by Sara Alexi
‘The donkey man will probably not expect anything,’ Juliet says, there is a slight crackle on the line.
‘But surely, it was my fault his beast died. Oh it was horrible, Juliet, the poor thing was fighting for its life. And then its life suddenly gone … I feel so guilty and sad. She was such a lovely animal. What does the Greek law say I should do, do you know?’
‘It is very sad,’ Juliet exhales slowly, ‘but life happens, and that is how the donkey man will see it, I expect. Just how life deals the cards; no one’s fault. It wasn’t as if you wanted it to happen or took the animal onto an extreme path. This was the main path along the coast to the boatyard, right?’
‘Yes. But even so, I was the one riding her. What’s the law? What would you do, Juliet? In England, I would expect to pay, but then in England I know the law and I am sure the owner would have become very angry as well. It feels very different here.’ She sighs. ‘It was so sad.’
‘In England the donkey man would sue the person down the cliff, the person down the cliff would sue the council for not maintaining the path, the council would petition the government for more money, the government would tax the worker to get it, the donkey man would pay more tax to the government, who would pay the council to pay the person on the cliff, who pays the donkey man.’ She laughs dryly. Michelle does not join in.
‘Yes, but what would you do?’ Michelle asks.
‘I’d pay the donkey man.’ Juliet does not hesitate.
‘Yup, that’s what I thought. I don’t know what I am legally obliged to do, but it is the only option that feels right. How much is a donkey, and how do I pay for his loss?’
‘No, you can’t pay for his loss. Just let him see your heartfelt sorrow. That’s all you can do, really …’
A man in a white coat walks into the room, an x-ray in his hand.
‘Got to go, Juliet. See you in a few days?’
Juliet wishes her well and says she has plans for a lot of eating and drinking for the next week when they will be together.
The doctor tells Michelle that her shoulder is not broken, and as the swelling goes down it will feel better. She may, however, have a concussion, so he needs to keep her in for twenty-four hours.
‘What time is it?’ Michelle leans back on the pillow. She has been put in a white gown for the x-ray. She would like to put her clothes on, but they are nowhere to be seen, just her wallet on her bedside table.
‘One-thirty.’
‘I have to be on the one-thirty boat back to Athens tomorrow, concussed or not. I have an important meeting. Can you have me discharged by half-past twelve?’
‘Yes, yes, of course, do not worry. The best thing now is rest.’
The door closes solidly on her room which is part of an old stone building, with high ornate ceilings and tall windows. It is a large room for just her one bed. The hospital was probably once a fine home. Now layers of white paint mask the former grandeur.
Muffled voices drift indistinctly from the next room. Michelle wonders if it is Dino’s room. It is in the direction the nurse had pointed when she asked after him. Maybe the doctor is in with him now, tending to his cuts and scrapes. Dear Dino, what a foolhardy thing to do. No one has ever dived down a cliff for her before, nothing even close. Visions of Richard diving off a cliff in his wig and gown to rescue her amuse Michelle for a moment. It’s a most unlikely scenario, however; for a start he would remove his gown and fold it carefully, find a safe place to put his wig, brush imaginary dust from his robe, and even then he would not likely leap to save her. He might roll up his sleeves and order someone else to do it for him. Her eyes flutter and the lids close. She will just rest a minute and then go and see how Dino is.
Michelle feels for Dino’s arm around her. She reaches for him, but he is not there. Panic closes her throat, no breath passes. The cliff gives way. He is not there to cling to. She begins to fall. Richard plunges even faster beside her, his gown flying behind him, his wig taking flight by itself, until, with a splash, his cape is splayed like moth wings on the sea’s surface. His wig floats away, his arms scrabble. The water turns red.
Her eyes open, she gasps for air. The curtains are drawn but the moon peeps between them, a slice of night cutting the bed diagonally. The room is unfamiliar in greys and shadows and, for a moment, Michelle has no idea where she is. She pushes herself up to a sitting position, and the pain in her shoulder reminds her.
There is no buzzer for the nurse. Slipping her legs from the bed and holding her gown together behind her, Michelle pads to the door and into the hall, which is lit by a dim bulb dangling bare from the high ceiling. The next door, Dino’s room, stands open, dark and empty.
‘Do you need something?’ A nurse comes from behind a screen pulled in front of the permanently open staffroom door.
‘Has Dino gone?’
‘Dino? Yes, he was discharged earlier. He went in to see you, but you were sleeping.’
‘Oh.’
‘What can I get you?’
‘No, nothing, thank you.’ Pattering back into her bed, the hospital seems cold and empty. Shadows play in the room. The flicking of the curtains in the soft night breeze cools the warm air and makes the greys dance and ripple, shimmer and slide, crumble and cascade. The donkey’s hooves clatter on the rocks, her whinnies become more frantic. Dolly’s eyes wide, her tongue protruding.
Michelle wakes again with her heart pulsing, the images still in her mind’s eye. There is no one she can call on to soothe her, so far from friends and familiar places. It takes time for her to slip once more into sleep.
The sun jolts her awake. Once the curtains are fully drawn, a new nurse busies herself with the chart at the end of the bed.
‘What time is it please?’
‘Six.’
Michelle groans and turns over to sleep again.
‘Time to wake up.’
‘Hmm? Er? Oh! What time is it please?’
‘Just after twelve. Your friend Dino came in, but you were fast asleep.’
‘Twelve! I need to go! Please get my things. Will the doctor be here soon? I have to catch the one-thirty boat …’ She flings off the sheet and steps onto the cold marble floor. ‘Can I have my clothes please?’
‘Doctor must see you before you go.’
‘I know, but if I am fine, I must go immediately. I have to catch the one-thirty boat.’
‘Doctor coming.’
‘Can I have my clothes please?’
‘Yes, yes.’ The nurse leaves the room.
Michelle walks to the window, from where she can see a square, partly covered with grass, planted with orange trees. Two old ladies passing with heavy shopping bags have paused to rest on a bench. One shakes a walking stick at a prowling cat. Michelle wonders if there is fish in her shopping bag. How long will it take to get to port from here? She cannot remember the route from yesterday.
She must get the one-thirty. If she misses this meeting, things could become difficult. Not only for the firm—although Michelle no longer really cares how the firm is doing—but since it has been made clear that ‘belts need to be tightened’, and that this may involve job losses, everyone feels a bit jumpy.
The downturn in the economy had prompted the decision: someone must go. Michelle thought getting this claim in Athens back on track would be an easy way to prove her performance, and it will be, as long as she can get to the meeting. She has no qualms about her ability.
There is no clock in the room. The door to the hall is open, and Michelle can see past the screen into the staffroom, where the clock on the wall says twelve-fifteen. Surely she can still make it, if someone can tell her the way. How big is the town anyway?
The familiar London pressure reaches all the way out here. It is not only her, it is all the salaried partners who are on trial, putting them all in competition with their colleagues. The powers that be decided it was the only fair approach.
How will she find the way to the port? Surely it is just minutes
to the harbour, but she cannot recall the journey here.
‘Excuse me, could I have my clothes please?’
The nurse looks up from her desk. ‘Yes, yes, one minute.’
At twelve-thirty the nurse comes in with her clothes.
‘How long before the doctor comes?’
‘He is coming.’ The nurse leaves.
Michelle waits. Her breath shortens until she becomes aware that her shoulders have tensed up around her ears.
‘Relax, relax.’ she whispers, but if she doesn’t make it to the meeting, it could result in her pulling the short straw. Then what? Unthinkable. How would she be able to pay the bills, keep the house heated or dehumidified, to stop it crumbling? The place would dissolve.
She peeks out of the door, no sign of the doctor. The nurse is typing.
‘I really need to go,’ Michelle calls. Twelve forty-five.
‘I will phone him again,’ the nurse replies, but she does not pick up the phone.
‘Could you do it now please?’ At her age, fifty this year, she would be sunk if the firm lets her go. Who would employ her? She would be the last in the line of employable lawyers, behind the eager young things and the self-assured forty-year-old men. Even if there were jobs, no one would touch her. Then what? The law is all she knows.
‘Now?’ Michelle cringes at her own tone of voice, but it does the trick; the nurse picks up the phone. Nearly one. ‘How long to the port?’
‘A minute, down here.’ She points with her pen as she dials. ‘Or straight and left.’
The house. How could she let the house decay? It is her safety, her symbol of success, her impenetrable fortress.
Her mouth drops open. What if she has to get rid of the house? What if they take it from her? Homeless. She would be homeless and unemployed.
‘I have to go. Tell the doctor I waited.’
‘No …’ The nurse stands.
‘Ah, good morning, is the patient better today?’ The doctor from yesterday walks through the main door into the hall, casually, no hurry.
She runs lightly and quickly down the hospital steps. They could not have discharged her more slowly if they’d tried. Turning toward the port, the way is blocked where a handcart full of bottled water has tried to pass a second handcart of breezeblocks, and their wheels have become interlocked.
An old woman in slippers, laden with shopping bags, points an alternative way. Michelle marches in the new direction. The ship’s horn vibrates across the blue sky, calling all aboard. If she can keep up the pace she will catch it. Down the narrow alley, left toward the port a corner and . . . into someone’s backyard.
‘No!’ Michelle retraces her steps twice as fast.
Back to the alley farther along, each turn left to the port could be another dead end. She tries another, a whitewashed alley that ends at a solid wooden door, a single round brass handle in the middle.
Perspiration is running into her eyes, the ripped edge of her dust-encrusted t-shirt is rubbing her slightly sunburned shoulder, and her linen trousers, creased, stained and torn, are hot and clinging. Turning another left, she can see the sea. Her feet break into a trot. She wipes the sweat from her eyes, down the widening path, shops on either side.
A man is pulling the mooring rope off the bollard.
‘Wait!’ Michelle cries, but he is too far away to hear. Another man is dragging the landing steps away from the ship on the harbour wall. Michelle waves at him. He stops and waves back.
She slows her pace, her heart pounding, relieved he has seen her. She keeps her gaze fixed steadfast on him. He leans against the steps and lights a cigarette.
But the ship begins to draw away. They have not stopped the departure. Michelle begins to run again, shouting and waving. She rushes along the quay. The ship is two feet from shore, four feet, six. Michelle bends double to breathe, staggering the last few feet to the man at the boarding steps.
‘Please stop them, I must board.’ She takes hold of his smoking arm.
‘She is gone.’ He gently pulls free to take a drag.
‘I have to be on her, please!’
Chapter 6
Her chest caves in, her shoulders droop. She is conscious of someone watching her. The man leaning against the ship’s boarding steps inspects her clothes, head to toe. She half glances down at herself to see what he sees: the results of yesterday’s disaster. But it is a minor detail. The boat’s propellers spin, the water churns: today’s disaster. Michelle watches as it slowly pulls out of the harbour.
She remains motionless, her heart sinking, waiting for the wave of panic that is sure to overwhelm her. She tries to control her breath, but the wave surges and crashes down on her and her throat contracts ... Curiously, the greatest sensation is one of relief!
Across from the pier is a stone step in the shade. She sinks to a sitting position, her hands to her eyes, all resistance gone. A frown flicks across her forehead. Relief floods through her body. Relief at what?
‘You always think you are about to lose your job,’ Juliet had said on the phone, shortly after Michelle was made a partner in the firm.
‘I don’t think you know how tough my world is.’ Michelle deftly took the cork out of yesterday’s wine and poured a glass, carrying it through to the sitting room, the phone wedged under her chin.
‘Yes, but you do this every time there’s a glitch at work. A small problem and you build it into a big one, which ends in you losing your job and then losing your house.’
‘Do you know how much that house costs to maintain?’ Michelle had sunk into the sofa and stared at the black, lifeless grate.
‘Then why did you fight for it?’ She had heard Juliet take a sip of her own wine and had imagined her sitting out in the warm evening, not facing a trek into the cellar for coal. She’d sighed.
‘Because I am stupid. Because I wanted to take something he valued. Because I wanted to hurt him.’ The wine had gone too soon and she’d put the glass down on the hearth and returned to the kitchen for the bottle. ‘I should have realised when he gave in so easily.’ She’d settled back on the sofa.
‘You weren’t to know though.’
‘He slipped the paper in with all the rest after the settlement, just like it was any other paper. I can’t believe it has taken me two years to find it.’
‘Have you had a second opinion?’
‘Yes. Definitely deathwatch beetle, and the whole wall will have to come down, new timbers, tens of thousands. Richard knew exactly what he was letting go of.’
‘Anyway, that’s a separate issue. You’re digressing. You are not going to lose your job over forgetting to copy in your boss, so relax. You know, sometimes I think you want to lose your job, and the house, to give yourself some breathing space.’ She had hated Juliet at that moment, hated that Juliet could not see what the house meant to her. The time she had lived with Richard there in security and comfort, a proper home guaranteed. A haven after years of couch surfing as she worked and saved the money to put herself through college and the bar exam. She had repeated her early childhood of instability and no roots.
‘Yes, that’s right, Juliet, I loved those years of my family moving from job to job and me from school to school, never having friends for longer than six months.’ She had changed hands with the phone, releasing her clenched fist, the blood rushing back to her white knuckles.
‘Ah, you just hadn’t found me yet.’ Juliet laughed. Michelle had wanted to slam the phone down, but there was something in the way Juliet had said it that started her giggling, which set Juliet off. And she was right, Michelle had reasoned. Life had changed for her after she had moved to Bradford and befriended Juliet. Right from the beginning it had been clear she could rely on Juliet to be there for her.
So maybe Juliet was right. Maybe it would be a relief to get rid of the house. It has already eaten up two years’ money to keep it warm and dehumidified, treating mould and pinning back panelling.
Coming across the paper about the
deathwatch beetle had been the last straw.
But to move out? Pack up everything she and Richard chose together, box it up, sell it, donate it, make decisions about each piece? It would be so painful. Move to a house for one person, with no history, just her? After eighteen years, the house is where she lives, it’s home. It’s her place. How can she move?
The sad truth is that, at her age, she is unemployable if she loses her job. No job means no money. Room by room the old place will decay, the mould will spread its way along the hall, the panelling in the library will split and crack, the chimneys will no longer be usable, and the beetles will eat and eat until the wall collapses. She can see she will end up in the scullery with an electric fire to keep her warm, until the money in the bank is gone and the house falls down around her, leaving her in the street in her dressing gown and slippers.
Homeless.
Flopping into the nearest café chair and ordering an ouzo will solve all her problems—if that one ouzo is followed by another, and another. It’s tempting. No matter how many deep breaths she takes no energy returns. The ship has gone, leaving her to drown. This mess might really lose her her job.
Despite all this, that feeling of relief remains, a feeling she has never allowed before when thinking about the house. And a part of her really does feel like this relief is, well, a relief.
‘Hey lady, you all right?’ A waiter addresses her. ‘You need some water?’ He is carrying a tray, drinks lined up. With his free hand he passes her a glass of water.
‘Thank you.’
‘You had an accident?’ He looks her up and down.
‘No … yes … no. I am fine; it was yesterday. Do you know where there is a phone please?’ She must not give up.
‘Public phones up the third street by the post office.’
On the corner there’s a shop with a dummy outside draped in linen and cotton, white and beige for the heat. Michelle dips under the low door and reappears minutes later in a clean, new outfit, noting to herself that things could have been worse—she could have lost her wallet as well as dropping her rucksack and missing the boat. But it is a small consolation. Now she needs a phone.