by Sara Alexi
But for now, it is lucky that at least one of them has regular work paying a steady wage. Although, she reflects ruefully, she is still owed some of last week’s money. With a sweep of her hand, she clears shop receipts, sweet papers, and a baby’s comforter from in front of the fuel gauge. That would be all she needs, to run out of petrol, but the needle shows a quarter and she relaxes and sweeps the rubbish back in place. The road to Saros stretches before her.
The little stone houses dotted between the trees become more frequent as she approaches the outskirts of Saros town. These give way to two-storey houses and then three-storey apartment blocks as Irini drives into the centre. A right turn takes her down to the port, where she parks with a handful of other cars and jumps out.
The sea lays like silver oil in the harbour, still and thick. There are one or two pillows of fluffy clouds low on the far horizon but the day, even at this early hour, is already warm now, and within the hour, it will be hot and it will be airless and sweaty below deck.
Boats of all sizes and shapes line the harbour walls. Towels drying over their booms, forgotten bikinis hung next to fenders, wine glasses abandoned amongst a mess of ropes, and shoes in the cockpits. Irini walks along, looking into each of the bobbing white boats, and she wonders if the tourists within give any thought for who clears up after them.
Chapter 2
Captain Yorgos is awake and sitting on the deck of Artemis, a thirty-foot sailing yacht that has seen better days. He is smoking his first cigarette of the day and his face is still puffy with sleep. He rubs his hand over his thinned, almost bald crown. He needs a haircut. The few strands of hair remaining create a fluff over his dome that stand upright and begin to look comical if they get too long. He is wearing a pair of dirty, baggy jeans and his distended stomach hangs over, covering both belt and zip. He slaps a hand on this taut expanse when he spots a thin man with a flat wooden tray balanced on his head, walking along the quay.
‘Kalimera, Toli. How are we today?’ The captain’s voice is loud and authoritative with a patronising edge.
‘Yeia sas,’ Toli greets the captain. As they are about the same age, there is no real reason for Toli to use this polite form instead of the more relaxed Yeia sou.
Yorgos listens to Toli describe his morning so far, one hand holding his tray steady and the other gesticulating and occasionally pulling down his white shirt that rides up under his raised arm. The captain waits for him to conclude before indicating he wants a koulouri from the tray.
The sight of the koulouraki seller reminds Irini that she has left her croissant in the car along with her phone and she stops abruptly, ready to retrace her steps. The sun is bouncing off the sea’s surface, so bright she screws up her eyes.
‘Ah there you are,’ the captain shouts from the cockpit of his yacht. Even with half-closed eyes she knows he is addressing her. Reluctantly, she gives up the thought of her croissant for the moment but she will need her phone for when Stathoula calls later. She can go and get it as soon as the captain has left, as is his habit, for coffee in the square.
‘Koulouraki?’ the man asks her and, reaching over his head, retrieves a circle of crisply baked bread from his tray and hands it to her, pulling down his shirt once she has taken it from him. Irini’s free hand goes to her pocket for money which she knows is not there; this will be her excuse to go back to the car now. There was some change in the ashtray. A seagull flies high overhead, briefly passing between her eyes and the sun.
‘I’ll just go back to my car and get…’ she begins.
‘Put it on my tab,’ the captain says to the vendor. If she goes now, the boat might not be cleaned in time for his clients. Was it six today? All Swiss. He makes a mental calculation. Six times the fee, it will be a good day. Addressing Irini, he adds, ‘I owe you a little bit from last week, so that will make us more or less straight.’
‘Well, I, er…’ Irini stutters. Surely it was five euros from last week and the bread ring costs, what, about fifty cents?
Captain Yorgos stubs out his cigarette and lights another. Picking up his peaked captain’s hat and slapping it onto his head, he begins to heave himself up from his seat. His legs seem to get worse every day. The doctor told him to walk more after they put the stent into his femoral artery, but what does the doctor know of the pain he feels? They know nothing of the hardships of living on a boat, up and down the steps from the saloon to the deck every few minutes. It’s even worse in the winter, when the boat is on stilts in dry dock and he has to climb a ladder from the ground all the way up to his cabin home. Besides, if those doctors had done their job right, why does it still hurt?
‘You still owe me,’ Irini states, just loud enough for him to hear as she concentrates on her balance across his homemade gangplank. She always makes it look like the thing is unstable. Some of the top layer of plywood has broken off here and there, but that coat of white paint has covered well. Look at her, holding tight to the handrail even now, when the sea is flat calm.
He is particularly proud of his ingenuity with the handrail. When his income is so uncertain, it is best to be frugal. Finding those pieces of domestic copper piping just thrown away in a skip at the boatyard was a great piece of luck. Such a waste, people throwing things like that away. Anyway, it has done him some good, as it gave him the idea of mounting them vertically at intervals along the gangplank with bungs of hand-whittled wood in the top of each, with holes drilled through to thread the rope from one stanchion to the next. Look at her grabbing it. If she pulls too hard, one of the bungs may come out.
Toli turns to leave.
‘Hang on. You going up to the square?’ He addresses the bread seller, who grunts but for some reason does not look too happy. Never mind, he will cheer him up. ‘Give me a minute and we will walk together.’ Standing now, his belly feels taut and he wheezes. Everything is a struggle these days. Pulling on a faded shapeless t-shirt that advertises a brand of decking varnish completes his outfit.
Irini steps to one side of the helm to give him a clear pathway to the gangplank.
‘New bed sheets for my cabin today and yesterday’s clients cooked. Italians.’ He emphasises their nationality as if it is an explanation. ‘They wanted pasta, so they cooked. The galley’s a mess, as we hit a bit of wind just before lunch. Oh, and can you stay on and clean all the glasses? Some of the ones I took out yesterday had fingerprints on them.’ He looks about him for his lighter, which Irini spots first, standing upright in the centre of a coiled rope. ‘The bareboat will be out today, so just a check over to make sure everything is still clean. Give the toilets a pump and put some bleach down them.’
‘Did any other cabins get used on this boat yesterday?’ Irini asks. She cleans the boat Captain Yorgos lives on every day, but as he only uses it for day trippers, the cabins seldom need attention unless someone feels seasick and needs to lie down. Captain Yorgos’ other yacht, tied alongside, is hired out as a bareboat, and the holidaymakers captain it themselves. It can be gone for a couple of days or as long as two weeks. That vessel only needs cleaning occasionally but when it does, it takes hours and hours, from scrubbing the deck to cleaning out the bilges. Last time, it took all day. If Captain Yorgos would pay her a fair hourly rate, those days would make a good impact on the situation at home.
‘A child lay in the front cabin for a short sleep, but I would not called that used.’ He is looking around again – for his glasses, Irini presumes. She looks too and spots them for him, hooked in the neckline of his t-shirt.
‘Ah, yes, right, now I am just popping out. Some business I need to attend to. Also, can you make a list of anything we need to buy? Window cleaner, cloths, that sort of thing. You may have to go shopping.’ Irini opens her mouth to protest that this is not part of the job she has agreed to do but before she can say anything, he is talking again.
‘Right, let’s go. We’ll wander past the port police if that’s alright by you?’ He addresses Toli as he swings on a stay to go around the he
lm. Slipping his deck shoes on his bare feet, he rolls his way down the gangplank, which creaks its resistance.
He is getting too old to be doing this job, Irini reflects. If he was a younger man, all the half-finished jobs would be completed and he wouldn’t spend so much time sitting in the square drinking coffee.
Going down below deck, she gags at the acrid smell of stale smoke. The galley is filled with pots that have not been washed, spaghetti dried onto surfaces, pans black with baked-on sauces. The ashtray on the chart table is full and this is the first job Irini decides to tackle, emptying it into a carrier bag she finds on the floor. The gentle rock of the boat feels familiar; she quite likes the movement but the stale air is more than she can bear. She opens the saloon hatch and then, grabbing the wind-scoop from the shelf above the chart table, she goes up on deck to tie this piece of curved material to the boom and the edges of the open hatch. What little wind there is now will be caught and blown below, refreshing the air in the cabin.
There are a few people about now. The cafés on the front are all opening. Their tall doors show off their high ceilings. Some are rich with ornate scrolled wood around chamfered, etched windows; others are chic and simple with chrome handles on tall frameless glass, doors that are invisible when closed. Clean-shaven men in tight shirts sashay between tables, putting out ashtrays and menus, assured of their days’ pay and tips.
The sea has turned from silver to a transparent blue and over the side, she can see shoals of small fish darting into the shadows under the hull. On the sea bottom, the rocks are pocketed with dark sea urchins too deep to spike careless feet. A single, larger fish glides into the shadow of the boat, creating an explosion of little fish darting back into the sunlight. She must take Angelos on a boat trip. He would love to see the sea life.
Reluctant to return below until the air has cleared a little, Irini judges what there is to do on deck and, kneeling, she takes hold of a mass of rope and, lying the end on the deck, starts turning it with the flat of her hand on top. The rope coils around itself, lying close to the deck where no one will trip over it. It is satisfying work and she continues with all the ropes until the deck is bejewelled with flat rope spiral snakes. She won’t swill out the cockpit until she has finished the other jobs, knowing her own footfall will create mucky marks as she brings rubbish and mop buckets and anything else that needs to go up or down the saloon steps and out to the bins on the quay side.
She opens a locker under the cockpit seat to see what a mess the life jackets and beach toys are in, and takes a few minutes to tidy them. She will not wash it out today. In fact, with the bareboat needing so little doing to it and relatively little to do here, this could be a really short day. If she can finish and leave before the captain comes back, that will also save some time. Closing the locker lid, she sits on the cockpit seat and looks out to sea.
Stathoula and Glykeria. In retrospect, it was obvious that they would be at Yiayia’s funeral, but somehow it was a shock to see them there. She found herself unable to meet their stares. Her life had been so rough since her parents died that just the sight of her cousins brought a memory of softness, comfort that somehow made her feel so far away from them. The tears in her eyes were from the joy of seeing them, the tiredness from her way of life. But then, when you are fifteen, how else do you live if you have no home, when you have no one? Putting it that way, it’s amazing she was at the funeral herself that day. How different her life might have been if she hadn’t bumped into the stall holder.
The yacht rocks as a fishing boat putt-putts past. The mountains that enclose the bay have colour now, brown and greens fading to pale purples in the distance. Somewhere over those mountains, Stathoula will be driving from the airport on her way to see Glykeria and her new baby down in Kalamata, Irini’s village almost exactly the halfway point. But just a lunchtime stop seems such a short time.
No doubt Stathoula will thrill over Angelos, but what will she make of Petta? If the wedding had not been such a spontaneous affair, she could have met him then. There is no concern, though. She is bound to like him; everyone does. But he is not exactly in the same league as Stathoula’s husband, from what she has heard. A German, like her father. The days of hand-me-down clothes may be long gone, but their positions have not changed.
That was her chief memory of being with Stathoula and Glykeria when she was little. The girls turning up in a new car, Mama greeting Dierk, her brother-in-law, and his new Greek wife warmly, always a sad look on her face as she remembered her sister. Irini on strict instructions not to let slip that Glykeria’s birth was the cause of her aunt’s death. But Irini knew that they knew anyway, which made her wonder for whose benefit they were not allowed to talk about it. So the topic was avoided and they played in the field, Irini happy, Stathoula and Glykeria enjoying the freedom, getting dirty.
Those visits came with clothes that Stathoula and Glykeria had grown out of, and this was exciting when she was tiny. After plates of briam and glasses of homemade wine, Yiayia had helped her dress and undress, trying on the pretty things that were so unsuitable for playing in their field. But as the years passed, the clothes mostly served to highlight the widening discrepancies in their worlds. The visits slowly became less frequent, and each more pocked with repeated explanations to Yiayia about where her second daughter was. In her confusion, Yiayia began to accuse her son-in-law of terrible things, and the visits stopped soon after that. That was around the time she started digging random holes in the field.
‘Mana mou.’ Irini’s own mother addressed Yiayia. ‘She died in childbirth. She was not even in Greece, let alone near here when it happened. Remember?’
Yiayia’s starry eyes stabbed holes in her as she glanced about.
‘Mana mou, come inside. I will tell you again. She married Dierk. You remember Dierk the German? They had Stathoula and then there was a problem when Glykeria was being born?’
Thunk. The tsapa dug deep into the soil and Yiayia used all her strength to lever open a hole. Thunk. The tsapa excavated deeper.
‘Mana mou, come let us make some coffee,’ Irini’s Mama coaxed.
Yiayia never did quite seem to understand. Mama and Baba became worried about leaving her on her own when they went off to the markets and Irini to school. Irini would regularly return to find little excavations pocking the field, sometimes uprooting crops. Often, Irini would cover over the worst if she was back before Mama and Baba, just to try and relieve some of their worry.
Then the day came that Mama and Baba would never return and that soon after Yiayia began to wander off as if searching for them. Irini mostly caught her before she had gone too far, but some days, Yiayia could be very sneaky and Irini would find her streets away, completely lost.
The fishing boat leaves the bay and the rocking of the boat settles. If she is going to see Stathoula today, she’d better get on. She must put the pots that need washing to soak and pump the toilets to clear out the stale water and, while the bleach acts in them, she can nip back to the car for her phone.
And then one day, Yiayia was gone and could not be found. It wasn’t long after that that the field and the house were repossessed by the landlord. That hollow sinking weight of being left with no one and nothing settled into the pit of her stomach, becoming a part of her. That feeling stayed until Stathoula took her in.
Below deck, the air has cleared a little. It is not so acrid. Above deck, it is hot now, but below is even hotter. She opens the door to the forward toilet. Water sloshes below the duck boards, and the soap suds from people taking showers make everything look grimy.
If ever there was a good day to be caught for stealing! That market stall holder had no idea of the favour he did her. The police were involved but it turned out to be good luck for her that day.
The sink, which has yellowed with age, is always impossible to make look clean, and someone has left a toilet roll out whilst using the cubical as a wet room and the soggy tissue has disintegrated on the side.
To a great extent, it was the memory of all the food at her parents’ funeral that persuaded her to go to Yiayia’s. It certainly hadn’t occurred to her that her family had been traced and that she would see Stathoula and Glykeria.
On the shelf above the toilet and below the porthole is where the first aid box is kept. Really, it is a thick plastic sandwich box with the words ‘Artemis - First Aid’ written in indelible felt pen. It has been opened and the contents are spread out on the shelf; there are tubes in the sink and sealed plasters on the floor. An empty shampoo bottle is in the tiny bin which hangs on the back of the cupboard door below the sink and this stops the door closing and the one into the room from opening fully. Irini is unable to get into the space and she fishes about until she retrieves the bottle. Once in the room, she opens the porthole to let out the smell and heat.
That was what had hit her first about Stathoula and Glykeria’s house. The cleanliness. They led her first to a bathroom with a free-standing bath on legs with big industrial-looking taps.
That initial feeling of sinking beneath the warm water was such a luxury, she thought she might never climb out. Stathoula and Glykeria left her alone, and she marvelled at her luck. She did not want to soil their world with her own experiences. She wanted to embrace her new life and her cousins. Cast off the street. Forget the horrors she had seen. Lock it all away, pretend it had never happened.
It was a natural thing to do, even if not the best. If only she had found her tongue back then, talked to them, told them about the time between losing her parents and their Yiayia’s funeral. Talked about it all when it was fresh rather than letting it settle, bury its way into her, become a part of her, stagnating.