The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

by Andrea Gillies

  As she got to the middle of the field she realized there were bullocks in it. They’d been bunched static and invisible to the right, but were now approaching her at a canter. The thing to do was not to run away but to turn and face them — it was counterintuitive — so she raised her hands and shouted, “Yarr, yarr!” and rushed a few steps forward. The two at the front jumped back, splaying their front legs like playful dogs; the ones at the back barged into the ones at the front and now they were beginning to spread out around her, their muzzles like wet plastic and their breath visible. Nina sat down, and then she lay down on the wet grass, on her side and slightly curled up. One of the bullocks came forward and snuffled at her hair — she could smell his warm animal self — and then he moved away and began to graze, and the rest of the herd followed.

  At this point Nina’s phone rang out in her pocket, and it was Paolo.

  She answered it while sitting up. “Hello?”

  “Just checking up on you. What are you doing?”

  “I’ve just left Dad’s and I’m walking home.”

  “The road way, I hope.”

  “Hold on a minute.” She got to her feet and went forward, brushing mud and grass from her clothes as she went. The bullocks let her pass as if they hadn’t noticed her. They’d had their fun.

  “Just to say that the offer’s still open, if you need a lift to the airport.”

  “Thanks. I have a taxi booked, but thank you.” She could be normal. She could be so normal that nobody would ever know. It was just down to — what was that word Fran had used about Luca, when she went to see Paolo? Compartmentalizing. It had seemed patronizing, at the time.

  “Also I wanted to say … I wanted to say something about Francesca.”

  She was startled by their synchronicity. “What about her?”

  “I know you’ve been worrying,” he said. “About Francesca’s illness. About your making her ill.” Christ. What had brought this on?

  “People can’t give other people cancer,” she told him. Now she was the sensible one.

  “That’s exactly my point. They can’t.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “She didn’t mind. Francesca. About you and Luca. I mean, obviously the kiss bothered her.”

  “There wasn’t a kiss.” Nina glanced around to make sure the cows weren’t following. “Hang on a minute.” She fumbled over the fence and onto the sidewalk. She was absolutely filthy and smelled bad; cowpat had got onto her jacket.

  “Most of the time Francesca didn’t really take it seriously,” Paolo said. “She had the measure of the situation, you know.”

  She was walking past houses with lit windows, and lowered her voice. “What measure?”

  “She said to me once that she was glad he got so much attention from you, because otherwise he might have screwed his secretary. And mine.”

  “Luca wasn’t like that.”

  “Yes, Nina. He was. He is.” Even as she’d defended him she knew that she was wrong. It was the oddest thing; it was something she didn’t know until she was told it, and then she knew that she’d always known. She thought about smashing the phone on the ground.

  “You’ve always made this mistake,” Paolo said. “Just because he was playful with you. Because he appeared to confide. Wrong, Nina. And I say this as someone who loves him unconditionally. Nina. Hello? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here, but I’m going now. I’m almost at my door.” She wasn’t, but she didn’t want to hear any more of this.

  “I love my brother,” Paolo’s voice said. “You know how much I love my brother. His behavior is another matter and we have to separate the two things. He sleeps around. He sleeps around, Nina, and always has. The truth is, he has screwed his secretary, and he’s made numerous passes at Karen. That’s Luca, I’m afraid.”

  “So,” Dr. Christos said. “You’re basically okay. You didn’t look very happy, when I came into the room.”

  “Ach,” she said, dismissively of herself. “Brooding. Brooding again. I go round and round with things that can’t be solved and that need to be forgotten.”

  “Well,” Dr. Christos said. “You’re going to have to be brave and cut the rope.”

  “Paolo’s good at that,” she told him. “At cutting the rope. When I left, when we separated, my dad was sure that I’d return home in a day or two. And I think there was a window. I needed Paolo to come to my door in the rain, but he didn’t. He got on with things. He accepted the new situation in a way that made me sure he wanted it; he’d wanted it and he was relieved.”

  “Of course. Or he would have fought for you.”

  “His ability to adjust offended me. I needed him to be more upset about the situation. He got up in the morning and got on with things.”

  He got on with his life. Was that impressive or a terrible indictment? To get on with life after your wife has left you: to function, to go to work, to manage to have ordinary conversations, to laugh at people’s bad jokes, to cook for yourself, to socialize, to read the paper and understand it, to go to bed and sleep well: these were the things that Paolo did in the days immediately following Nina’s exodus. They were all things that Nina failed to do. Paolo was immensely brave, her father said. Nina wondered if that was it, or whether it showed a certain lack, some missing filter, or perhaps an overly evolved one.

  “And so, the time has come again for the doctor to do some doctoring.” Dr. Christos made as if to leave the room and then didn’t. His mouth pursed up with silent words.

  “What is it?”

  “Doris has e-mailed, saying she wants us to reunite. As I thought might happen. I’m going to turn her down. I thought you should know.” He came closer. “The truth is that you can never go back. Once something is broken, it can be repaired but it will never be the same as before it was broken. Like a teacup. It can be glued together, but it isn’t the same. You can’t drink tea out of it anymore.”

  Nina was vaguely provoked. “Are you very subtly trying to tell me something about my marriage?”

  In turn Dr. Christos was perturbed. “You’re not going to reunite with him this week, I hope. There isn’t going to be a big reunion scene in my hospital, I hope.”

  “Why would you hope that? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

  “Of course, but I don’t think going back to Paolo will make you happy.”

  “You hardly know me.”

  “On the contrary, I know you quite well. I’ve heard it from you in your own words.”

  A few minutes later Nina heard a blazing row between doctor and nurse, each of them shouting accusations she couldn’t understand, followed by intemperate door-banging and then a long, deep silence, as if the whole fabric of the hospital was sulking. She picked up a book, but immediately she’d found the page Nurse Yannis came into the room and sat in the chair. She appeared to be calming herself. She had one palm placed across the other at right angles in her lap, her fingers taut, and slowly rotated her hands.

  “Is everything all right?” Nina asked her.

  “I must talk about Christos. Christos is an angry person.”

  “We’re all angry sometimes,” Nina said. The nurse waited. “What are you saying? He is violent, abusive? He hits people?”

  “No; he hates with his mouth only.”

  “You have been fighting. I hear you arguing. I’m sorry you don’t get on well.”

  “He is not the person he is here,” the nurse said. “Here with you, this is happy Christos. Always control.”

  “I think he is under a lot of stress at the moment,” Nina said blandly. She wasn’t going to take sides.

  Nurse Yannis couldn’t reply, because Paolo had come into the room. “Who’s under a lot of stress?” He dropped his rucksack onto the bed and asked Nurse Yannis if she could excuse them.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said when she’d gone. “About Christos, who is apparently rather stressed at present.”

  “Dr. Christos,�
�� she corrected. “What about him?”

  “Is there something genuinely going on between you? Something that might be serious?”

  The possibility had to be defended. “What’s it to you? You’re going out with Karen.”

  “You’re quite right. Do what you like.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m worrying about you.”

  “Worrying? Why?”

  “I hear things. I don’t want to say more because gossip is gossip, and I don’t like gossip.” He opened the bag and handed over yesterday’s English newspaper. It had sand on it and was dribbled with chocolate ice cream, and was wrinkled from where it had been dampened by seawater and had dried.

  “He isn’t perfect. But I’m fond of him, warts and all.” She heard this come out of her mouth as if somebody else had said it.

  “He has warts?” Paolo asked, looking distressed. “Where are they? You have to watch out for warts.”

  “You’re very funny. Now shut up.”

  He shrugged it off. “I worry about what you’re getting into, that’s all.”

  She needed to take things down a notch. She said, “To be honest, I’m not getting into anything.” Why did she need to do this? What business was it of his? “I appreciate your worrying,” she added.

  “Okay then.” He seemed reassured, but Lord it was hard work, keeping everything possible and unresolved. The plates were spinning on their high, precarious poles.

  “You don’t need to worry,” she said, emphatically, sincerely. “I know about his reputation. It’s been discussed. The conversation hasn’t only been one way.”

  “You know about Doris.”

  “I know about Doris.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh. You don’t know about Doris.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I do.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about it another time.”

  “Please don’t do that. Is there something you know that I should know?”

  “As you say, you know all about Doris.”

  “What? What are you saying now? Is that sarcasm?”

  “Not at all. You know about Doris or you don’t, and as you say, you do. But I think we should change the subject, as walls have ears.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The next day Nina was woken by a row, one that began in the corridor and adjourned to an office, where it continued in a muffled form. She didn’t see Dr. Christos, nor Nurse Yannis, all morning; an auxiliary came round with the trolley and to do the tidying, and the other doctor, the one Dr. Christos said looked after the geriatric patients, a white-haired, white-coated man called Dr. Argyros, came in to look at the chart on the end of the bed, but didn’t speak to her; didn’t even look at her.

  It was time for physiotherapy, so she went along to the treatment room at the other end of the hospital. It was at the furthest end of the other spur of the C-shape, and she could have gone out of her room and across the paving and in through their garden door, but she liked to go along the corridors, wishing other people kalimera and being kalimera’d back. Aside from the elderly residents there was a young woman who’d had a baby, and three postsurgical recuperators who’d returned from Main Hospital; a lively boy of twelve who’d had his appendix out was routinely in trouble for ramming people’s ankles with his remote-control car. In addition there was George, who seemed to come and go. George, she could see, through the long windows that faced into the courtyard, was at his usual table with his newspaper, and Nurse Yannis was sitting with him. When Nina got to the physio room, her single white plimsoll squeaking on the gray rubber floor, her crutches tick-tocking in rhythm, she found a note on the door in two languages saying that Mirella would be fifteen minutes late, so she sat down on the hard chair just outside her office. The blind was lowered full length over the door to the garden, but the door behind it had been propped open, and she heard Nurse Yannis saying her name.

  “Christos has never been able to resist a pretty face,” George’s voice said. He had a native English accent, quite nasal and flat. He sounded as if he came from the Midlands. “Her looks are already beginning to go,” he added, consolingly.

  Somebody called the nurse’s name; Dr. Christos from inside the hospital, through a window pushed open. “Yannis!” Once the nurse had gone, Nina pulled the blind up with the cord, and went out into the garden, and sat at the next table to George, positioned so she could see Mirella arriving.

  Looking towards him, she said, “Hello there.”

  “Hello,” George said.

  “You’re English; I didn’t realize.” She couldn’t help but sound a little hostile. So, he’d been playing a game.

  George seemed unconcerned, lighting up a cigarette. She waited for him to say something else, but he took no further notice of her, returning to his Greek crossword. Nina’s phone beeped and it was a text from Paolo. When physio done, fancy walking to village to meet me at café?

  Physio been delayed, she replied. Enjoy the sun and come by later. She picked up her crutches and went to the steps to the beach, and looked up at the deserted bus stop, and went down the side path to the front entrance. The road was empty, and the hill empty even of goats. Back in the foyer she heard the noise of a vehicle pulling up, and saw Mirella arriving in her little electric car. Going past Dr. Christos’s office, Nina heard his voice, sounding as if he was talking to someone in distress, with soothing, repetitive reassurances. Was it Nurse Yannis in there? What on earth was going on? She made her way back across the garden and saw that George was watching her. “Is everything all right?” she asked him. George just shrugged. It didn’t seem to bother him that language-wise the game was up.

  When she came out of physio and back into the sun, Dr. Christos was there, with a tray of coffee and three cups. He paused at George’s table and asked if he’d like one, and George said, “No, thank you,” in English without looking up from his paper.

  “Getting back to ‘the Boy’ …” Dr Christos said, sitting down and looking expectant.

  Nina sat opposite him. “It was Andy. My childhood friend Andy Stevenson.”

  “Your childhood friend?”

  “Andy from the village gang.”

  “Andy! Really? Andy with the rosy cheeks and thatch of hair. Luca’s friend.”

  “Though the thatch of hair is gray now. He’s still got the rosy cheeks. He still looks like a farmer.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “I have.”

  “So he was twenty and your mother was, what, forty-five?”

  George made a disgusted noise, stubbing out his cigarette with energy. He got up from the table and walked away as quickly as he could, which wasn’t fast. He had a bad hip, a stick, and took his time to leave the garden. Nina watched him go. “George is English. You didn’t mention that.”

  “I’m sure I did. How else were you going to tell him you needed to phone me?”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Oh — George is a local now. He’s lived here a long time. He comes for his treatment and then he goes home.”

  “But he smokes.”

  “We can only advise. So how did Sheila know what the diary entries meant, when the boy wasn’t identified?”

  “She’d seen them, the two of them, together. She already knew.”

  “What happened?”

  “She walked in on them.”

  “Oh no.”

  “She didn’t knock on our door anymore. She just went in, calling my mother’s name.”

  “And there they were.”

  “There they were. She went rushing in to tell Mum something, and the sofa is straight ahead of the door. All Mum wrote in the diary was Sheila came over at a bad time. That was it: one corroborating line. Sheila told Dad that she saw Andy lying on top of my mother, and that they were kissing. He had his legs together and hers were around him. They had their clothes on, but his shirt was out of his trousers
and my mother’s hands were inside it, on his back. She was clear about that particular detail.”

  “Have you spoken to Sheila?”

  “No. It’s all been relayed through Dad. I’ve avoided Sheila. I’ll continue to avoid her.”

  “And she’d seen the diary, before it was found?”

  “No. She saw the year embossed on the front, when they found it in the box, and knew what must be in there, and made sure she got to look at it first. She tried to put it in a rubbish bag. She’d kept what she knew from my dad for all those years. Decades.”

  “He didn’t know. And you didn’t know?”

  “I was at university when all this happened. I had no idea at all.”

  “So what did Sheila do, when she saw them together?”

  “Apparently she ran out of the house, and didn’t talk to my mother again for almost a week, and then she arrived at the house one afternoon, saying they had to clear the air. That was their last conversation.”

  “Do we know what was said?”

  This time, Sheila rang the doorbell and waited, which was significant in itself. That was an unsubtle adjustment.

  “She told Mum she didn’t feel she could be her friend anymore. Which shocks me. And after that there was mutual avoidance. They wouldn’t tell their husbands what they’d fought about. Sheila shunned Mum, afterwards. She didn’t visit her at the apartment, not once. I can’t forgive her that; that’s the unforgivable thing, to me. Anyway. It occurred to me that she might have been misrepresenting what she saw — for whatever reason — and I had to know, so I spoke to Andy. He said Sheila’s story was accurate.”