Mothers and Daughters

by Fleming, Leah

  ‘Are you Germans?’ the waiter asked, looking at Paul’s blond hair.

  Connie lashed them with her broken Greek. ‘No! I am Konstandina Papadaki. My mother was Anastasia Papadaki, sister of Stelios Papadakis.’

  But she couldn’t recall the name of the village where they lived. ‘To be so near and yet so far,’ she cried, and Paul held her, making love to her, soothing away the tension from her body with massage and caresses.

  ‘Be patient. We’ll find it.’

  ‘But how? Papadakis is such a common name. There are hundreds of men called Stelios. I have to find him … What if he is dead too?’

  ‘If it’s anything like Grimbleton, all you have to do is spread the word. If you kick one, all of them squeal. The jungle drums will do the rest. An English girl who speaks good Greek is here to find her mother’s family. Wait and see.’

  It was hard to contain her enthusiasm. Every shop they went into she surprised them with her Greek conversation; up the bombed backstreets, where people were suspicious of authority, careful with their opinions and neighbours, she met with silence.

  On the Saturday they found the open fruit market where the farmers from all over the island arrived in donkey carts, and rusty vans brought in fresh produce: live chickens, rabbits in cages, barrels of cheese, olives in brine, oil, wine and raki. It was just as Mama had described all those years ago when the Olive Oils tried to reproduce her stews. Food was the true heart of everything here, Connie smiled.

  Paul staggered down the aisle of shouting hawkers, mesmerised by the colours of tomatoes the size of tennis balls, melons, cherries, bunches of fresh herbs – mint and thyme – barrels of honey oozing golden drips. Connie followed behind in a long skirt and peasant headscarf, eyeing up the stall holders just in case.

  ‘Do you know a Papadakis family?’ she repeated. ‘Anastasia – her sister, Eleni, was shot in the war.’ Faces were guarded and inscrutable to read, pleasant but cautious. No one, it appeared, knew anything.

  There was an older man sitting behind the family cheese stall, selling tubs of mitizithra and hard graviera, yoghurt curds. He was dressed old style in traditional dress, baggy trousers and black knee-length leather boots, a loose black shirt and a lacy bandana wrapped over his head. He listened as he flicked his amber worry beads over and over into his palm. ‘Repeat,’ he said, and Connie brought out her photo of Ana. ‘She was with the Andartes in the hills … a nurse, captured and sent to Germany … You knew her?’ she cried, suddenly excited.

  He tossed his head but said nothing.

  She was almost crying. ‘This is hopeless. Why won’t anyone tell me anything?’ Paul dragged her away. ‘They had a terrible war and then a civil war, Communist against right wing, brother against brother. We don’t know how it was for them. I think, for what it’s worth, he recognised her. I watched his face … Just give them time.’

  They walked along the harbour, looking out towards the lighthouse and harbour wall, watching the sun begin to dip down. They slipped into the shade of the backstreets to admire the ruined palaces and older buildings, through the souk of the leather shops, trying on sandals and bags and belts, sensing the history of this ancient city.

  When they returned to their room there was a message asking them to go to a taverna close to the big indoor agora.

  ‘See, what did I tell you? Bring your photos. It’s a small place after all!’ Paul laughed.

  A man was waiting with a younger one of about twenty, dark with a moustache, both in traditional dress, flicking beads and smoking, eyeing Connie up. They stood.

  ‘Are you Anastasia’s girl?’ the older man said in disbelief.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with pride. ‘My husband, Paul. We have photographs.’

  ‘I don’t need such things. You are like your mother … but the hair. It is English hair?’

  ‘My father’s. Are you Stelios?’

  ‘This is Dimitri, my son … your cousin. We heard there is a girl in town asking questions but today you must be careful, but I can see you are Ana’s girl. We never know if she is alive or die. She never wrote to her mama.’

  What could Connie say? Her mother’s sorry plight was not hers to tell, but she smiled. ‘It is a long story and she never forgot this island. I promised her that one day I would come and find you to visit Eleni’s grave, but I didn’t know the name of her village when she died.’

  ‘It is your village now. Come, collect your bags and stay with us. It is shameful that you live among strangers when family is close by. Come and meet your family. Be our honoured guest, and your husband.’

  There was a pick-up lorry waiting, an ex-military vehicle that they sat in the back of, watching the town disappear into the dusk. The road ran along the coast and climbed high becoming just a sandy lane with olive trees on either side, and then little more than a donkey track into a hillside.

  ‘The British fought their last battle here from those caves,’ Stelios shouted. ‘We hid in the fields, watching the soldiers retreat over the White Mountains and then we saw many of them creeping back as prisoners of war, ragged, barefoot. It was a terrible time but now … times are difficult for us but one day …’

  It felt like the whole village came out to greet them, lining the street, watching as the young couple jumped off their impromptu taxi into the cool darkness of the Papadakis house. They were engulfed in thick brown arms, hugged and welcomed, offered tiny glasses of fiery liquid. In the corner of the room sat a little woman in black who watched over the proceedings.

  Connie was taken to meet her grandmother Eleftheria, and kneeled down at her feet to receive her welcome, overcome with emotion at this unexpected blessing.

  ‘My Ana is come back from the dead.’ She crossed herself three times. ‘God is merciful indeed.’ She smiled a toothless smile looking to the icon of the Virgin tucked in the right corner of the room, and to a sepia photo of three girls lined up against a wall, looking serious. Maria, Ana and Eleni. It was the first photo Connie had ever seen of her mother as a girl.

  A great iron pot of stew appeared, and then another, bread, and a plate of beans in a rich tomato sauce. Paul and Connie tried to do justice to this honour, fearing that many had gone without a meal in order to give their guests the best. Neighbours called in with little gifts of lace and cheese, examining Connie’s hair and her photographs, her family snaps. Her Greek strained to grasp their dialect and speed of delivery. The barrage of questions never ended. What did Paul do? How much did he earn? Who were his father and grandfather? Paul sat back, accepting toasts until he was legless, but by then they had started up the music and the boys were out in the street dancing and he was expected to join in, copying their kicks and moves.

  They were given the best family bed, hung with handwoven drapes, sheets edged with lace and striped wool blankets. Stelios and his wife, Christouli, slept in their children’s room while Yaya slept on a ledge by the fire. Nothing was too much trouble. They told terrible tales of the cruelty of war and how the family had once harboured a British soldier in their cave in the hills.

  They gave hints of how hard it was now under the colonels, but dangerous to protest. Only in the mantinades could they voice their sadness.

  The rest of Connie and Paul’s stay was spent exploring the hills, miles of limestone greenery, cooler, higher up and full of wildlife and the last of the summer flowers. They toured their olive groves, dipped into ancient Minoan remains, visited the cave grottos with their shrines, and swam in the tepid turquoise sea close to Kalives, a little fishing village nearby.

  On the last night of their stay before another farewell feast, Connie slipped away with Yaya to the cemetery, to the Papadakis family tomb standing like a solid stone table sloping down. At its head was a shrine, photographs encased in glass with an oil lamp burning. Here was her grandfather in his dark suit; Eleni; Maria, who died in childbirth. Here they placed the precious photo of Ana, the one she loved best, looking young and relaxed on the allotment and, as was the cu
stom, something personal to give a clue to who she was. By her grandfather there was a button from a military uniform. Connie placed her mother’s nursing badge to show she was an SRN. Now she was back with her family where she belonged. Yaya smiled and took her hand.

  When they’d asked about Ana’s husband, she told the truth and said he’d died in the war. It didn’t matter which one, did it? She had his name and his photo. They knew how she was placed in the Winstanley family and that was enough. She stood among the brown grass, overgrown clumps, wax flowers and other tombs. This is part of me, she sighed. Mama would’ve known this place well.

  ‘I did what you asked, Mama. Rest in peace. You are home and I am home too now I’ve found your birthplace,’ she smiled through her tears. This was not going to be her one and only visit. She would be back. One day I will bring my own family … all of them, she vowed, wondering if she was already pregnant. A baby conceived on Crete … so be it … a new life and new start?

  No matter what happened Anastasia would always be her first-born, wherever she was now. In returning to Crete she’d completed her mama’s circle of life.

  But when will I find the missing bit of myself?

  28

  Zoe, 1970

  Everyone was puzzled when Connie booked herself into a private clinic for the coming birth. The partners’ wives were sniffy. ‘We like to fly the flag for our local maternity unit wherever possible,’ advised Marianne, the senior partner’s wife. ‘I had all my three children there with no problems at all. So don’t worry, babies deliver themselves. Given half a chance.’

  ‘I had all mine at home,’ said Celia, wife of the second in command and next one down the pecking order. ‘It was lovely. We have to be seen to support our surgery and the midwives in the town.’

  And you like to keep yourselves to yourselves behind the great iron gates of Albert Drive, playing bridge with your friends, sitting on charity committees and sending your children to public schools. They meant well, these middle-aged ladies, with their smart clothes and permed hair, but she found them so scary.

  How could Connie begin to explain that she needed the privacy of a clinic where no one locally might see her medical records and deduce that this was not her first pregnancy? Paul wasn’t bothered either way, but she was.

  I really want to deliver out of town, she thought, but said nothing. She was learning fast that being a prospective junior partner’s wife in an established practice meant bending to unwritten rules and traditions, supporting her husband, of course, at every turn, and no complaining.

  Paul was expected to do all the unpopular on-call hours, cover for school holidays. They were expected to live within a mile of the new practice and to respond to emergencies, to be careful with patients socially, to conform to a standard of living, and above all to be seen to be paragons of virtue in public behaviour.

  The honeymoon was over on their return and Connie’s sickness made her condition soon evident. Everyone was congratulating them, but Connie felt panic. It was all too soon, she had hardly taken up her new social work post before she was having to hand in her resignation because no one expected a doctor’s wife to work with a new baby in tow.

  Rosa continued to make slow progress. She was busy crocheting a patchwork shawl of Afghan squares. Joy was already collecting up Kim’s precious baby clothes from her cupboards in bags smelling of mothballs. They were thrilled to bits for her, and if ever there was a time to tell her friends about Anna it was now, but her courage failed. She just couldn’t confess anything to them right now.

  How different this pregnancy was, how public, how welcome. Everyone was giving her maternity clothes, baby equipment and buckets full of advice.

  She did avail herself of a private relaxation class to learn the technique of psychoprophylaxis; learning to breathe in labour while tensing muscles. This time she’d not make a mess of things, this time she knew what to expect and all about the stages of labour and how to react physically to the pain. Everyone thought she was a first-time mum and guided her along as a novice. She took herself swimming and for long walks, and tried to feel excited, but it only made her remember that very first time and all the girls at GreEveryone was puzzled when Connie booked herselfen End House. Where were they all now?

  With Gran’s generous legacy Connie and Paul were able to put a deposit against a mortgage to buy old Dr Unsworth’s farmhouse on Green Lane. It wasn’t far from the new Health Centre premises going up. Even this move was sniffed at by the partners’ wives as extravagant for a newly married practitioner.

  Lane House was a period stone house with a walled garden. Most of its land had long gone for building around it but there was still an acre and a half of trees and outbuildings, which gave it a rural air. Connie had loved it since a child, recalling those Boxing Day gatherings with Diana Unsworth. It smelled of soot and must. It had seen better days, but was a loving family home, shabby and spacious and airy again now that the Unsworths had taken away all the clutter of antique furniture to their retirement house in the Derbyshire Dales. Neville, Joy and the gang mucked in to help Connie and Paul move in, as every time Connie smelled fresh paint, she threw up.

  A week later, Celia and Marianne paid a state visit, eyeing the interior with knowing nods, suggesting they could accompany her to art auctions so that she might collect suitable pieces to fill out the bare rooms. Connie smiled politely, knowing there were no funds left for that sort of luxury. Instead, with Nigel’s help, they furnished the rooms with second-hand pine, an old Chesterfield and gaudy cushions, an Indian coffee table, painting the walls white, and brought a large scrubbed pine table and chairs through a newsagent’s ad. For curtains Connie used old lace hand towels and tablecloths, embroidery and lace reminding her of Crete, and the gift of a hand-woven Cretan rug they hung on the wall like a painting.

  Cynthia eyed this motley collection of junk with interest. ‘You do have an eye, Connie, but I’m not sure what Dennis and Betty Unsworth would have made of it. The white makes all the rooms look lighter. But you must get in a gardener. It’s looking very scruffy out there on the roadside and people will talk.’

  Let them, Connie screamed inside, this is in my house and I’ll do what I please, but she swallowed her fury and said nothing. ‘More coffee, anyone? Pass the mugs across …’

  ‘Don’t you use your wedding china?’ Celia looked with interest at Grandma Esme’s Wedgwood in the cabinet.

  ‘Not on your life! Granny Esme would turn in her grave if I risked those antique cups on these stone floors. They take no prisoners!’

  ‘Then you ought to get fitted carpets. Much easier on the feet and for Baby when it crawls.’ Marianne sipped from the pot mug.

  ‘I rather liked the stone flags with rag rugs on them. It’s traditional.’

  Marianne sighed, ‘But they do have some beautiful Chinese silk rugs in Mason’s … I’ve been telling Charles that we need another one in the drawing room.’

  ‘Rag rugs are fine. The baby will just have to learn to walk quickly,’ Connie smiled, watching Celia wince at the thick pottery and the Nescafé.

  ‘You do know you can get ground coffee in the Maypole? Did you get a percolator in your wedding presents?’

  ‘Somewhere, but it’s still in its box. Paul likes Nescafé and I can’t touch the stuff, or tea, or I’m sick.’

  ‘You might find it useful for your dinner parties,’ Celia said, oblivious to Connie’s reply.

  ‘What dinner parties?’

  ‘Dinner parties help to circulate you around the district, to meet other young professionals, advertise the practice. You’ll meet such interesting people who might be helpful to us, and Paul might find some new friends.’

  ‘But I thought doctors can’t advertise?’ Connie said. ‘I just like suppers by the fire with my friends.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but Paul has to make contacts. I hear you’re very friendly with that flower man and his fancy boy. Is that wise?’ Marianne said, her eyes roamin
g round the room.

  ‘You mean Nigel and Neville. Nev’s my cousin … we’re all family. Nigel helped me design this room, in fact. They’ve bought a derelict barn and outbuildings on the Preston Road. They’re going to go in with Joy, my half-sister, and open a series of design shops and outlets with a café and car park. Just what Grimbleton needs, don’t you think?’ Connie smiled, watching their cheeks flush.

  ‘I see,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s just that we don’t encourage those sort of liaisons.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the two of them go to the Blackie and Donovan surgery.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’

  No, well, I’m sure you didn’t mean to offend. Grimbleton’s a small place. Kick one of us and we all squeal. I don’t expect it was like that in Solihull, but you’re right, we do have to be careful who we mix with,’ Connie said, looking so innocent that Marianne and Celia weren’t sure who had come out on top of the little spat.

  I’m not one of you, am I? Connie thought. I’m too local, too Northern, too common, and I don’t want to join your sort of snobby club. I’ve got all the friends I need in the world, right here. I’ll do my share of wifely duties, but you won’t take me over and turn me into a someone who thinks just because she’s a doctor’s wife she’s somebody’s special.

  ‘You are a lucky girl to live in such a period property. How on earth did you get hold of it?’ Marianne eyed up the large hall and circular stairs with envy. ‘It never came on the market.’

  ‘Connections,’ Connie grinned. ‘Sometimes it pays to be local. Diana was my mother’s friend. She was like an aunt to me, so her mother asked if we’d be interested when Paul joined the practice.’

  ‘Oh, we never knew that, did we?’ Celia looked at Marianne.

  ‘I bet you didn’t!’ Connie smiled as Marianne put on her Jaeger coat to leave.