by Sara Alexi
Marcus takes the cigarette end, drops it in the ashtray, and folds his arms across his naked chest, relaxed, unruffled as always.
‘Well?’ he asks her with the air of a teacher waiting for an answer. Then she is released and everything moves at once. She trips over her own feet in her rush for the stairs, bangs her head against the top newel and sinks to the floor.
‘Ellie, you alright?’ Marcus calls after her and she can hear the rustle of bedclothes. On her feet again, she takes the steps as many as she can at a time. Holding tightly to the banister, she leaps the last four, sprawls on the floor but grovels on her hands and knees to stand and continues to run.
‘Ellie, El, hey. Isn’t this what life is about? Exploring, learning…’ She can hear Marcus’ tread on the stairs.
Flinging the back door shut behind her, it slams—but not loudly enough, and the shattering of the glass in its window is not nearly enough damage.
Now her legs won’t stop, her feet pounding the pavement, past the patisserie. Past the travel agents, they don’t stop until she is back at the main road, and it starts to rain. As she speeds past shops and houses one hand scrabbles in her back pocket, for reassurance that the thin booklet that gives her some security, that gives her hope is there nestled next to her credit card. If she was not out of breath she would sigh with relief.
Then, of course, it starts to rain! What else would it do? What else can she expect? Becky and Penny are no doubt off to university, her parents have a lodger for her old room, she has blown it with the guy of her dreams, her husband is shagging Brian the boring history teacher, and she is standing in a busy road in the rain! Of course!
With hair plastered to her head, she looks up to the skies, lifting away strands that cling to her cheeks. The rain hurtles at her like stair rods now, an infinite number of spears, as if nature herself wants to impale her. Leaning against the sharp edges of the dry stone wall that borders the pavement by the road, it seems hardly worth taking another breath. The jagged edges of the granite dig into her back. There is her and there is the rest of the world, and the rest of the world looks intent on squeezing her into the outer darkness, denying her a place, robbing her of any comfort.
The cars that speed by throw up spray, the drivers seeing her too late to slow down and reduce the arcs of water that reach the pavement. The first drenching is a shock, the cold biting her skin but then that too fits with her life. What has she left? She may not technically be homeless but she has no home to go to. Her existence is loveless. If she disappeared from this spot, it would alter no one’s life. She could just climb over the dry stone wall, crouch down in the shadow it casts, out of sight of the cars, and wait for hypothermia to end her miserable little life.
Chapter 23
‘So you ask no one if you can take the bar job but you storm back in here, throwing customers out, and expect your place to be waiting for you as if you were never gone?’ The old woman flings these words at Loukas as he slams the bolt home on the inside of the shop doors.
‘Don’t start, old woman. I am in no mood for your tongue.’ Loukas faces her, meeting her gaze, staring back, letting the anger in his eyes show until she has the sense to back down.
‘Steady…’ the old man mutters.
Loukas turns his steady look on him. ‘Or what, old man?’ The title Loukas uses to address his father-in-law is laden with sarcasm. ‘Will your old body straighten and life come to your limbs so you can whip me like I am a child?’ Loukas pushes past them both. In the kitchen, he yanks open the oven to find it is bare. There is a loaf of tsoureki on the table. The old woman hurries in at the sound of the oven door.
‘The tsoureki is for…’ she begins, her hands reaching towards it, but Loukas is there first.
He says nothing, ripping off a big piece and stuffing it in his mouth to make his point that anything they have to say has no meaning for him. He takes the old man’s bottle of ouzo from the shelf above the sink. The old man is also in the kitchen now and he hurries to open the cupboard where the glasses are kept, but Loukas leaves the room, bottle and sweet bread in hand. The house resonates with his boots on the wooden stairs, and the bare bulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling swings in response to the slam of his bedroom door.
Stella arrives back at the eatery in the village to hear a door slam somewhere in the closed depths of the bakery. The raised voices of the old man and old woman sound through the muffle of the walls. They are arguing. Having left Ellie to sleep with Sarah looking in on her, she wonders if there is anything she can do right now. The eatery, in comparison to the rest of her life and the turmoil in her head, is pleasantly calm. The farmers are talking in a hushed, lazy tone that suggests they have already eaten. Mitsos is scraping the black burnt bits from the grill.
‘Here comes trouble,’ Iason calls through to them, looking out of the eatery’s open door. Stella follows his gaze but she is at the wrong angle to see anything. She steps back from the fridge that she is restocking to look out of the double door in the grill room.
The old woman trundles with purpose across the road towards her.
‘Stella!’ The old woman stands, hand on thin hips, her cheeks sucked in, lower jaw pushed out, brows lowered. ‘Come here, we speak!’
Stella wipes the condensation off her hands with a tea towel.
‘Easy, Stella. Don’t let her get to you,’ Mitsos says.
But she feels no unease. She was taunted and bullied all her childhood, and this old woman holds no fear for her.
‘What do you want, Stheno?’ Stella faces her, still wiping her hands in the sunshine.
‘You did this. You and your swanky hotel.’
Stella does not feel the need to reply.
‘Well, are you happy now?’ The old woman waits for a response. Stella’s instinct is to turn on her heel and continue restocking the fridge, but this will only inflame the situation.
‘What do you want from me?’ She speaks quietly.
‘What do I want from you? Ha! I want nothing from you. Nothing, not even if you beg! You are not content with bullying the people of the village to run around for the crumbs thrown to them from your business, your hotel, what with hinting you will take rental cars from the garage and selling olive wood bowls to the tourists, you make yourself even more grand by upsetting and snubbing people that you have no use for. What right do you have to interfere into peoples’ lives as you do? Well, you may find your life is not so easy.’
Stella sighs and her shoulders slump. She has heard this all before, but she really thought the last of the villagers would have got past all this by now.
Her poor Greek baba would turn in his grave. How he had tried to protect her all his life, even on her first day at school! But children can be cruel and it seems some never grow up.
Stella recognises now that the village eatery was her first attempt at trying to contribute to the village, in part an offering to buy her redemption for having a gypsy mama. It altered a good many people’s minds, mostly those of the hungry farmers, but it has not been enough. Still there are those with these streaks of bitterness which they occasionally throw at her.
The hotel, which Stella considers as her biggest offering to this community, is likely to be her last. She has no energy for any more. From now on, they must take her as they find her. The hotel offers work to a number of local businesses. The garage, the wood carver, the beautician, the hairdresser. It will bring more tourists into the village, so the corner shop and the kiosk will benefit. If the stubborn villagers cannot see who she is and how her heart beats by now, they never will. They are remaining stubborn out of pride. She cannot alter that and would be a fool to try.
Nevertheless, Stheno’s words sadden her. But other than that, they have little effect. She has heard it all before and the threats the baker’s wife is making are hollow, hot air. She has no real ammunition. But it is utterly demoralising to hear Stheno use the hotel, the very things she is offering to the village, against her.
/> She waits till the old woman subsides and then looks her in the eye.
‘Life has never been easy, so what threat is this?’ Stella’s words are calm.
Stheno’s puckered mouth opens and then closes and Stella turns away and continues to refill the fridge. It is only by the flapping of the old woman’s slippers across the road that she knows Stheno has left.
Chapter 24
‘How are you doing here?’ Stella addresses Mitsos as she enters the eatery again. She stuffs a bunch of papers detailing the illegalities of the hotel, which she was studying on the way over, back in her pocket. The less Mitsos knows about it, the better. He has a tendency to become anxious.
‘I forgot to order that charcoal the other day. Do you think that we will be alright if we get some brought over tomorrow?’ Mitsos’ eyebrows are raised and worried lines wrinkle his forehead. Stella looks in the bag by the grill and nods. There is enough for today. Whilst she is standing close to him, he says quietly, ‘I really messed things up, didn’t I?’
With the hotel foremost in her thoughts, Stella hesitates before realising to what he is referring.
‘No, Mitsos. It wasn’t you. I should have told Loukas, I even tried to, in an indirect way, but it was Ellie’s place to make her position clear.’ Stella looks over to the closed bakery. ‘Anyway, he is blaming me now, not you.’
‘That’s not good.’ Mitsos puts two sausages onto a plate which looks bare without the usual hunk of bread. ‘Lemon sauce?’ He shouts through to the customer in the adjoining room. Interpreting the grunt of a reply, Mitsos liberally pours on Stella’s homemade sauce before wiping his hand on his apron so as to take a firm grip on the plate to take it through. On his return, he adds more sausages to the grill.
‘Anyway, Sarah says she can come back, after taking the goats out, for an extra two hours to serve on the beach bar tonight, but she doesn’t know how to mix a cocktail,’ Stella says. ‘I have someone else who will come in to do a couple of hours before that but later on, I’ll go back and do it myself.’ She leans her elbows on the counter, her head in her hands. It is just possible that the hotel is more than she can handle. If she cannot get the staff and the papers, then what? The place will have to close. It will be worthless and their savings will be gone.
‘You cannot do everything yourself,’ Mitsos says kindly, as if hearing her thoughts as he steps from behind the grill to embrace her in a one-armed hug.
‘Right now there is no choice, and besides, it is not as if the bar is a real problem. Another barman is not so hard to find.’ She rests comfortably in his embrace, soaking up Mitsos’ love, offering hers in return. He is the most important thing. Forget the hotel, forget the money. A twinge of sadness shadows her thoughts as Ellie comes to mind. ‘It will be harder for Loukas to find another Ellie, and Ellie her Loukas,’ she says reflectively.
‘Have a little faith in life, Stella. Look at our paths. They were harder but we still found each other.’ Mitsos’ chin rests on the top of her head.
‘Yes, but how old were you?’ Stella laughs quietly, intimately, as Mitsos bends his head to lean his forehead against hers.
‘Well, I had to find some wisdom and courage first. Without those, I would never have found you,’ Mitsos declares and kisses the end of her nose.
‘Is this a dating agency or can a man get a meal here?’ Iason wipes his bald head with a handkerchief as he enters.
‘From what I hear, you don’t come here to eat these days, Iason my friend.’ Mitsos pulls away from Stella and goes back around the counter, colour flushing to his cheeks.
‘Is that right, and why else would I be coming here?’ Iason takes a beer from the fridge.
‘To save your voice.’ A farmer from the next room shouts into them. Iason leans through the adjoining door to see who is speaking.
‘Ah it’s you, neighbour!’ There is laughter in Iason’s voice.
‘Who else would know your business?’ comes the reply.
‘Anyone with ears,’ a new voice joins in. ‘Morning and night, you shout at that poor boy.’ Both sympathy and teasing are mixed, in equal measure, into the way this is said.
‘Is he actually looking for a job?’ Stella asks.
‘The boy’s fussy. I tell him he cannot afford to be fussy. I told him to take your bar job but he refuses.’ Iason takes a napkin from the counter, this time to wipe the back of his neck, and then he ducks through the doorway to be greeted by some well-meaning banter.
‘It’s harder for the young these days,’ Stella observes to Mitsos.
‘It never occurred to me that I would do anything different from my baba,’ Mitsos agrees. ‘Choice can be very distracting and stop you from getting on with life.’
‘I think life happens when you are distracted by making choices,’ Stella says.
‘Well, one thing’s for sure, none of us end up where we expect to be.’ Mitsos lifts the chips from the fat, gives them a shake and pours them into a dish. ‘Can you take those through?’ When Stella comes back in, Mitsos asks, ‘So will you be very late?’
‘Probably.’
‘It was my dream at one point, you know, when I was about Loukas’ age, to run a beach bar.’ Mitsos sighs and nods as he looks at his arm that is not there.
‘Everything alright?’ Stella greets Sarah, who is busy drying up glasses.
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Did you have to mix many cocktails?’ Stella asks with a smile. She had printed off some basic cocktail recipes, stapled them together, and put them behind the bar for Sarah just in case. In the sand around the bar, there are many cigarette ends. That’s another job for which she must find a solution. The beach must be clean.
‘Oh no. Everyone’s been drinking beer or fresh orange juice.’ Sarah seems buoyant but looks tired. Stella knows she will also have to find another receptionist to job share with Sarah if she wants things to run smoothly. There is so much to think about suddenly.
‘An easy shift then,’ she replies lightly, keeping her worries to herself as usual. It would be nice to share but then, her problems are her own, so what’s the point?
‘Yes. Oh, and a man I didn’t recognise who said he was from planning was down here looking around.’
‘Oh, did he leave a name, say what he wanted?’ She doesn’t manage to keep her voice calm now.
‘No.’ Sarah stops what she is doing to look up. ‘Stella, what is it? Is there a problem?’
‘There is a slight hiccup, shall we say, with planning.’ How much should she share?
‘Oh, but everything is illegal here. I thought you Greeks were used to that!’ Sarah chuckles.
‘It’s difficult to be legal, that’s true. Too many laws cross over each other. You stick with one and you break another.’ Stella tries to make light of the conversation but the tension in her voice cannot be hidden. ‘But this one with the planning could be a big problem. I will go into Saros tomorrow find out who it was and who really has the power there.’
‘It’ll be the mayor surely,’ Sarah says, laying her tea-towel flat on the bar. Even in the relative cool of the evening, it will dry quickly.
‘Yes, but the mayor said he was all for the hotel on the opening night and, with these local issues, everything can be overcome if everybody is willing. So that means someone somewhere is not willing. If I can find out who, find out why, then I can resolve it.’ She smooths out the tea towel Sarah put down.
‘I wish everything was fixable.’ Sarah takes her bag from under the counter and joins Stella in front of the bar. ‘I suppose it’s too soon for you to have heard anything from Ellie yet?’
Stella nods and looks out to sea as far as she can. Somewhere out there across the waters, poor Ellie is trying to make a bad marriage work. She feels for her. Maybe she will email her. She won’t have time today, but tomorrow, after Ellie has settled back into her life a little.
‘There was a couple down here earlier. I don’t know them, but you will. A tall man with a blond woma
n with hair extensions, long nails. The one who looks a bit out of place for the village,’ Sarah says.
‘Ah, probably Magdalene, the girl who worked on the television for a while.’
‘Oh did she? I didn’t know that. Anyway, I think they thought I was Bulgarian or Polish or something and couldn’t understand because they chatted away in English, here at the bar, as if I didn’t exist.’
‘He is half-Canadian.’
‘Oh, I did wonder why they weren’t speaking Greek. Anyway, it seems, their house backs onto the bakery.’
‘Yes I know,’ Stella says absently, still distracted by the thought of someone from planning nosing about whilst she was not there.
‘Right. Well, apparently Loukas, presumably straight after he left us here, went back to the bakery and was screaming at his in-laws. Then he stole a tsoureki that was on order for her, this Magdalene, and he also took the father-in-law’s ouzo bottle up to his room and about ten minutes later, he brought it back down empty, only to take a full bottle up. They were talking about him, saying he was banging and crashing about until the early hours. Apparently, he didn’t get up to make the bread…’
‘I know. We’ve had none in the eatery today,’ Stella says.
‘And this morning, they found the second bottle, empty, in their flower bed beneath his window. So I guess he is taking it hard.’
‘I imagine it is just as hard for Ellie.’ She looks at her watch. Maybe she could stop and email her right now.
‘Anyway, that’s the news, but I really need to get going if I am on reception tomorrow morning, so are you alright to take over now?’
‘Yes sure,’ Stella says, but now she is worrying about Ellie and Loukas too. Maybe she should not have let Ellie go. She could have stayed and worked out whatever she and Loukas had together. Maybe letting her go was the worst thing to do.