You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  I looked into Mum’s eyes and thought I could see that she knew exactly what I was alluding to but, as ever, didn’t want to go there. She looked back at me with puzzlement, as if it was me that was speaking in tongues.

  ‘But what about the other stuff?’ I said as casually as I could manage. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘What other stuff?’ Mum asked.

  ‘The accident and everything,’ I said. I still couldn’t bring myself to say the forbidden words. Father. Dad. Progenitor. They had all been unmentionable for so long I couldn’t even remember when I had first learned they were taboo.

  ‘Oh, that,’ Mum said. ‘Well, there’s really not much to tell. You know there isn’t.’

  I must have sighed in frustration at this because Mum went on, ‘But there isn’t! I . . . you know . . . I met a guy. We had a fling. And he died. I’m sorry, chicken. I know how . . . how . . . lacklustre that must sound but it’s the truth. It’s not very classy, but the truth is that I can barely even remember him myself.’

  ‘Fine, Mum,’ I said softly. ‘Whatever.’ I turned to look out of the window. We were passing another group of tiny islands, even closer this time, perhaps too close. I could see a man fishing from a rock and I wondered if that was OK.

  ‘Look,’ Mum said after a moment. ‘I was on holiday with a girlfriend, OK? And I met a random guy. And I had a fling. Please don’t sulk.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, turning back to face her. And it was true. I’d got so used to not talking about my father that not talking about him a little more barely caused a ripple these days. But because it was the first time she had ever volunteered any additional information, Mum had piqued my curiosity.

  ‘A girlfriend?’ I asked. ‘Was that Aunt Abby?’ Abby was one of Mum’s oldest friends, not a real aunt at all. But she had visited us once or twice a year for as long as I could remember.

  Mum nodded and licked her lips. ‘And I met him . . . I mean . . . this will sound terrible to you, but remember I was only twenty-five . . .’

  ‘Just a bit older than me.’

  ‘Yes. But in my head, I was much younger than you, if that makes any sense. I hadn’t been to college like you have. I hadn’t known any boys – well, not many, anyway. I hadn’t even had a proper boyfriend really. Your grandmother ran a tight ship. She ran a very tight ship.’

  ‘Yeah, I know she did. So it was a holiday fling, nothing more?’

  Mum nodded. ‘But then he had . . . you know . . . the car accident. And that was that. I don’t know if it would have gone any further, but we never had the chance to find out.’

  ‘How soon afterwards was it?’

  ‘A couple of days,’ Mum said.

  ‘After the holiday, or after you met?’

  ‘Oh, we were still on holiday. It was awful really.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I told her, but I couldn’t. I had one of those powerful, fleeting realisations that my mother was this complex person who had lived through terrible things. Nothing bad had ever really happened to me. ‘So you didn’t know him at all really?’

  ‘Not really, no. I mean, I knew him well enough to . . . you know . . . I mean, I didn’t jump into bed with him the second I met him or anything. So I knew enough to know he was lovely. And I knew him well enough that . . . when I realised I was pregnant I knew you’d be lovely too. That’s why I didn’t . . . you know. But anyway, that’s enough of that.’

  ‘You considered an abortion?’ I asked, a wave of existential shock rolling over me at the hard-to-grasp concept that I had almost never existed.

  ‘No!’ Mum said. ‘Not once. My mother, your grandmother, she . . . Actually, never mind about that. But no. Not once. I knew you’d be lovely. And I wanted you. There was never any doubt.’

  ‘Gran can’t have been thrilled, though?’

  ‘No,’ Mum said. ‘No, she wasn’t. You know how religious she was.’

  ‘She was ke-ra-zy religious,’ I said. ‘But what was he—’

  ‘Now, do you think we could talk about something else for a bit?’ Mum interrupted. ‘Would that be OK? Because none of that was . . . Well, it wasn’t much fun, really. And I am trying to enjoy my first holiday in decades, you know?’

  And so, though every snippet of information I had gleaned made me want to ask another thousand questions, I let the subject drop. For now.

  ‘Anyway, what about you?’ Mum asked me. ‘You never tell me anything about your personal life.’

  ‘My personal life?’ I said, feeling immediately queasy. Though Mum and I were close, we’d never had a girlfriend kind of relationship.

  ‘Yes. You were dating someone when you came back at Easter. You kept sneaking off to phone him all the time. I’m not blind. Or deaf.’

  ‘Hmm . . . OK. Well, that was Tom,’ I replied thoughtfully.

  ‘And what happened to Tom?’

  I shrugged. ‘He wasn’t very nice in the end.’

  ‘Right,’ Mum said. ‘Oh well. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t French,’ I told her, straight-faced. ‘He was Scottish.’

  ‘I never said he was,’ Mum said, looking confused. My humour, as so often, had gone whizzing over her head.

  I turned back to look out of the window again. We were passing an arid red outcrop and I wondered if it might be Serifos. According to my watch we were due to disembark in twenty minutes. But the island passed by – it was completely uninhabited – and so I stared out at the vast blue sea, which again stretched to the horizon, and thought for a bit about Tom.

  I wondered, as I had wondered a thousand times, if I should have made more of an effort to make things work with him. Because Tom, despite his faults, had been sexy, sporty and on his better days funny, too. Jen, my best friend from college, was of the opinion that if you had to struggle to make something work, it was doomed from the start. But it seemed more and more to me that the people around me at college who were in long-term relationships made constant and sometimes overwhelming sacrifices to stay in them. So I was beginning to doubt that such a thing as a carefree, effortless relationship existed. Not outside Hollywood, at any rate.

  The red rocks hadn’t been Serifos, but as our ship finally manoeuvred into port I could see that Serifos was made of the same stuff. It was a sprawling red rock almost entirely devoid of trees or greenery. It looked a bit like the upper edge of some vast asteroid that had landed in a deep, deep sea.

  The owner of our holiday-let, an ageing farmer in dungarees, was at the port to meet us with his battered old Peugeot hatchback. He was holding a flapping piece of paper that said ‘Mrs Laura & Mrs Robeeca’.

  ‘Mrs Robeeca,’ I said to Mum, pointing. ‘That’s me!’

  ‘I don’t speak English,’ he said as we shook hands. And we quickly ascertained that he really didn’t. But what he lacked in vocabulary, he made up for in smiles.

  He drove us up and up the red hillside, along red roads, cut out of red rock. Even the dust that caked the car was red. When we reached the plateau at the top of the hill (a place where you could successfully film a fake Mars landing), the road turned and started, almost immediately, to zigzag back down the other side. Sitting in the back, I started to feel quite pukey.

  As the car redescended (straight – hairpin bend – straight – hairpin bend . . .) we caught glimpses of the bay below: an incredible turquoise sea, a strip of orangey sand and then bushes, trees, crops . . . a vibrant oasis in the midst of the arid Martian desolation. There were even a few palm trees down there and the scene looked a bit biblical, like some ancient painting of Babylon.

  The house was formed of a series of smooth-edged cubes, seemingly plonked on one another and painted in the obligatory blinding white. The farmer and his wife lived above – her huge knickers were pegged to a rotary washing line, flapping in the breeze – and our holiday flat was below. We had the entire ground floor.

  The woman of the house spoke little more English than
her husband, but had learned the names of the gifts they had left scattered around the house, so as she showed us proudly yet shyly around the rooms she would gesture theatrically at things and say, ‘Bread – I make,’ or ‘Grape – we grow,’ or ‘Wine – from grape,’ or ‘Cheese – from Alpina, our goat.’ Finally, bowing as if we were royalty, she backed out of the front door and left us to it.

  ‘What an amazing place!’ Mum said, once she had gone. The rooms were sparsely furnished but spotless, and cool despite the still-present heat of the day.

  Outside, a goat bleated so I bowed and gestured towards the open door and said, ‘Alpina – our goat!’

  Mum frowned at me. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I thought she was really lovely.’

  ‘She was. They are,’ I said, picking a grape from the bowl and feeling bad. I’d just been trying to make Mum laugh and I certainly hadn’t intended to imply anything negative about our lovely, generous hosts.

  We checked out the bedroom – it had two single beds with crisp, ironed sheets – and the bathroom, which had one of those wet-room shower affairs everyone is so into these days. You know, the ones where you can’t shower without getting the bog roll wet . . .

  And then we stepped outside to look at the view. We were halfway up the hillside, perhaps a few hundred yards from the water’s edge. To the left, a red, rocky outcrop plunged into the sea, framing the view, and to the right were terraced hills covered in cultivated greenery. I guessed they were vines. In the middle, bang in front of us, nestled between the two hills, was the vibrant green oasis and, beyond that, the electric neon blue of the sea.

  ‘It’s stunning,’ I commented.

  ‘And did you see the beach as we were coming down?’ Mum asked. From where we were standing, it was hidden behind the trees.

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘And I think it’s just for us.’

  Mum looked left and right. ‘I don’t see any other houses around, at any rate.’

  ‘So, food, drink or a swim?’ I asked.

  Mum wrinkled her nose. ‘I am a bit hungry,’ she said. ‘But I’m gagging to get in that water, too. We should have eaten something on the boat.’

  ‘We could take the bread and cheese,’ I suggested. ‘We could picnic on the beach.’

  Mum smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that.’

  Our two days in Serifos were paradisiacal.

  Had we planned to stay longer (and I would have loved to, it was truly a wrench to leave) the absence of transport would have been a problem. But for two days, three nights, we were fine.

  We’d get up, say hello to Alpina, give her some scraps from the previous evening’s meal and then meander down to the beach where we’d swim in the warm waters of the bay, or snooze or read in the shade of the trees that overhung our private beach. Then we’d climb back up the hill to have lunch at the house with a random collection of cats around our feet.

  Fresh gifts arrived constantly, basically any time we left the house. At lunchtime we discovered tomatoes and tiny red peppers. At dinner time a pot of home-made moussaka and some pungent yoghurt. At breakfast time a rather incongruous sponge cake appeared on the doorstep. It was so dry you had to wash it down with coffee for fear of choking. But even then, the intention to please was evident. And considering we’d paid only forty-five euros a night, we could barely believe our luck.

  The wine was the only thing we honestly couldn’t consume – boy, was it rough – and we discussed, endlessly, whether it was better to pour some of it away so they’d think we’d liked it, or leave it intact, as they clearly weren’t wealthy people, and would probably frown at such waste.

  In the end we decided to top it up with water (we’d barely touched the stuff). ‘That way they’ll think we’re just teetotallers,’ Mum said.

  It was our final night in Serifos and as the sky turned deepest red, and as the husband fed the endlessly bleating Alpina on the terrace below, I got to thinking about Tom again.

  ‘How do you know if someone’s an alcoholic?’ I asked Mum, a forkful of moussaka hovering.

  ‘Why? Are you tempted by that paint-stripper wine of theirs?’ Mum laughed.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, I’m really not.’

  ‘Then you’re safe, I reckon.’

  ‘I was thinking about Tom actually,’ I told her. ‘He was lovely when he was sober but pretty horrid when he’d had a drink.’

  Mum sighed. ‘Then you’re well out of it, I would say.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Most people drink to have a nice time,’ she said. ‘It’s the ones who have a bad time but carry on drinking regardless you have to watch out for.’

  ‘I keep wondering if I tried hard enough,’ I said between mouthfuls. ‘God, this moussaka is amazing, isn’t it? It’s even better than the one in that restaurant.’

  ‘It is,’ Mum said. ‘And what do you mean by “tried hard enough”?’

  ‘Well, he got drunk and lairy a few times and I just gave up really. I mean, it was the end of term and everything and we hadn’t been going out for long, so . . . But I wonder if I shouldn’t have tried harder – tried to get him to stop drinking or something?’

  ‘Best thing you could have done, sweetheart,’ Mum said. ‘Run away quickly.’

  ‘You sound like you’re talking from experience.’

  Mum shrugged.

  ‘Are you?’ I asked. ‘Brian was OK when he drank, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, Brian was fine. He just used to fall asleep. No, I saw a programme about it, that’s all. And they said the only people who can help alcoholics are themselves. Everyone else just needs to save themselves.’

  SIX

  LAURA

  Other than the fact that I had argued with my boyfriend, I’d told the hiker guy virtually nothing. But as I had left – off to the hotel in search of a spare key – he’d said, ‘If you have any problems just shout very loud, OK? I think we are close enough to hear.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I’d told him, laughing falsely and wondering what kind of problem he was imagining. I’d said so little, after all. But the idea reassured me a tiny bit.

  All the same, I barely slept at all that night and when I did manage to quit the misery of consciousness for twenty minutes or so, my sleep was so shallow I was hardly asleep at all.

  Even with my friendly neighbour listening out, I was scared about Conor returning. I doubted that such a thing was possible. He’d been way too drunk to drive and almost certainly too drunk to organise a taxi or even remember where he was staying. But I was terrified all the same.

  About seven, I finally gave up on sleep. The longer I lay in bed, the more the possibility of Conor getting home increased, and him finding me dozing would leave me feeling even more vulnerable.

  So I forced myself up and showered and fixed up my face. I had only the slightest of bruises on my cheek, which I covered with foundation. My elbow was scabby from where I had fallen and I had a bruise on my back from the earthenware pot the tree had been in, but other than that, all things considered, I’d got off pretty lightly.

  I hadn’t decided what to do yet but I felt certain of one thing: it would involve a packed suitcase. So I set about making that happen. Afterwards, I sat outside and stared at the view as I tried to review my options. It was another beautiful day, but it brought no pleasure to me that morning. All I wanted was to escape.

  I could get a taxi to the airport, I reckoned, and try to change my ticket there. But even in Mykonos the airport had been tiny and I hadn’t seen an airline desk at all. The one in Santorini would probably be even smaller. Plus, I’d need to change not one but two plane tickets to get home: the Aegean one to Athens, and the BA ticket back home. It’s silly, because it seems perfectly doable to me these days, but in my twenties the complexity of the whole thing just made me want to cry.

  I could get a taxi and ask him to take me to a different hotel in a different town, and try to enjoy the rest of my holiday.
But I wasn’t even sure I could pay for it. I hadn’t yet tested my debit card in Greece and the seventy pounds’ worth of drachma I’d changed at the Post Office wouldn’t get me very far. Plus, I’d inevitably have to face Conor for the flight home anyway.

  I considered phoning Mum and asking her what to do, but knew she’d go ballistic, probably wouldn’t have any answers I hadn’t thought of already, and would punish me severely when I got home. I wished I could call Abby but she, of course, was in Ibiza. Oh why, oh why hadn’t I gone to Ibiza?

  ‘Good morning to you!’

  I jerked from my reverie and turned to see Conor standing behind me. I’d be brave, I decided in that instant. I’d inform him of my decision and make him help me organise things. He owed me that at least. What a terrible feminist I was back then!

  ‘Good morning,’ I said coldly.

  ‘I woke up on a bench,’ Conor said, laughing as if this was funny. ‘Totally shit-faced last night . . .’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I was there.’

  ‘Have you eaten yet?’ Conor asked, choosing to ignore my glare.

  ‘Not hungry,’ I replied.

  ‘You’re looking lovely,’ Conor said.

  I shrugged and turned back to look out to sea.

  ‘Have you got the hump with me or something?’ he asked.

  I chewed my lip, trying to channel the anger rising within me into something concise and constructive. ‘No, Conor,’ I said icily, turning back to face him. ‘No, I haven’t got the hump with you. I’m . . . I’m . . . furious beyond belief. And I’m leaving. My bags are packed. I just need you to help me change my flights.’

  ‘Oh,’ Conor said, his stupid grin fading. ‘You’re leaving? May I ask why? I’m a little fuzzy on the details of last night.’

  ‘You hit me, Conor,’ I said. ‘You whacked me in the face.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He peered at me to search for evidence of my accusation and shrugged.