve finally noticed I only drink lemonade,” she laughed at him.
“I didn’t. David did. He’s the one who notices things. Anyway, what you drink isn’t important. I want your advice.”
“No, you don’t, you want me to tell you that it’s all going to turn out fine without you having to lift a finger. Isn’t that right?”
“If you could tell me convincingly, I’d sure love it,” he said.
“I’ll be up in ten minutes,” she said.
He noticed she was wearing a clean fresh blouse, yellow with little embroidered roses on it. She must keep her clothes in the craft shop. “That’s pretty.” He indicated the stitching. “Did you do that?”
“No, it was done by Magda, she could sew like an angel. Her people were from Santorini, where they specialize in embroidery. I encouraged her when her marriage was bad; she came to our house to sew and looked up from under her thick dark hair and her long lashes. She smiled and she wept and she sang and she stole my husband’s heart.”
Thomas swallowed. “This is very sad for you to talk about, Vonni. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“Well, I do, really. You are all anxious to know about me . . . you are asking everyone else.” She smiled at him innocently.
Thomas looked at the floor. “They told you?” he said ruefully.
“Of course they did!” To her it was obvious.
“I’m sorry—it looks very nosy, but I tell you, Vonni, you’re special, we are all fascinated by you.”
“I’m flattered, and astonished. But anyway, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” She smiled at him encouragingly.
“I don’t know, now that I’m in a position to ask questions, I honestly don’t know what to ask. I suppose I want to know—are you happy?”
“Yes, I think I am fairly happy, as it happens. Are you happy, Thomas?”
“No, I’m not. You know that. I’ve messed up with Bill, you told me yourself. But we’re meant to be talking about you.”
“And what will we talk about?” she asked.
“I suppose we wanted to know what your husband was like, and what happened to him,” Thomas said uneasily. He felt awkward asking intrusive questions, but Vonni was totally at ease with it all.
“Very hard questions to answer, both of them. His name was Stavros. He was very dark, big brown almost black eyes, black hair, long always, whether it was fashionable or not. His father was the barber here; he used to say he was ashamed of his wild and woolly son. And that Stavros was no advertisement for his father’s barbering skills. He wasn’t tall, he was . . . I suppose you’d call it stocky. The moment I saw him I knew I never wanted any other man.”
“And where did you see him? Here in Aghia Anna?” Thomas asked.
“No, I met him somewhere very different. The most unlikely place,” Vonni said almost dreamily.
“Are you going to make me beg or will you tell me?” he asked.
“I met Stavros in Ardeevin, a small village in the West of Ireland in the spring of 1966, before you were born, Thomas. He came to work in a garage on the main street. We had never seen anything quite so exotic. A real live Greek man on our main street, well, our only street. Ardeevin didn’t run to more than one. He was learning English, he said, and the motor trade, and seeing the world.” Vonni sighed at the memory. “We didn’t think Ardeevin was the right place to start seeing the world. What about Paris? London? Even Dublin. But he said he liked it, it reminded him of his hometown, Aghia Anna. It felt familiar, comfortable.”
She paused to think about it. Thomas didn’t encourage her to say more. Either she would or she would not, it had nothing to do with his promptings. “I was still at school, in my last year. My family hoped I would get what was described as a Call to Training. It meant a place in a college where you became a primary teacher. A Call to Training was like winning the Irish Sweepstakes, you were educated free into a grand career and a permanent job and a pension.”
“But the call never came?” he asked gently.
“I don’t know whether it did or not. I never heard because I was so much in love with Stavros nothing else mattered. I had stopped going to school, abandoned studying, examinations had no meaning for me. My purpose each day was to hide from my sisters, to sneak into the back of Ardeevin Motors. I didn’t care about anything but being with him.”
Thomas listened, amazed at the calm way she told the story of her first love.
“So Jimmy Keane, who ran the garage, began to think Stavros wasn’t concentrating fully on his work and started making sounds that he was going to sack him. I could neither eat nor sleep with the worry of it all. What would I do if Stavros had to move on? I went in and sat my school examinations. I could barely understand the questions, let alone answer them.”
“And what kind of results did you get?” Thomas, ever the teacher, wanted to know.
“I have no idea. You see, the most marvelous event occurred in Ireland that summer. There was a bank strike!” Her eyes shone at the memory.
“The banks went on strike? Never!”
“Oh, they did,” she said happily.
“And how did people manage?”
“On trust mainly, a series of IOUs. They even printed blank checkbook forms to try and make it seem more normal.”
“And?”
“And what happened then was nothing short of a miracle,” Vonni said. “Supermarkets would have a lot of cash and no banks to lodge it in so they cashed these ‘checks’ for people they knew. The big town ten miles away had a supermarket where I was known because the manager was a cousin of my mother. I had no money but I cashed a check for two and a half thousand pounds. And that day Jimmy Keane said he’d have to let Stavros go.”
Vonni began to pace the room at this stage. “He told me he would miss me, that I was his true love and that one day we would meet again, that he would go back to Aghia Anna, open up a petrol station, and send for me to come and join him. And I asked what was wrong with going right now, that I had the funds to set him up. I told him it was my savings.”
“Tell me he was pleased.”
“Oh, he was, but my parents weren’t.”
“Weren’t you worried about writing a bad check? About the police?” Thomas asked.
“Well, I didn’t worry about it one bit; I had bigger problems, like telling my family that their eldest daughter was leaving home. Not easy, believe me.”
“You told them?”
“I told them that day, that I was seventeen and a half. In six months I could marry without their permission anyway. What were they going to do? Lock me up? They cried and shouted a lot, they talked about the waste, the bad example to my sisters, about not being able to raise their heads in Ardeevin. My father was a teacher, a man of considerable importance in the community, my mother was related to big important shopkeepers all over the place. Oh, the shame of it all.”
“But you wore them down.”
“I told them I was leaving that very night and we did, on the seven-thirty bus.”
“And the money?”
“Ah, yes, the money. We were well in Aghia Anna by the time the bank strike ended. A wonderful journey by train and boat; we saved the big money, you see, didn’t touch it until we got here. We traveled through Switzerland and Italy and ate bread and cheese. I was never so happy in my life. Nobody was as happy as I was then.”
“And you arrived here?”
“And it wasn’t so great. There was this girl, you see, very pregnant with Stavros’s child. She thought he had come back to marry her. She was Christina, the sister of Andreas and Georgi. When she discovered he had not come back to her she tried to kill herself. It turned out that she killed the child she was carrying, not herself. It w
as a terrible time for everyone.”
“What happened to Christina?”
“She went to the hospital on the hill. You know, on the Kalatriada road.”
“And you, Vonni?”
“Me? I learned to speak Greek. We bought the petrol station. I learned how to change wheels, pump up tires. I went to see Christina every week. She didn’t speak to me for forty-five weeks, then one day she did. And soon she got better and she married a good man. She has children and grandchildren. They live on the other side of the island. I see her often.”
“You married Stavros?”
“In a civil ceremony in Athens. No one thought it was a real wedding, not my family back in Ardeevin, not his family here in Aghia Anna.” She had begun to sound tired and weary.
Thomas knew he must not push her.
“And in 1970 our son Stavros was born. By this time people were used to me. We had a christening at the church and even my husband’s father relaxed and sang songs. And Christina came and gave me all the baby clothes she had made when she had thought she was going to have Stavros’s baby.”
“How amazing,” Thomas said.
“I know. No word from Ireland of course. I wrote and told them they had a grandson. No reply at all.”
“They must have been very bitter.”
“Well, the money was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“Ah, the money.” Thomas smiled.
“Well, I was always going to pay it back.”
“Sure,” he said with no conviction.
“And I did,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
David opened the letter. It was the first time they had written. He sat and read unbelievingly of their pride and delight about this award his father had won. David knew those awards; businessmen patted each other on the back every year. It was a reward for nothing except making money. No achievement, philanthropy, research, generosity to charity was being praised. No, it was only the huge god profit that was being worshiped here.
His mother wrote about seating in the Town Hall and a table plan and wondered how soon he would come home for it. He would calm himself and write a courteous letter explaining why he would not be there. A letter was wiser than a phone call. No danger of anyone losing their temper.
Fiona went to the Anna Beach Hotel and sent an e-mail to her friend Barbara in Dublin:
It was good to hear from you, really it was. Lord, but it’s beautiful here, Barb, I am so glad we chose this place. The accident WAS terrible, but the people are full of courage, they would do your heart good. Shane’s gone to Athens for a few days on work. He’ll be back any day now. I keep watching the ferries. Thanks for telling me about the hospital. Imagine Carmel the cow being ward sister. I’ll write again when I know our plans. Love, Fiona
“There’s a fax for your friend, the German woman,” the man at the reception desk said as Fiona was leaving the Anna Beach.
Fiona marveled at how everyone knew who they all were. “I’ll take it back to the villa,” she said. And she gave it to Elsa as soon as she walked through the door.
Elsa took the fax and put it down without reading it.
“I’d have read it, but it’s in German,” Fiona said.
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to read it? You don’t have to translate it,” Fiona encouraged her.
“I know what it says,” Elsa said.
“That’s pretty psychic of you,” Fiona said in wonder.
“It’s telling me to pull myself together and come back to where I belong, that I’m wrong about him.”
“Maybe it’s not that,” Fiona encouraged her.
“All right, I’ll translate . . .” She picked up the paper. “It’s fairly short anyway.
“Darling Elsa.
The decision is yours. We will move together into an apartment openly for all to see and we will be married. We were intended for each other, you know that I know that. What is the point in playing games? Fax me yes.
Love until the world ends, Dieter”
In Chicago, Adonis took the letter with the Greek stamp to the men’s room. He sat down to read his father’s spidery handwriting.
“Adonis mou,” it began, and told simply of the boat that had burned in full sight of the town with people unable to get to it in time. “It makes everything else that has happened seem very unimportant,” his father wrote. “Arguments about the taverna are so small compared to life and death. It would give me great pleasure, my son, if you were to come back to Aghia Anna and see me before my death. I assure you that I would not speak to you in that tone of voice that I did when you were here. Your room is always there if you come for a visit, and of course bring anyone you like. I hope there is somebody to bring.”
And Adonis took out a big blue handkerchief to wipe his eyes. Then he cried again because there was nobody to bring.
There was no bail for Shane in Athens so he was brought back to the cells after the initial hearing.
“I’m allowed to make a phone call!” he shouted. “You’re meant to be in the bloody European Union; one of the reasons we let you in was for things like this, so as you’d pay some attention to human rights.”
They passed the phone to him without comment.
He dialed the police station in Aghia Anna. He wished he could remember that old guy’s name. But what the hell. “I’m trying to get in touch with Fiona Ryan,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” Georgi said.
“I’m phoning from a police station or jail or some hellhole in Athens,” he explained.
“We told you before, she is not here,” Georgi lied smoothly.
“She must be there, she’s expecting my child. She’ll have to get the bail money.” He sounded frightened.
“As I say, sorry, we can’t help you,” Georgi said and hung up.
Shane begged for a second call. He was so anxious the policemen shrugged.
“Not too long if it’s Ireland,” they warned.
“Barbara, they took a hell of a time to find you. It’s Shane.”
“I was on the wards, Shane. It’s called work,” she said.
“Very droll. Listen, has Fiona gone back to Dublin?”
“What? Have you two split up?” She couldn’t keep the pleasure out of her voice.
“No, don’t be ridiculous, I had to go to Athens . . .”
“For work?” Barbara suggested dryly.
“Sort of, and those half-wits in Aghia Anna say she’s left there. So it’s been a bit of a breakdown in communications, you might say.”
“Oh dear, Shane, I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You’re thrilled.”
“How can I help you, Shane, exactly?” Barbara asked.
“You could tell her to contact me at . . . No, don’t bother. I’ll find her.”
“Are you sure, Shane? I’d love to help,” Barbara purred.
She had never heard better news since the day her friend Fiona had taken up with the dreaded Shane.
Thomas looked at Vonni in her faded cotton skirt and her blouse embroidered by the woman who had become her husband’s mistress. How many more secrets did she have?
“You paid back the supermarket?” he said.
“It took some time, like nearly thirty years,” she admitted. “But they got every penny. I started at one hundred pounds a year.”
“Did they thank you? Forgive you?”
“No, not even remotely.”
“But the supermarket manager who was your mother’s cousin, didn’t he say the money was returned?”
“Not in any way that made any difference. No.”
“Did you keep in touch with your family?”
“Cold little note every Christmas. Done out of Christian charity, proving to themselves they are bighearted, capable of forgiveness, that went on for a time. I wrote long letters, sent them pictures of little Stavros. But it was a bit one-sided. And then of course things changed.”
; “Changed? They came round?”
“No, I meant I changed. I went mad, you see.”
“No, Vonni, you mad? This I can’t see.”
She looked tired. “I haven’t talked about myself so much for ages, I’m a bit weary.”
“Lie down then, in your own room in there.” He was gentle.
“No, Thomas, I have to feed the chickens.”
“Let me do that for you.”
“Thank you, but no. And, Thomas, you can tell the others what I told you. I don’t want them bothering people here for my story.”
He looked embarrassed. “They don’t need to know, none of us needs to know, anything about your business.”
“I’ll tell the rest another time . . . you know, like a serial story in a magazine.” She had a wonderfully infectious smile.
He found himself grinning back.
She did not return to the apartment that night.
When Thomas looked out the window later on he saw her flashlight moving around the henhouse.
Thomas told them the story the next day down by the harbor. They had gotten into the habit of turning up at the place with the blue check tablecloths around noon. David reported on the latest driving lesson—they had stopped and given some of Maria’s neighbors a lift. David couldn’t be sure what they had said, but it appeared to be great cries of approval.
Elsa and Fiona said nothing about their messages from home but they told how they had spent the morning helping an old man to paint some wooden chairs. He had wanted them all white until Elsa suggested painting one blue and another one yellow. He had been delighted with them. Or at least they thought he had been delighted.
And Thomas told them Vonni’s story.
“She did want you to know; it’s as if she were going to take it up with one of the three of you.”
They marveled at the notion of a country where the banks went on strike. “I remember my father talking about it; he said that the country ran perfectly well without them. There were a few loose cannons, like Vonni, who went off with small fortunes, but not many,” Fiona said.
“I wonder who she’ll tell the next episode to,” Elsa said.
