Aftershock

by Bernard Ashley

  He followed the sounds and took a left turn, then a right at a fountain – and there they were: the Regent’s Park football pitches. He’d made it!

  But it didn’t look as if a Cup Final was being played here. Makis had imagined seeing twenty-two players on a pitch surrounded by a crowd of people. But here, the crowd was not of people but of pitches. They were all over this part of the park – and there seemed to be a team in red on nearly every one of them.

  He ran down between the touch-lines looking for familiar faces, but he knew it was too late. All the games had started; and although later on players might have to come off because they were injured, or were sent off by the referee, no one else was ever allowed to go on. A game started with eleven players and those first eleven were the only people allowed to play the match, even if it ended up with eleven players against four.

  So Denny Clarke would be playing in Makis’s place, wearing his old dyed-red vest.

  Makis ran down one side of a pitch, across behind the goals of two other games that were back to back – and suddenly he spotted one of the old red Imeson Street vests. He ran towards the game, but when he got there, the player wearing the vest wasn’t Denny Clarke; it was a younger boy who sometimes took part in the playground games: Lennie Rainbird. Makis looked at the faces of the other players wearing the new red shirts. They were puffing and straining in a fast, hard-tackling game, with the defence trying to cover for Lennie Rainbird who was chasing around, as erratic as an eaglet. Makis knew that if David Sutton shouted ‘W’ or ‘M’, Lennie would have no idea what to do. It was clear that, had Makis or Denny Clarke been there, they would have made a big difference to the way the game was going. So where was Denny Clarke?

  ‘Give me that shirt, lad!’

  Mr Hersee jumped out at Makis from a group of people along the touchline. No, ‘Where have you been?’ No, ‘Why are you late?’ He grabbed at Makis’s bag and pulled out the Imeson Street school shirt, spilling Makis’s boots and shin pads on to the grass in an angry yank.

  ‘Referee! Shirt change!’ the headmaster shouted, when the ball went out of play: and before the throw-in was taken, the shirt was pulled over Lennie Rainbird’s head. And when Makis looked closely, he could see that Lennie was playing in his street shoes – and all because Makis Magriotis and Denny Clarke hadn’t shown up for the match.

  For a minute or so, Makis wondered whether to stay or go. Judging by the looks he got from the grim-faced Imeson Street players, he certainly wasn’t welcome there. And as he watched the other team rob Rainbird and go on to score a goal, Costas Kasoulides ran to the touchline and shouted, ‘Traitor!’

  Makis trailed off home, a lion from the depths of the zoo roaring him on his way – to spend a most unhappy weekend, not even playing well on Sunday for Mr Laliotis. The violinist consoled him with a musicians’ excuse: ‘Some days the naughty fingers disobey the brain. It happens.’ They cut the rehearsal short; but Makis knew he had disappointed the man.

  While Makis’s mother was out at the corner shop buying flowers, Makis had a chance to dig out The Man Who Ran to Sparta and throw it into the dustbin, burying it beneath a heap of dead coals.

  Good riddance!

  Chapter Fourteen

  That Monday, Makis got to school as late as he could – he knew how unwelcome he would be in the playground. He wasn’t the player who’d had his hand shaken by Mr Hersee any more.

  And he was right. Freddie Gull spat in his direction. Lining up to go in, it was all elbows in the ribs and kicked shins, and ‘Greek’ seemed to be the swearword of the day. Makis knew without doubt that Imeson Street had lost in the Cup Final. But it wasn’t until the school went in for assembly that he heard the score and realised how they’d lost. The boys who had played were paraded and clapped, and the result was given out: nil-one. The Reds had lost by that one goal scored from Lennie Rainbird’s mistake. Makis not being there had made a difference. But Lennie was praised by Mr Hersee for being ‘one of our valiant heroes’.

  When the team went back to their places in the hall, two other names were called out, and both boys were made to stand up in their lines: Makis Magritis and Dennis Clarke.

  Makis stood, and not knowing where to look, he stared at the picture of the new Queen of England hanging up behind the headmaster. He stared at Elizabeth the Second until his tears dissolved her.

  ‘Standing among you, like Judas trees in a vineyard, are two boys who are alone in their Imeson Street disgrace. Can you imagine Stanley Matthews of Blackpool not turning up for the Cup Final at Wembley? Can you imagine Nat Lofthouse telling his Bolton team-mates, “I fancied a lie-in, so I didn’t bother getting up to join the team coach?” Imagine…’ Mr Hersee was working himself up; he had to stop for a moment, and swallow. ‘I can’t imagine that happening, can you?’

  The juniors shook their heads, and the infants chanted, ‘No-o-o.’

  ‘Well, Clarke and Magritis, these two,’ – Mr Hersee pointed at the disgraced boys like a preacher from a street pulpit – ‘these vipers in the bosom did just that on Saturday. Although honoured by being picked as first reserve, Clarke didn’t even turn up at the field of play. And Magritis decided he’d got blanket fever and showed up too late to start the match – leaving brave, heart-as-big-as-his-chest Leonard Rainbird to throw himself into the fray.’

  Makis felt dislike rising from the floor of the hall like the stink of seaweed, and sensed the teachers down the sides nodding and shaking their heads. But he could see nothing, standing with his head bowed – not with shame, but with the anger of injustice welling up inside him. This was not fair. Had Hersee bothered to ask him why he’d reached Regent’s Park late? No! Did the headmaster know the state of his mother that Saturday morning? Would he even have understood her pain at seeing a picture in a book that looked just like her husband in his death agony? Did anyone in England care that a terrible earthquake had killed hundreds of people on his island in one minute?

  Stirred in with his anger was not having the courage to shout something at the man at the other end of the hall. But perhaps that was just as well, because it would only have come out as a breathless snivel, his voice somewhere up in the ceiling beams. So he stood there until he was ordered to sit down, and people shuffled away from him on each side – the start of isolation and insult that were to poison his day.

  Denny Clarke was the worst. At morning playtime, as the football match went on around them, he grabbed Makis’s neck. ‘You dirty Greek traitor!’ He pushed Makis and nearly floored him. ‘You proper got me into trouble, you foreigner!’

  ‘You not there, too!’ Makis managed to get out.

  ‘Wasn’t playing, was I, Greekie? Waste o’ time. Then you don’ come – an’ make me look as stinky as you!’

  ‘That your problem, not my problem.’

  Clarke got hold of Makis’s jumper and pulled him violently towards him, stopping just short of a head-butt. ‘I’ll tell you your problem, you rotten turd. Me! I’m your problem! A’ter school, round Prince’s – I’m gonna knock seven bells outa you, where Hersee an’ no one can’t stop me. An’ you be there – if you got the guts.’ He twisted a foot behind Makis’s leg and pushed him hard, sending him down flat on his back on the tarmac. ‘Prince’s, a’ter school – an’ bring your fightin’ fists with you, if you got any.’

  With a kick in the calf, Clarke went off – and Makis picked himself up, hurting and choking in the throat with the rotten unfairness of life.

  He didn’t go to Prince’s Fields after school. He didn’t fight Denny Clarke. He went in the opposite direction, home to Georgiana Street, full of bile and unable to breathe properly in fury and frustration, his eardrums thumping with the beat of his heart. Even the earthquake that had killed his father and destroyed his Kefalonia life hadn’t brought this burning turmoil inside him.

  ‘What’s the matter, Makis?’ his mother wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did the school lose their football match?’
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  She was sharp. Makis had to tell her that he hadn’t got there in time on Saturday.

  ‘You look different, Makis.’

  ‘Well I’m not, I’m the same.’

  It was a relief when Mr Laliotis came down to invite him upstairs for a rehearsal. And somehow that evening, against the odds, he was back to being a mandolin player. It was as if St Gerasimos had decided that not every part of his life was going to go wrong. Besides, he had to be good at the Acropolis on Saturday. It was why he had let himself seem a coward to Denny Clarke.

  ‘If you want me to tell you that was good, Makis, I will tell you so – that was very good. Old men will cry.’ The musician patted the back of Makis’s hand. ‘But please, use just a little less plectrum and a little more dripping of Assos honey across the bridging chords…’

  Makis played a chord, to show how he could do honey.

  ‘My boy! I applaud you.’ And Mr Laliotis span his balalaika around to pat its back. ‘Oh, Saturday is going to be so good…’

  Mr Laliotis should have brought some calm to Makis. But that night in bed, he couldn’t get the bitter taste of unfairness out of his mouth. And when he went to sleep, his dreams led him into a distressing place.

  He went to the hall at Imeson Street school, with all the classes sitting in their assembly lines, staring at him as he stood out at the front. Again, he was in tears, his head bowed, his hot hands clenching and unclenching – because of what was being said.

  ‘This boy has shamed us. He has shamed me, and he has shamed you. What was asked of him? What honourable action was he asked to do for the school? And what did he take upon himself to do instead?’

  Makis could see the cold faces staring at him – even the infants at the front looked at him like enemies.

  ‘He was asked,’ the voice went on, ‘to ooze honey from his strings, and not to cut across them as if his plectrum was a broken roof tile.’

  Again, Makis could sense the teachers nodding as if they knew the difference.

  ‘But did he? Could he?’ – the rising voice came to a climax. ‘No! He played with crude force, like Dennis Clarke hitting someone in the face!’

  There was a pause, as the man at the front raised his hand like a conductor for the whole school to boo and boo. But it wasn’t Mr Hersee standing there – it was Mr Laliotis, a man Makis thought of as a friend, who was treating him now with derision. It shocked him, and it hurt.

  And that night, for the first time since he had been a very small boy back in Alekata, Makis woke from his nightmare in a wet bed. So, to his anger and his frustration, now he had to add his shame.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Next morning, Makis made his bed quickly, in the hope that his mother wouldn’t find out how far away he was from taking his father’s place in the home. He ate hardly any breakfast and got out of the house as soon as he could. In case anyone was watching, he turned the first corner as if he was going to school. But did he want to go to a place where he’d be treated like a traitor all day? That school was a place filled with people who didn’t understand how plans can suddenly get upset. When those hateful people were pupils, that was one thing. But when they were teachers, too – who were supposed to know about helping you to learn things, and to grow up a good person – then everything was rotten.

  So why not go and lose himself in Regent’s Park – and stay there until his mother told the police, and they told the school, and everyone felt sorry for him instead of hating him? Or – a really stupid thought – why not go to the zoo and get eaten by a lion? Or how about finding the port where the ships came in from Greece, and stowing away on one that was flying the blue-and-white flag? Then he could go back to Kefalonia and Alekata, and build a small house from fallen stones, and patch up a boat and become a fisherman like his father. There were still people in Kefalonia who ate fish, weren’t there?

  But while he was having these thoughts – the possible, the stupid, and the wild – his feet were taking him the familiar way to school. His pride wouldn’t let him run away. Makis Magriotis was not going to act as if he was ashamed of himself, nor as if he was afraid of Denny Clarke. Hold his head up high – that’s what he was going to do.

  He came to the school gate, and taking a deep breath, he went through it.

  ‘Ere ‘e ‘is! The Greek coward! Couldn’t stand an’ fight like an Englishman!’ This was Clarke.

  ‘Don’t go near to him – he stinks of goats!’ This was Costas Karoulides, back to his old insult.

  ‘Traitor!’ This was an infant, who wouldn’t even know what the word meant.

  But worse than the insults was what most other people did – they didn’t speak to him, but bumped and bored into him as if he wasn’t even there.

  Makis’s pride quickly drowned. But it wasn’t too late to run off and do one of those other things he’d been thinking about, was it? The whistle hadn’t blown yet. All he had to do was walk over to the gate and go through it.

  Well, he would do that. He quickly turned to go, before the teachers came out to get everyone in.

  But what was this? Who was this, striding into the playground with a mean and angry look on her face, and carrying the blackened copy of The Man Who Ran to Sparta?

  ‘Where is he? The Principal?’ his mother asked in Greek. She grabbed his hand and yanked him towards the school building. ‘Makis – the Principal. Show me where he is!’

  Makis knew the others in the playground were watching her, all saying things behind their hands and pulling faces. She wasn’t waiting for his answer; she could see the door into the school and she started marching him towards it.

  ‘Mama! Stop! What are you doing?’

  But she pulled him in through the door, just as the teachers were coming out. The stares they gave one another were just like those Alekata warning looks of earthquake tremors to come. Trouble.

  ‘Where?’

  Makis could do nothing but take his mother along the corridor to the door she wanted. ‘Mr A.W. Hersee. Headmaster.’ It was half-open. She knocked on it and stood waiting, her face frozen in determination.

  ‘Yes?’ Mr Hersee opened the door wider, saw Makis, and realised who this woman was. ‘Ah.’

  Makis could see him making an instant decision about the way he’d treat this mother. He could go into a rant about her son, the Cup Final traitor, or he could calmly explain to her his headteacher’s duty to point out Makis’s faults. He chose the second. ‘Ah,’ he said again, ‘I think we must talk…’ as if he’d sent for her to come.

  ‘In!’ Makis’s mother said, in English. She pushed Makis into the head’s room. She shut the door behind them, firmly.

  ‘And how can I…?’ In the face of Makis’s mother’s determination, Mr Hersee was shifting like a wind-change on water.

  ‘See!’ All the way from Georgiana Street Sofia Magriotis must have had her finger keeping a place in the page showing the terrible picture of the suffering runner. She cracked the book open and held it in the headteacher’s face. ‘See, Makis Dad, see!’

  ‘Ah. Philippides…’

  She pointed at Makis, and at the face in the picture. ‘Dad. Makis’s Dad.’

  ‘A runner? Your father’s an Olympic runner?’ Mr Hersee asked Makis.

  ‘Dead!’ Makis’s mother gave the universal sign for death, fingers drawn across her throat. ‘Dead,’ she went on, still in English. ‘The earthquake,’ she said in Greek – and looked at Makis for him to translate, which he did in such a soft voice that she had to prod him to say it again, louder.

  ‘Sofia Magriotis see face look,’ she said. ‘Makis Dad. Dead Dad. Sofia very bad.’ She mimed a fainting, a crying, a sort of collapse. ‘I see. I see dead, in this.’ She thumped herself in the chest. ‘Sofia Magriotis very bad.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Hersee had an ah for every situation. This ‘ah’ said he was beginning to understand. ‘Are we talking about Saturday?’

  ‘Makis.’ She patted Makis on the head. ‘Makis‘ – she searched for
the words – ‘Good boy! Makis good boy for Mama!’ she said triumphantly.

  Mr Hersee turned to Makis, the look on his face distantly related to a smile. ‘Your mother was bad, and you helped her…’

  ‘Makis help. See Makis help.’

  ‘Ah.’ A full grasp now.

  Makis took the book from his mother. ‘I teach my mother reading. The face, she thinks – like my father. He dies under earthquake houses, look like this. She is bad. She is very bad…’

  ‘And you felt you had to help her? You stayed till she recovered. This was what made you late…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve been teaching her English? English,’ he repeated to Makis’s mother, smiling seriously, and nodding. ‘You learn… English?’

  ‘Ten green bottles,’ she told him, to prove it.

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Hersee’s face softened as he looked at Makis. ‘And you missed the bus…?’

  ‘I get lost,’ Makis said. ‘I run fast. I get lost.’

  ‘Of course. But you turned up, didn’t you? You got there too late – but, credit due…’

  ‘Yes.’

  But Sofia Magriotis wasn’t finished. ‘Makis bad – in this.’ She knocked on Makis’s forehead with a knuckle. ‘Not good. Not Makis.’ She mimed Makis’s unhappiness with a face from a tragedy. ‘He even wet the bed,’ she said in Greek – her hands urging Makis to translate.

  ‘We’re not telling him that!’ Makis said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything, lad?’ The headteacher was waving his head this way and that as if in time to music. ‘I’m not an unreasonable man. I wouldn’t have said what I did to the school had I known the circumstances.’ He turned to Makis’s mother. ‘In my ignorance of the true situation I made the situation worse, bad for Makis. I apologise. I’m sorry. Me’ – he pointed both long-fingered hands towards his chest – ‘very sorry.’ And he nodded his sorrow like a priest at a graveside.