On Table Four, in the lane closest to the front entrance, he recognised the two men who’d been bowling on the day he’d biked here. Their mother sat next to them, occasionally putting food into one of her son’s mouths.
Where would we be, he thought, without our manas.
There had been platters of food on the tables when they sat down and these kept being replenished and added to throughout: cheese eggplant rolls, grilled bread with feta and tomatoes, dolmades, filo pies filled with spinach or various spicy meats; a myriad of sauces and dips: hummus, taramasalata, he knew, but there were others. These finger foods were gradually augmented by more substantial dishes: moussaka, chicken, kebabs in tomato sauce, roast lamb with sun-dried tomatoes. It all came through the swing-doors that led to the bar and the offices, carried by waiters wearing monogrammed white shirts, D for Dino’s.
Helena was involved in a long conversation with the cousin’s daughter, who wanted to start her own clothes label in Australia, where she had contacts. Meanwhile the five-year-old’s mother was worried about the boy’s speech. They’d found out Paddy’s profession. Her son seemed well behind the other kids of his age, she told Paddy. ‘Say something,’ she said to him. ‘Say, “Please may I go to the toilet?”’ The boy looked at her and shook his head. ‘Because he doesn’t want to go to the toilet,’ said the boy’s father.
As dessert was being served, people were moving freely around the tables, making the pilgrimage to see the birthday girl or going outside to smoke. He spied Tony leaving with a group of men, already peeling the wrapping from a cigar. Plates of unattended baklava, figs in honey, chocolate-filled filo parcels and other sweets were everywhere. He had sticky fingers. The older children were gathered in groups by the entrance, looking at one another’s mobile phones, while the younger ones had taken over the free lane at the far end where they were rolling themselves over and over in the direction of the pins. Some of these kids were lying in the gutters, pretending to be stuck, their feet waving in the air. He recognised Jimmy’s son, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling.
Paddy walked over to Table One, where a space was free opposite Jimmy and his wife Sue, the physiotherapist. She told him it was a pleasure to meet the famous Patrick Thompson, without whom she wouldn’t have a husband.
‘Or any of this!’ said Jimmy. ‘Had I not come through, Yaya would have died years ago. I was her darling, don’t you know.’
Paddy said that while he didn’t doubt Jimmy’s special status, he hadn’t saved his life.
Sue had a lovely open face, long dark lashes. ‘But,’ she said, ‘you taught him to talk again and I don’t think I’d marry a man who could only grunt and groan.’
‘Most people do, honey,’ said Jimmy.
She laughed and hit him hard on the shoulder.
‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Now I need some physio on that, darling. Gimme a rub.’
‘I’m sorry for us, Paddy,’ she said. ‘The bubbles went right to our heads. We haven’t even had the ouzi yet.’
‘Ouzi, listen to her. Ouzo, it’s ouzo, dummy brain.’
She made a face. ‘Anyways, don’t let me near it.’
‘Honey,’ he bumped her on the nose with a finger, ‘you wouldn’t be able even to sniff it. No way you could actually drink it.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘That right?’
‘Thass right, baby.’
She looked around. ‘Where’s Adam, sweetie?’
Paddy said, ‘He’s in the gutter.’
‘Okay,’ she said. She turned her face to Jimmy’s, an inch from him. ‘Are we fine with that? Our son is in the gutter.’
‘Looking at the stars,’ said Jimmy. They kissed. Then he put a fig in her mouth.
I’m in the middle of a romantic comedy, Paddy thought. And not just this pair. He looked around. Greeks were a fairly short race. Shortish and homely. He meant it kindly. They’d discovered the mind. He always thought well of them because of their ancient achievements, even Gorzo. The men were a bit beetly. Hirsute. He thought again of Elizabeth Bishop’s begonia.
He caught his mother’s eye at the head of the table and they raised glasses to each other. She hadn’t moved from her position. She looked content. Beside her Mrs Gorzo may have been asleep. But then the old woman roused herself again and appeared to be speaking to Teresa, who leaned close to listen, nodding and smiling, looking into the centenarian’s face. Of course maybe nothing had been said; the pair had simply mimed it all. Paddy didn’t think Mrs G looked any older than the last time he’d seen her, when she was in her eighties.
He excused himself and moved along a few seats, to sit next to Ellie. Over the years he’d met her only a few times and always by chance, in shops, once coming out of a cinema with a group of women friends. They’d talked only briefly, always about Jimmy. At once, she stood to greet him, putting out her hand. He took it in both of his and thanked her for the invitation. It was a wonderful party, a privilege. No, she said, the privilege was theirs, to be able to share their mother with so many kind and brilliant people. They sat again and looking down the table in Jimmy’s direction, Ellie said, ‘So happy. She’s a lovely person. And Adam, have you met the boy?’
‘Really liked the whole family.’
‘Bit of a shock, but now—’
‘If it works.’
‘Sure, it’s what I said to Tony. Only now we’ve got to call him James. Sorry, no.’ She laughed. She looked tired. Most likely she’d shouldered a good deal of the organisational burden of the birthday celebrations, despite what her husband had said about all his work. ‘For me, I told him. It’s too late. If you’re going to change your name, do it earlier please. I’m too old to start having to remember a new name. A funny thing is Tony doesn’t mind now. He says he can call him anything Jimmy wants. The most important thing is to keep calling, keep calling. We know who he is. If he decides to be Ringo or Tonto or something, we know who this boy is. It’s Jimmy Gorzo. Anyway. He’s got his life now, the full package, as Tony says.’ She drank some wine and, noticing he wasn’t drinking, poured him some in a fresh glass. ‘Cheers!’ she said. ‘Yiamas!’ They knocked their glasses together.
‘Ah, Patrick,’ she sighed. Her eyes were prickling with tears.
‘I know, I know,’ he said.
The children who’d been playing in the free lane were being rounded up. The lane was needed for something. Beefy young men, still beetly, began carrying sound equipment forward, arranging the boxes, readying an assault.
Ellie shifted back in her chair and looked towards the top of the table. ‘Here’s something.’ She gestured towards Tony’s mother.
‘What an incredible achievement,’ he said.
‘Oh, a hundred years of course. Yes but also the two of them together. Look at this. It’s incredible, Patrick. Yaya has lived in New Zealand for, I don’t know, almost sixty years, and never speaks English. Never. A lot of people say, oh but she understands everything. Mmm. I know her very well, I think.’ She took another sip from her glass.
‘And what’s your feeling?’
‘A lot of what’s going on, she doesn’t understand at all and has no interest in knowing! See, always in her mind, there was this idea she’d go back home, to Greece. She was here temporarily. But she never did go home. And she never learned English. She speaks the Greek of her village, in the thickest accent. She comes from a tiny place outside Patras, in the west. A lot of these young people here have no idea what she’s saying, and she really doesn’t understand them either. With Tony and me, with Jimmy, we’ve built up communication, and a few others who’ve known her a long time, but it’s a small group. Yet here is your mother.’
‘The Greek phrases written on her arm.’
‘Can you believe that? I was so touched. I mean, no one knows Greek but the Greeks, and a few old Classics professors in the university. We’re only a step up from Portuguese, also at one time a great nation. But I’ve got to say, your mother’s
gesture, that meant nothing to Yaya. I mean, she doesn’t see very well but even when we explained, it didn’t go in. No, it’s strange. Nothing to do with talking, a language, I mean. It’s just a—connection, I don’t know. You’re the expert, Patrick. You tell me. Anyway, Yaya won’t let her leave!’
They looked along the table again. Everyone else had left now. The two women weren’t saying anything to each other but they sat close, absorbed in each other, if that could be guessed at, and they seemed always on the point of confiding, readied in intimacy.
‘You can’t see it,’ said Ellie, ‘but Yaya has her walking stick hooked over your mother’s leg. Twenty minutes ago, I went and asked your mother if she wanted to move around, to leave the table, she could do this, no trouble, and I’d sit with Yaya. But she said she didn’t. She wanted to stay there, if it was okay. She likes this, I don’t know. Do you think she’s okay? She’s happy?’
‘She would say if she wasn’t. I think this suits her very well.’
It occurred to him then why Teresa was like this. It was the closest she’d allow herself to be celebrated, fêted, paid attention to. That it was happening without it happening was perfect. It wasn’t her party. Yet she was at top table. She was a prisoner there. She was stuck, couldn’t move even if she wanted to. Ah, and to be fair Patrick Thompson, she didn’t want to.
The trestle tables were being dismantled, and behind a pile of speakers the DJ, clearly one of the diners, about twenty years old, in his white shirt, tie, black trousers, now put on a baseball cap and addressed the dials on his console. Paddy and Helena had retreated into a small alcove along the wall from the trophy cabinets, though at Table One, his mother still sat with Mrs Gorzo.
He leaned into Helena, pressing his knee against her leg, feeling tremendously horny, possessive, zingy from the sweets. Her bowling shoes may have been bedroom slippers. He rested his chin on her shoulder for a moment.
‘Hello you,’ she said.
‘Helena of Troy,’ he said.
‘I don’t really know that story.’
‘A woman drives everyone crazy.’
‘The wooden horse.’
‘Forty men inside a wooden horse.’
‘You’re always trying to find a way of describing me. I’m a bee, I’m this or that.’
‘It’s true. How shall I compare thee.’
‘Did you have the figs?’
‘Of course, I love figs.’
‘Very sticky, weren’t they.’
‘Exceedingly.’
She laughed and bit him on the nose quickly. He straightened and they looked out at the room. A dance was being organised. People were being drawn up out of their seats, some unwillingly, and they were forming a long line, everyone holding hands. A few boys ducked under the line and ran out into the night, laughing.
‘Do you think we can sneak out too?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Smoke a cigar. Celebrate.’
‘Celebrate, I like.’
‘You never told me you fired Dora.’
‘Fired? Her contract had finished, that’s all,’ said Helena. She looked at him. ‘She was terrible at it. Data entry.’
‘I’d rather be locked inside a wooden horse.’
A young woman was in front of them, smiling, holding out her hand to Helena. She was part of the line, now trying to shape itself into a big circle, though the division between each bowling lane made this awkward. ‘Kalamatiano!’ she said. Music had started and the girl was tugged. She shrieked and grabbed Helena’s hand.
Helena turned to Paddy. ‘Kalamatiano!’
‘Speak to me in English,’ he said.
Helena grabbed his hand. ‘Kalamatiano!’
He stood firm. ‘No really, I think I ate some of that already.’ Then they were both yanked forward.
There was a step, a twelve-step in fact, though he never got it, at least not in the timing that was required. Beside him Helena was rapidly expert. On his other side an older man grinned encouragingly and tried to show Paddy, but it was useless. It was wonderfully useless. ‘Sorry!’ he kept saying to the man. ‘Sorry!’ But the man didn’t seem to mind. ‘I’m a cretin,’ Paddy shouted at him.
‘Which town?’ shouted the man.
Paddy tried to put him right.
‘It was a joke,’ the man called out before he was whisked off.
Helena was laughing hard, calling out instructions he couldn’t hear. The circle turned with the music and Paddy tried to keep up, skipping and stepping. There were figs in the gutters of the lane, they stomped in their soft slippers on flakes of pastry.
People shouted and clapped. Across from where he was, he saw Tony dancing. He’d not talked to him since they’d first come in. He should go over, he thought. But how? Tony was caught up. The patriarch danced with determination. On either side of him, his son and his daughter-in-law were lifted and dropped by Tony’s exertions. They were almost having their arms yanked off. He was treating them both like weights, they went up and they went down on the movements of his arms. Up and down they went. Up and down.
And in a booth at the far end of the room, half watching, in utter stillness, very close together, sat Tony’s mother and his mother.
Paddy tried to wave but he didn’t have a free hand, the circle claimed him, threw him this way and that. He submitted. It had a mind of its own.
10
A few days later he had a call from Alan Covenay asking for a meeting. Angela would be there too, but not Sam. They could come at any time that was convenient for Paddy. Immediately Paddy felt guilty. There should have been some kind of exit interview and a new feeling gripped him that nothing really had been sorted with Sam Covenay. For a start, none of the paperwork was done. There was the refund. He’d get on to that. He supposed he’d been hoping that the Covenays would fade away. But of course here they were again. Were they going to confront him with the whole chase episode? He apologised and told the father that he should have called them. ‘No,’ said Alan, ‘there was no need for that.’
The following afternoon they arrived at the apartment.
He found himself being kissed in greeting by Angela. It was the first time this had happened and he wondered whether it was connected again with the kissing that had taken place the day his mother had been brought to the apartment by Geoff Harley. Or a celebratory kiss perhaps? Except they both looked tired and drawn. The kiss was only to revive herself, he thought, to generate the feeling that was missing. He shook hands with Alan, and saw he was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper: his picture. There was a slight move on Alan’s part to give Paddy the package then but he moved it away again, a little behind his back, on some quick glance Angela gave him. Not yet.
Rather than using the office, Paddy took them upstairs to the living-room and made tea. He hoped here to set a new note, with the business removed as far as possible from the bad old days of Sam slumped in the chair by the door.
Angela was looking out the window. She told him the view was surprising; they were higher than she’d imagined. Could they see the sea? Only a tiny corner of harbour, he said, from the top room. She could go up if she liked. He gestured towards the stairs and for a moment she seemed to consider it but then she turned back to the window, as if the stairs, all six of them, were finally a little too much. No, it’s fine, she said. Alan went over and stood beside her and pointed out the roof of his workshop. ‘Needs a paint job actually,’ he said. He’d rested the package behind the sofa. They moved there as Paddy brought the tray over.
‘How is your mother?’ said Angela.
‘My mother is wonderful, thank you.’ It was the truth. Teresa had made up her mind not to seek further help—from him or anyone else. He’d supplied her with the contact details of the speech therapist to whom he’d send a referral letter. He’d drafted the letter and shown it to her. She thanked him, read it, said it was an excellent letter, and then she told him she didn’t want to go ahead with any treatment. She’d not seen M
urray Blanchford either. She felt fine, she said. She was sleeping properly, eating normally. She was okay. Do I look okay? she asked him. Yes. Then that’s that. And Pip wanted to get her overseas for a holiday. It looked like happening finally.
Her speech was the same.
He noticed she’d photocopied some drawings from the Petit Nicolas books and stuck them to her fridge. Those, she said, were for Steph’s kids.
At the end of the Gorzo centenary celebration, Mrs Gorzo had wept when Teresa was saying goodbye, but Teresa hadn’t cried.
Angela told him she was so pleased about his mother.
‘Great stuff,’ said Alan.
Paddy dreaded asking it. ‘What I want to know is how is Sam?’
They looked at each other, figuring out who would answer, who was up to it. ‘He’s talking!’ said Angela finally, breaking into a broad smile. ‘He’s speaking again!’
‘That’s great!’ said Paddy. ‘How fantastic.’
‘Yes,’ said Alan, nodding earnestly.
Angela put her hand on her husband’s knee briefly. ‘I mean, we don’t always like what he says—’
‘No,’ said Alan.
‘But, it’s … speech. It’s his voice. And he’s a teenager, you know. Anyway, it’s a breakthrough. Totally.’
Paddy repeated that it was wonderful news.
Angela looked at her feet. Work shoes. Had she got the job? It looked likely. ‘So we feel—’
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