Cartes Postales From Greece

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ said Ellie simply. As they looked out over Athens, Anthony continued to talk. It seemed that there was more about Sarah that he wanted to get off his chest, as if, once said, he might never need to mention her again.

  ‘For the short time she inhabited my world, Sarah was my world.’

  Though he was old enough to be her father, Ellie felt that this man expected her to respond as a mentor or confidante.

  ‘You thought this was it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, it seemed like that to me, at least. My head was in the clouds. Everything I had read about love in classical myth, and about its power, now made sense to me. I felt connected with all the art that it had inspired: poetry, painting and sculpture of every period had new significance for me.

  ‘Sarah willingly came to galleries with me, and bounced around them enthusiastically. She seemed to respond to things exactly as I did. I was completely seduced by her charm. By Love. By Erotas. It seemed a force that was bigger than myself.’

  Anthony’s thoughts came spilling out.

  ‘In all my blissful musings on Eros and Psyche, I ignored the crimes that love leads people to perpetrate. I did not want to know about its darker side, the betrayals, the tragedies. I was never interested in the endings.’

  Ellie did her best to understand and nod in the right places, though some of the references were new to her.

  ‘There was a fifteen-year difference in our age, but in the end I think it was me who was the child. I held on to the ring I had bought for a while, but it’s gone now. Only last week, I summoned the courage to return it. The money will cover my rent for a year, so it was almost worth the humiliation! And I am hoping that any new legislation will let me stay at least that long here.’

  Anthony saw that the jug of water was empty.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like something else? I could do with a coffee.’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ said Ellie.

  Anthony noticed her glance at her watch. It was nearly six.

  ‘Do you need to be somewhere else?’ he asked, with concern.

  ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I was hoping to visit the Acropolis before my flight. But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You have a plane to catch?’ he asked, in surprise. ‘What time?’

  ‘It’s not until one in the morning,’ she said. ‘It’s hours away.’

  When Anthony returned with the coffee, Ellie was browsing through the notebook. She felt more relaxed with him now.

  ‘What happened …’ she said, ‘… it must have been awful.’

  ‘It’s strange that you have read all of this,’ said Anthony. ‘On the other hand, it’s nice to think that there is someone in the world who knows what I went through.’

  Ellie blushed. The guilt of reading what was, effectively, a diary had not quite worn off.

  ‘Even now, if I pass someone in the street in Athens who wears her perfume it almost overpowers me with memories. But how can I prevent this unless I never walk the streets?’

  Ellie shook her head.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said quietly, sympathetically.

  The mountains were gradually turning rose pink. The sun was beginning to set.

  To Ellie, Anthony seemed like a teenage boy with a broken heart.

  ‘I had a pretty good arm when I played cricket but I couldn’t throw that phone far enough,’ he continued, with a wry smile.

  Watching him reflecting on his infatuation made Ellie realise how gullible even intelligent adults could be. He was a highly educated and cultured man who had been struck with a temporary blindness.

  ‘Unless all that had happened,’ she said simply, ‘perhaps you wouldn’t be here now …’

  ‘That’s very true, Ellie. And it’s not such a bad place to be.’

  Both she and Anthony seemed comfortable with the occasional pause in conversation. It was never quite silent, in any case. Traffic noise came up from below, horns sounded with impatience and were answered with irritation and there was occasionally the noise of an aircraft.

  The man she sat with on this rooftop was a total stranger and yet she felt as if she knew him.

  ‘But we have done nothing but talk about me!’ he laughed. ‘You must think I am a total egotist! I haven’t talked like that about myself for … perhaps for ever. I’m so sorry.’

  Ellie laughed, too.

  ‘Don’t worry! You have been filling in the gaps for me!’

  ‘Now you have to tell me about you. Please. I insist.’

  Anthony looked at Ellie. She would not meet his eye.

  ‘But my life is so uninteresting,’ she said awkwardly, unused to being the focus of attention.

  ‘Everyone’s life is interesting,’ he said encouragingly. ‘I know where you live, that’s all. What do you do?’

  Ellie briefly sketched her life for Anthony: from Cardiff to London, and the unsatisfactory job in which she found herself. She found it impossible to conceal her dissatisfaction and boredom. He listened intently, just as he must have done when he heard the stories that people told him around Greece.

  She described how her boss had reacted when she announced her decision to take ten days off.

  ‘So what will you do now?’ he asked.

  Ellie shrugged her shoulders. She realised she could not give a definitive answer.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her eyes resting on the view of Athens. ‘There’s nothing particularly to go back for.’

  She was not sure whether he was really interested in her life, so she changed the subject. In any case, she did not want to think about herself, as it would lead her to the thought of her plane and the moment when it would lift into the air and she would be gone. It was only a short time away now.

  Ellie watched his hand on the notebook. She felt a sense of loss. Whose was it, after all? It had been sent to her address, a street name so deceptively and carelessly given, where S (as she still thought of her) had probably never lived.

  ‘Did you really write down the stories for Sarah?’

  It was the first time Ellie had spoken the name.

  ‘Who does anyone write for?’ he responded. ‘I told myself that’s who they were for but, in the end, I think we write everything for ourselves. My book on sculpture, for example. The world is not exactly on the edge of its seat waiting for it. I know that. Someone who reads it might be gently stirred to see how closely some of Picasso’s or Henry Moore’s work resembles a Cycladic sculpture, but they will just inwardly say: “Ah! That’s interesting … That’s nice.” It won’t change anyone’s life. I have no illusions about that.

  ‘It’s not so unlike these stories. I had nowhere else to put them except on these pages, and there was nowhere for them to go except to your address. But I am very happy you brought them back. It seems like the very end of something – that she never lived there, that even this was a lie …’

  They sat and continued chatting. He asked her about her holiday, where she had stayed, what she had done, and Ellie told him about Tolon and visiting Nafplio each day and how much she had enjoyed sitting in the square.

  She looked at the beautiful stone sculptures on the roof terrace. They glowed in the dusk. Were they modern? Ancient? Were they original Picassos? Or Henry Moores? Or were they copies? Ellie had no idea and was not sure it mattered. They were graceful pieces of carved stone, timeless and elegant.

  Anthony saw her looking at them.

  ‘Wonderful, aren’t they? They are the only things I had shipped over from London when I decided to stay here. They look much more at home here than in Bloomsbury.’

  ‘They’re … amazing.’

  The word sounded banal.

  ‘As well as all my books.’

  When she had walked through the apartment to get to the terrace, Ellie had noticed that every wall was lined with huge art volumes.

  ‘Greece is giving me so much,’ he said. ‘Without that experience, that … disappointment … whatever y
ou want to call it, I wouldn’t still be here.’

  ‘And if … S. Ibbotson had been there to read the postcards or your stories, I wouldn’t be here either,’ Ellie added tentatively, unable to repeat the woman’s name.

  ‘Yes. All of those things have led to this moment. The two of us sitting in this place, on this night, with this moon, under these stars.’

  The Acropolis was now illuminated and glowed golden in the distance. In spite of the troubles that persisted in the streets and squares beneath it, the Parthenon was unassailable, untouchable. It had survived the ravages of both time and vandalism.

  Anthony’s eyes were drawn to it, too.

  ‘Perfect, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Only the Pyramids are as recognisable, but I always think of death when I see them. They’re burial places, rather than somewhere to worship.’

  ‘The Parthenon is definitely more beautiful,’ commented Ellie.

  Anthony turned to her.

  ‘What are your plans? I feel a bit responsible that you might have lost your job.’

  ‘I suppose I could blame you,’ Ellie said, laughing. ‘Your postcards, anyway!’

  She told Anthony how she had pinned them up in her home, how much they had meant to her and how, when they had stopped coming, she had decided she had to come herself.

  The reality was that she did not have any idea what she was going to do next. The last time she had looked at the balance on her account, she saw that she was running low on funds. Though she had stayed in a cheap hotel, the holiday had cost most of her savings.

  ‘It will be hard going back to London,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you stay? You won’t regret it,’ said Anthony.

  Ellie did not like to mention her lack of money, but she knew that he was right. Her journey to this moment had already enriched her life immeasurably.

  In a lull in their conversation, Ellie heard the sound of a door shutting inside the apartment. A moment later, a young woman appeared on the terrace. She was small and gamine. For a reason she could not explain, she felt a pang of jealousy, especially when the new arrival strolled across to Anthony and kissed him on both cheeks.

  ‘Athina. This is Ellie. Ellie. Athina.’

  The two women shook hands.

  ‘It must be time for a glass of wine,’ said Anthony. ‘The sun has practically gone down!’

  ‘I’ll bring some,’ said Athina enthusiastically. ‘Just give me a moment to change.’

  ‘There’s a lovely Cretan Assyrtiko chilling in the fridge. And would you mind bringing out some pistachios, too?’

  There seemed an easy familiarity between them. Athina was clearly at home here.

  ‘You read about Athina,’ Anthony said to Ellie. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Delphi!’ exclaimed Ellie. ‘You met at Delphi!’

  She was just as Anthony had described her.

  ‘We’re not a couple!’ said Anthony, reading Ellie’s mind. ‘Athina has a girlfriend. You can imagine how that went down with her parents in Lamia.’

  Athina had reappeared on the terrace with a bottle, and had overheard.

  ‘They’re still introducing me to the sons of their friends,’ she laughed, twisting the opener into the cork. ‘It’s a whole other story.’

  ‘Athens is liberal enough, though,’ said Anthony. ‘You’ll meet Anna later.’

  ‘Later?’ said Ellie.

  ‘Won’t you stay and eat with us? I insist. It’s just cold. Salads and some chicken, but …’

  ‘I have a plane to catch!’ protested Ellie feebly.

  ‘I can give you a lift to the airport,’ said Anthony kindly.

  Somehow, despite everything, she had not expected this hospitality.

  ‘I’ve picked up some good habits,’ he said. ‘Treating strangers as if they were friends. You meet more interesting people that way. But I’m not entirely a stranger to you, am I?’

  Soon, Anna arrived, and there were more introductions. The three women discovered that they were more or less the same age. They briefly exchanged information on university careers and jobs. Anna was a lawyer. Ellie felt a twinge of shame over her job selling ad space.

  Over supper, Ellie silently questioned whether life had anything better to offer than sitting on this roof terrace under the stars.

  ‘Did you enjoy your time in Greece?’ asked Anna.

  Ellie smiled.

  ‘More than I can begin to describe. I don’t really want to go back to England.’

  ‘What are you going back to?’ asked Athina.

  Ellie shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Not a lot, by the sound of it,’ said Anthony.

  ‘Anthony’s right,’ admitted Ellie. ‘I am not that contented with life in London.’

  ‘If that’s the case, you should change something,’ interjected Athina. ‘Life is too short just to drift.’

  ‘She has a point,’ said Anthony. ‘I think you know my views better than anyone. Life should be full of possibilities. Not just promises.’

  Ellie was slightly embarrassed at how much she knew about Anthony, and how personal the notebook was.

  ‘Will you go travelling again?’ she asked Anthony, to deflect the conversation away from herself.

  ‘Right now, no. I want to stay where I am. My mind is still so full. And I have my book to finish off.’

  Suddenly, he seemed to have an idea.

  ‘Can you type?’ he asked.

  ‘Type? Can’t everyone type?’

  ‘Some of us still write by hand,’ he said sheepishly. ‘We missed the computer age …’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I need someone to type up my manuscript,’ he said. ‘The publisher can’t read my handwriting.’

  ‘Well, I know I can do that,’ Ellie said, laughing. ‘I had no problem with the stories.’

  ‘Well, if you would like the job, then it’s yours. And you can stay in my spare room if you have nowhere else.’

  Ellie did not know what to say. It was a wonderful opportunity. Habit said that she should go back to London, as her family and friends would expect, but her heart told her to stay here.

  Athina leaned across the table.

  ‘Know yourself,’ she said emphatically.

  Ellie remembered the inscription. Gnothi s’eafton. Perhaps it was her turn now.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, getting up from the table. She needed some time to think and wandered over to the balcony railings to look at the view. One thing already on her mind was the next month’s rent.

  She reached into her pocket for her phone and called her landlady. It seemed an age before she picked up.

  ‘It’s Ellie Thomas.’

  ‘Flat D?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to …’

  ‘Flat D, you said? I already had a call today about flat D. An old tenant. Abbotson or something. Asking if there had been any post for her.’

  Anthony had appeared by her side.

  ‘Could you hold on a moment?’ Ellie said, her heart thumping wildly. She put her hand over the mouthpiece, her palms damp with sweat.

  ‘Anthony,’ she whispered. ‘Sarah has been asking about mail. What shall I say?’

  ‘Just say “no”,’ he replied, drawing deeply on a cigarette. ‘Please tell her there was nothing.’

  Still shaking, Ellie resumed her conversation with the landlady, Anthony standing close by.

  ‘I’ve just checked,’ she said boldly. ‘I’m afraid not … The reason I rang was to hand in my notice on the flat.’

  A disgruntled voice on the other end muttered about deposits and guarantees. Ellie could sense that she was not going to be granted any favours.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellie. ‘But can I at least start my notice period from today?’

  The discussion continued for a few minutes and eventually ended with a compromise. As she replaced her phone in her pocket, Ellie noticed that Anthony was still next to her, gazing at the rising moon, deep in thought. She did not want to disturb his co
ntemplation.

  A few moments went by before he glanced in her direction. His look seemed to pose a question.

  Ellie smiled at him.

  ‘It’s all sorted out,’ she said.

  The two of them returned to the table. Athina and Anna stopped talking as they approached and looked at Ellie expectantly.

  Ellie sat down again and Anthony refilled everyone’s glass. There was a pause.

  ‘I’m not leaving after all,’ she announced to the two girls, with a new self-assurance. ‘I’m going to stay.’

  Of all the moments she had lived, this was the one in which Ellie felt most peaceful, but most alive.

  Above them all, swallows ducked and dived on the evening air.

  With thanks to:

  Alexandros Kakolyris for his invaluable contribution to the creation and development of Cartes Postales

  Patrick Insole for his beautiful design

  Emily Hislop for her creative rigour

  PICTURE CREDITS

  All images © Alexandros Kakolyris, except:

  i, iii © Olga Popova/Shutterstock and 19srb81/Shutterstock (postmarks)

  20–21 © Bardocz Peter/Shutterstock (map) and Stephen Rees/Shutterstock (background)

  30 © Tatjana Kruusma/Shutterstock

  32, 35, 40–41, 43, 44 © Carolyn Franks/Shutterstock (photo frame)

  78 © MikhailSh/Shutterstock

  80 © DutchScenery/Shutterstock (retouching)

  124 © Tatjana Kruusma/Shutterstock

  132, 136 © creaPicTures/Shutterstock (photo frame)

  146 © Susan Law Cain/Shutterstock

  148–9, 151, 157 © Print Collector/Alamy (Byron handwriting)

  169, 171, 175, 184 © happykanppy/Shutterstock (water texture)

  178 © ninanaina/Shutterstock (water texture)

  200, 203, 206 © Shebeko/Shutterstock (texture)

  214 © 5 second Studio/Shutterstock

  223 © Tatjana Kruusma/Shutterstock

  246 © Oleg Znamenskiy/Shutterstock

  269 © Alinari Archives, Florence (laterna players)

  270 © nevodka/Shutterstock

  275 Still from Laterna, Ftohia kai Filotimo courtesy of Finos Film, Athens

  277 Stills from Laterna, Ftohia kai Filotimo courtesy of Finos Film, Athens and donatas1205/Shutterstock (film strip)