You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  At the other end of the table, the guys became more and more raucous, but because I was having such a nice time with Sheila, Mads and Terri, I didn’t really notice how much they were drinking until the end. But about half past midnight, Conor stumbled off to the toilet and I suddenly took note of the tens and tens of empty bottles on the table.

  ‘This is where we escape,’ Sheila said, checking her watch and standing. ‘And I suggest you do the same, darlin’.’

  ‘Conor’s driving,’ I said. ‘We’re at the other end of the island.’

  ‘Driving? Well, good luck with that,’ Terri laughed. Then she, Sheila and Mads linked arms and headed off across the patio, leaving me feeling jealous of their sisterhood, and alone with the men.

  Most of these now decided to leave, so by the time Conor returned only Mike and a Spanish guy, Pablo, remained.

  Conor was paralytic. He bashed into three empty tables and almost fell over a chair just crossing the terrace to join us, and when he got close I saw that he’d had an accident. The front of his trousers was wet. I hoped it was only beer.

  Taking my courage in hand, I stood to intercept him. ‘Come on, Conor,’ I said. ‘It’s time to get a taxi home.’

  Without saying a word, Conor pushed me aside and managed, just about, to return to a chair opposite Mike.

  ‘More beer?’ Mike asked, his facial expressions grotesque and exaggerated due to his drunkenness.

  ‘More beer!’ Conor slurred, picking up an empty and turning it upside down to demonstrate. The dregs dribbled out over the table.

  ‘Waiter!’ Mike shouted, attempting to click his fingers, then, on failing, clapping his hands instead.

  ‘Say “garçon”,’ Conor laughed. ‘Apparently it annoys the shite out of them.’

  ‘Garçon! Garçon!’ Mike called out.

  Pablo stood and, saying, ‘Is enough. I am quite drunk!’, he zigzagged off in the same direction the women had taken five minutes earlier.

  I crossed to where Conor was sitting and crouched down beside him. ‘Conor,’ I said softly, putting one hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s go home, eh?’

  Without turning, he pointed at me with one thumb and, while visibly trying yet failing to focus on Mike’s features opposite, he said, ‘The woman actually thinks I’m going to go home now.’

  Both men collapsed into laughter at this, and when he could speak again, Mike replied, looking glassy-eyed at me, ‘She does. She really does, mate!’

  ‘Conor!’ I said more sharply now. I pulled a half-empty bottle he had found amongst the empties from his hand and raised it high above my shoulder, out of reach. ‘You’ve really had enough. Come on. Please! Let’s go!’

  His hand flew so fast, there was no time to duck and no way to avoid the blow. It hit me squarely across the cheek, sending me flying into a tamarind tree in a pot behind me.

  Just for a moment, Mike looked worried. Just for an instant, I saw his addled brain recognise that all was not well. But then Conor laughed and said, ‘Now where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yes, beer, wasn’t it? Garçon! We need more beer.’ And I saw Mike choose to laugh. I saw him choose to forget about the woman lying on the floor.

  I held it together quite well. A burst of adrenalin enabled me to leave the taverna and find a taxi and explain, after much pointing, where I was staying. I sat in the back and watched the dark roads whizz by and felt, just for a bit, quite pleased with myself.

  I paid the driver – it was thousands of drachma and I had no idea whatsoever if he was ripping me off – then I crossed the road to the staircase that led to our hotel.

  I had descended about twenty steps when I returned to myself. Whatever hormone had been seeing me through this ordeal now vanished and I realised that my elbow was bleeding where I had grazed it on the floor, and my cheek was stinging from where I’d been hit. I paused, staring out at the view, still so beautiful, and let myself realise: Conor had hit me. He really had. I managed another ten steps before the tears arrived and I sat on the step and cried. Childhood had rushed back up on me and I suddenly wanted to be home in my bed with Barney Bear. I wanted Abby, or even my mother, to look out for me, to tell me what to do. I felt scared and stranded and alone. And I didn’t know how to deal with any of it.

  ‘Excuse me?’ The voice came from behind me so I wiped my face on my sleeve and turned to look. Two men were trying to pass me on the narrow staircase, no doubt to get to their rooms.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sniffed, shuffling to one side so they could pass.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ the thinner of the two men said. ‘It’s you. We met this mor—’ But I had leapt to my feet and was already scuttling down the stairs, jerked out of my self-pity by sheer embarrassment.

  When I reached my balcony, I realised I didn’t have the door key. It was in Conor’s pocket. So I dried my eyes on a towel we’d left on the back of a deckchair and, after a few panicky breaths, returned upstairs towards the hotel.

  Two houses behind ours, sitting in his own identical chair, the young hiker guy was reclining, apparently enjoying the night-time vista.

  ‘I don’t have my key,’ I explained when he nodded at me questioningly. He had a kind face. ‘I’m hoping they keep a double in the hotel?’

  ‘They do,’ he said, then looking concerned, he added, ‘Are you OK?’

  I bit my lip against a fresh flood of tears. There’s nothing worse when you’re trying to keep it all buttoned up than someone being nice to you, is there?

  He stood and crossed to where I was standing. He was much, much taller than me but because I was on the staircase, our eyes were almost level. ‘You’re not OK at all, are you?’ he said, reaching out to gently touch my upper arm.

  I shook my head and stared at the floor, squeezing my eyes shut as hard as I could. But it was too late. I’d been holding it all in for days, even though it was only now that I realised it. My tears were already dropping to the ground, staining the concrete where they fell.

  FIVE

  BECKY

  It was a good job, I reckon, that I found out about Mum’s trip. I mean, I’m not saying she couldn’t have managed to organise it all on her own, but I definitely think it would have been a challenge for her. As far as the holiday was concerned, Mum had booked plane tickets to Athens but that was about as far as she had got.

  Despite her many years as a secretary, Mum had never been that good at all the online stuff. Oh, she could use her Internet bank to pay the electricity bill and she could even log in and choose a film on Netflix. But watching her do anything she hadn’t done before – search for something on Google, for example, or research hotels or flights – made me want to pull my hair out. She forever seemed to be clicking on the least useful thing on the page. And I always, despite my best intentions, ended up elbowing her out of the way. ‘You could have flown direct to Santorini, you know,’ I told her, ‘if that’s where you want to go.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But I just thought a boat trip might be nice.’ I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  The boat schedules were, Mum said, ever so complicated. And it turned out she was right about that. But together, over the next couple of weeks, we worked out a plan. We would spend one night in Athens (exciting!), travel to the tiny island of Serifos (a friend had told me it was amazing), then carry on to Santorini. Step by step we booked tickets and finally, after some argument about whether hotels were better or worse than self-catering apartments, we booked our accommodation as well. ‘I just worry they’re going to be dirty,’ Mum kept saying.

  We flew to Athens on the twenty-third of August. It was drizzling and fifteen degrees in London, but in Athens it was scorchio!

  Mum seemed really nervous about our bags being lost, but they arrived quickly, jostling their way onto the carousel, so we headed towards the metro for the next phase of our carefully coordinated plan.

  As we passed the taxi rank, Mum grabbed my arm. ‘Shall we just get a taxi?’ she asked.

 
; ‘We decided to take the metro,’ I reminded her. ‘We planned the route and everything. It’s cheaper and probably quicker, too.’

  ‘But we won’t see anything,’ Mum argued. ‘I mean . . . I’m in Athens, you know? I want to look out of the window and see, well, Athens.’

  I agreed this was a good idea and though most of the journey was on the motorway, once we got into Athens proper I was glad we’d chosen not only a taxi but that precise taxi. Because the driver, a cute guy of about my age who spoke perfect English, gave us a running commentary as he drove, pointing out schools and parks and good areas for food, historical monuments, and occasionally the Acropolis, towering above it all.

  We got into our little Airbnb just after four and thankfully it was spotless. We collapsed onto the big leather sofa. We’d been up since six.

  ‘This is lovely,’ Mum said. ‘Good choice.’

  ‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘Better than a hotel, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘OK. You were right.’

  We showered and headed straight back out. We only had one night to explore Athens and were both too excited to rest. Our boat out was booked for the next day.

  We walked through the streets for a while and, drawn almost magnetically, we started to head towards the Acropolis, only to quickly find ourselves distracted, if not actually lost, in a vast pedestrian zone en-route – a lovely maze of little streets and squares bordered with bars. All of the tables were full of pretty, young Athenians drinking and talking and laughing. The ambiance was magical.

  ‘I expected it all to be a bit sadder, somehow,’ Mum commented. ‘What with the banking crisis and the bailouts and everything.’

  ‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘I was thinking the same thing. But then I suppose it is the capital. I mean, if you go to central London you can almost see the money flowing down the streets. But the shops are all still boarded up in Margate High Street. I bet plenty of places in Greece look like that too.’

  ‘It is terrible, isn’t it?’ Mum said. ‘They really do need to do something about that high street.’

  ‘What we need,’ I told her, ‘is a change of government.’

  Mum gave me a thin-lipped shrug. She firmly believes that all politicians are the same, i.e. useless, whereas I obstinately cling to the hope that some are at least less useless than others.

  We eventually chose a place that didn’t look too touristy (almost everyone seemed to be Greek) but yet still had an English translation of the menu.

  ‘Oh, we forgot about the Acropolis!’ I suddenly realised.

  ‘It’s a bit hot for that, anyway, isn’t it?’ Mum said. ‘Maybe tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Sure,’ I told her. ‘This is lovely, anyway.’

  ‘It is,’ Mum agreed. ‘I’m starting to feel like I’m on holiday.’

  ‘You were going to do this on your own,’ I said, looking around. ‘I find that hard to believe now.’

  ‘Me too,’ Mum said. ‘I’m so glad you came, chicken.’

  Eventually, drinks arrived, misty glasses of white wine, and a bowl of olives and cubes of salty feta.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said. We clinked glasses and sipped. The wine was dry and chilled and lovely. I looked around again and noted how nearly everyone was smiling. ‘It must be so much easier to live in a hot country,’ I added.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum agreed. ‘I always thought I might move somewhere hot, but it just never really happened.’

  ‘Did you?’ I asked. ‘When?’ I didn’t really believe her on that one. Mum often seemed to say things that other people tended to say, whether they were true for her or not – it was just her way of making conversation. I was used to it.

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ Mum said vaguely. ‘Way back when. I thought about it a lot. Every time it rained, really.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Well,’ Mum said, ‘although at your age it’s hard to believe, there are plenty of things you don’t know about me.’

  I laughed. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ahh,’ Mum said, smiling. ‘Now that would be telling.’

  We ended up eating right where we were sitting – a salad for Mum, and a moussaka for me – after which our frantic day and early start caught up with us and we yawningly decided to head back to the flat.

  As we left the restaurant, Mum said, ‘Before the euro, there were thousands of whatever they were called – drachma, I think – to the pound. It’s much easier now . . . Or so I imagine.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Italy was like that, too. We did it in economics. There were tens of thousands of lira to the pound at one point.’

  Once I’d replied, however, something struck me as strange about her comment, though I couldn’t for the life of me work out what it was. I glanced at her sideways as we walked along the street, and she smiled at me falsely, before turning away.

  The following morning, we were both up early, so we packed up most of our things and headed off to check out the Acropolis.

  We walked sportily through the early-morning streets, watching delivery men wheeling boxes around and seeing old Athenian ladies walking their dogs. It wasn’t hard to find the Acropolis, in fact we didn’t even need a map. Every time you went around a corner you could see it up there on the hill. As we approached the park surrounding it, the roads rose steeply and we both broke out in a sweat.

  ‘It’s boiling already!’ Mum commented, pausing to wipe her brow.

  ‘I saw a sign,’ I told her. ‘It said it’s twenty-nine. In the shade!’

  The park around the monument was scrubby but pretty and afforded some great views out over the city. We even came across a colony of tortoises, just roaming through the bushes, which got me unreasonably excited. I’ve always loved tortoises and if it hadn’t become so difficult to buy one I would probably have one by now. The closest I ever got was a miniature turtle thing in a goldfish bowl, but I cuddled it one night and killed it. So it’s probably a good thing that I never had a full-sized tortoise after all.

  By the time we reached the gates to the monument itself, we were hot, thirsty and tired. The queue for the cashier was a snaking monstrosity and the cost of entry for two was forty euros. Our courage, at the last hurdle, failed us.

  ‘I just feel like I’ll spend my entire life telling people I almost saw the Acropolis but couldn’t be bothered to queue,’ I told Mum as we walked away.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,’ she replied, grinning slyly. ‘Anyway, you can see it from here. Look.’

  I paused and peered back up at the majestic columns, the birthplace of democracy, as the sign said, and sighed. ‘God, I am such a heathen, but you know what? This really is close enough for me.’

  ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ Mum laughed. ‘Now for more important things. We need to find some coffee!’

  ‘Or even better, some of that chilled coffee they all seem to be drinking,’ I said.

  After lunch, we checked out of our lovely flat and took another taxi to the port, and this proved to have an unexpected queue-jumping advantage to it.

  When we arrived on the quayside, there were thousands of people jostling for position, but our driver, Nick, squeezed right past everyone, almost squashing a dog in the process. He dropped us right at the front of the queue and as no one seemed to notice, or even less care, we just stayed there, albeit feeling guilty as hell.

  The boarding process was stressful. Men blew whistles and shouted incomprehensible instructions and the crowd surged forward towards the gaping orifice at the rear of the boat. Someone dragged a suitcase over my toes, making me shriek.

  The whole thing felt like some biblical exodus or a deportation or something. I wondered, for the first time, if certain things aren’t scarier than they logically should be because we’re tapping into a collective memory of the past. I felt scared that afternoon, as if I had already been there, as if I knew exactly what it meant when a thousand people ran for a boat while men with whistles shouted. And what it meant, my soul seemed to b
e telling me, was imminent, terrifying danger.

  The interior of the boat was vast – rows and rows of comfortable cinema-like seats that in places were twenty or thirty wide. Mum was understandably disappointed that we couldn’t go out on the deck but this was a high-speed jetfoil – the windows couldn’t even be opened. Our seats were 26K and 26J, right in the middle of a boisterous Greek family, so we naughtily nabbed two empty window seats. It was Mum’s idea and though I worried the whole time, no one ever did come to claim them, check our tickets or kick us out.

  The sea was as smooth as a lake and the three-hour trip went by without a hitch. Mum snoozed and I watched through the salt-stained windows as Athens vanished behind us and the first islands slid into view.

  Watching the passing scenery was hypnotic and I daydreamed, projecting the events of the past few days on the cinema screen in my head, until Mum’s comment about me not knowing her as well as I thought I did came to mind. And that, obviously, got me to thinking about my father. Because as far as I knew, that was the only real gaping hole in my education.

  When Mum woke up, I fetched gritty Greek coffees for us both – to butter her up, nothing ever worked better than coffee – and after a few deep breaths, I dived in. ‘You know all those things I don’t know about you?’ I started.

  Mum was sitting sideways with her legs hunched up. She peered over her coffee cup at me. ‘I was only being silly,’ she said. ‘You know everything about me. We lived in each other’s pockets for eighteen years. How could you not?’

  ‘But before,’ I said tentatively. ‘I mean, I know you don’t like talking about it, but I don’t know anything about before.’

  ‘Well, you knew Nanny Eiléan,’ Mum said. ‘You’ve stayed in the house where I grew up, too. I never met any of my grandparents. They were all dead before I was born. So you’re already one up on me for family history.’