Nights of Rain and Stars

by Maeve Binchy

  “It’s all right now. I’m over him. I’m going back to Dublin. I suddenly looked at him and saw what the future would be like, and that it wasn’t worth it. I suppose you’ll say, or think anyway, that it can’t have been real love if it vanished so quickly.”

  “No, it was real love, all right,” Elsa consoled her. “But as you say, it has ended, and that will make life easier for you.”

  “I didn’t give him up to have an easy life,” Fiona explained. “I just suddenly saw him in a different light, the light you all saw him in I suppose, and it was quite easy to walk away. I’m sorry of course that he wasn’t the person I thought he was. It’s not like your situation.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, Shane only tolerated my attaching myself to him. In your case Dieter writes begging you to come back to him, promising to change. That’s real love.”

  Elsa ignored this. “What was it finally that made you choose to walk away from Shane?” she asked.

  “I think there was a kind of indifference in his tone; he didn’t care.”

  “I know what you mean.” Elsa nodded slowly.

  “You can’t know! Your guy is down on his knees beseeching you to come back to him. That’s utterly different.”

  “Something you said there about a tone of voice seemed fairly relevant to me. I’m going out on the balcony to look at the sea, do you want to join me?”

  “No, Elsa, I’m exhausted. I’ve been to Athens and back in one day, changed the whole direction of my life. I’m going to have to sleep.”

  Elsa sat for a long time looking out at the moonlight on the sea, then she went back into the sitting room. She took up some paper and began to write a letter which she would fax the next day.

  My dear Hannah,

  You have been such a good, unselfish friend. Asking nothing and always ready to listen. It was, as it turned out, a very good decision for me to come here. And it was even better that I met Dieter again, as now I can make a decision on the facts as they are, not in some fantasy world.

  I’m still not sure what I am going to do. But a few more days on this peaceful island will make it all clear to me.

  I heard two things tonight. . . . one from an American man who told me that we can get over people. He just said it casually, like he’d say you can get over whooping cough. I don’t know if he’s right. Then an Irish girl said to me that I was lucky because Dieter had promised to change for me. And I have been wondering why we should want to change people. Either love them as they are or move on.

  It’s late at night and I am writing this by moonlight. I’ve been thinking in a way I never did before about my life with Dieter. I went into it as an escape. I had a fair amount to escape from. My father left home when I was a child. I always hoped he would get in touch when he saw me on television, but he never did. My mother and I were never close, possibly we were too alike, always striving to be perfect. But in the weeks I have been traveling, I have learned that there really is no perfect life, so we must stop seeking it. I have met many people on this voyage whose problems are much greater than mine. Oddly, it has calmed me down.

  And I thought of you, Hannah, and your happy marriage to Johann. On the day you married five years ago, you said there was nothing about him you would change. I envy you that, my dear, dear friend.

  Love from Elsa

  SIXTEEN

  Miriam Fine had prepared David’s room for him, bought a new gray cotton duvet cover and matching curtains, laid out dark purple towels.

  “They look nice and manly somehow. I hope he’ll like them,” she said.

  “Don’t fuss over him, Miriam, he hates fuss,” David’s father said.

  “You tell me not to fuss. What will you do, yes, tell me what will you do the very moment he comes in the door?”

  “I’ll do nothing to upset him.”

  “You’ll start talking to him about responsibility; if there is anything guaranteed to fuss him it’s that.”

  “No, I won’t talk about responsibility; at least he’s seen sense and decided to give up these cracked notions.”

  “He’s coming home because you’re ill, Harold. He worked that out for himself, you saw the letter I sent. I never mentioned it. Not once.”

  “I don’t want his sympathy, I will not have his pity.” The man’s eyes filled with tears.

  “But you might want his love, Harold, after all that’s why he’s coming home, because he loves you.”

  Fiona’s father turned the key in the lock. It had been a long, tiring day in the office. It was a week from his fiftieth birthday. He felt eighty-five. His shoulders were stiff and cramped. There were young fellows in the office snapping at his heels. He might well be passed over for the next promotion.

  He had been tempted to go and have three pints in his local pub, but realized that Maureen would have his supper ready. It wasn’t worth the hassle.

  As soon as he opened the door she ran out to meet him. “Sean, you just won’t believe this! Fiona’s coming home. This week!” Maureen Ryan was overjoyed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Barbara rang when you were out.”

  “Could that lout not draw his dole money out there? Is that what happened?” Sean grumbled.

  “No, wait till you hear, she dropped him. She’s coming home on her own!”

  Sean put down his briefcase and his evening paper and sat down. He put his head in his hands. “Someone asked me at lunch today if I thought there was a God,” he said. “I told the lad to grow up, of course there wasn’t. What kind of a God would allow all this mess and confusion to go on? But now I may have to rethink my answer. There might well be something out there. She’s really coming back?”

  “Tomorrow or the day after, she asked Barbara to tell us, she’s looking for her old job back.”

  “And I suppose you’ve been doing up her room?” He smiled wearily.

  “No, and I’ll tell you why: she wants to live in a flat with Barbara.”

  “Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “I think it’s all for the very best, Sean,” said Fiona’s mother with tears in her eyes.

  “Big surprise, Bill, I’m going to take you and your mom on a little trip!” Andy said.

  “Hey, that’s great, where will we go?”

  “Your grandmother is going with a group to the Grand Canyon, remember she told you?”

  “Yes!” Bill looked very excited. Dad had often told him about the Grand Canyon, showed him pictures of it. Told him that they would go there someday. “Do you mean we might go there too?” Bill was eager.

  “Well, I said to Shirley we always intended to go there and why not do it when you could see your grandma as well.”

  “And what did Mom say?”

  “Well, she said I was a kind man, and that pleased me, but I didn’t do it to be kind. I suggested it because I thought it would be good for all of us.”

  “You are kind, Andy,” Bill said.

  “I’m very fond of you, Bill, you know that, and when the new baby comes I’ll be as lucky as you are. I’ll have two children to love.”

  “How does that make you as lucky as me?”

  “You have two dads, don’t you? And talking about that, you should call your dad in Greece and tell him you’re going on this trip.”

  Bill dialed the number in Greece but there was only an answering machine. He left a message. “Dad, Andy is driving us to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, we’re going to cross the Sierra Nevada and we’re going to meet Gran there. She’s going with her book club. Andy says I can call you when we get there so that Gran and I can both say hello.”

  Then Andy took over the phone. “Thomas, just in case you don’t get this message before we leave and you want to call Bill, this is the number of my cell. I’ll try and show things properly to your boy, we have the atlas out now looking at the journey, but I guess there’ll be a lot I miss. Maybe he could go again with you sometime when you get back.”


  “That is if he ever comes back,” Bill said before Andy had hung up the telephone. So it was there on the message when Thomas came back from walking Elsa home and turned on his answering machine.

  He sat for a long time wondering about the world. He saw the flashlight moving around the henhouse. He had been right in assuming that Vonni would not come to sleep in the guest room tonight. He thought of the strange, tortured life she had lived among the people of Aghia Anna. He thought of the beautiful, bright Elsa going back to that selfish German who only looked on her as a trophy.

  He thought of simple, decent Andy, the man whom he had always demonized, who was only doing his best. He thought of his Bill, who believed his father might never come home.

  He sat there thinking until the stars faded from the sky and the early light came up over the hills.

  They met for a last lunch at the restaurant with the blue check tablecloths. “Imagine, we have been coming here so often and we don’t even know its name,” Fiona said in wonder.

  “It’s called Midnight,” David said. “Look at the letters.” He sounded it out slowly: “Me-sa-nih-ta.”

  “How on earth do you work that out?” Elsa asked.

  Painstakingly he went over the Greek letters again. The thing that looked like a U with an extra leg on it was actually an M.

  “You would be a great teacher, David,” Elsa said very sincerely.

  “I don’t know, I don’t have all that many certainties,” he said.

  “All the better for a teacher,” Thomas said.

  “I’ll miss you all, I don’t have very many friends back home,” David said.

  “I don’t either, but I’d be very surprised if you were without friends for long,” Thomas said. “And don’t forget, you’ll make a whole new circle through your driving lessons!”

  “It’s easy here, a bit different than English motorways,” David said. “I don’t think I’ll set up my own school.”

  “Do you have a lot of friends back in Germany, Elsa?” Fiona asked.

  “No, hardly any, a lot of acquaintances but only one good friend, Hannah. When you are on the fast track, or think you are, and have to keep yourself ready and available, then there’s no real time for friends.” She spoke regretfully. They all nodded; it was easy to understand.

  David explained that Fiona was going on the train to see David’s parents with him, help smooth over the homecoming, try to explain something about the life on this magical island and how it had seduced them.

  “Like the Lotus-eaters,” Elsa said.

  “Elsa is showing off how much English literature she knows.” Thomas looked at her affectionately.

  “It’s Tennyson,” she said, ignoring him. “You know in the poem, when they all arrived where the Lotus-eaters lived and ate nectar, in a land in which it seemed always afternoon, one of them said, ‘Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.’ This place has that effect on all of us, I think.”

  “Except Fiona and I are leaving,” David said sadly.

  “But you’ll be back here again one day. It’s different now from Tennyson’s time. Back in the nineteenth century there were no cheap air tickets, or indeed any air tickets!” Thomas was cheering them up.

  “I’d love my friend Barbara to come out here with me one day, but it won’t be the same without you,” Fiona said.

  “Vonni will always be here, and Andreas, Georgi, Eleni—loads of people.” Thomas was full of consolation.

  “Will you be here for much longer yourself, Thomas?” Fiona asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll go back to California fairly soon,” Thomas said. His eyes had a faraway look.

  They didn’t want to ask him anymore. It was a decision not fully made.

  “And when are you going back to Germany, Elsa?” David asked gently, as if to change the subject.

  “I’m not,” she said simply.

  “You’re staying here?” Fiona gasped.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m not going back to Dieter.”

  “When did you decide this?” Thomas leaned forward and looked at her very intensely.

  “Last night, Thomas, on my balcony looking out at the sea.”

  “And did you tell anybody, like Dieter for example?”

  “Yes. I wrote to him. I posted the letter this morning on the way to meet you all. He should get it in four or five days. So now I have all that time to make up my mind where to go.” She smiled at him, one of those slow, warm smiles which had made her the darling of television all over Germany.

  “You’re not going to go down to Mesanihta and say good-bye to them, Vonni?”Andreas asked as he called into the craft shop.

  “No, I annoyed them all enough while they were here. I’ll let them go in peace,” she said, not looking up.

  “You heard how they praised you. Aren’t you a difficult woman, Vonni, prickly like a hedgehog. Both David and Fiona said last night how grateful they are to you.” Andreas shook his head, mystified.

  “Yes, they did, they were very polite, as were you and Georgi, and I thank you. And by the way, the urge to drink seems to have passed over like a summer cloud. But it’s the other two, Thomas and Elsa. I really upset them. I don’t want to sit there pontificating like some old bat. You and I heard plenty of advice years ago, Andreas, but did we ever listen? The answer is no.”

  “And what would you change if you could have your life all over again?” he asked. This was unfamiliar territory for Andreas. Normally he left things as they were, without question or analysis.

  “I’d have fought Magda for Stavros. I wouldn’t have won then, but I might have won later. He might have come back when he tired of her. And of course I should have fought Stavros for the petrol station. The people here are fair, they would have known I bought it for him. I could have raised my son. But no, I thought the solution was somewhere at the bottom of a raki bottle. So it didn’t happen.” She looked around her despondently.

  “Did anyone give you any advice like that at the time?” he asked gently.

  “Yes, Dr. Leros’s father did and your sister, Christina, but I had my face so far into drink I couldn’t listen to them.”

  “You haven’t asked me what I would change if I were given the chance,” he said.

  “I suppose you’d have managed to keep Adonis here? Am I right?”

  “Yes, of course I should have done that. But at the time would I listen to people who told me that? No, I would not.” His eyes were sad. “And also I should have asked you to marry me twenty-five years ago.”

  She looked at him, astounded. “Andreas! You don’t mean that. We never even remotely loved each other.”

  “I didn’t love my wife either, not in any real sense, that is. Not like people read about and sing about. We got on all right and were company for each other. You and I could have been fine companions.”

  “We are fine companions, Andreas,” she said in a weak voice.

  “Yes, but you know . . . ,” he muttered.

  “No, it would never have worked, not for five minutes. Believe me. You did the right thing there. You see, I loved Stavros exactly the way you read about, sing about, and dream about. I could never have settled for any other kind of love.” She spoke in a matter-of-fact way, which brought normality back to their conversation.

  “So it was all for the best,” Andreas said.

  “Definitely. And listen to me, Andreas, I meant it when I said Adonis will come back to see you. I know it.”

  He shook his big head. “No, it’s only a wish, a fairy tale.”

  “The man is thirty-four, you wrote to him, of course he’ll come back.”

  “Why has he not called or written then?”

  He didn’t want to tell Vonni about the mysterious phone call assuming that Adonis was already here. It could have all been a mistake, a misunderstanding; he didn’t want to raise her hopes like he had raised his own and his brother’s.

  But even though she knew nothing of
the call, Vonni’s faith was unshaken. “He needs a little time, Andreas. Chicago is far away. He’ll need to get his head around it. But he’ll be here.”

  “Thank you, Vonni, you are indeed a good companion,” Andreas said and blew his nose very loudly.

  “Hey, Dimitri?”

  “Yes?” The policeman was cold. He had never seen such a violent attack on a gentle girl, who had come to visit this Shane in love and good faith.

  “Can I write a letter?”

  “I’ll get you paper.”

  After that he looked in from time to time and Shane was writing and thinking and writing again. Eventually it was finished and he asked for an envelope.

  “We’ll put it in an envelope. Just tell me where it’s to go.” Dimitri wasted little time with him.

  “Like hell you will, I’m not having you read my letter,” Shane said.

  Dimitri shrugged. “Please yourself,” he said and left.

  A few hours later Shane called out to him.

  Dimitri wrote down the address: Andreas’s Taverna, Aghia Anna, Greece.

  “How strange!” Dimitri said.

  “You asked for the bloody address, don’t start criticizing it,” Shane said.

  “No, it’s just that I know that man’s son, Adonis. He and I are friends.”

  “You are, huh? Well, his father doesn’t think much of him,” Shane said.

  “They had a difference of opinion, it’s something that happens to many fathers and sons,” said Dimitri with a great sense of dignity.

  They agreed to meet at the ferry half an hour before departure. And they all headed off in their different directions from the café they now knew was called Midnight.

  Fiona and David went to say their good-byes and collect all the gifts that were being offered to them. Maria had made a cake for David to take home to his parents. Eleni had made a lace collar for Fiona. Georgi had got them worry beads made of amber-colored glass. Andreas had a photograph of himself and David set in a little carved wooden frame. Dr. Leros gave Fiona some colored tiles she could put on her wall to remind her of Greece.