A Handful of Pebbles

by Sara Alexi

  ‘I tell you what I find tricky about having a foot in so many countries—the tax. Because I have a house here in Greece, I must file a return even though, officially, I am a UK resident for tax purposes,’ Helena says.

  ‘The same for me,’ Laurence rejoins. ‘I did live in London once, just briefly when I qualified. Bought a flat; thought it was the right thing to do. Rented it out when I moved back home, but I seem to get endless letters from the letting agency, and I have the rental income to declare. Get a tax accountant, that’s my answer. All the post goes to him now.’

  Joss says something about his Green Card and Sarah’s gaze drifts to some people watching. Families with small children sit nearest to the open area in the square, their children tentatively venturing away from them with balls or tricycles. Round the back of the plane tree sit couples absorbed in the moment. She is aware that she is vaguely looking for the shepherd, but as she becomes aware of this, she rebukes herself, firstly because there is no reason for him to be here and secondly, what is it to her where he is? She lets her thoughts drift. It is strange to see no variation in hair colour; everyone’s dark, the women with the occasional gleam of red, dark and shiny. Men and women alike seem to have a dress sense that screams confidence in their appearance, the women coordinated, high heeled. If they walked down Strand Street, they would look, well, very overdressed. A bit tarty perhaps, but here in the sun, they look like birds of paradise.

  As if on cue, a sparrow flies down from the tree and hops along the ground. Now, she sees, there are many of them busy clearing crumbs, some bold enough to sit on the backs of seats, others waiting expectantly under the tables. A cat lazes under a chair with no interest in either birds or leftovers.

  A dog barks and Sarah turns to see a Husky at the feet of one of the coffee drinkers. The owner is leaning over, his shoulder-length hair flopped forward, his hand on the back of its neck pushing down so there is no choice but for it to lay. The poor thing must be so hot in this weather. The owner of the dog talks to it before straightening and just for the briefest of seconds, as he flips his hair back, Sarah sees Torin. Her thighs tense and she sits up straight. His dark hair, the straightness across the shoulders, the way he moves his head to settle his hair. And then, as quickly as it arrived, the illusion is gone and the dog owner is a Greek stranger again.

  It’s been a while since she has thought of Torin. She is not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. They don’t talk of him. She doesn’t want to upset Liz, and Liz probably doesn’t want to upset her. But really, it has been twenty-nine years. They should speak of him with ease by now.

  ‘I saw someone today who reminded me of Torin.’ The pool is deliciously warm by the time the sun disappears behind the fig tree. She is drying now in the evening’s residual heat, which is warm enough for her to lay there in her bikini. The husbands have gone for a walk, the boys have left for a mesimeri—siesta—before heading out with a young group of Helena’s family to the nightclubs along the coast road out of Saros town that open late and don’t close till dawn. Sarah and Laurence have not been invited.

  Liz spins the lilo around to face her.

  ‘Just for a moment, I thought it was him,’ Sarah muses.

  ‘I see him all the time.’ Liz pushes herself away from the edge with her toes. Her retro swimsuit really suits her.

  ‘Do you? It’s an odd feeling. Inside, my love is exactly the same for him. I suppose it’s because he hasn’t changed. He is still twenty.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Liz replies.

  ‘It’s funny, well not funny, strange maybe, that if it wasn’t for Torin, our lives would be so different.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Torin, we would probably be married to some dead-end bartenders in Cork or somewhere.’ She refers to a time when Liz was proposed to in one of the new bars in Cork. They took the bus there one Saturday as schoolgirls. ‘To get coloured paper from Bowen’s for an art project,’ they told their mums, and then spent the day trying one licensed place after another until they returned worse for wear with the bartender’s number, and his friend’s, but without any purchases from Bowens.

  ‘Well, you might be, but I would be married to Torin. Do you want a G & T?’ Sarah replies.

  ‘Do think we would have been any different if you had been my sister-in-law all this time?’ Liz asks.

  ‘No, you would have irritated me just as much,’ Sarah teases. ‘Do want a G & T or not?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Do you need to ask?’ Liz grabs the pool side and pulls hard, sending herself spinning toward the fig tree.

  Sarah returns with two tall glasses filled to the brim.

  ‘You want this on the lilo or are you coming out?’

  ‘Here.’ Liz cups one hand and rows herself to the edge.

  ‘You would have been an aunt to Joss and Finn,’ Sarah muses.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been Joss and Finn, though.’ Liz is now paddling with one hand and going around in circles; her other hand holds her drink.

  ‘True.’ Sarah watches her. She stops paddling to take a sip of her cold gin and tonic, closes her eyes in appreciation, and the lilo drifts off to the other end of the pool with the current from the water filter.

  Joss and Finn or Torin? But of course, she would never have known Joss and Finn to miss them, and the truth is she would never have swapped Torin for two people she had never met. She tips her head back and looks up at the fig tree behind her. Torin would have climbed the fig tree rather than sit under it, discovered all the streets of the village rather than sipping gin and tonic, and probably made friends with a few of the villagers, make everything in their lives seem like it matters.

  Or to be more accurate, he had made her feel that she mattered, and no one has done that since he died. Well, the boys when they were young, maybe Liz before she moved to London, but not ever, if she is honest, Laurence, and definitely not, and it stings to admit it, herself.

  The gin percolates into her bloodstream, distancing herself from her surroundings.

  Other than her boys, the things she has filled her life with since have just been meaningless. She had joined a string of groups after the boys grew up and first Joss and then Finn went off to university. The organic farm helped for a while. Getting her fingers into soil had been so cathartic. She would go along and spend hours digging and weeding, planting and pruning, listening to the hum of insects. The other people were enthusiastic, but no one seemed to understand the marketing side of the business. The women who were just filling in time had annoyed her, which was so hypocritical. The men her own age seem to be directionless; she had very little to say to them. The lack of anyone taking control of the business side of things had the project doomed from the start, and none of them were surprised when the co-op broke up with finger pointing and blame and the land was bought by developers.

  But she kept trying. The beekeeping night course mixed her in with a new set of people and for a while, it was something she looked forward to each week, but as the course neared its end, her fellow students began talking about what they would take next year: lace making, painting, learning Spanish, and the reality that she was finding substitutes for any real meaning in her life closed in on her and so she quit and became almost reclusive.

  ‘Finding substitutes for any real meaning.’ She didn’t really even know what she meant by that. Life had no meaning and nothing she could do could give it meaning.

  The thought takes her right back to the party to celebrate the eighteenth of a friend of Torin’s. She and Liz had spent hours getting ready at Liz’s house. Torin was out taking his driving test and they could tell by the whoops and cheers he had passed.

  It was as if he had changed whilst taking his test from an awkward best-friend’s-brother to Torin the man. Sarah was transfixed by the transformation as he admired her dress. At the party, he told her of his plans to move to Dublin, where there was more to life than there ever could be in county Clare, and it felt exciting. In that one evening, Torin brought re
lief from the thought there was no meaning, to a future full of possibilities. He entertained her, made her laugh, and turned life into an adventure. He said they would take bites out of living together.

  Then all too quickly, he was gone and without him, she was left without power and the questioning re-emerged.

  Sarah blinks against the sun at the sound of voices.

  ‘Hey girls, have you had a good time? We walked all the way up the dry river bed to an ancient pile of stones. It didn’t have anything to tell you what it was, but it was clearly ancient.’ Neville wanders into the garden.

  ‘It says here ...’ Laurence comes up behind him with a guide book Sarah saw on one of the shelves in the bedroom earlier. ‘That it is Mycenaean, so 1500 BC. Can you believe it? And what a relief from the usual oversell. There was not a plaque, not a tearoom, not a gift shop in sight.’

  ‘Anyone getting hungry? Shall we go into Saros again?’ Neville asks.

  The thought is too much effort. It would be less exerting to cook.

  ‘Or I can do us omelettes.’ It is the easiest thing she can think of that Laurence will consider a proper meal.

  ‘Oh, good idea,’ he says.

  ‘Good for me.’ Liz pushes herself off from the end of the pool. She has left her empty glass on the side.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to leave that there.’ Neville strides over and picks it up.

  ‘Laurence, why don’t you get Liz a top up and something for Neville?’ Sarah pulls her wrap around her and heads for the kitchen, marvelling at being outside in nothing but a bikini and a wrap at seven o’ clock at night and for it to still be warm. Laurence pours drinks and leaves one for Sarah on the side before returning outside.

  The place is well equipped and she wants for nothing. Nothing but eggs. She never did make it to the supermarket, but, she guesses, they are bound to sell them at the village shop. Undoing her sarong and crossing it to tie it at the back of her neck converts it into a presentable dress. Grabbing her bag, she hesitates at the gate. Perhaps she should tell them where she is going, but then, she’ll only be a minute or two.

  Chapter 8

  Sarah walks slowly. Why not; it is her first holiday abroad in the sun since they got married. Somewhere, a dog is barking; another answers it and a chain of howls fades into the distance. In the garden next door but one, with the masses of flowers in pots, there is a lady with a watering can, her back turned to the lane, black skirt and jumper, a blue misshapen hat for shade, and pink slippers. Sarah walks past quietly, not wishing to disturb her, her footsteps more sure as she reaches the abandoned house at the corner. It looks forlorn even in the sun, and she wonders if it is for sale. There’s no sign.

  The dog is there again. It runs past her towards the main road, and she follows, turning the corner.

  A voice startles her.

  ‘Hi.’ Sarah jumps.

  ‘Oh Stella, hello. You surprised me.’ Today, Stella wears a belted floral, sleeveless dress. Sarah instinctively likes Stella. Her countenance is open. She moves as if she is capable of hard work, but there is a softness about her.

  ‘Are you settled in now? Everything good?’ Stella asks as they fall into step, heading towards the village centre.

  ‘Oh it’s lovely.’ Sarah replies.

  ‘It is a beautiful house. Michelle, she came for a holiday and now she lives here,’ Stella says. Her skin is darker than most Greeks Sarah has seen, her eyes almost black, and there is a childlike quality about her that is not just to do with her size, but somehow conveyed by her energy.

  ‘Michelle, oh yes, the owner. Did she know Juliet before she came?’

  ‘Oh yes, they are old friends. That is why she came here on holiday. Yia sou Stavro.’ She waves and calls to a boy who passes them on a slow moped, a partly filled crate of oranges gripped in his fist, which is disconcertingly balanced on the foot of one extended leg.

  ‘So if she lives here, does she have more than one house?’ Sarah wonders where Stella has learnt such fluent English but then reflects that many foreigners speak two languages. It is the English who only speak one.

  ‘She has a guest house on Orino Island. Have you been there?’ Stella shields her eyes with her hand to watch the moped negotiate the turning past the square ahead.

  ‘To the island? No.’ Sarah cannot help but wonder if there are any age limits on driving mopeds and motorcycles, as it certainly doesn’t seem so.

  ‘It is very beautiful,’ Stella continues. ‘No cars, no bikes, just donkeys. Yia sou Maria pos paei?’ Stella greets a woman brushing her front steps.

  The thought of no cars or bikes sounds like a slow and ponderous life. ‘I suppose there is a lot of tourism on such an island?’ she states.

  ‘Many tourists, many tavernas and hotels. Also, many houses belong to foreigners,’ Stella chirps. ‘But you are here. You like our village?’ She gesticulates to everything around them with an open hand.

  A man in overalls is on his knees with a bag of tools by the fountain. The men from the kafenio have now spilled out onto the square in the relative cool of the evening, drinking coffee and watching a big screen television propped in the open window of the café. In the dusk, the lights are on inside, creating an inviting glow. The shepherd is not there.

  ‘This is my husband, Mitsos.’ Stella points to the one-armed man as they draw near to one of the tables which is crammed with glasses, cigarette packets, and ashtrays.

  ‘Hello, very pleased to meet you.’ Sarah offers her hand to shake. Mitsos gently takes it but instead of shaking it, brushes it lightly against his lips. It is the action of a content man.

  ‘He does not speak a word of English,’ Stella laughs. ‘Afti einai i gynaka apo tis Michelle.’

  Sarah wonders what Stella has said, recognises the word Michelle and figures she is explaining who she is.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Stella asks. Sarah is still making eye contact with Mitsos and his companions but breaks her gaze to answer.

  ‘Oh, just to the shop.’

  ‘Come, I go there too. It is new,’ she says proudly, and for a moment, Sarah is not sure what Stella is talking about. ‘Well, not new. The old shop, it was hit by a tree, so they built it again. It looks the same but it is new.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sarah’s understanding comes as a sigh, her attention still drawn by the villagers in the square. ‘Everyone here seems so, oh I don’t know, content?’

  ‘Most of them sit and argue or complain when really, they should be happy drinking ouzo in the warm evening surrounded by friends. Yia sou Damiane.’ She taps a man on the shoulder as they pass his table before crossing the empty road. She seems to know everyone, but then, of course, it is her village.

  Three steps take them onto the raised forecourt of the village shop. A woman sits on a chair by the door with her feet up on an empty crate.

  ‘Marina afti einai. Sorry, what was your name again?’ Stella turns to Sarah, who answers her. ‘Oh yes, afti eiani i Sarah pou menei sto spiti tis Michelle.’

  Sarah hears her own name and picks out the word Michelle more easily this time.

  ‘Ah, welcome, welcome. I understand but no speak. Welcome. Marina.’ The woman says in broken English before she pats her ample housecoated bosom as she says her name.

  ‘How do I say hello?’ Sarah asks Stella. She is not sure if the feeling in her stomach is excitement or hunger.

  ‘Yia sou.’ Stella tries to say it in an English accent, enunciating clearly.

  ‘Yia sou Marina.’ Sarah smiles into the shop owner’s face. The woman stands and waddles into the shop. Behind the counter, from floor to ceiling, are shelves piled high with different brands of cigarettes. To the right is a little window that looks out to the raised forecourt with its three drinks cabinets and a rack displaying soil-clogged loose vegetables. A Spanish omelette would be nice. Everything looks so fresh.

  Marina settles in behind the counter. To her right on the top shelf is a row of bottles of wine. Below that is a shelf of knitti
ng needles, dolls, plastic flowers, and playing cards; under that, boxes of stockings and shower caps. Sarah cannot take it all in; the whole place is lined with shelves, including a row that stands back to back down the centre of the narrow space.

  ‘How many days you here?’ Marina’s accent is so strong, Sarah can barely understand her. The sounds sink in and she filters out the words.

  ‘It’s my son’s wedding. He is marrying Helena Plusiopoulos. Do you know her?’

  ‘Ah yes.’ She resorts to her mother tongue. ‘Poli kala, kali ikoyenia me ta hrimata. Poli kala yia to yio sou.’

  Sarah looks blankly at Stella. ‘She says they are a good family.’

  ‘Now what did I come for?’ Stella asks herself and then turns to Marina and they speak fluently for some minutes.

  This gives Sarah time to discover shepherds’ crooks leaning in the corner, dog collars by the biscuits, red and yellow boxed mousetraps on the shelf below the pasta, and a glimpse through a back door onto a flower-filled courtyard across which is a house, presumably Marina’s. A chicken pecks away in the middle at the weeds between the thick flagstones.

  It all seems so much more real here. Closer to nature maybe. She doubts there will be co-ops growing organic vegetables or evening classes on lace making. By the looks of what she has seen, everyone grows vegetables. Every garden seems to have something planted between the flowers; even the lady with the garden filled with potted flowers on her lane has a border of lettuce and some other things growing. There’ll be no time for night courses, what with chickens to feed, courtyards to sweep, and glasses of ouzo to drink.

  ‘She says what do you need?’ Stella touches Sarah’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, er, a dozen eggs please.’

  ‘Do you want village eggs or for the town?’ Stella asks.

  The question feels like liquid gold to her spirit, it pulls her so far from her life back home. Not graded for size or colour, instead whether they have come from someone in the village or a place just a few miles away.