by Kate Hewitt
“I doubt there’s anyone alive in the village who remembers the war,” she’d told her mother. “They’d have to be over ninety, at the least.”
“Probably not. But if you’re really interested, you could do some digging at a local library or historical society.”
“I don’t read Greek, or speak it beyond a few key phrases. I doubt I’d find much.”
“True.” Her mother had smiled and patted her hand. “Perhaps it’s best to let it lie, then. Your grandmother must have had a reason not to talk about it, and regardless of who lived in the house before, at least it’s a place for you to stay. Rest.” Her eyebrows had drawn together. “Regain yourself.”
“I’m not lost,” Ava had said, half joking, half warning. She couldn’t take any more pity, not from her mother anyway. Simon certainly hadn’t shown her any; one of their last fights had started because he’d told her to stop moping.
Moping, as if she were a sulky child. The implication had so obviously been that he’d moved on from the death of their daughter—why couldn’t she? As if it were a choice she was too stubborn to make. Resentment had burned in Ava’s chest and churned in her gut even then, when she was talking to her mother a month later.
Now, standing in the village, the night air crisp and quiet and so very dark, Ava swallowed down the anger, knowing there was no point to thinking about any of it now. She and Simon had surely said all they could say to each other, which in the end hadn’t been very much, and it was that knowledge, perhaps, that hurt the most. Taking a deep breath, she started down the street.
In the darkness every house looked the same: whitewashed stone, tiled roof, painted door. Small gardens shrouded in darkness released the dry, dusty scents of rosemary and lavender, sage and thyme. The narrow street hugged the hillside, then curved sharply upwards, presumably to a street much like it farther up the hill, and perhaps another one after that, zigzagging towards the peak. Her grandmother really had lived in the mountains, or at least closer to them than Ava had realized.
How on earth was she going to be able to find her house? Ava possessed an old-fashioned iron key but no address beyond the name of the village. Somehow, in her vague imaginings, she’d pictured herself arriving in daylight, strolling down a sunny street, chatting to friendly villagers and soon-to-be neighbors in her clumsy Greek; someone would smile and clap their hands as they pointed out the house and everyone would make her feel welcome. It was something more from a romcom than reality, she acknowledged now as she continued making her way down the street, alone in the darkness.
Presumably her grandmother’s house was the one most in disrepair, but she couldn’t make the houses out well enough to know, and in any case there were several that looked less than neat and tidy. She stopped in the middle of the street and listened to a cat—perhaps the thin one on the fence—yowl in the distance. A light switched off, casting the little street into deeper darkness. Ava fought the urge to cry, more from fatigue than sorrow, but the tears felt the same.
It was typical of her that she’d rushed into this whole adventure without properly thinking it through. Simon had always accused her of rushing into things, of being too hasty and emotional. Once she’d brought home a stray dog without consulting him; she’d thrown away her birth control pills with blithe thoughtlessness. The dog had died years ago, and the pills hadn’t mattered in the end, but still. Once upon a time, she’d happily traipsed through life. That felt like a long time ago, but it still seemed she was adept at making poor decisions.
They were a sorry pair, Ava thought sadly, with her own volatile emotions and Simon’s refusal to be even remotely ruffled. It had been his unending, stony silence in the face of their shared loss that had led her to ask for a separation, and then make this move to Greece. Simon might have considered it foolhardy, but Ava had known instinctively that she needed a change, a new start, at least for a little while. Life had simply become too bleak to face.
Gazing around at the darkened, empty street, she decided this was certainly a new start, yet the trouble was she wasn’t sure how to begin.
The squeaky sound of a shutter opening had her turning around. A face poked out of a window in the house opposite, hair swathed in a head scarf, eyes narrowed in suspicion and lost in wrinkles.
“Pos se lene? Stamata!” the older woman demanded. She issued a series of barked commands that had every Greek phrase flying out of Ava’s head.
“Den katalaveno,” she finally managed. I don’t understand. Perhaps the most important words to speak in a foreign language.
The woman’s frown grew even more ferocious. She started to say something Ava knew she wouldn’t understand, then stopped. “Anglika?” she asked, and Ava nodded in relief.
“Yes… I mean ne… Anglika. I’m English. Do you speak English? Anglika?”
The woman shrugged. “Some.”
Better than nothing, Ava thought with both gratitude and desperation. She stepped towards the woman, who was now leaning out of the window, her elbows braced on the stone sill. She looked to be in her mid-seventies, about forty years older than Ava. “I’ve come to stay in a house here,” Ava explained hesitantly. “It belonged to Sophia…” She realized that in her panic and dismay she’d forgotten her grandmother’s maiden name. Helplessly she fished the key, heavy and antiquated, from her pocket and showed it to the woman who gave it no more than a cursory glance.
“Ne, ne. You must be the one who bought the Paranoussis place.”
Paranoussis! Yes. Ava remembered her grandmother’s name, and she nodded almost frantically. “Yes. That’s right. Sophia Paranoussis is—was—my grandmother. Do you know where her house is?’
The woman nodded, alert now. “Your grandmother, ne? One moment.” She closed the shutters and emerged a few seconds later in the doorway of her house, a sweater now draped over her rounded shoulders. She called back into the house to someone in Greek and then turned to Ava. “I am Eleni.”
“I’m Ava.” She reached out to shake Eleni’s hand. “Ava Lancet.”
“And your grandmother, she lived in Iousidous?”
Ava nodded. “A long time ago. She left right after the war.”
“As did most the village’s young,” Eleni said with a sigh, although if she’d been alive then, she would have only just been born. “Come.”
Ava followed the older woman down the darkened street past half a dozen shuttered houses. It was hard to tell whether they were lived in or not, although Ava saw a few cars parked on the street. She strained to hear something other than the rustle of the wind in the trees and the crunch of pebbles under their feet, but there was nothing. All around them the village was dark, silent and still.
They walked quietly for just a few minutes before Eleni stopped in front of a house perched in the sharp curve of the street that twisted up farther into the hills and the darkness. Even without the benefit of street lamps, Ava could tell that this house was clearly a bit more dilapidated than the rest. One peeling shutter hung askew and the lightless windows and weedy garden gave every indication that no one lived there, or had lived there for a very long time.
“Here it is,” Eleni said, and Ava stepped forward.
“Wonderful, thank you,” she murmured. She fit the old key into the lock as Eleni watched, clearly curious about the Anglika who appeared to have come to live in a falling-down farmhouse sight unseen. The key stuck, and Ava jiggled it for a few alarmed seconds before it finally turned. With a creaky sigh of surrender the door opened, and she stepped into her grandmother’s house.
2
Now
The house smelled old and unused, the air damp and musty. It smelled, Ava thought, forgotten. In the darkness all she could make out were a few bulky shapes, and she fumbled for a light switch that she assumed—or at least hoped—was by the door.
“Here.” Eleni reached for it, and the click was audible and dispiriting in the darkness, for nothing happened. Eleni made a grunt of disgust, and Ava felt the panic t
hat had skirted around the edges of her mind now swamp it completely.
“I arranged to have the electricity turned on—” Her voice, she heard, sounded alarmingly shrill. She’d spent over an hour on the telephone last week, racking up an enormous bill, attempting to communicate her needs to the local electric company. She’d thought they’d reached an understanding; apparently they had not.
Eleni shrugged. “It is not the Greek way.”
“What isn’t? Light?” Ava fought down the urge to start laughing hysterically, for that would surely only give way to tears. She was exhausted and emotionally drained and she just wanted something to work. She desperately needed sleep. And yet here she was in a lightless house that clearly—from the smell alone—was not fit for human habitation.
Once again she’d been absurdly impulsive and chased a dream, just as Simon had always accused her of doing. She’d thought something difficult and improbable would be if not exactly fun then at least doable, and here she was in a place like a pigsty, realizing, just as Simon had always said, that life didn’t follow her heedless fantasies.
No, it most certainly did not.
“It is not the Greek way to do things quickly,” Eleni explained, her voice calm and surprisingly soothing. “Especially as you—the owner—were not here. We Greeks, we like to talk and look and maybe have a drink before we do anything.” She smiled. “We get things done in our own time.”
Ava drew in a steadying breath. “I see.”
Eleni withdrew a torch from the pocket of her trousers and flicked it on; the narrow beam revealed a room appalling in its unfinished state. A few rickety wooden chairs and a warped low table were the only furniture. Ava had been planning to buy some new things anyway, but the stark barrenness of the place still shocked her, even though she realized it shouldn’t have. From England she had been determined to turn it all into an adventure. A house in Greece! In a tiny village, so picturesque! Her best friend, Julie, had said she was envious. Her boss had told her it sounded perfect. Ava had pictured herself here as if on holiday, sipping thick Greek coffee from a tiny porcelain cup at a small sidewalk café, or in her lovely little garden, planting pots of trailing bougainvillea and clematis, maybe an orange tree. Healing herself with these small kindnesses, tender acts of mercy for her own soul. In light of this absolute hovel, it all seemed ridiculous. Her adventure was a joke, or worse, a catastrophe.
Her gaze moved slowly around the room now illuminated by the thin light of the torch, taking in the sticks of old furniture, and then the floor, thick with dust, the stone walls begrimed with smoke and dirt. It was awful. Really, really awful. And unlivable, at least as far as tonight was concerned.
Eleni clucked her tongue. “It needs a good clean.”
“You could say that,” Ava managed to reply. Silently she wondered whether it needed to be torn down and a new house needed to be built in its place. She forced herself to smile. “I suppose I should have considered something like this happening,” she said, trying to keep her voice bright, as if this were nothing more than a mild and even amusing inconvenience. “The solicitor mentioned that it hadn’t been lived in for sixty years—”
Eleni clucked her tongue again. “Half the houses in this village haven’t been lived in for that long,” she said dismissively, and Ava wondered if any of the others might be in a better state than this one. Perhaps she could trade. “At least this one has been modernized,” Eleni added, although Ava begged to disagree. Nothing about this place looked modern. Eleni tapped her foot against the floor and flicked the useless switch again. “Tile floor, electricity. And a kitchen and bathroom. All that would have been added after the war.”
“Really?” Ava knew she had no real idea what life had been like here seventy years ago. She’d assumed, naïvely, she saw now, that life in rural Greece wouldn’t have been that different from that in, say, Dorset. Her mother had warned her, but Ava had ignored the warning, just as she’d ignored anything that didn’t fit into her plans, because she’d been so desperate to go. She swallowed. “What would the house have been like then, before the additions?”
“Dirt floor and no kitchen. That was the kitchen.” Eleni gestured to the fireplace, which took up most of one wall. “And the toilet—outside. What do you call it?”
“A privy?”
Eleni nodded. “Yes. And no electric, of course. No running water. So, yes, it is modern. Lucky for you.”
“Indeed,” Ava murmured. “The solicitor mentioned that some minimal repairs were done over the years.”
“Yes, everyone thought it strange. People always wondered who kept this place. If they would ever come back.” She slapped one wall, the way you might slap the flank of a cow or horse. “Well, with the electric and water, a bit of whitewash, it should not be so bad for you. You will stay?”
“I’m hoping to,” Ava answered, although she felt that Eleni was a touch more optimistic than she was. She glanced at the empty room cast into looming shadows by the torch’s thin beam and wondered whether she should sleep on the dirty floor, or if the upstairs might be more promising. Perhaps she could sleep in the car. Or could she face the prospect of finding a hotel at nine o’clock at night, in the middle of nowhere? She’d seen that a fair-sized town, Lamia, was about ten kilometers away, but she didn’t know if that black dot on the map meant a big enough town to have a decent hotel, or even a shop. Perhaps it was more or less the same as Iousidous—dilapidated and forgotten. It was just one more thing she hadn’t bothered to check, yet now she felt she’d sell her soul for a soft bed, a hot bath, and a glass of wine.
None, she knew, would be forthcoming. Despair, all too close an emotion for the last year, flooded through her again. Tears rose and she blinked them back fiercely. She’d agreed to this adventure. She just had no idea it would be like… this.
Then, to her surprise, Eleni patted her arm. “Do not worry. You cannot stay the night here with it like this. It is not fit for pigs right now. Come back with me. You eat at my house. You sleep there.”
Eleni spoke firmly, and Ava knew her offer was genuine. Yet to sleep in a stranger’s house? She felt both humbled and uncomfortable. This was not how things were done in England. “I couldn’t—”
“And what else will you do?” Eleni asked practically. She swept an arm towards the grimy room, as depressing on second glance as it had been on the first, or even more so. Ava saw there was some kind of animal’s nest in the wide hearth and she swallowed audibly. “You cannot stay here,” Eleni insisted again.
“I know, but—”
“Come.” Smiling and shaking her head, refusing to listen to any more protests, Eleni ushered her outside again.
Eleni waited while Ava locked up, and then led her to her own house, the same kind of low stone building with a terracotta tiled roof and a painted door, yet in every other way completely different. The small garden was neatly tended, pots of rosemary and thyme sat on the wide window sill, and inside warm lamplight illuminated a comfortable sitting room with a worn sofa and a couple of chairs by the fireplace, each piece draped in hand-embroidered covers. The warmth enveloped her as she stepped inside.
“You must eat,” Eleni said, and went to the small kitchen at the back of the house.
“You’re really too kind,” Ava called out. She felt both grateful for Eleni’s spontaneous generosity and annoyed at herself for getting into such a predicament as this in the first place. She should have checked that the house was ready. She should have booked into a hotel while she fixed it up. It seemed so obvious now, and yet in England all she’d been able to think about was getting away. She hadn’t wanted to consider delays or dangers; she’d just wanted to go. To escape. For a little while, at least. So she’d closed her mind to anything that could possibly go wrong and ended up—here.
“So what is an Anglika doing in such a place as this?” Eleni asked. Ava had moved to the doorway of the kitchen and was watching as Eleni placed several little bowls on the small table—olives swim
ming in brine and oil, a lump of feta cheese, some chunks of stewed meat mixed with spices.
“I wanted to try something new,” Ava explained rather hesitantly. “May I help?”
Eleni reached for a loaf of crusty bread and began to slice it with brisk movements. “No, no. You must be tired. Did you drive all the way from Athens today?”
“Yes, I have a rental car for a few weeks. I’m not sure what I’ll do after that.”
Eleni turned to her, one eyebrow raised. “You stay for more than weeks, then?”
Ava flushed. It sounded so strange, to just turn up here with nothing to do, nowhere else to go. “Well, I’m not sure how long I’ll stay,” she said. “But at least a few months, I think.” It suddenly seemed a very long time. What would she even do? She had a little money saved, and surely it wouldn’t cost too much to live frugally in a place like this, but even so, Ava thought Eleni looked skeptical. As skeptical as she herself now felt.
Eleni gestured to the set table. “Come. Eat.”
Murmuring her thanks, Ava went to sit down. “This looks delicious. I can’t thank you enough for helping me out like this. I don’t know what I would have done—”
Eleni waved a hand in dismissal. “This is nothing. And if your grandmother lived in the village, and now you are going to, for however long, then of course I must help you. We help each other here. That is our way.”
“You are so kind,” Ava said, meaning it utterly, and then from the other room she heard the slap of slippered feet against the tile floor. She looked up to see an elderly woman—in her eighties at least—standing in the doorway. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, her hair a silvery-white wispy cloud, but even so her eyes were bright and sharp and dark.
“Ti ine afto?” she asked, and Eleni spoke rapidly in Greek before turning to Ava and speaking in English.
“This is my mother, Parthenope. She has lived here a long time.”