An Octopus in My Ouzo

by Jennifer Barclay

  'Everyone knows you now… As winter comes, it's more like that,' says Pavlos. 'Emeis kai emeis!' It's an expression that means literally 'we and we', something like 'just us'. October is almost here, and it will just be the permanent residents left.

  'When the rain comes, we'll plant onions, potatoes, carrots,' says Pavlos. 'Have you still got honey? I'll bring you some more.'

  'Thank you, but this time I want to buy it!'

  'No! We'll give it to you. If you want to buy it, we won't give you any!'

  While I'm watering the plants, Stelios arrives and, since he doesn't have fishing tonight, potters around looking at courgette flowers. Back indoors, I see he's looking up recipes online. While Greeks tend to be strict about what goes into a particular dish, Stelios also improvises sometimes. At first when he cooked something and said, 'You'll never have tasted anything like this!' I thought he was bragging, but he actually meant it was his own recipe.

  'Gather some mint from the garden,' he says now. 'And grate some graviera.'

  He cuts eight courgette flowers and then chops a tiny courgette into thin slices. I mix the grated, salty, firm cheese with the chopped mint (diosmo) and an egg. We find half an onion in the fridge to add, a few cherry tomatoes from the garden, and grind in some pepper.

  I put the oil in the frying pan, while he instructs, 'Valeh, valeh!' – keep going!

  He realises there are still ants in the courgette flowers and we have to put them in deep water to get them out – 'Let's see if they know how to swim…' Then he fills the yellow flowers with the mix and we douse them in flour. He puts them all in the hot oil to cook, and takes them out when they start to brown. Soon they're on the table, smelling delicious. We taste them. They're good. I had been sceptical about the point of stuffing courgette flowers but it's really just an excuse to eat soft and sticky fried cheese.

  'Something missing?' he asks.

  'Maybe more herbs?' I suggest.

  'Or salt,' he says.

  But they're very moreish. A successful experiment.

  He's brought home a crab claw and an orange mataki or eye of the sea – part of a shell – which he found in the fishing nets and thought would look good on a necklace. He's still undecided as to whether he'll leave; there isn't much work anywhere in Greece this year, so although it's tough, he's also lucky that he could continue fishing on the island through the winter.

  Which is why, one afternoon not long after, I find myself scrambling down a rough, slippery track on the back of a motorbike.

  Chapter 7

  Forces of Nature

  There's a large and unwieldy bag of potatoes sitting on the handlebars of the motorbike and a sack of goat manure balanced precariously on the seat in front. I am terrified as we skid around in the rocks and sand. Stelios shouts at me in Greek – but what he is telling me to do, I have no idea.

  We are on our way back from Menelaos' farm on the way to Skafi. Now that Stelios may be staying here over the winter, he is taking more of an interest in the garden. Menelaos owns hundreds if not thousands of goats and sheep, and the garden needs fertiliser. While we were there, Stelios asked for a bag of potatoes as well, and will repay him with some fish or a beer at a later date. Usually when I'm on the back of the motorbike and bouncing around down an uneven track, he says 'Min fovaseh', don't be afraid, but this time he's shouting and I wish I could get off the bike.

  Eventually, I discover that he wants me to grab hold of the sack of manure to stop it sliding off the seat – linguistically a little beyond me, and physically not so easy either. Of course I am grateful, however, for the help with acquiring what I want for the garden. We eventually make it home.

  Now that there's fertiliser, I can plant the beetroot seeds. Pavlos takes over, mixing them with some earth in a bucket before scattering them on ground that's freshly dug with manure. I wanted to do the digging myself, but if I try digging the garden in front of Pavlos and Stelios, they will laugh at my feebleness and tell me I'm doing it wrong. How could an English woman know how to dig a garden? How difficult can it be though, I wonder…?

  I don't really know why I feel the need for blisters on my hands. I like experimenting with my very first garden. I want the exercise, to feel strong; already I'm physically stronger as my new life here involves so much walking and swimming. And moving to Tilos alone, relying on myself, has worked so far; I don't want to become dependent on anyone else. If I'd been dependent, I might not have got here in the first place. Anyway, it's just a beetroot patch… I give in, let the men do the work, and will sneak in some gardening when no one's around.

  'What's that,' said Pavlos, pointing at my new plant, 'dendrolivano?'

  'Yes.' I admit it's rosemary. I know exactly what he's going to say next.

  'Why did you buy that? Where, in Rhodes? We have lots of it here in Tilos! How much did you pay?'

  Stelios had said exactly the same. I find myself lying again about the price, just to defend myself: I say two euros, when it was actually three.

  'Oh. Well, that's OK.'

  It's my garden, and my money, and I just wanted it. Sometimes paying a couple of euros is a lot easier than procuring things the Tilos way.

  My dad visits for a few days in early October. It's supposed to be five days, but almost on arrival he learns that Greek air traffic controllers are planning to strike on the day he's due to fly home – so he's somewhat stressed by the likelihood that he'll have to change his flight and leave early in order to make it back in time for work. He loves staying by the beach in Livadia, where he can lie on a sunbed and read a book, but one day I meet him and we drive his rental car to Eristos Beach Hotel for lunch. I want it to be a relaxing experience, but after we've waited a while at a table on the empty terrace I can tell he's wondering what's going on, so I head for the kitchen. I return to explain that I've ordered Greek salad and a couple of beers but they've run out of tomatoes – it's the end of the season – and are going to get some from the farm.

  Dad looks incredulous. 'It's a Greek taverna and they don't have any tomatoes?'

  He and Mum introduced me to Greece when I was little and I can see his point, but the ones they get freshly picked from the farm up the road will be even better, and to me it's the quirks of Tilos that make it special. There again, perhaps I'd be just as exasperated if it were my holiday. Living here, I'm protective of my relationship with the local people in whose community I'm trying to live a peaceful life. I get defensive because I want everyone to love Tilos the way I do.

  After a very good Greek salad, Dad snoozes in the sunshine for the afternoon while I work, then we go into Megalo Horio, stopping at Pavlos and Maria's so I can introduce them. Maria is delighted to meet my father, even though she doesn't speak English and he doesn't speak Greek. She sits us down and offers us a spoon sweet. Greek women often keep fruit preserved in sugary syrup, and offer a spoonful to guests.

  Dad has a dread of Greek sweets, however. I once gave him the name and address of a lovely lady in Lipsi who had treated me like a long-lost daughter when I stayed with her for a few weeks. Dad, on holiday in Lipsi, felt compelled to go along to see her, and recalls with horror how he and his girlfriend were forced to sit down on the balcony, drink coffee and eat sweets while Eleni insisted on making conversation with them in Greek, of which they didn't understand a word.

  So now, as Maria is offering a glyko, Dad whispers to me, 'Can you tell her I've got diabetes?'

  I do.

  'Oh, that's sad,' she says, putting away her jar of candied fruit and patting his hand. 'Well, I hope you'll come and visit again, and we can cook stuffed goat for you!'

  Afraid that Dad will concoct another illness, I usher him out the door and up the road to the kafeneion, where he drinks a beer and feeds peanuts to the ants on the terrace; Sofia seems to realise that eccentricity runs in the family.

  Back to my quiet routine a few days later after Dad leaves, I walk up to the supermarket. Megalo Horio has two shops, Irini's mini-mini-market u
p the alley towards the kafeneion, and the 'supermarket' – which is two rooms of sometimes unbridled chaos, spilling out on to the road where the bus squeezes past, amid flowerpots painted blue. The place is stuffed full of the most eclectic mix of what a villager might need, although the sign out front merely advertises 'Cigarettes', which are kept on a very high shelf and need to be knocked down by whatever comes to hand, a mop handle or Menelaos' stick. This supermarket, a centre of village life, is owned by Eleftheria's mother Rena – another form of the name Irini. You don't have to be called Irini to have a shop in Megalo Horio, but it helps.

  Yorgos the nurse, thin and bespectacled with a sly sense of humour, is in the supermarket, too, searching for something up and down one aisle. I'm searching for something up and down the other aisle. When we reach the end, we swap and do the same as if it's a sitcom.

  'What are you looking for?'

  'Chlorini, bleach.'

  'Me too! Where is it?'

  We swap aisles again and look in vain. When we give up, Rena comes and points it out, hidden behind something else.

  'Here we are,' says Yorgos, handing me a bottle, grinning. 'Good for the hair.'

  Walking back through the village I run into old Pantelis, who looks happy to see me and stops to talk.

  'Where's your father? He's gone already? Just three days in Tilos?'

  'Unfortunately yes – he had to go home for work. But I'm sure he'll be back.'

  'And your mother, when is she coming?'

  'Oh, as soon as she can! She has a husband and a dog back in England…'

  Once you've visited Tilos, you're part of the family.

  Since the weather has cooled down, for exercise I decide to walk up to the castle. I haven't been up there since late spring and neither have many other people, by the looks of the overgrown path. There are a few flies about and one keeps coming back to my arm. A moment later, there are hornets buzzing around my head and in my hair. I feel a sting on my back as I start to run down the path, trying to shield my head somehow without losing my footing. Eventually they leave me alone. I've had hornets buzzing around my house before and they've been harmless: I must have kicked a hornets' nest. The sting is quite painful but doesn't look bad. I shower and make myself a cup of tea and look after myself for the afternoon.

  And then, the next day, it comes.

  I've heard of it, but never experienced it before: the wonderful smell of the countryside when the first rain falls on the oregano, thyme and sage plants after they've been scorched by the sun for five or six months.

  The day starts when we are awoken by violent winds. The canopy in the garden flaps around crazily. Stelios dashes outside to untie it and stop it from tearing. Chairs and my shoes are scattered everywhere. Delos tells me the beehives he took down to Ayios Andonis last night have blown over.

  At lunchtime, the wind has died down and I walk up to the village, warm in jeans and flip-flops and vest top, the sky turning blue. It doesn't look like rain is coming. But dark clouds cover the sky during the afternoon as I sit and work, my hornet sting still itching but no longer hurting. Then the rain falls and falls…

  I'm used to rain in England; frequent rain, inappropriate summer rain; not deluges of sky-falling-down rain.

  As the torrential downpour softens to a gentle pattering, I set off down the muddy track and it's like walking through a church filled with incense, so intense is the fragrance of the herbs. It's also very still, and so clear I can hear the waves crashing on the shore at Eristos a few kilometres away. A cockerel crows as the rain dies away. White wispy clouds play over the tops of the mountains. Everything is fresh and the rain brings it all into bright, high definition – the stones of ruined buildings, the trees, the mountainsides.

  There is a Greek word for autumn, fthinoporo, but I hardly ever hear it. People mostly say it's winter when the rain starts, when the summer businesses close and it's only permanent residents on the island. Autumn means a decline, a waning, but although the days are growing shorter, the seasons are different here. When the rains start to fall after the long, dry summer, the forces of nature bring everything to life.

  Stelios, while still joking that he's only hanging around so I'll take him to England, makes the decision not to go away for work but to stay in Tilos with me. He works long hours on the fishing boat, leaving me with plenty of time alone, which is important to me, and I'm even happy when he messes up my kitchen-office with his tobacco and cooking and sugary coffee cups. So, given that we're moving on to a more serious stage of the relationship, there's something we need to talk about.

  I think he'll probably run away when I tell him I want to see if it's possible to have a child.

  'All women do,' he says, matter-of-factly.

  'No, they don't,' I say. 'I didn't for a long time.'

  A woman doesn't get past her early forties without ever being pregnant just because she didn't get around to it. Friends remember me as someone who had no interest at all in kids. Even into my thirties, I wasn't sure. I thought if it was ever supposed to happen, then I would know. It was only in my mid-thirties that my body's forces of nature kicked in; only as I turned forty, single, that I realised how strongly I wanted to try, if it were still possible. Stelios already knows about my last relationship. I explain as well as I can in my basic Greek.

  'I understand if this changes things for you. This is just something I have to do now. If you don't want to stay, it's OK. I want to try to be a mother, but I don't need to have a husband, not immediately. I know it's strange. But I'm in a difficult situation. I've thought it all through a lot. You don't have to stay and be a father if you don't want to.'

  But Stelios loves kids and his eyes have lit up. He says, 'It's OK. I understand. We will see what happens.'

  We decide to take it one step at a time.

  After a few days of rain, the sunshine returns and in the early afternoon I walk down the road to Eristos beach. Near the sea, I encounter Dimitris the fruit and vegetable seller, just outside his family's tiny taverna, now closed of course for the winter. He's carrying a towel.

  'Number eighty-six!' he shouts: eighty-six swims this year. When he reaches a hundred swims, he'll stop. He's usually the only other person I see at the beach, though occasionally I'll see my teacher friend Dimitris with his wetsuit and harpoon, off to find fish or octopus.

  Halfway back home is the other farm where I buy vegetables. Michalis is no longer sitting in the shade of the tree, and his crates and scales have been packed away for winter, but his son Yorgos is in the field nearby planting cabbages and cauliflowers. He gives me a bag of seedlings and instructs me to plant them that day, 60 cm apart. I get home and start preparing the ground for them, while Stelios makes bread and chaos in the kitchen.

  'Jennifer!' he shouts.

  I run inside.

  'Can you add some flour?' His hands are sticky with dough.

  I add flour to the bowl and go back to my garden.

  'Jennifer!'

  I drop the trowel again and go inside.

  'Can you plug in my mobile?' He needs it charged for the evening. He never knows exactly what time Nikos will call him for fishing.

  'Jennifer!'

  I dig a little more and then, more slowly this time, go inside. The oven door is open, the bread under a towel.

  'OK, we leave it now to get big. Have you finished in the garden yet?'

  Er, no, not yet – there have been a few interruptions. Gradually, the smell of baking bread fills the house.

  Chapter 8

  Normal Service Will Be Resumed

  For a week or so now, the sole Tilos ATM on the outside wall of what may be the tiniest bank in the world has not been working. 'Use another branch nearest you,' said the message on the screen. The nearest branch is on Rhodes – a bank withdrawal could take a day or more, depending on ferries. Perhaps someone pointed this out, as a few days later the technician has still not arrived, but the message has been changed: 'Normal service will be res
umed in a few minutes.'

  I've started to feel like that myself: always on the brink of normal service, but not quite getting there. Life seems more hectic, busier than it was before.

  'Miss! Hello, miss!' Grinning 8-year-olds are waving at me across the square in Livadia. Which ones are they? Kyriakos, perhaps, and Yorgos? For now their names are a bit of a blur – entertaining a dozen noisy children is something I haven't done for quite a while.

  It all started when I got a message from Dimitris the headmaster that Irini, who works in the doctor's office in Megalo Horio, wanted to talk to me about something. I figured I'd see her when I went up to the village, but before that happened, Stelios said, 'Oh, something I had to tell you…' and it was that Irini wanted to speak to me. Then I got a Facebook message from Evgenia, saying Maria wanted to see me.