The English Lesson (The Greek Village Collection Book 11)

by Sara Alexi

  'We have lots of time.' Juliet says, with which Toula lets her shoulders drop and gives up trying to think of the word she needs to explain Apostolis.

  Juliet is smiling.

  Generally, her new teacher seems very unpretentious and seems to have a warm heart. But, and she is very aware of this, her biggest attraction to Juliet is that she is not Greek. This is not her attraction as a teacher, but as someone to spend time with. She is not of her circle, or to be more accurate, Apostolis' circle of friends. She could tell Juliet anything and it would not be passed around the tight-knit group she and Apostolis make company with by the end of the day.

  'I used to live in the village. The village you live now.'

  Juliet nods. It encourages her to keep trying with her English although she is tiring already. It takes so much effort to remember the English words.

  'I grew up the village. Also Apostolis. My husband.' She might have told Juliet this over the phone, but she cannot remember.

  Juliet gives her another nod and moves her chair a little into the shade.

  'We are at school together. We work hard, make money. We moved here, Saros town. Now we live in a big house, alone. Next house is no one.' She wonders if she can explain that all she can see in her future is more and more isolation. But as she doesn’t know the English world for isolation, it remains unsaid.

  'Okay. So we are going to do a little work on the past tense,' Juliet says with a brief glance to the vine above her head, which is not doing much of a job of blocking the sun from her eyes. She moves her chair again, then crosses her ankles and leans over to write in her notebook on her knee.

  Toula watches the pen move in squiggles across the page. The weight of her sadness, her constant companion, lifted momentarily when she met Juliet, but now it has returned. It is not Juliet's fault. Of course not. How could it be? It is just how things are, how they have been for years. Years and years. Years and years and years …

  Juliet

  'How did it go?' Michelle holds several stiff bags with rope handles in each hand.

  'Did you leave anything in the shops?' Juliet quips.

  'Listen, a whole summer on Orino island running the hotel made no time for shopping. So what was Toula like as a student? Are you glad you took her on?'

  'Oh, she’s a lovely lady, but with a real deep strain of melancholy about her. I got the impression that she does not feel that she has lived the life she wanted somehow.'

  'Oh dear. So why is she learning English at this time in her life?'

  'English grandchildren. Do you want to eat here, somewhere else, or go home?'

  'Somewhere else, I think. Has she been to England then?'

  'No, her husband is not keen.'

  'She should dump him and move countries like we did.' Michelle closes her eyes as she laughs. It is a laugh of relief. They have both done it. They have both moved on from bad marriages and had the courage to follow their dreams. They can afford to laugh.

  'I am beginning to think living in Greece is making you a bit wild. Talking of which, you still haven't told me if you have decided to contact Dino or not?'

  'I'll go in and pay.' Michelle sidles past Juliet, leaving her bags behind on the table.

  Toula

  The door needs a little shove to open it fully. It was the same last year. As soon as summer has gone, the wood absorbs the sea air and expands. The bottom edge scrapes slightly on the worn tiles. Why Apostolis won't let her get a carpenter to shave a little off the bottom, goodness only knows.

  She takes a final look down the street back at the café. It is strange to have someone to talk to who knows nothing about her and who has no reverence for Apostolis.

  The cat is at her ankles again, nuzzling her for attention. It is not as if it would do any harm to let it in. She can see Apostolis’ point about the cat hair, but it is such a friendly thing.

  The temperature drops as she steps inside. The hall on the north side is the first part of the house to become cold. If it has a chill there, then she knows August has truly passed. These houses get so hot in the summer, but like ice in the winter.

  Looking up the wide wooden staircase, its carved handrail polished with time and use, she wonders if she can manage them today. Usually, she makes herself climb them for the exercise but just now, everything seems different somehow, as if she has lost all will to make any extra effort. Her meeting with Juliet has highlighted for her the feelings she has spent so long trying to ignore.

  Turning away from the stairs, and with a degree of trepidation, she slides the metal concertina gate open and pulls on the shiny brass handles to open the wooden doors into the lift. The floor is tilted at an angle. This is not a good thing, but then, if the first of the rains were to come now, at least the water wouldn’t be able to pool on the lift floor as it did at this time last year. The cat would sneak in and drink from the puddle and Toula would chase it out, worried it might get shut in. In the end, a bowl of milk on the street solved the problem.

  She really must ask the electrician again to try and prioritise this job. Surely it is not safe like this? If only Apostolis would have a word with him, she feels sure he would do it today, as a priority!

  Stepping inside, she closes the gate and hesitates before pressing the button with the scrolled lettering Pano cast in brass relief around it. The word Kato circles a second button. The brass shines in the half gloom. With just a little pressure from her forefinger, the cogs begin to turn; the chains rattle. Her grip on the handrail tightens as the floor straightens and the counterweight begins to move. The wooden cage jerks and begins to lift.

  Apostolis had the lift installed for his mama when they first bought the place. Toula used to run up the steps then. Now her feet stand where her mother-in-law’s once stood and her pace is as slow as the old woman's before her. She never thought she would see the day when she, too, would be that old.

  A rattle of chains and a judder of the floor, and the ornamental crate comes to a standstill, not quite level with the polished wood of the first floor. It has stopped too soon again. Last week, it stopped so if she hitched up her skirts and took a big step she was out, but today, the height is more than she can manage. The room looks odd from this low angle.

  The floor boards, old and dark, waver over the beams, rising and falling like the sea. Time has warped the straightness out of them. The dark wood panelling of the walls and dark wood furniture give the room a heavy feel. The oil paintings around the wall do nothing to lift the sombre appearance. The slices of sun through the louvred shutters only accentuate the stillness. There are very few dust mites dancing in the air. Apostolis likes her to dust every day with a damp cloth. The only colour in the room is from the armchairs that she sewed covers for, oh, over ten years ago now. Apostolis hated the bright fabric when she first did it, but age has dulled them and the flowers are pastel shades now. They are only slightly less dull than the rest of the decor.

  The heat gets trapped in this room with its windows that face south, over the sea. It is like a greenhouse until the cold Northern wind creeps in from the back, chasing the heat out for another winter.

  'Apostolis, are you there?' Her voice sounds muffled by the lift shaft but she knows the acoustics will carry the sound. She listens, but all she can hear is the ticking of his clocks, time passing. She looks at her watch. It is very nearly mid-day. If he does not hear her before the first clock begins to strike, she could be here for some time. Her suggestion that he gets them to strike all at the same time seems incomprehensible to him.

  'Apostolis.' She raises her voice to a shout but she has such little volume these days and not much power to her lungs. She presses the up button hard, and a couple of more times as well, to be sure. The counterweight drops, she grips the handrail, and the floors become more level. Smoothing her skirts, she sits on the first floor as if it is a chair and then attempts to spin around, but it is hard to get her legs up. She is not as supple as she was.

  'What on earth ar
e you doing?' His indignant tone shows no compassion. She stops trying to help herself.

  'I went into the electrician’s today. They say they can come out next week, but if we are going to use it, we should get it working properly and ensure that it is safe sooner.' Toula holds a hand up, inviting Apostolis to help her up.

  'I never seem to have a problem.' He takes his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket and presses the latch to open the silver cover. He looks around the room expectantly as the first clock begins to chime. Toula closes her eyes and waits. The mantel clock is first, but is soon interrupted by the English long-case clock. An ornate Swiss affair joins the cacophony and then the French brass carriage clock adds its more refined tones. One from his study strikes and the skeleton clock in the kitchen joins in. The modern 'art piece', as Apostolis refers to the huge abstract thing on the wall, adds a bass tone.

  Away in the distance, from the floor above, in their grand bedroom and the unused guest rooms, other clocks join in, adding layers to what is already a deafening sound.

  Toula waves her hand at him but he is lost in his orchestral composition.

  'Tolis!' she shouts, edging her words with the coarse accent of the village. He jumps, remembers she is there, and helps her to her feet and then looks at the kitchen door as if to remind her that he likes a snack at twelve. Their main meal is at three o’clock sharp. He then sleeps till five thirty. They have cocktails—or these days an ouzo—at six thirty, after which he retreats to his study till eight. When he comes out, he expects the mahogany table in the main room to be laid with his dinner. Sometimes they watch the television around nine but more often, he returns to his study or goes out, where to she does not know. They go to bed at eleven, which is early for Greece in the summer months. They always get up at six.

  Toula has very little to fill her days with. A girl comes twice a week, on Saturdays and Thursdays, to clean 'properly,' as Apostolis says. Toula wipes a wet duster over the furniture on the other days. The meat and fish for the week arrives on Monday. She lowers the basket from the side balcony and the butcher’s boy fills it with her order. The fisherman only comes if he has caught barbounia – red mullet. Apostolis likes barbounia. The laundry is collected on Tuesdays using the same basket. Up and down it goes on its little electric winch. On Wednesdays, a friend’s daughter makes a trip to the laiki, the farmer’s market, delighting in loading everything into the basket. On Fridays, the laundry comes back clean and ironed.

  Taking lettuce and tomatoes from the fridge and a chopping board from the cupboard, Toula begins to make a salad. Two plates are laid before the clocks all wind and grind to their conclusions.

  The yellow wooden-legged, formica-topped table adds colour to the kitchen and it may be fifty years old now, but Toula loves it for its sunny colour. She used to bake at this table back when they still lived in the village, her children covered in flour, next door’s children running in and out to see if the biscuits were done yet. Then later, sitting at that same table, accounting books spread before her until the early hours of the morning. Apostolis was so grateful at first, before he got involved with that George.

  'Here.' Apostolis breaks her reverie as he sits down and throws a letter onto her side plate.

  'Oh, who’s it from?' Toula looks around for her reading glasses.

  'How would I know?' He tears at the bread. His transition has been from village boy to city boy but at moments like this, he plays the role of the village boy again. Only he exaggerates, accentuates the coarseness in his acting. He is untouchable behind his veneer.

  Glasses found, Toula examines the postmark.

  'Didn't you see it was from England? Surely you know your own daughter’s writing?'

  'I saw your name and paid it no more attention.' His tone is condescending. 'Do we not have any olives?'

  Toula jumps from her seat, feels ever so slightly dizzy and pauses, gripping the edge of the table, her head shaking side to side. When the world steadies, she goes to the cupboard and returns with a glass jar, which she puts on the table unopened. She does not have the strength these days to lever the jars open.

  Apostolis takes the jar and grips it between his knees to open it. His strength has faded over the last few years, too. His shirts hang loose and his belts are all done up on the last hole, the muscles of his youth long gone and even the bulk of his successful middle age withered away. She tears the letter open with a crooked finger.

  'Look, it’s a card! Oh, and Katerina has signed her name, look! We are invited to her third birthday party. Oh my goodness, three already. Darling, can we go? It would be so nice to see where they live, watch Katerina's little face as she opens her present, and we would meet little Apostolis, your namesake, before he is one. Do let’s go?' Toula stands and goes through to the sitting room and takes a silver-framed photograph from the writing desk and returns with it. The writing desk belonged to Apostolis' baba. It is the writing desk that he grew up with in the village. Why does he gather these things around him when, in his business dealings, he makes such a big point of creating space between him and his roots?

  She puts the framed picture of Apostolis the younger, in his mother’s arms in a hospital bed, on the table by the olives and sits down again. Her husband does not answer. He doesn't need to answer; she knows what he will say. There will be unconvincing excuses. He will give reasons why it is not possible just at the moment, and he will promise that they will go in the future. The future she has been waiting for since her daughter moved to a place called Homerton, Hackney, London, four years ago.

  The names alone sound delicious. So foreign, such promise of new and exciting things. Hackney, Islington, Camden.

  'West Minster.'

  'What?'

  'Big Ben.'

  Apostolis gives her a hard stare.

  'Don't they sound exciting, these places? Do you remember when we were young and we had a list of places we wanted to see?'

  'Yes, but then we grew up and we had work to do.'

  'But there is no work now. Why don't we see these places now?'

  'Now we are too old.'

  It is on the tip of her tongue to say, 'You might be, but I am not.' But it would not be a kind thing to say, so Toula helps herself to more lettuce.

  She can hear the crunch of the stalk of the lettuce inside her ears as she chews. The ticking of the clock on the outside. Empty, hollow sounds.

  What if she never sees these places? What if one day, she lays dying and all she can think of are the things she has not done? Places she has not been, people she has not met, nothing in her life except running around after Apostolis. Is that it? Is that her destiny?

  'Coffee?' Apostolis requests and takes the picture of their unmet grandchild and puts it back in the front room. Lines it up with the corner of the desk, parallel to the one of his dead mama.

  Juliet

  'So you have been back a week already.' Juliet tugs on the handbrake. With her eyes screwed up against the sun, it is possible to see through her dusty windscreen that there is only one yacht in the harbour now. Climbing from behind the steering wheel out of the car and back into the heat, the first noticeable sound is the yacht’s halyard clacking against the mast. The boat’s hull is a dirty white and there are towels and clothes hanging on the wire handrail between the stantions. An orange beach towel hangs limply over the boom. It has all the appearances of a boat that is someone’s home, not a holiday experience. Schools of tiny fish nibble seaweed from a rope that trails loosely in the water from a bollard on the quay. The fisherman's boat is not there.

  'I know, life is just spinning past.' Michelle unfolds out of the car and stretches. 'I’m glad I’ve finished cleaning the house though. It feels my own again now.'

  'It doesn't seem like a week since I picked you up from the bus station.'

  'It would if you had spent the week cleaning,' Michelle laughs.

  'Nor does it seem like a week since I met Toula.' Juliet picks her books off the back seat and pus
hes them under her arm before they set off. An English Encyclopaedia, a Greek to English dictionary, an exercise book with a pen clipped on its cover.

  'Do you know what Marina from the corner shop in the village told me?' Michelle asks as they walk side by side. 'She said she grew up with Toula, knew her before her husband started his construction business. Do you know he started it with a loan that he got from the bank that was meant to be used to extend his house? All a bit naughty, from what I heard.' Michelle’s bob needs a trim if she is going to keep it in that style. It is a long time since Juliet has seen it this long. The dress Michelle bought is very similar to her own; light linen, no need to iron.

  They walk side by side with long, easy strides until they come to stop by the side of the road, waiting for what little traffic there is to pass.

  'Well, this is Greece. The law is not exactly black and white. Even worse in the old days, they say.'

  'He deals in clocks now.' Michelle steps out after the last car passes.

  'Do you want to stay in town for lunch today?' Juliet asks, hitching up the sinking books.

  'We could do. I am going to leave you here and I'll see you in an hour.' Michelle hops onto the pavement at the other side and turns towards the harbour-front cafés.

  'You've dropped something.' Juliet bends to pick it up but Michelle is too quick. 'Michelle, that is a military envelope!!'

  'So?'

  'It's from him isn't it? It's from Dino,' Juliet teases but her eyes are wide, asking for information.

  'See you in an hour.'

  Juliet watches Michelle’s outline become unclear in the glare of the sun. There is just the slightest of squeezes around her heart. She is not sure whether it is heartache from the potential loss of her friend. Maybe she is ready to find someone herself. Maybe the tightness is just a trace of loneliness. The idea of love is very seductive. But there are always complications.

  As Juliet passes Toula's door, she can hear clanking and whirring. An involuntary shiver runs the length of her spine and she shakes it off, putting it down to the sudden shade and the sneaky breeze from the north. Soon, she will have to carry around a cardigan or a light jacket. And then a coat in a couple of months as January and February bring the colder weather down from Russia. She will order wood early this year, pay a little more and get the kind that does not spit and burn holes in her rug. A big wood fire with the sofa pulled close and she will remain unmoved until the delicate flowers of spring come to life. If she wanted cold and damp, she would have stayed in England. The cat on Toula’s doorstep lifts its head as she passes.