by Sara Alexi
Stella drags her thoughts away from Mitsos and reaches for a lie, and then wonders why she should save Stavros from the embarrassment he deserves. But the events of earlier seem small in comparison. She has ascertained from Theo that Mitsos is alive, but no one knows how badly he is hurt. Besides poor Abby cannot know if she is coming or going, literally, she certainly doesn’t need added complications. She will explain everything at a more suitable time. She wipes her face on her sleeve and turns to collect more goods.
‘Stella?’
‘Ti? Oh, limping, yes, I fell.’ She hurries back into the rain, washing away the tears. One minute she saw Abby as everything in her world. But then she felt life was over when she saw Mitsos pulled out of the rubble. Her chest had sunk inwards to her stomach and all life force had drained from her limbs. An overreaction , perhaps, after all that had happened, her upset with Abby and Stavros.
The crying was probably from the shock of earlier and the storm, she reasons. Marina has worked so hard to make that shop work and now, in the space of minutes, it is all gone. All that hard work, gone. All the chat and banter building up regulars, pointless. The years of refining her methods, wasted. All the fiddling with the grill to get the optimum heat.
Then she realises she is internalising about herself, and the tears stop.
A gaping hollow insides her chest heaves. She needs to see Mitsos. Calm, safe, caring.
She breaks from the line of people recovering all they can and goes to the house behind the shop, Marina’s house.
She doesn’t knock. She walks in, hears voices upstairs, people in the kitchen, a kettle boiling. She goes up the wooden stairs.
‘She’s fine, she’s fine,’ Kyria Katerina from opposite the church consoles her at the top of the stairs. ‘The doctor is looking at her now.’ Katerina was a nurse before her arthritis got so bad and her hands knotted up.
‘Mitsos?’ Stella asks. Her bruises seem to have come to life again, throbbing and aching.
‘He’s ok, he’s in there.’
Stella goes into the next room. Kyria Katerina follows her. Stella looks at Mitsos, lying so still.
‘He’s unconscious, but his breathing is steady. The doctor says he is not worried. Nothing broken, it seems. Lucky man.’
‘Yes.’ Stella hardly moves her mouth to reply. She cannot believe the surge of feeling rushing through her. She wants to hold him, kiss his sunken cheek, smooth his thick grey hair. He is older, but not that much older. Some women in the village have married men more than fifteen years their senior.
Marina, for example. Her husband was thirty and she was fourteen, or perhaps fifteen, when they married.
Marina. The thought comes like a lead weight. Mitsos’ lifelong love. Here he is, in her house, both of them having escaped disaster. And how is it that he was in the shop anyway? Mitsos hasn’t spoken to Marina properly for years. Now they will have plenty of time to talk. This is bound to bring them together. How could it not? She sighs.
‘He’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ Kyria Katerina says with the positivity of someone happily employed, and she steps forward to smooth his bed and tuck in the edges.
‘Yes, now he will be fine.’ Stella closes her emotions back into the box she has only just learnt she has. It doesn’t seem to want to shut.
She takes a last look at Mitsos’ relaxed sleeping face and leaves.
Vasso is downstairs in Marina’s kitchen. They return outside together and find Abby. They walk homewards together.
‘Abby, so much is happening, my feelings are everywhere but I made a very big mistake this morning. I cannot ask you to understand but please stay, give me a chance to explain everything to you, Will you? Will you stay?’
Abby nods. Now is not the time to talk of passports or money, they are all exhausted, emotionally and physically. Despite Vasso’s insistence that Stella comes into her house with them for something to chase out the effects of all that has happened, Stella returns home alone, squeezing Abby’s hand before she leaves, promising they will talk.
The clouds have lifted, but it is evening so the sky is still dull. No lights are on in her home and Stella is sure Stavros is still out. She did not see him amid all the activity earlier.
She needs to sleep. There is no denying the pain in her ankle and, judging by the way her left arm hurts to lift, she thinks she may have at least one broken rib. The weight in her chest pulls her shoulders forward. She refuses to think of Mitsos, or Marina.
The house is all echoes and silence. Her bed is waiting for her.
When they first moved in, they complained to the landlord that the bed was not suitable. He promised a replacement, but it didn’t happen and they got used to the gap. Stella splits the two beds apart with her knee. The two singles are cheap and light, the mattresses thin. Stavros’ side has a dip moulded into it. Using her weight against her lower leg, she pushes it with disdain. Her right leg seems to be the only part of her that doesn’t hurt.
She lifts the bed onto its side, the thin mattress falling off. She slides the base through to the kitchen. She pushes the mattress after it and throws some sheets on top. He can put it together himself. She grabs a kitchen chair and takes it into the bedroom.
Locking the door and wedging the chair under the handle, Stella carefully lies down on her right-hand side, pulls a sheet over her head and falls asleep, cutting Mitsos food for him, their knees touching under the table.
Chapter 14
The day’s heat has already built. Shutters are open and the cicadas are singing. There is a smell of sheep in the air, and fresh bread.
Last night it seems Vasso had no idea she had even left yesterday. This morning she made her a coffee and gave her a time check as if she were going into the ouzeri as normal.
Abby is unsure what to do. Stella apologised and asked her to stay last night, but even so, she is not sure where she stands. She decides to wander casually to the ouzeri and see how Stella reacts. She puts her books in her bag and leaves nothing behind - just in case.
Outside with the sun on her face, even with the emotional roller-coaster ride she is on there is a bounce in her step. Life is very exciting in Greece, it beats being bored at home. She is glad Marina and Mitsos were not badly hurt. Theo was so brave.
A few immigrant workers wait in the square. Abby smiles in their general direction but they do not acknowledge her, almost as if they expect to be ignored.
Vasso, who left the house an hour before Abby stopped reading and finally climbed out of bed, waves a cheerful hello as she walks up to the kiosk. The glass-fronted fridges sparkle in the sun. The shade under the awning is a sharp contrast to the whitewashed wall behind. She wants to ask how Marina and Mitsos are this morning but she does not know have the Greek. She points to the fallen tree trunk, on the crushed shop, which is rapidly being dissected into manageable lumps by a man wearing a checked shirt and wielding a chain saw.
‘Marina?’ She adds a thumbs up and a sceptical look. Vasso returns her own thumbs up and babbles two or three sentences in Greek, and then laughs. She points to Abby’s leg and makes a snapping motion with both her hands and a wet harsh sound with her mouth.
Abby’s stomach flips. She restores her calm and asks after Mitsos, who just gets a thumbs up, no snapping. Abby is relieved. She waves as she leaves, and Vasso calls in a low gruff voice ‘You be back,’ and cracks into laughter. Abby taught her ‘I’ and ‘You’ last night after they had showered off the tree debris and sweat and were sitting in dressing gowns. Abby is about to correct her grammar but decides it is funnier the way she has said it and just laughs as she walks on.
She does not quite get to the shop before Stavros steps out and locks the door behind him. He points to his car and then the direction of the town.
Abby frowns, now what? Is this him telling her to go now as well? He points again and then strides over and opens the passenger door. Abby is not ready to leave. Besides, she needs to talk to Stella first, and get her passport back. She loo
ks into the shop but it is dark, Stella is not inside.
‘Stella?’ She asks.
‘Shhh.’ He puts his finger to his lips. ‘No Stella.’ He waves her into the car pointing to the deep-fat fryer in the back. Abby has no idea what Stavros’ intentions are. None of his actions suggest that he wants her to get in the car to make her leave. He is insistent.
‘Work.’ he says, his one confident word in English. She climbs in. The plastic seat is split in many places and the gashes have opened like wounds, the edges peeling back, hot sharp corners cutting into her bare legs.
He has the chip fryer on the back seat and the inside of the car smells acrid even with the windows open.
The dashboard is covered with dust and bits of rubbish and the well of the passenger seat is filled with empty cans and plastic bags. A collection of charms and elastic bands hang from the mirror, which is cracked. Abby does not want to touch anything. She pulls her shorts down as far as they will go and wishes she had worn the grey ones.
Stavros heaves himself in, his door creaking on squeaky hinges. Air escapes from his seat as he sits. The car takes some revving to get it going and then with a judder they lurch away into the middle of the road.
He is a dangerous driver, heeding neither signs nor other road users. By the time they reach the town Abby would decides she’ll return by taxi, whatever his plans are.
But it seems there are no plans. Once in town, they drive slowly from one shop to the next. Stavros has his window down and kerb-crawls, stopping frequently to talk or to call a greeting. Each acquaintance dips his head to look in at Abby, who pulls her shorts down even more and puts her bag on her knee. She resents this show, in which she is the main attraction, but with growing anger she tolerates the steady pace until finally he pulls up at a shabby-looking place, its windows filled with stickers that obscure a mess of articles stacked in the window. It is not a shop, it is a storage unit, stuffed with discarded junk. A microwave door balances on top of a radio with no front, a television with no case around it supports a video player balanced at an angle on top, countless articles, most of which Abby cannot identify, all sitting on a tangle of electrical wires, adaptors and fuses.
Stavros gets out and, ignoring her, carries the chip fryer into the shop.
Abby waits. And waits. And waits. Finally she gets out of the car to stretch her legs. She was right, the seat has left various grubby impressions on her behind. Just as she is trying to assess the worst of the damage, Stavros comes out of the shop and with a sneer, he too looks at her bottom. Abby defiantly faces him, her bag providing cover for her shorts.
Still grinning, he puts a different chip-fryer onto the back seat and gets into the car, leans over and pushes the passenger door open.
Abby gets in. He hasn’t actually done anything she can say is wrong; it just doesn’t feel nice.
He drives just as manically back to the village.
The shop is hot. Stella is not there and Stavros sets her to cleaning the mirrored shelves behind the grill. She hadn’t realised how tight the muscles in her shoulders had become until they relax with this confirmation that she still has a job. She looks at the shelves that he wants her to clean - God knows they need it.
Stavros greets the butcher who arrives with the meat for the giro slung over one shoulder. The butcher takes off the sheet that is covering it and slots the three feet high skewered meat layers into its upright position in front of the grill. Stavros flicks a switch and the electric bars that surround the turning spit glow red hot in seconds. The butcher doesn’t linger.
Stavros becomes aware of Abby watching the process. He rummages under the counter and gives her something called Azax. It is a bottle of window cleaner that looks as if it was designed fifty years ago. Abby likes the retro style but it is not a spray bottle: it just has a nozzle with a hole. She inverts it and squeezes, and it burps and emanates an uneven, blotchy spray. She wipes with a piece of kitchen roll and cuts through years of grease. The paper is black; the glass no longer misty, now smeared with a thick white-grey. Abby can feel the beginnings of a reflux action and she breathes deeply to overcome it. She wonders why Stella is not here.
Stavros has trouble lighting the grill and Abby delights in trying to memorise the words he uses, obviously swear words.
The bottom shelves come out so she leans them against the back of the grill and allows gravity to lure the Azax down the sticky surface. Once she has cleaned a couple of shelves and sees the sparkling difference, Abby feels rewarded. It is quite a Zen job, she decides. She takes her time. It is hot anyway and her limbs feel sleepy with the heat. She can hear a donkey bray behind the shop – somewhere near the pine tree top, she decides, maybe by that cottage that looks deserted next to the almond grove. The view from up there is breathtaking, it reminds her of Uncle Brian who has a huge model railway in his attic, with miniature trees and sheep in the fields, tiny houses, and, her favourite since she was so small Uncle Brian had to lift her up so she see, a shepherd with his dog under a bridge, the train going over the top, almost real. She would love to go up the hill again and look down on the rows of oranges. Maybe today when Stella turns up and Stavros goes for his sleep, she’ll go for a walk, like she did the last time.
The memory of Uncle Brian triggers thoughts of Dad. She must either phone or write him another card. She called last night, after her shower, but got the answer machine again. Postcards are good, though. There are no arguments with them.
She breaks off a new handful of kitchen paper. She can hear Stavros pouring chips into the fryer, she wonders if he peeled and cut the potatoes himself. It doesn’t seem likely; maybe they were already in the fridge.
Postcards. Day two was a kitten in a sock, day three dolphins. She wonders what she will send today. There is a good one of an old man in a traditional Greek white skirt thing and red shoes with pom-poms on.
She presumes Stella has not come in because of her fall. She wonders how she is but does not have the Greek to ask Stavros. Mind you, Stavros looks like he has slept under a hedge. Literally. He has tiny twigs in his hair. When she saw him first thing she had tried not to stare.
With the bottom shelves spotlessly clean Abby moves on to the higher ones, taking a chair to stand on. Stavros keeps poking his head around the grill to see what she is doing. She decides he is definitely a bit of a letch. Stella, in one of her good moods, is so full of fun and life that Abby cannot work out why she is with this guy. He is creepy, sweaty. She considers. No, he has not one redeeming feature. She sniffs and moves on to the next shelf.
The chair is not tall enough and she cannot reach the top shelves. The ones above the sink look as if they have not been cleaned – ever. There is something black in the corner of the top one. Abby doesn’t really want to find out what it is.
She continues with the shelves she can reach. The smell of the chickens cooking begins to sweeten the air.
Abby continues her work rhythmically, focussed on the task. When she does think, she is thinking of her school friends, and sometimes of Stella, whom she feels she really does seem to have some sort of connection with, even though Stella does blow warm and cold.
Is Jackie wondering where she is? She doubts it. All her money gone on that boat ticket. Since the boat was cancelled, could she get a refund? Mind you she earned it in no time. The bar might be more fun, it would certainly be less heavy, more steady. She could still go, it would probably be fun. Maybe she will go nearer the end of the summer, for a sort of fun time, rather than work. The money here is enough. The tips are great. She has some regulars.
Anyway, she is back now and she is working, she feels she is within her comfort zone. She likes her little room at Vasso’s. It is the first room that is truly her own. Vasso is not about to barge in and demand she tidy it up like Dad does at home. But, then again, she doesn’t have to, she keeps it tidy anyway. She likes it that way.
Vasso is hilarious and Stella is, well, like she imagines a mum to be, when she isn’t bei
ng moody.
Abby has got to the back of the second shelf. It is disgusting. She pokes at the corners with a kebab stick to get out lines of mould growing between glass and wall.
It had been a big enough deal running away to Greece in the first place. That was way out of her comfort zone. But she had been so angry. He cannot tell her what to do with her life. She had to show him that she was independent.
It had been a bit rash, perhaps, a bit too spontaneous. An Internet booking at 4 p.m. and flying at 4:30 the next morning. She had been amazed at the bustle of life at the airport at that time of day, especially after the empty, silent, train she took to get there. And the silent house she left before that, Dad snoring, the dog not even stirring.
She blinks a couple of times. She had also wanted to show Dad what life would be like without her if he did insist she didn’t go back to do her A levels. That hadn’t been a nice thing to do. She will write on today’s post card that she is sorry. Well, not straight out like that, she would never hear the end of it. She has apologised in an indirect sort of way, saying that she hoped he and Sonia and the baby were ok and not to worry about her. She will try to phone again, at some point.
The only way to reach the top shelves will be to stand on the sink. The big marble bowl looks like it will support a house, it is so solid. With the bottle of Azax in one hand and the kitchen roll in the other she climbs from chair to sink. The sink edge is narrow but balancing with one foot on either side she can just about reach.
She bends and takes a knife from the sink and uses it to reach the back corner, standing on tip-toes, she hooks the black object in the far corner and scoops it towards her. There is a layer of mould over it, which crumbles as she drags it.
Stavros pops his head around the grill again. He steps into the passage and takes a glass from one of the clean shelves. Abby continues edging the object to the front of the shelf, but it keeps slipping from the knife end. At first she thinks it is a potato that has been there since time began, but as it comes to the edge of the shelf and the mould falls away it takes on a form.