by Sara Alexi
She has gone all of two or three hundred metres ahead of the goats, but reluctantly she is forced to pull over. She releases the bonnet catch and gets out. The day is hot but the heat emanating from under the bonnet is immediately apparent. She opens it up and clicks the support bar to hold it. The temperature of the engine is fearsome to Marina’s hands, which she waves over it. She has no idea what to do. The radiator cap is too hot to touch. She must only be about four or five kilometres away from the village. Nevertheless, four kilometres will take her over an hour to walk. Maybe there is a more direct route through the orchards.
The sound of goat bells tells her they have caught up and are just behind her around the last corner. The clonking of different pitched bells accompanying the bleating is normally a sound she likes, but today it is not welcome. A dog is the first to be seen and then the herdsman. Marina wonders where they have appeared from. His knees bend out sideways and his trousers are held up with string. His hair is greased back. He leans his weight with each step on the crook he holds. Marina vaguely recognises him from the next village. One of the Malakopoulos family, perhaps.
He slows his very steady pace as he comes alongside her. He drawls out a lazy long ‘hello’. Marina replies automatically, but then asks if there is a way to her village directly through the fields.
‘You want to go to the village, you say? Well …’ He considers at length. ‘If I were going to the village, I wouldn’t start from here. No, you’d be better off starting away over that hill there.’
Marina is not in the mood for banter. She grabs her bag from the car and strides off along the road. The goats behind her turn in to a narrow lane and the sound of their bells diminishes until all she can hear are the birds in the bushes on either side of the road. She walks faster.
She wonders if Costas will have the sense not to tell Eleni where she has been. Maybe the bus takes longer than she thinks. If it goes to all the little villages on the way maybe she still has time, if she hurries.
There is a clattering sound behind her and a hoot. She turns to see a tractor. Maybe she can catch a lift. She waves for it to stop, but as it draws near she sees it is the goat herder driving. He is grinning mischievously.
He points, with his thumb, to the flat-back trailer his tractor is pulling. Marina smiles, and using the rim of one of the tyres climbs up and sits in the middle with her legs straight out in front of her. There is a strong smell of goat and little pellets of goat poo are rolling around on the surface of the trailer.
The driver sets the tractor in motion, and as soon as they have gained some speed Marina finds the movement is bouncing her slowly towards the back of the trailer, where she is in danger of falling off. There is nothing to hold on to but the edge. She grips this with one hand and, with her arm through the handle of her bag, pushes the tips of the fingers of her other hand in a crack in the wooden boards. She is just beginning to feeling stable when the herdsman increases the speed and the trailer begins to bounce along the road as it hits pebbles and rocks and potholes.
To Marina’s anguish, the bouncing is so violent that it is transferred through her body. She can feel every ounce of her that is not muscle or bone being quivered like a jelly. Worst of all, her support bra’s elasticity is giving its contents an animated life of their own. She prises her fingers from the crack in the board and folds her arm across her chest, which gives her immediate relief from the chafing. But she begins a rather rapid traverse towards the back edge and she is forced to give herself up to the movement, no matter how uncomfortable it is, and hold on for dear life.
Marina tries to look ahead to see how far they have to go. The tractor has round reversing mirrors and it is in one of these that she can see the driver looking at her predicament with amusement. Marina tries to turn her back to him, which she eventually manages, and just as she thinks they are making good progress he stops suddenly, splaying her supine.
‘I’ll be going down this track then,’ he shouts over the tractor engine.
Marina wriggles to the edge of the trailer and slides herself off to the ground. The solidity of the earth is most welcome. The man drives off without even a wave and Marina wishes him good riddance. She straightens her skirt and smooths her blouse. Parts of her feel a bit sore. Nevertheless, she sets off at a brisk pace and within five minutes she is on the main road into the village. Just in sight of the square she hears a low engine noise behind her which, as she turns, she can see is the bus coming into the village.
Marina breaks into a trot, a very unfamiliar activity. She takes small steps very rapidly and holds her bag in both hands to stop it swinging too wildly. The bus overtakes her and pulls up at the square in front of her, and people begin to get off. Marina darts into the road behind the bus as she sees Eleni climb off and go round to the luggage compartment. As Marina passes the bus the luggage compartment doors have been opened on both sides and Marina can see Eleni’s legs on the other side of the bus as she waits for her bag. She recognises Eleni’s luggage. On her side of the bus it is the nearest bag to her; on Eleni’s side it will be the last to be reached. Marina reaches for the bag and pulls it around the central pillar, hoping to make its extraction from Eleni’s side just that bit more time-consuming.
She tries running again, and holding her bag up to hide her face she darts in front of the bus across the road that enters the square from the left, and into her shop on the far corner.
‘I have not been away. I have been here all the time,’ she hisses at a very surprised Costas.
‘Go! Go!’ she adds, and Costas lazily stands and begins to stretch. ‘No time for that, go through the house.’ She pushes him in the small of the back out into the courtyard that connects her house to the shop. As the door swings shut behind him she sits solidly in her chair behind the counter and picks up the order book and a pen. Putting the end of the pen in her mouth she tries to assume the appearance of having been there for hours.
‘Mum.’
‘Oh – hi, Eleni, is the bus late? I have been waiting ages.’
‘How can you have been waiting ages when you didn’t know what time to expect me and you sit here all day anyway?’ She leans over the counter to kiss her mother on each cheek, an all but formal greeting, no warmth. ‘And why do you smell of goats?’
Marina realises that in her hasty dismissing of Costas she now has to sit in the shop all day and will not get to spend any time with Eleni unless she will sit in the shop with her, something she hasn’t done since she was about fifteen. Marina doesn’t bother to ask.
Eleni wheels her bag out of the door into the courtyard towards the house, and that is all Marina sees of her that day. She closes the shop at midnight and goes through to the house where Eleni is asleep on the sofa.
Marina stands and stares, takes her in, absorbs all she can. She is so tiny, like a bird, one leg curled under her, the other extended the length of the sofa, one arm bent under her head, the other dangling. Her jeans are slightly too big and her hair is shiny and smooth, she must have just washed it. It falls over her face, flecks of gold in the deep chestnut.
Marina makes her way towards her room but pauses to strokes Eleni’s hair softly, her feelings heightening in the action that has been denied her for years. All her rejected love bubbles to the surface. She wants to wrap her arms around her daughter, she wants her to be a baby again so she can scoop her up and take all her fears and anger away for her. Her love seems bottomless. Tears spill over.
‘I love you no matter how angry you get,’ she whispers, and Eleni sleeps peacefully on.
Eleni has moved sometime in the night. Marina passes her room on her way to the courtyard. The door is open and Eleni has just flopped on top of the bed fully dressed. At this early hour there is a chill in the air and she is curled into a ball. Marina tiptoes across the wooden boards, takes a blanket from the chest under the window and arranges it over her sleeping princess. She is about to stroke her hair but retracts her hand as the dreamer turns.
All she can focus on is that it is imperative to stop Eleni’s relationship if it is with whom it might be. The pain of being on the island herself when she was young floods back. If only she had the name of the family. She considers the option of telling all she knows, but they are words she cannot speak, pain she cannot face. But could she face it for the sake of her daughter’s happiness? Yes, she could. But if she is wrong and Eleni’s lover is from another family, which is highly likely, then the words she speaks may create the final severing rift and then Eleni may be gone.
No, she is right in what she is doing. She must find out quietly who he is, and only if it is who she fears will she tell Eleni everything. Then she must tell all, and her own happiness will be secondary, even if it causes a rift that never heals. But if it is not that person, then she can quietly bow out and hope that time will bring her and her beloved daughter back together again. Maybe grandchildren will help? When Eleni understands what it is to be a mother, and Marina can show how much she cares through her love of the grandchildren, maybe then they can reach each other.
‘Mum, are you in here all day or is Costas coming in?’ Eleni bursts through the courtyard door into the shop. Her hair is fuzzy from sleep and her T-shirt neck is so wide it has fallen down one shoulder. She hitches it back on.
‘Costas is coming in about …’ Marina turns to look at the clock on the wall, which has a sticker on marking its price, still in drachmas. She has thought to change it but with recent events she thinks she might as well leave it. They may have the drachma again soon enough. ‘Well, about now. Why, my love?’
‘I dunno, I just thought seeing as I am here we could have a chat or something.’ Eleni looks everywhere around the shop but at her mother. She selects a packet of crisps and opens them. Marina opens her mouth to suggest a proper breakfast but then closes it again. She tries out a few replies in her head and judges Eleni’s possible reaction to each. Eleni concentrates on her crisps and Marina tries to speed up her thoughts but draws no answers she can feel sure will cause no negative reaction.
‘Morning.’ Costas wanders in. Marina stands and Eleni disappears through the courtyard door. Marina turns her mind to the shop’s business and runs through with Costas who came in that morning short of money and owes them a euro or two. Anything less than a euro she ignores. Nor will she ask for what she is owed: it is up to the discretion of the customer. Every customer is a friend, a neighbour. If a euro is forgotten at the shop it will be paid back with fresh eggs one day, or a lift into town another day. It all evens out in the end.
But she keeps the book to appear as if she takes the loan seriously. She has found it makes her customers feel more at ease if she writes it down and crosses it off when, or if, it is paid back. Costas settles into her chair and takes out his phone. As Marina opens the door to the courtyard she can hear the phone whistle and ping as Costas plays a game.
Eleni is in the courtyard sitting under the fig tree, a coffee on the table.
‘You want one?’
Marina nods and goes inside herself and pours a coffee. She takes a deep breath before returning to the courtyard.
There is a cat on the wall watching a bird on the roof of the house. The cat picks its way across the jasmine that covers the wall. The jasmine needs watering, but not now. Marina sits in a canvas chair with wooden arms and balances her coffee on her knee to wait for it to cool a little.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
Eleni’s eyes are looking at the ground, darting left and right. Marina can see that she is struggling to form her sentence and wishes she could help.
‘What is it, my love?’ Marina can think of no other way to help.
‘Look, if you had a secret, or knew something that would affect me deeply, make me unhappy even, would you tell me in hopes that we could work it out?’
Oh my God, Panayia, she knows! Oh how in heaven has she found out? Marina can feel her face being drawn white, her hands start shaking and she spills her coffee. The heat penetrates her skirts and as her knee burns, and as she jumps in pain, she knocks the tiny cup and saucer onto the floor. To her surprise Eleni jumps up to help. She picks up the broken pieces, her head so close to Marina’s knees she could reach out and touch her silky hair. Her hand hovers but she dare not touch. She wants to pull her daughter to her, hug her and protect her, tell her she is sorry.
‘I’ll get you another.’ Eleni is gone.
How could she know? No one knows. Those that did know are dead. Aunt Efi. Even if her boyfriend is who he could be, he would not tell, he could not tell, could he? No, he would not, could not. No, that is not the source. Besides, if it was, Eleni would be angry, not enquiring. She would be demanding, furious.
Could it be that she has found out about her being on the island asking questions? That is possible. But she would just think she was interfering. She would think it was no more than that, there would be no reason to think there was more to it than that. Short of talking in her sleep and Eleni taking notes, this makes no sense. Does she talk in her sleep? No, it must be that she knows she has been on the island. Panayia! But no, that does not make sense either. Again she would be angry, not sitting here trying to form sentences. Marina feels slightly light-headed.
‘Here you go, Mum.’ Marina pulls her chair up to the table so she doesn’t have to balance her coffee again. She doesn’t trust herself. She has no idea what to say to Eleni but she must say something, think as she speaks maybe.
‘I …’ But Eleni does not wait for Marina to say any more.
‘Let me put it another way. If I had a secret, or knew something that would affect you deeply, even make you unhappy, would you want me to tell you so we could talk about it, you know, until we felt OK?’
Marina is about to say ‘Yes of course’ but then wonders if it is a trick. No, Eleni is not that cunning. Angry, yes; cunning, no. But hang on, if it is not a trick then who is she talking about? Does she know or not? With these words it sounds as if Eleni really has a secret. Marina’s brain feels as if it is swelling and the pressure in her head blurs her vision. She takes a sip of coffee, hoping the sweetness will give her clarity. She takes a breath and hopes her voice will not give away her panic, her confusion.
‘What are you saying, my love?’ Marina tries to say the words as gently and kindly as she can, not wishing to scare Eleni away. She needs a little more information to know how to respond. Her voice quivers and sounds breathless. God knows even talking at this level is such a leap forward for them. So precious, even if the topic is one she would rather she did not have to discuss.
‘Well, if I … if there was … there are … not everyone …’
What is she trying to say? Eleni’s pain is clearly internal. This is about Eleni, not her. If this is about Eleni, why would she come to talk to her now, before she is about to move to the island, unless …? Of course, this must be about the move, maybe about her boyfriend, but not in the way that is connected to Marina. Something else, perhaps. Perhaps they have had a fight? Oh no, not so soon, poor Eleni.
‘Have you argued with your boyfriend?’ Marina tries to help.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake Mum, that’s my point exactly, that’s why we don’t talk! You have only one way of thinking.’ Eleni’s frustration bubbles over and she stands abruptly. Her thigh jogs the table and both coffee cups tip over in their saucers. But Eleni is in the house, the door slammed behind her. Marina is left to watch the coffee puddle on the table, and form rivulets that flow across the table to the stone slab floor.
Marina is ashamed. She is such a coward. She has let Eleni down.
Chapter 10
Marina
finishes writing the card. She sighs and puts it with the present which is already wrapped. She stands wearily, even though it is only mid-morning, and takes the present and card into her bedroom and puts them in her black holdall. She straightens the sheet on her bed. It is the brass bed that belonged to Manolis’ mother before her. She would like a modern one with a harder mattress. Although her shop supports her and the girls there is no spare money for such things. She can see herself serving in the shop until they day comes when she cannot get out of bed. With Artemis in Athens and Eleni barely talking to her, the future looks a little bleak.
She hears a door bang. She carefully fastens the clasp on the holdall before leaving the room, shutting the door behind her. She can hear Eleni in the kitchen running a tap. Marina’s heavy tread echoes on the wooden stairs. She takes a breath before turning towards the kitchen.
Eleni slams her glass down, and water slops over the top and down her hand. She flicks her wrist at Marina and the droplets land on Marina’s nose and cheeks. Before she can react, Eleni is shouting.
‘Why? Why, for God’s sake? What for? Just to interfere, to be nosey, what did you think you would find out? You can’t even (she adds a Greek expletive, Marina gasps) talk to me so what’s the point in …’ Eleni makes a sweeping movement with her hand, generalising and dismissing everything in one gesture.
Marina blinks rapidly and tries to work out what is going on.
‘Eleni, my sweet …’
‘I am not your sweet, I haven’t been for some years, in case you haven’t noticed. Just tell me why?’
‘Why what, my love?’ Marina wonders if the pain in her chest is the onset of a heart attack. Tears spill down her cheeks and there is a lump in her throat.