by Sara Alexi
But the mama gave her no acknowledgement, turning back to speak to her daughter instead. She did so in a kind voice, and she leaned forward to brush some sand from the girl’s skirt. ‘Ah, you see,’ she said, ‘such a pretty dress, but it is just not in your nature to keep it clean, is it? Everything is always a little more about you than the lovely things you are given.’
She said it in such a warm, low tone that it sounded as if she was praising the girl. But the child’s face crumpled.
‘Ah, ah, don’t start. We have brought you out for a lovely treat. Don’t be ungrateful.’ So softly were the words spoken, they sounded like a caress. Had she spoken harshly, her husband, Christos and no doubt anyone else nearby would have looked on in disapproval. But because of the gentle timbre of her voice it passed everyone by, except the little girl – and Rallou.
‘I want to go home,’ the child muttered, her voice only just audible.
‘Your friends had left you anyway. They had better things to do, so we are here now,’ the mama smoothly murmured, and with this she stopped brushing the sand off the child’s dress and turned to her husband, who sat passively waiting for her attention. When he had it he became quite animated and the little girl was forgotten.
Rallou took the impact in her chest. The feeling was a hard sadness and it was prompted by the way the mama had spoken to her child. It spun her back into her own childhood and it took her breath way. She reached for her wine and took a swallow to steady herself, her pulse in her ears, adrenaline coursing through her solar plexus and the muscles across her chest tightening. A blast of emotional memories told her exactly how this child felt: the mortifying shame of not being good enough, the confusion of not knowing how the situation had got to this point. The child was now trying hard to sit still and be ‘good’, and not cry. She would grow up trying to be ‘good’ and do everything right. She would do all that was asked of her and more – just a bit more to gain the briefest of hugs and the smallest of praise.
Just as Rallou had done with Harris.
No wonder she had been so keen to live with Vasillis, to go to school, to work at the carpet factory so young and, eventually, not only to leave her beloved island, but also to go as far away as she dared to break the strings of need that bound her to her surrogate mama.
Rallou tried to get the attention of the child at the next table by smiling at her, to tell the girl with her eyes that she was loveable just the way she was. But the child did not look up. She was working so hard at sitting still and being quiet.
Athens and Paris had helped to set Rallou free, but it was the events in London, the accident, her experience in that hospital bed that really made the change for her. That unexplainable event told her with full force that she was important and that she had as much right to live her life the way she wanted as every other person alive. No one was more important than her, but equally not one was less important. The love she felt when she was in that place of light lingered still, all these years later, and it gave her certain knowledge that she had been in that place and that the place was real. Back then – and she didn’t know why she felt driven to do so – she had even compared the love she had felt in that extraordinary place to the love offered by Harris, and in comparison Harris’s love seemed less important; if that place of light was where she would end up then she would go happily. So she returned to the island strong and sure and confident.
So what happened?
The first napkin was dissolved into shreds on the floor. She kicked the pieces into a small pile by the table leg and took a second.
She was fine when she first moved into Orino town with Christos. They had been excited about having their own place and swore, because of the dispute between the cousins, that it was only temporary and then …
And then what altered? Harris! Harris had moved in opposite and their relationship had picked up where it left off. She can see her now on the third day in her marital home.
‘Morning, Rallou. Christos well?’ Harris had called across as she cleaned her windows. Instead of shouting, Rallou had pointed to the ridge and smiled. There would be rabbit stew tonight.
‘He’s gone where? The hills? Again? But you have only been married two minutes! Doesn’t take them long to wander, does it? Perhaps you should tempt him home with a really good dinner.’ Harris had spoken so openly and so kindly; it was said with such care. ‘Ah, yes, of course, maybe that is the problem. You were off studying books when I learnt to cook, weren’t you? Never mind, I will come over, I can teach you. We can make dishes that he will hurry home to.’
Such comments weren’t made just once. It seemed that every time they spoke she had some judgement to make, and as she had always been in the role of mama, Rallou had listened, and as she had listened the doubts had begun. Was he away longer than he needed to be?
‘Of course, it is understandable, as it is not your own home,’ Harris began one day as her fingers investigated the rot in one of Rallou’s shutters. ‘I am lucky that ours is Stephanos’s family home. It feels so much more permanent to actually own your own home, and it is worth taking care of them. But I admire the effort you have put into this. Look, you have planted flowers to try and cheer the place up.’ Rallou spent the rest of the week painting the shutters, planting more flowers and doing a hundred things to improve the house. Christos tried to dissuade her, pestering her to go for walks with him up in the mountains, but she was not to be deflected and so he went by himself up to the hills and in turn she felt alone.
‘Gone again, has he?’ Harris would shout across to her. ‘Come over, we can have coffee.’ And, as she contemplated the hours stretching out into the future with no one to talk to, Rallou did go across, and generally ended up going home more miserable than when she arrived, though she could never understand why. Harris told her it was the state of the house, or the lack of attention from Christos, and the cycle would begin again.
Why had she not seen all this for what it was at the time? Why was she seeing it only now?
The waiter returned and Christos ordered for them both. Beetroot with a garlic sauce, long red peppers stuffed with feta, and stuffed tomatoes.
‘Will we eat all this?’ Rallou asked, breaking her reverie. More to the point, how would they pay for it, she wondered. Christos smiled and told the waiter that was probably enough, and then he turned to the sea again, with a faraway look on his face that told her he was content.
After the children arrived, Harris had advice for every occasion.
‘I heard her crying again just now. Does she have a temperature? Did you check? Oh, you had better check. I can’t believe you didn’t. These things can change so quickly if you don’t remain vigilant. You see, that is where my childhood has the advantage, I have already raised you and the boys.’
And another time: ‘I see Natasa has a bruise on her arm. Did she fall? Again? How does that happen so often?’
The looks that accompanied such comments would cause Rallou to wither inside. The crushing kindness Harris came out with about the children was incessant. The more she commented, the more Rallou tried harder, she could see that now. The way Harris’s comments were delivered was so kind, so soft, so full of concern.
The child at the next table was trying to eat, and her mama was encouraging her, but the poor girl was having trouble swallowing. Rallou remembers that feeling too: the lump in her throat, the sluggishness of her limbs, the inability to swallow because she was so upset that she had been told off again.
‘Baba, I feel I can never please Harris. Am I really so bad?’ she once asked. She must have been quite small because she was nestling neatly under her baba’s arm.
‘My little treasure, you are perfect,’ he had replied, and cuddled her tighter as they looked across the sea, which was painted orange by sun kissing the horizon in its slow descent.
‘Just perfect,’ he repeated to himself, and they watched as the shimmering orange disc sank lower and lower into the sea, creating a reflection of
itself until the last fingernail of glow remained: going, going, gone, and then dusk was on them.
Taking another swallow of wine, Rallou sat back as the food was placed on the table. The smells of olive oil and garlic stimulated her hunger and she took up her fork. Christos paused to admire the dishes before he too tucked in, but even when he began to chew he was still smiling. He was obviously delighted to be a papous but there was something else too.
One thing at a time.
‘Christo, do you think Harris is a nice person?’ she asked, as casually as she could, pushing some scordolia onto her forkful of beetroot. Maybe all this negative thinking about Harris was in her head, just like all she had imagined about Christos.
He laughed, a short snorting laugh.
‘You really want to know?’ he said, and stabbed a forkful of the beetroot leaves. ‘Do you want some fava?’
‘Yes. And yes, I really want to know.’ She knew that, whatever he said, there was probably no return so she braced herself, in her heart knowing what was to come.
‘She is a competitive …’ But he didn’t say the final word. Instead he put down his fork, looked into her eyes and, in a soft tone, said, ‘She is in competition with you and she does everything and anything she can to make herself feel better about herself by being mean to you.’
‘It has taken you twenty-nine years to tell me?’ her voice asked without her permission. She felt numb.
‘You love her. She was your mama and is your sister and, I am sorry to say, your poison.’
‘So bad?’ He was blurred through her tear-filled eyes. He didn’t answer; there was no need.
She was so filled with love for him at that point that she looked away, at the vase of little blue flowers between them.
Chapter 31
Rallou decides to wander across to see her baba. She’ll make him a morning coffee, or take a little walk with him. They could go to the bees, or maybe the goats need grazing. They could do that together.
There are two ways to her baba’s: in a straight line through the village, past Kyria Vetta who says that she has returned to her roots and that she is never moving again, or behind the house, along the very top of the ridge, skirting around the edge of the hamlet. Today she does not feel like seeing too many people so she will take the longer route. It will be hotter as there are no trees out of the dip, but the views of the sea will compensate.
With the people who have moved back to Korifi have come an assortment of animals. There are a few cats and one has already had kittens that have grown quite feral, and one of these now has an extended belly. Before she leaves, Rallou puts some scraps out in case any of her feline friends happen to pass by. A couple of dogs have been brought up to Korifi by their masters and they bark their daily conversations. As she reaches the top of the ridge, the dull clang of a metal bowl being dropped on concrete or stone and the sudden silence of one of the dogs signals feeding time. The mundane task of feeding animals does not inspire her today. She wants to be freer than that.
Looking beyond the village and out to the horizon, to the strip of water between the island and the mainland, Rallou can see several boats. Two water taxis are moving in opposite directions at great speed, heading towards each other in a marine version of chicken. When they pass, though, it is apparent that there is plenty of room to spare. Three small fishing boats sit unmoving and a large yacht is moored where the water is shallow enough to drop anchor. Its bright orange tender bobs alongside, a shocking dot in the field of blue.
As she walks around the perimeter of the village, Rallou looks down into the scooped-out hollow of land where the single-storey houses with their terracotta roofs are partly hidden by stunted trees and grapevines. The houses are no longer in a poor state of repair, as they had been for the last thirty years or more. Now there is evidence that people are starting to make improvements: broken windows have been glazed, and chimneys smoke from cooking fires. Washing on lines adds pinpoints of colour against white walls.
Evidence of the presence of the recent influx of inhabitants to the tiny hamlet is also carried to Rallou on the slight morning breeze, in the form of a blend of new aromas: a rich, oily smell, mixed with herbs – something delicious cooking slowly on a stovetop – and a passing hint of laundry powder from washing hung out to dry in the sun.
She brushes past a rosemary bush, which adds to the air’s perfume. The plant is another sign of the presence of people. It is not a wild bush but one that that someone has recently planted to gather from for cooking. Further up the track she passes a roughly built hut, around which is an enclosure that holds three sheep. The smell of their dung mixes with the other smells, acrid compared to the cooking but not unpleasant. One of the animals bleats a welcome as she passes. Then she is out in the scrubland and the domestic smells recede and the colours dominate: hues of bronze and browns at her feet, greys further away and the blue of sea, the navy of the mainland and the deep admiral blue of the sky. There is a haze over everything. She would like to run and take off like a bird to fly free over the beauty before her. A little further on, in the shade of some thorny scrub, grows a clump of the little blue flowers. She will take some to Baba. When she bends to pluck them they transport her back to the restaurant in Corfu once more, to the moment when she asked Christos what he thought of Harris.
Christos shared his views so gently that she was moved to tears. His hand reached out for hers but neither of them said any more about it, and of that she was glad. She needed all her thoughts to settle. They enjoyed the meal in silence and then, when it was time to leave, with tenderness, he even pulled her chair out for her and they walked back into town arm in arm. It was almost as if he had rehearsed for this day, expected it to come.
When they neared Corfu town centre, it was Rallou who spoke first.
‘Toula offered me her house, for us to stay in on the way home if I found you.’
‘What do you mean if you found me?’ Christos asked, and Rallou ignored the question.
‘I am going to accept her offer.’ She felt determined to be herself again. ‘The money I could spend on a new blouse will see us through a few days, and when we run out we can go back to Orino and stay with Vasillis, or my baba, until my payday. You and I are going to have our first proper holiday off the island.’
His mouth dropped open a little after this speech, but only for a second, and then he said, ‘Welcome back.’ And he was grinning.
Rallou enjoys the sense of freedom she gets in the open scrubland. If she looks to the west she can see only land and sea. In this direction there are no houses, no civilisation, just the island as it has been for thousands of years. The low-lying bushes and plants are scratchy so where these are dense she walks with her head down, but the rest of the time her chin is up and she revels in the moment.
She and Christos entered the village near Saros in the late afternoon. She didn’t know what to expect but was pleasantly surprised to find it much like any Greek farming village, except perhaps smaller and slightly less cared for than most. Here the buildings had remained traditional from a lack of resources, rather than by design as was the case in Orino. The tiled roofs were a multitude of oranges and burnt umbers, lichen speckling them here and there. The whitewashed walls were peeling and the shutters, mostly blue and light grey, were flaking paint. This was a farming village, without the wealth the tourists bring to Orino. It should have felt drab but it didn’t. Rather, the impression was that it was homely and lived in. They wandered up past a large church, next to which was an impressive house. A group of boys were playing football on the broad paved area in front of the church, and, as they passed, a wide ball came to Christos, who dribbled it round and past the boys for a minute, appearing to relish this reminder of youth.
A little way past the church the houses ran out, giving way to rows of orange trees on either side of the road, stretching as far as they could see into the distance, and so they turned back and took the road through the main square, past a wind
owless place that smelt of cheese, and beyond. Beyond the square was a row of taps mounted on the wall, evidently providing water for the locals from some stream. One of the taps dripped continually and the area was slippery with wet, and wasps hovered, circling and drinking. Rallou watched as a man pulled up in a pickup truck and filled a dozen empty water bottles from the taps, stepping carefully so as not to slip. As he returned to his truck with the full bottles, he called a greeting. A lady hosing down her front courtyard smiled and waved. Back at the central square, where the bus had dropped them when they first arrived, the woman in the kiosk, which stood under the shade of a tall palm tree, said she would be delighted to be able to help.
‘Oh, welcome, welcome,’ the coiffured woman called through the open glass window of her tiny emporium. Behind her, the shelves of the kiosk were filled with stacked cigarette packets, boxes of aspirin, and cartons of coffee granules, along with all manner of other essentials. On the shelf below the little window were boxes of individually wrapped sweets, a tray of lighters, another of biros, and plastic cups in cellophane wrappers labelled Frappé – just add water and shake.
‘Ah yes, Toula’s house.’ The woman laughed as she spoke. ‘How is she? She was here just a week or so ago. Now, her cottage, just a minute,’ And with a shuffle and a squeeze she came out of her mustard-coloured box, kicking a crate out of her way, the bottles tinkling their reluctance to move. At the front of the kiosk, by the drink cabinets and the magazine racks, she stood by them companionably.
‘You can go up by the church, if you have a car …’ She looked around, and seeing no car she continued, ‘But on foot, I would go up there, between the pharmacy and the bakery and that’s it, the main gate is directly opposite you at the top.’