How Greek Is Your Love

by Marjory McGinn

  We watched him with vicarious pleasure until he finally loped out of the water, shaking himself over the shingle beach. Angus looked about and scratched his chin.

  “The entrance to Hades is supposed to be in a cave around here.”

  When we looked back towards the temple, we could see a bank of rock on the headland in a semi-circular shape, with a deep overhang and all obscured by a thick fringe of bushes.

  Zeffy, fresh from the water, pushed through the greenery as if he sensed its significance and we followed him. There was a long, deep cave under the overhang, shaped like a gummy mouth, but high enough to walk into. It had an entrance of sorts – the remnants of two stubby ancient plinths that must have been part of a wall shielding the cave, which had since disappeared. Zeffy was quick to sniff out the cave wall, stopping at one corner where a round circle of embedded stones seemed to mark out a rim of sorts, filled in the middle with compacted earth, which Zeffy scratched at with little effect.

  “Is that the portal to Hades?” I asked.

  “It’s a small one if it is, but then the ancients were small people, I imagine. Zeffy’s got the scent of Cerberus, it would seem. Clever dog,” Angus said, with a sardonic grin. “Cerberus used to guard the underworld, stopping the living from descending and the dead from legging it. Only demi gods like Iraklis – that’s Hercules – were able to enter Hades and return to the living world again. It was here that Orpheus famously descended to retrieve his wife Eurydice, who’d been killed by a snake. Hades, the god of the underworld, had one condition when he decided to let her leave, that Orpheus wasn’t to look back at her, which of course he did, and she was snatched back into the underworld again,” Angus explained, enjoying his moment of instruction and reminding me how much he once loved teaching.

  “I didn’t know you were into ancient mythology. The things I’m learning about you.”

  “When you come to a place like this it brings all the great myths to life.”

  It summoned other thoughts as well. I remembered that when I’d boned up on Peregrine for the interview, I’d noticed she’d once starred in a modern theatre adaptation of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, to great acclaim. So, Hades was perhaps an emotive link to her past. Clearly, she wasn’t around these parts at present, or maybe a few kilometres ahead of us, if this was really a scene from her disappearance gambit.

  Zeffy was still scratching at the portal. I put him back on his lead for fear he might crack through into the underworld and drag us with him. We didn’t hang about long. Although the patch of undergrowth right in front of the cave was bathed in sunshine, the place had a clammy, musty feel about it and we returned to the shingle beach and then walked back to the car park. A small taverna nearby was closed, with the tired look of abandoned buildings in Greece, as if no mortal had been there for decades.

  “I think our next stop should be Porto Kayio, the second place Peregrine mentioned.”

  “I still don’t believe for a minute she’s down here, Bronte. I’m indulging you because it’s great for you to see all these places, but honestly, that book in the chapel. It’s just a whacky co-incidence.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  He shook his head and we drove off to the next destination. It was slightly more hopeful, a peaceful settlement, nestling by a shingle beach with a stone jetty on one side of the narrow bay and a path leading up over a low gorsy hill. Like everything else here, it was a remote but pleasing outpost. There were a few tavernas and cafes along the beach, though none was particularly busy, as it was still early in the season. We stopped at the first taverna we came to, hungry after our excursion. We had a leisurely meal outside and shared a carafe of wine.

  After lunch, I quizzed the waiter, who spoke reasonable English, about Peregrine and whether she’d come by here recently. I showed him the back cover of her book, with its author photo.

  He considered it a moment and smiled. “Yes, she has been here a few times. And well … this is parakseno, strange, I think you say … wait a moment.”

  Angus raised a quizzical brow at me as the waiter sauntered into the taverna and came back holding a book. He handed it to me. It was another one of Peregrine’s, entitled Fateful Journey, with a woman cresting a sun-drenched hillside dotted with cypress trees that looked like somewhere in Italy.

  “She left this here?” I asked the waiter. He nodded.

  I shot Angus a told-you-so look.

  “Did she say that friends might be coming by?”

  He frowned. “I don’t think so. She left it inside where we keep a few little books near the counter for our clients.”

  “When was she here last, do you remember?”

  He held his hands out a moment and grimaced with the effort of raking his memory.

  “I can’t say. A few weeks ago, or a few days perhaps.”

  Ah, Greeks and their time frames!

  “Which is it?” offered Angus, gently.

  “I have been away for three days at a wedding in Mani and started this morning.”

  “So, she might have come by a day or so ago but you weren’t here?”

  It made no sense. Angus sighed.

  The waiter shrugged. “I don’t know, my friends. I ask someone else for you?”

  “No, it’s okay. Can we take the book? Is that all right?”

  “Yes, you take it and read on your holiday.” Then he marched off to take another order.

  “Are you collecting all her books, Bronte?”

  “You never know, there may be a message secreted inside them.”

  Angus laughed heartily. “More crumbs?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’re going doolally now. Too much sun. You were never good in hot climates.”

  “I’m improving,” I said, but he was right about that fact. My reluctance to come to Greece to help Angus out with his health problems at first was ramped up by my dislike of heat and sunbathing, especially with my colouring – my auburn hair and fair skin – but I had inherited my hazel eyes from Angus and not the pale blue of my mother, or her strawberry blonde hair, so with some persistence I did develop a tan in the end.

  “I know you think my Peregrine theory is mad, but what else can all this mean?” I said, waving her book around.

  “She goes for dramatic titles, doesn’t she? Against the Storm, Fateful Journey,” Angus said, sniggering.

  I ignored the comment. “The thing is, she wants us to know that she’s been here recently. Two books in two places. She knew I’d come looking for her. She’d already pointed me in this direction by showing me those black and white photos.”

  “But why would she do all that? Unless …” he said, twisting his hand back and forth beside his forehead. The Greek sign for doolally.

  “Be serious now, Angus.”

  “Oh, I would, Bronte, were seriousness at all required in this strange escapade,” he said with a dramatic flourish.

  “Maybe it’s a cry for help. Eve’s had a proper meltdown about the interview, about spilling the beans on the blocky thingy. Perhaps she’s hiding out in an apartment somewhere here,” I said, looking around the village, thinking maybe she was watching us right at that moment.

  “But if Eve wanted you to follow her, with the book crumbs, as you say, why not just tell you where she is and request your company for a girlie rant-fest?”

  “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

  “Exactly. She’s a luvvie and prefers to play games. And where will the next book crumb be, and what will it be called: Death on the Bad Mountains?” He sniggered.

  “You’re taking the piss now.”

  He nodded. “This is crazy stuff but it’s a nice day out, I guess, away from the coalface. Shame about all the driving.”

  “I get what you’re saying. I just have this feeling she’s down here somewhere, honestly.”

  I was like Elpida at that moment, my guts twitching like crazy, and yet nothing felt very logical. As we drove out of Porto Kayio, I suggested w
e try the third and final place in the line-up of photos: Vathia.

  “That’s where she might be. That place with all those big high towers. She said it was her favourite place.”

  “Oh, aye! Vathia’s a fantastic place but deserted now, Bronte. No-one lives there, apart from maybe the odd mad Athenian with a half-finished holiday house who might come in the height of summer for a week. But even that would be pushing it.”

  “Let’s swing by it anyway.”

  Vathia was a kind of citadel village built in the early 18th century across a high spine of rock to protect inhabitants from marauding pirates and Turks, but mostly from other Maniots intent on mischief. The Maniots in this southern region had always been a lawless, trigger-happy group formed into clans and clustered around fortified villages, like Vathia. They were fiercely territorial and uncompromising. In the past, the area was largely overlooked by the rest of Greece due to its remoteness, cut off by the Taygetos mountains and lack of decent roads. Even the Ottoman Turks, despite a few punitive raids, had no urge to take on these wild Maniots, so unlike the rest of the country, the Mani remained unoccupied during the 400 years of Turkish rule. In the 19th, century the Deep Mani was dominated by formidable and valiant clan chiefs, like Petros Mavromichalis, who gathered 3,000 men and marched them to Kalamata in 1821 to help kick off the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks.

  All of this was easy to understand when we finally reached Vathia. Its slew of impregnable tower houses ranged across the hill like tall ragged teeth. Many of the towers were in a poor state, and several had lost the plot entirely, reduced to rubble with wild trees growing up through fallen masonry. Only a few looked like there had been some attempt at renovation, with fresh repointing and new doors and windows, all firmly shut. There were no signs of life, apart from the wind clawing at old shutters sagging on their hinges.

  We parked the car on the deserted road near the village and took the narrow pathway that cut through the settlement. Although it was early afternoon, the height of the towers and the darkness of the old stone seemed to pitch the village into sunset. And it felt colder here.

  “Honestly, pet, I can’t imagine why Eve Peregrine would even want to come here, hiding out like some doolally Rapunzel,” said Angus. “And if she’s here, she’d have a car nearby, wouldn’t she?”

  At the end of the path was a view down to the sea over vast empty tracts of land covered in gorse and olive orchards. The tower at the very end was in reasonable condition, with brown painted shutters and a stout front door. A stone shed leaned up against one side of it, but with no door. It was empty. It was a strange place, where the wind strafed through the towers and moaned lightly. The place had its own raw beauty but all the same I was starting to feel dispirited. Even Zeffy, who had kept up a good pace all day, was walking with little enthusiasm.

  “This was obviously a daft idea. She could be hiding out almost anywhere in Greece, couldn’t she? Let’s head back now,” I said.

  Angus’s face brightened, but I knew the drive home wouldn’t delight him much, with all the hairpin bends. It had been a worthwhile expedition for me to see these iconic places so many people had told me about. But when it came to the Peregrine disappearance, it was a folly. My instincts had been shot to pieces. We turned and plodded back along the pathway towards the road, but just before we got there something jagged my attention. I touched Angus on the arm.

  “Can you hear an odd noise?”

  “No, like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know ... It’s stopped now, I think.” I stood gazing up at the towers we’d left behind. Perhaps it was the sound of the wind again, or branches brushing against the stone towers. I also had that strange sensation you get on the back of your neck when you’re being watched.

  “There it is again. Very faint but …”

  “What noise?” said Angus, looking impatient.

  “I don’t know … like … no, that couldn’t be.”

  “What couldn’t be,” he said, shaking his head and marching ahead of me.

  “Nothing,” I said, shouting after him. Angus strode ahead to the road, quickly side-stepping an old woman dressed in black, bent over the dusty verge picking wild greens, like the sole survivor of a bombed-out village in a war zone. She was snapping off the greens with a short kitchen knife and piling them neatly into a wicker basket. Perhaps that was the noise I’d heard from the pathway, the constant snip of greenery.

  Angus spoke to her and turned to me. “I asked her if there was anyone living here at present and she says no. Not that she knows of, anyway. She lives further down the road. She doesn’t go into Vathia itself, she doesn’t like the atmosphere. Can’t say I do either.”

  On the roadside I decided to call Peregrine’s mobile again, just in case. But I couldn’t get a signal. Something to do with the towers perhaps, or a lack of reception in general. We sat in the car and sipped some water from the bottles we brought. There was something about the Mani that seemed to ramp up one’s thirst, perhaps no surprise since the word Mani was supposed to have come from an old Greek word meaning a dry and treeless place.

  “Let’s think about all this for a minute, Angus. We’ve done the three places in the order Eve described them to me. Whatever order we did them in, I don’t think we’d have had a different outcome. There’s no book hidden around here to indicate she’s been to Vathia. Maybe she skipped it. Maybe she went to Porto Kayio first and then Hades – in a depressed state of mind like, you know, to end it all.”

  “Now you’re going real doolally. We didn’t find her though, did we? And why leave a book in the temple? Why not a big note on the altar saying, ‘Goodbye cruel world. I’m off to join Cerberus’. Or a trail of her books on the path to the deserted cape lighthouse, where she could have jumped off the cliff.”

  I laughed. “You’re taking the piss again.”

  “I certainly am. Anyway, there are easier ways to top yourself than blundering around Cape Tainaron.”

  “But an actress, which is essentially what she is, would want total drama.”

  “Nah, I don’t go for it. Anyway, we can’t scour the whole area on the off-chance the doolally Rapunzel is here. Och, I’m weary, let’s go.”

  I felt weary myself but I didn’t feel I was done with the Deep Mani yet.

  “I don’t suppose you could swing by the village of Glika Nera, where that creep Dionysos lives?”

  Angus had just started the car. “Why the hell do you want to do that?”

  “Just want to see where he lives. What it’s all about. Maybe get a feel for why he’s harassing foreigners, me in particular.”

  Angus sighed. “We don’t have time, Bronte. It’s really out of our way, up a long winding road on the other side of this peninsula. We’ll get back very late if we go there. We should get going now.”

  “Okay, I just thought that while we’re down here …”

  Angus didn’t respond. I lay my head back on the headrest as we accelerated away from the deserted village. Glika Nera had been another daft idea but I doubted we’d come all the way back here in a very long time. But what I’d already learnt from the village Greeks was this: “When people make plans, God laughs.”

  As we drove towards the coast I turned and looked at Zeffy on the back seat. He was lying on his back, his legs straight up in the air, fast asleep. He looked content. I wondered if it ever crossed his mind how much he was living the life of Riley after his spell of rough sleeping? If anything ever did cross a dog’s mind.

  The day after our excursion, I left more calls on both Peregrine’s home phone and mobile with brief messages asking her to call me, saying we were all worried about her sudden departure. Yet there was no reply. Either she was indulging in some attention-seeking prank, or was more likely holed up in a secret location trying to unblock her creative logjam. Or she’d been kidnapped and murdered by some Dionysos-like thug, given the toxic times we lived in, as everyone kept telling me.

  Some days lat
er, Sylvia Rainford phoned me, sounding frantic. Still no contact with Peregrine. She urged me to go to the police. I talked it over with Leonidas and he offered to set up an appointment with his detective friend at Kalamata police station, who would pass on the details if necessary to a uniformed officer for some exploratory checks. It would be better this way, he thought, than trying to explain the situation to one of the more junior constables.

  I arranged to meet Leonidas in the old quarter of Kalamata at two o’clock after his morning surgery.

  Chapter 11

  Vanishing act

  Detective Nikos Vassanopoulos was tall, with wide shoulders and an angular face, dark greying hair and observant green eyes. He wore a scruffy leather jacket and black T-shirt. He gave Leonidas a warm handshake and ushered us to a battered desk piled up with paperwork, files, plenty of rubber stamps and ink pads. The desks were arranged in an L-shape, with old filing cabinets along one wall. One was hanging open and I could see it was stuffed with dog-eared manila folders. Only one other detective was present, sitting nearby and barking down the phone like a constipated walrus. While there were a few ancient-looking computers on desks, I got the feeling that things were still done the old-fashioned way, with plenty of form-filling and rubber-stamping. The detective was smoking, his ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and a takeaway coffee cup beside it. There were remnants of cake on a cardboard plate crossed by a plastic fork.

  Leonidas spoke to the detective in Greek, explaining the apparent disappearance of Eve Peregrine, whose name was fired out at regular intervals like Morse code. The detective scratched out notes, glancing at me now and then with a narrow-eyed stare, as if I were the main suspect in this possible misdemeanour. The detective spoke some English and only questioned me briefly about my relationship with Peregrine. He didn’t say much but his eyebrows flickered slightly when I told him I was a journalist.