“Really? Let me guess. You and Angelos are now shagging!” Why beat around the bush now. So much for my hollow ‘promise’ to Leonidas that all would be well.
“I’m afraid we are,” she said boldly, leaning back on her white sofa, ruffling her blonde hair. “A few times now.” Was this the prim, flaky woman I first interviewed a few weeks ago, who was in a funk over a writing blockage? Or even the glamorous woman who came to the Easter lunch, looking fetching in fuchsia? And oh so understanding about living the Greek life. Thank God I’d clinched the Markham interview before she lost brain cells to coitus.
That morning Eve had called me on her mobile, asking me to come to her villa for a chat. I had hoped she was going to tell me she’d decided to cool the affair with young Angelos and be sensible, but here she was telling me it had climaxed. I almost felt she’d summoned me to gloat over the circumstance, the way a cat drops dead birds on your doormat so you can see what a clever predator he is.
Being in ‘love’, or lust at least, suited her though. She was glowing: her skin was lightly sunkissed as the days became more hot and summery. Her eyes were glossy and bright.
“Tell me it’s just a holiday romance, Eve. You know, a kind of Mrs Robinson interlude with beaches and Feta. That it does not contain love!”
“Bronte, I’m in thrall at the moment. It’s been so unexpected. He is such a fabulous guy in every way,” she said theatrically, and I knew where her mind was going. I felt sick. Leonidas would be furious. Oh hell! He’d strangle me.
“Yes, but the age difference. It can’t last, Eve.”
She looked mildly shocked. “Well, we’re not talking about marriage, my dear. I’m just living in the moment. Isn’t that what Greeks do?”
“Your moments are somewhat longer than the Greek ones, I think.”
She laughed, briefly.
“I hope you’ll be discreet,” I said. “Leonidas knows about the two of you, and other people have commented. You know how it is here. Nothing’s private.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! How people do over-react.”
“The thing is, Eve, back home it wouldn’t matter a fig how much you were shagging, but this is a rural village in an area that other Greeks describe as ‘wild’. A place of historic retributions; Maniot towers, remember? You can’t break wind here without everyone commenting. Deal with it!”
“Don’t get fractious, Bronte. It doesn’t become you.”
So, I had a Jane Austen moment, to rival Leo’s Mr Darcy. I had to stifle the urge to slap the back of her hand like an impatient dowager, just to bring her to her senses. As if that would even work!
“If you get more serious, there will be hell to pay. Leonidas helped Angelos to get a small business operation going with Myrto since he lost his job in the crisis. I don’t know if he’s told you about all that.”
“Yes, he did, poor lamb. He’s so smart and so good-looking. I don’t know why he wanted to come back to village life. I’ve told him to go to London. Plenty of young Greeks are getting work there now, and in other places: Germany, Sweden. I could probably help him to land some work.”
Good God, it was getting worse! Angelos going overseas now, ripped clean away from his family. Everyone he knew would be lining up to throttle me. Where were the smelling salts?
“Eve, can I be frank with you? Greeks …”
She cut me off. “Oh, don’t lecture me now. I’m a grown woman and Angelos is no child.”
I ploughed on nevertheless. “Greeks still have strong views about people having relationships with foreigners, especially in rural Greece. But the age gap between you is the thing. And Leonidas is nettled with me over this – just when we were getting over the Phaedra episode. Your love trysts have put me in a difficult situation. And really, you don’t know what you’re getting into here.”
She gave me a wide-eyed stare. “If I can digress slightly, I can’t believe you are the same woman, who at the Easter lunch said something about the culture here being challenging and ‘how can you love the country as much as you love the man?’ In fact, you have your head around the whole thing. Well done you! You understand the cultural narrative exactly – apparently.”
“I try,” I said, sarcastically. “And can I remind you in turn you also said at that lunch you’ve never had the urge to get serious with someone whose culture was still a mystery to you – remember?”
She shrugged. “Look, the culture thing isn’t such a big deal – for me. Lust is much more fun,” she said with a lascivious smile. “It’s been a while since I said that. And you know the best thing? For the first time in ages I’m not thinking about books and writing all the damned time. I’m not feeling stressed-out.”
“Why not just take a few tranquilisers. That would be less trouble.”
She gave me an arch look. “That was mean, Bronte.”
“Maybe, but when your affair comes to an end, you’ll still have to face your other problems, won’t you?”
She gave me a black look and fiddled with her hair, gathering it up into a ponytail, dropping it again and shaking it out over her shoulders.
“Look, Eve. I’m just asking you to be sensible.”
“I don’t care for sensible, or what people around here think,” she said with a defiant lift of her chin. “I will see Angelos for now, and I know he feels the same.”
I began to seethe with anger. Maybe I’d been blindsided by Eve, with her charm, her generosity, if not her gift for deception and plundering the writing prowess of a good friend. But now I was disappointed with the fact she had turned out to be so incredibly selfish and wilful. I was growing tired of her, and I only had one card left to play.
“Okay, you don’t care about others, but I do. And don’t forget I’m the only person in the world who knows your story – about the books, that is.”
Her mouth sagged in shock.
“You wouldn’t say anything, Bronte. You promised.”
“I wouldn’t want to, believe me. I’m not that kind of person, and as a journalist I respect what’s strictly off the record, always have. But this is a peculiar situation I find myself in. And you are pushing a lot of envelopes.”
She pursed her lips in annoyance. I thought she’d ask me to leave, but she fiddled with her hair again.
“So, you’re giving me an ultimatum. If I don’t stop seeing Angelos, you’ll grass on me?”
“Something like that,” I said, trying to look like I really meant it because in my mind it could only ever be a last resort. It was a threat only that I could never carry out with a good conscience. Clearly she was losing all sense of reality. What had started weeks ago as a series of eccentric endeavours – disappearing, holing up in a Maniot tower, falling for someone young enough to be her son – had become something more troubling.
“You wouldn’t squeal on me, Bronte. I know you. I know you’re not that vindictive.”
“Watch me,” I said, like some well-practised minx.
Her nostrils flared and I knew she had no idea if I was serious or not. I could almost see the struggle going on inside her. After a few tense moments she appeared calmer; a pitying look in her eyes.
“The thing is, Bronte, I don’t know if I can stop seeing him. Not right now. But I will talk to him. I will try to sort it out, okay? Don’t do anything rash.”
I sighed. That would mean another meeting with Angelos, another dinner, another session of love-making and more opportunities for someone else in the village to see them together, for things to get worse. For Leonidas to go ballistic.
“Forgive me saying this, but you’re one of those people lucky enough to have a holiday villa. You come here and do what you want, mess up and then you leave again. But the rest of us will live with the consequences. Not you.”
She got up from the sofa briskly. “Okay, I think you’ve made your point. I said I’d sort it.” She walked to the door and held it open for me.
“I trusted you, Bronte.”
“And I you,” I sai
d. “But you’ve shifted all the goal-posts.”
I turned and walked quickly to the car and drove fast up the hill, my heart pounding with irritation. I don’t think I’d even scratched the surface of who Eve really was. That’s when I started thinking about Douglas Markham. It had always intrigued me that she’d agreed so readily to do the interview for The Daily Messenger, and was so candid. With so much at stake with her reputation as a best-selling author and the ghost-writing secret, I wondered why she wanted to draw attention to herself. No-one could doubt that Markham was a sleazy sex pest, but the truth was, I felt convinced that Eve had been no angel either. She was just as self-regarding and probably a terrible coquette in her acting years, cultivating a man who had always had a certain reputation, drawing out the worst in him perhaps, playing up to the cameras, revelling in the attention. I was sure she must have cheated on Markham as well. Perhaps when they split, it was he who’d made a lucky escape, rather than her. And she knew that only too well. Perhaps she wanted to denigrate him before he ever got in first. I’d have loved to get his side of the story.
But about one thing she appeared to be right: I did have a better understanding of Greek village life than I’d imagined. I may not have spoken the language much, but I was beginning to see what was in the Greek heart and what the complex lines of navigation were between friends and family. It didn’t always make me feel comfortable, but now I think I recognised it.
Chapter 24
A chasm appears
When I wrote my Greek column the following week, I decided on a more serious approach this time to the economic crisis, as there had been fierce riots in Athens due to another round of punishing austerity measures forced on the country by the EU in return for another tranche of bailout money.
I wanted to write about the way these measures were impacting on ordinary Greeks, especially in rural southern Greece, and their inability to pay taxes and deal with slumping wages. I thought it was apt to mention the growing influence of the far right because that particular week there had been violent attacks in Athens on migrants and in Kalamata a demonstration about austerity. A few members and supporters of the EPE had turned up wearing black T-shirts and chanting their slogans – no doubt Dionysos may have been amongst them. Angry scuffles had broken out between them and groups of left-wing students. There was little support for EPE in Kalamata among most of its residents, but enough to keep their antics bubbling along.
I ended the column with an outsider’s perception that the crisis had tapped into a darker side of the Greek psyche beneath the sea-and-sun veneer. I left it at that, even though I had personally experienced it. And it wasn’t over yet.
As June progressed with heatwaves and temperatures around 40 degrees, I found myself busier than I’d expected with freelance work. I no longer spent time wondering whether I’d done the right thing the previous year, walking away from my full-time job on The Alba at 37, at a point in my career when I could have taken it much further but in the end took redundancy. What I was doing here seemed as relevant, perhaps more so, with a slew of features as interesting and varied as anything I’d done as a staffer.
In the summer, I worked in the early morning and later went down to the sea, often with Angus, and Zeffy as well, to one of the hidden coves set along this stretch of coastline. We usually had lunch in the village of Paleohora, at a small taverna with tables by the water’s edge, waiting for a breeze to pick up before returning home for a siesta. It was a month I would always think of with certain fondness and nostalgia for its wound-down ambience when anything that took too much physical effort was never worth doing. It was a time for reflection as much as anything.
“Greece suits you,” Angus would often say as we passed an hour or two over lunch. And I was beginning to agree. Other things may not always have gone to plan but I began to feel healthier and happier than at any time in my life. I even managed a respectable suntan.
I heard nothing from Eve and neither did I call her, though I had no reason to think she hadn’t gone back to London as planned. Angelos continued his work with Myrto and I heard no adverse reports from that quarter. If the affair was still alive it must have continued in great secrecy. All of which puzzled me, mildly, as well as the fact that Leonidas didn’t mention it either, but he had other things to occupy his thoughts.
Angus had finally banished his malaise with writing and had completed over a third of his book, which he showed me. It was surprisingly good. He had nosed it off with the background story of my grandfather Kieran, arriving in Greece with the Royal Army Service Corps and later going missing. By the end, the book would reveal how we unravelled the mystery of Kieran’s disappearance and how and where he died. It would be a tribute to Angus’s father as much as anything.
One Friday afternoon, it was cooler than it had been previously. With my work up to date, I decided to drive into Marathousa for a walk around the village with Zeffy. I parked near the kafeneio, intending to stop for a coffee on the way back. We strolled past it and I saw Elpida standing by its front door. She waved as we passed. We took the stone steps at the back of the plateia that led to the narrow Palios Dromos, the Old Road, which ascended towards a high plateau above the village. Situated here was the small chapel of Saint Konstantina with its wooden bench at the front with a stunning view of the gulf. It was a place that Leonidas and I often walked to and I would always associate the chapel with us.
I sat for a moment to catch my breath. Zeffy hunched up beside me, being strangely needy, nudging my shoulder with his head. I kissed his ruffled head and smelt honey cake. I had an urge, however, to walk further. From here the rural path split: one way led up to the church of Ayios Nektarios, from which you had a clear view of many of the Taygetos peaks. The other way led south to the Rindomo Gorge, a deep rocky gash that started as a narrow slit in the mountains and cut a wide swathe thereafter to the sea at Santova. There were other rough tracks from the main road below up to this plateau of fields and orchards that could take vehicles, but generally this was a quiet and remote part of the village where I’d walked before. I set off towards the gorge, but not intending to go all the way, as the tracks along the top were rough and slightly perilous.
In the fields that spread out to the edge of the gorge there were just a few stone houses, mostly shuttered as they belonged to Athenians and expats who hadn’t returned yet for the summer. A donkey was grazing near a copse of olive trees, tethered to one of them. When I rounded a bend in the track, there he was – Dionysos the creep. I stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Ridiculous,” I heard myself say out loud. How had such a perfect morning once again begun to spool away from me in seconds – and all because of him?
He was alone, standing beside an olive tree, smoking. His blue scooter was parked nearby. When he saw me, he stubbed out his cigarette. Zeffy started to bark, straining at his lead. He hadn’t forgotten what the creep had first done to him. I reached into my pocket for my phone and tried to speed-dial Angus. But there was no reception up here. I turned to retrace my steps, ready to bolt across the fields back to the chapel. I had no desire to be up on this lonely hillside with the creep, and for the first time I regretted my over-confident decision to walk here alone. As I started back, I heard him running up behind me.
“Stop!” he shouted. I turned.
He looked the same as always: greasy hair, dark menacing eyes. He was wearing the kind of grubby padded gilet that hunters favoured, with a dozen pockets for stuffing God knows what into. Zeffy barked again. Dionysos eyed up the dog and smirked. It was then I knew absolutely that he was the one who’d left the poison.
“I’m going back to the village, don’t follow me or I’ll set the dog on you,” I said, firmly.
Dionysos just laughed, showing a poor set of teeth.
“You set dog to me and I shoot him with this,” he said, pulling a small handgun from one of his pockets. I recoiled in fear. I knew Dionysos was belligerent but I never thought he’d go this far.
It crossed my mind that his presence here wasn’t a coincidence, that he must have seen me from somewhere in the village, ascending the road to the small chapel, and doubled back to take one of the other farm tracks from the main road, which would be quick on the scooter.
“You come this way,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of the Rindomo Gorge.
“No, I will not. You can shoot me first,” I said, stupidly trying to call his bluff and walking quickly towards the small chapel again, hoping that somebody would be around.
“Stop, or I shoot dog.”
I stopped and turned again.
“Why should I go with you?”
“Because I say,” he snarled in his pigeon English, pointing the gun at Zeffy. I couldn’t risk it.
Now I had no choice – but what would I be walking into? My heart was throbbing with fear. I thought of making a run for it, letting Zeffy go, hoping he would run and hide somewhere safe. But knowing Zeffy, he would go for the creep, and then what?
Dionysos seemed to sense my thoughts. He waved the gun in the direction of the track that led to the gorge. “Keep walking straight. And you give to me your kinito, mobile.”
I hesitated. “Now!” he shouted, pointing his gun at me.
Terrified, I handed over my mobile and turned towards the gorge. While I walked, I anxiously plotted an escape, but nothing felt possible. I’d had many adventures and mishaps as a journalist and had come across shady, violent characters, but I’d never been kidnapped at gunpoint. I could only imagine what he had in mind for me at the end of the track. When he’d finished with me, he’d push me, and Zeffy, over the edge of the gorge. I’d recently written about the dark side of Greek life, but now I was in the midst of it.
I tramped along the path with the creep behind me. I thought of nothing but the gun pointing towards my back. But would he use it? I had a sense that Dionysos was just evil bluster but I couldn’t take the chance. Zeffy turned every now and then to growl, or bark, pulling on the lead. I had a struggle to calm him. I knew he was seething inside, wanted to have his day with Dionysos, but I didn’t want to lose the dog. Not like this.
How Greek Is Your Love Page 21