‘Alexi was busy last night.’ His wife’s words mirrored Takis’s thoughts as she put coffee and water and a few olives beside him.
Takis grunted. ‘As ever. He will grow up one day.’
Katerina snorted. ‘She will, at any rate. When she comes back and finds him absorbed in another. Always he does it! Can’t he see it’s bad for business trifling with their affections for an evening, then on to someone else the next? It is time he was married, I think. He needs to start a family and learn to be responsible for someone other than himself. That will do it.’ She pursed her lips and nodded, the decision taken, their son’s freedom already ebbing away. She continued, ‘It is hard these days, discovering a good girl willing to stay quietly here and work instead of heading off to the city, but I will look around.’
Ah, but what about the thrill of each new conquest, thought Takis, as Katerina departed for her kitchen. The sweetness of their adoring eyes. The softness of their lips. The heady sense of absolute power, of being a lion for the night. Alexi would not find those things so easy to give up.
Takis sighed. He had been like that once, a long time ago. He glanced across the doorway at the tray of tiropita, old memories stirring.
Ellen climbed on, embracing every minute of the ascent, thanking the gods at each step for that ‘ Eighth wanted to share Greek villa – reply immediately’ advertisement on the noticeboard. She wouldn’t even have seen it if she hadn’t been fetching a coffee for her boss. That had gone cold while she rang the extension number and booked the place straight away. She’d had to get her boss a fresh cup with her own money. But oh, it had been worth it. She was here. Here, here, here.
She climbed steadily upwards, entertained by the course of the road. Mostly it was conventional, curving around the cliff, allowing her eyes to feast on purple-bruised hills, the startlingly blue bay water and the steeply wooded slopes opposite. But occasionally it looped inland in a wide detour before surging out to the cliff edge again.
Perhaps, thought Ellen whimsically, the ancient architects hadn’t wanted to spoil the rare patches of flower-strewn grass, so had gone round on their account. She kept to the designated path, not cutting across the loops as the others had done yesterday. Speed in Greece, she thought contentedly, is as unnecessary as a city suit in Heaven. She was filled with the joy of a whole week here instead of hurrying head-down through the rain to another day’s tedious filing of insurance claims and sending off forms in triplicate and going without a cake at lunchtime in order to add a further one pound ten pence to her savings account.
She breathed deeply, savouring the moment, and caught a lingering aroma of last night’s meal. It brought her mind suddenly and without warning to Alexi.
Alexi. Her heart leapt, though she knew she was being ridiculous. Dark-eyed, curly-haired Alexi. Her knight errant outside the mini-market yesterday afternoon and – miraculously – the son and heir belonging to that very Delphini taverna high up on the hill where they had headed in the evening.
It meant nothing, she knew. He was godlike and gorgeous and would have a new love every week. There were plenty of men like that at work, taking devotion as a right, supremely confident in their own masculinity. But she walked slower all the same, hugging herself, remembering the delicious excitement of his Greek words breathed into her ear along with the menu. And English too, as he sat close beside her later under the star-dusted sky, his thigh touching hers, telling her stories of the gods and goddesses who peopled his hills. How, if you trick them into greeting you, you may ask for anything on Earth. How, if they are displeased, they wreak terrible punishments. How you should accept neither their food nor their drink for fear of enslavement. Ellen, more than a little enslaved herself at his ardent attention, hadn’t protested the tales. She was intoxicated with the scents and sounds and tastes of Greece, and thought nothing more likely than that the shining ones still existed. And then Alexi had walked her home, and kissed her under the olive trees, and told her to have a beautiful week.
There had been no need for her blurrily charitable and well-meaning colleagues to sit her down and warn her earnestly about holiday romances ending in tears. She’d known since she first set eyes on him – right there in his arms – that Alexi was as far from her as the sun is from the moon. But still …
Rounding the bend where the road joined the main one from the airport, the sun was full in her eyes, making it difficult to focus on the group of people sprawled on the grass. Locals obviously, from their tanned, olive appearance and the way they seemed to own the patch of ground where they sat. College students maybe, waiting for the bus to the next town. Ellen blinked and shook her head – for a moment, their long, open shirts and loose shorts had looked like robes. Crazy. The very air here played tricks with your imagination. She checked in case Alexi was amongst the students, and was pleased when he wasn’t. He’d still be up at the taverna, then.
The young woman at the centre of the group was curling her lip, almost as if she could read her thoughts.
Ellen blushed. ‘Kalimera,’ she said, trying out her Greek again.
‘Hierete.’ The reply to Ellen’s ‘good morning’ seemed to slip automatically from the supercilious mouth.
Immediately Ellen sensed a change, a sharpening of attention on the part of the group, and a look of absolute fury on the face of the young woman herself. Oh dear. Ellen waved an arm wildly at the view in an attempt to calm down whatever was wrong. ‘Oreia. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said, picking up her pace a fraction.
The Greek girl’s response was to autocratically pat the grass next to her. It wasn’t a gesture that a prudent person would ignore – and looking at the really quite large number of companions the girl had, Ellen told herself she’d been ready for a breather anyway.
‘Tiropita?’ She was being offered one of the triangular cheese pies they were all eating. Ah, that was what she had smelt from below. But there hardly looked enough to go around.
‘Ochi,’ she said with a smile. She even remembered the upward jerk of the head which accompanies a Greek negative. Presumably it was only water that she was pressed to take next, but she politely refused that too. She had no intention of staying here beyond a couple of minutes. Just long enough to show that she was harmless and of modest means, but with friends below in the holiday villas who knew where she was headed. ‘I’ll have coffee at the taverna,’ she explained, pointing uphill.
There is a school of thought that says if you listen hard enough to a foreign tongue, you can understand the gist of what’s said, no matter how rudimentary your grasp of the language. Ellen knew perfectly well now that she was being asked her name, where she was from, what she did for a living, how long she was staying here, why she had come.
‘E de-a-kop-es,’ she answered carefully in Greek to this last question. ‘A holiday. Here in this place because it is so beautiful.’
They were pleased with that. ‘And what do you want?’ she was asked next.
Apart from to stay here for ever? Unbidden, her mind flew to Alexi. His face appeared in her thoughts, weakening her limbs and making her smile. His words of last night came back to her.
‘Thai-e-thela e oreia evdomada,’ she said, stumbling a little over the phrasing. ‘I would like a beautiful week .’
The girl’s companions laughed uproariously as if they knew just what was in Ellen’s mind. Ellen blushed again, which made them laugh all the more.
‘That’s all?’ The Greek girl sounded sceptical.
Just for a moment, Ellen’s lips tightened. It was all right for this pampered Greek girl. Her entire life was probably beautiful. Ellen doubted she would ever have had to mend a fraying hem or darn a worn sleeve in her life. She would never have gone to bed hungry, never have been so cold at night that she’d needed to sleep in a cardigan and bedsocks. All Ellen wanted was one lovely week to treasure when she got back home again. Was that so bad?
She couldn’t help it – she raised her eyebrows and glanced at t
he young men surrounding them, at their obvious devotion.
The other laughed in a lightning change of mood. ‘It is enough,’ she agreed. ‘Enough for a holiday week. Adio, little sister.’
Ellen got to her feet, released. ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Adio.’
She climbed on, feeling glad and free all over again. Alexi and a beautiful week. Well, she would make the most of her holiday, but as for Alexi … she laughed aloud, knowing how unlikely that was. The road broadened, the first of the few houses hove into sight. A black-clad peasant woman was watering tubs of brilliant flowers. Ellen greeted her merrily as she went by.
The Greek girl gathered her party together and swung them down the shimmering road. Occasionally, one of the boys would dart ahead, swarm up an olive tree, and lean down to catch at her hair and distract her. She batted him away, preoccupied. At the bottom of the cliff, she plunged straight into the Dryads’ Pool while her entourage smirked knowingly at each other and spread out on the stone benches to sunbathe, or flung themselves full-length on the pebbles of the tiny bay. ‘Is she there yet?’ she asked, as if only mildly curious.
The long-sighted one turned his head, amused. ‘She arrives.’
She floated, playing with her promise, putting off the moment. She hadn’t expected the girl to see her, had been startled into answering. She had tempted her, taunted her, but the silly child hadn’t even noticed her tricks. Such naivety, such innocence. She scowled up at the blue sky, knowing she was cross mainly because the girl had been so reasonable, had asked only what was easily within her power to give. Little fool – she could have had the Earth – yet all she wanted was a holiday romance to brighten her dreary world, a fragment of Greece for ever in her heart.
The Greek girl knew the taverna owner’s son, of course. She kept an eye on all of them. A beautiful boy for sure, and certainly no hardship to spend a week with. But he did have a tendency to think his life of pleasure was a right. It seemed … unfair. Also just a little unwise of him.
She swirled in the iridescent water, the rainbow cascades along the length of her smooth, tanned body affording her no gratification today. One minute longer. Two minutes. She beckoned to her favourite. No one else, she found to her chagrin, would be right.
‘You know what to do,’ she told him shortly.
‘The young man at the top,’ he answered. He kissed her wrist and raised lightly malicious eyes, a tribute to his position with her. ‘But can you manage without me?’
‘Ah, I miss you already,’ she said extravagantly. And she did. She was not accustomed to doing without. Somebody, somewhere, ought to pay. Not the girl, of course, there were rules. But the boy … As she brooded, she remembered the first small strand of thought that had escaped the English girl’s mind when asked what she wanted. Now that had possibilities. Her lips curled into a tiny smile.
Takis’s eyes held regret as Alexi’s English girl from last night came into view. So pretty, so carefree and willing to please, so soon to be disappointed. ‘Hierete,’ he replied to her cheerful ‘Kalimera’, ‘What can I get you?’
Coffee, please – Nescafé – she answered predictably, and a plate of those tiny cheese pies, and wasn’t it beautiful this morning? She wished she could stay here for ever.
Takis stood still. ‘Tiropita?’ he said slowly. ‘I have none ready.’
‘Oh, you haven’t sold them all?’ she cried.
‘You are the first customer this morning,’ he said, meticulously accurate. He picked up the empty tray from the table by the door.
‘But I met a whole group of people down the road. I was sure what they were eating was from here. It looked exactly the same as your food yesterday.’
Takis sat down abruptly, the tray dangling from his hand. ‘You met them? Did you speak with them at all?’
‘A bit.’ The girl was looking at him curiously.
‘Nescafé,’ roared Takis into the interior.
Her eyes were searching the taverna now. She stretched up to touch the swinging sign. ‘Taverna Delphini. The Dolphin. How lovely. Alexi said the dolphins swim in your bay sometimes?’
‘Alexi is a romantic,’ said his father, drily and again scrupulously accurate. ‘Ah – these people – there was a girl, yes? Classical looking?’
‘Yes, yes there was.’
‘She didn’t – promise – you anything?’
‘Promise? No. We just talked. Is – um – is Alexi …?’
Takis took a breath, ready to frame the excuses for his son’s behaviour that had served best in the past, when he was stopped dead by the sound of slapping feet on the taverna’s outside steps.
Alexi, hurtling down from the upper level, had eyes for no one save the blushing English girl. He was bare to the waist, one hand still buckling the leather belt that held his jeans in place. ‘Ellen,’ he entreated her. ‘One moment, you wait, yes?’
As he passed, Takis caught a glimpse in the dark eyes of a bewildered, barely awake boy, swept along by events way beyond his control. In another minute he was back with coffee for them both and a plate of fresh tiropita, drawing the delighted Ellen to a table overlooking the bay.
Katerina emerged at Takis’s back, all solid amazement and disbelief. ‘Up before nine in the morning?’ she said. ‘Is he ill?’ And then, ‘She is the same girl as last night! See how he looks at her!’ And in a different voice again, ‘I noticed her hands yesterday. A hard worker, that one. Not Greek, of course, but a biddable girl, I think, and eager to learn. Does she have money, I wonder?’
Takis, watching Alexi kissing the girl’s wrist, and recalling, in half-forgotten gestures, certain events thirty years or more past, hardly heard her. He knew with grimly humorous certainty just what had befallen his son. And he wondered how long it would be before Alexi himself started putting the triangular cheese pies in the oven of a morning. It is a strange and awesome experience, sharing your body with an Ancient. Takis briefly envied Alexi the frenzied whirl of his thoughts, the golden hours he would spend with her whilst other folk slept. It is not a time one ever forgets, a week spent wondering frantically whether you will ever be free of it, the rest of your life wishing it would return.
Ellen thought of nothing beyond the sparkling sea, the scent of flowers, the morning sunshine, and the heady promises in the eyes of the young man opposite. She had strayed inside the fringes of paradise and had fallen fathoms deep in love. She heard Alexi’s words of courtship and devotion and visas and an uncle in the immigration department, and she doubted no more than he that everything was now possible.
It was entirely likely that both of them were going to get rather more than they’d ever bargained for.
Waiting for Take-off
Caroline Dunford
‘Your life is not over. You’re only twenty-seven. Today was meant to be your wedding day. So what? Narrow escape, I say!’
‘So let’s not tell the entire airport,’ I begged.
Julie pushed her huge black sunglasses further up into her chestnut hair and regarded me with her hands on her slender hips. ‘I’m happy,’ she said, ‘to take you to my favourite island hideaway, but not if you’re going to spend the whole time hanging around with a face like as a government minister caught fiddling his expenses. We are going to par-tay!’
She gyrated her hips, making her long, colourful Indian cotton skirt shimmer. More than one man turned his head to look at her. One of them walked into a bin and only just saved himself from falling in. She flashed him a charming smile. He blushed furiously and hurried off. ‘Idiot,’ she murmured.
Despite the fact that Julie oozes sex appeal and charm she manages to keep her female friends by her fanatical adherence to ‘girl power’. She is of the mind that men are only good as playthings and can never be trusted in the way a woman can. So it was hardly a surprise that when I discovered that Lewis was cheating on me with his secretary – such a cliché – that while my other dispossessed bridesmaids came round with boxes of tissues and tubs of ice-cream, Juli
e brought plane tickets.
‘Taxi’s waiting,’ she had said, and gone straight for my wardrobe. She packed a carry-on bag full of undies, bikinis, shorts, and a couple of those dresses that look better for having been rolled up, and before I had time to say more than ‘my toothbrush’ to which she had responded ‘buy one’, we were in the taxi on the way to the airport. I was still saying, ‘I can’t,’ when we reached the terminal.
Julie paid the taxi off, took me inside, and sat me down at a coffee bar. ‘Look, listen to me for ten minutes and then if you honestly want to go back to the “snuffles and getting fat on ice-cream brigade” you can. She took a long swig of her cappuccino, wiped the foam off her lips with the back of her hand in a way that was both workmanlike and vaguely slutty, and said, ‘Lewis is an arse. He is a grade-A arse for cheating on you. He is a grade-double A arse for rutting with his dumpy little secretary when he had you. He is a triple-grade A arse for …’
‘I get it. Lewis is an arse.’
‘Yes, he is.’ Julie sighed. ‘But he is not a reason for you to mope and pine. None of this is your fault. Do not give away your power to the arse!’ She punched the air. This last sentence was delivered loud enough for several people to look around. ‘Arse! Arse! Arse!’ said Julie loudly. A mother got up and took her child out of café. An older couple muttered into their teas and the spotty youth behind the counter positively drooled.
‘For heaven’s sake, shut up!’ I hissed at her, but I could feel myself smiling for the first time since I had cancelled the wedding.
‘That’s better.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘I’m not suggesting you come with me and attempt to shag your way across the island end to end. I know that’s not your style. But some time in the sun, on the beach, admiring the locals, and maybe having a tiny wee fling? It’s got to be better than moping. You have to get over what he’s done.’
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