by Carol Mason
‘Girl! Put a higher price on yourself than that! Of course he doesn’t! It’s us! We’re irresistible.’
‘My backside.’
‘Yes. Your backside is too. And so is mine.’ She bounds off the bed, turns around, bends over and shoves her bottom in my face.
‘You’re a bit disgusting sometimes, for a mother.’
She grins at me over her shoulder. ‘And you’re a boring, stick in the mud daughter. Gosh, if you were Eve in Adam’s garden, we’d all never have got here, would we?’
I stare at the ceiling, feeling a soft exhaustion settle around me. I think of how he absently massaged the vein in my arm, even though his mind was clearly on the subject of his olive trees.
‘What are you thinking?’ Mam interrupts my thoughts.
‘Nothing. Just that he is easy to be around. You’re right.’ Jonathan never was. From the moment I saw him at that house party, Jonathan was never easy. I was dating another guy at the time—Paul somebody; I can’t even remember. When Paul somebody went to the kitchen to get us another drink, Jonathan took the opportunity to move in on me.
‘I’ll give you three minutes to tell him it’s over,’ he said.
I said something like, ‘Oh give me a break! Is a line like that ever going to work?’ Meanwhile I was trying to work out how fast I could dump Paul.
As I walked over to the kitchen to dump Paul faster than he’d ever been dumped, I happened to glance back; Jonathan was deliberately looking from me to his watch. I narrowed my eyes at him as though to say, I’m not really going to do this! I’m just going over there to get a drink, and keep you hanging in suspense…
But Jonathan knew he had me right from the start.
Even when he proposed to me, twenty-five dates later—a date for every year I had lived—it was slightly mad how he did it. We were in the middle of Tesco’s in Sunderland. ‘Marry me,’ he said, getting down on one knee, as I picked deodorant off a shelf.
‘And have your babies?’ I asked him, pressing my hands into his shoulders.
‘And have a great many of our babies.’
‘And be with me when I die?’
He plucked a hair off my mouth. ‘And die with you when you die.’
See, that was Jonathan. He wanted a contract for eternity, not just for life.
~ * * * ~
‘I was just thinking of Jonathan,’ I tell Mam, because she knows I’ve just been off in space, and she will know what I was thinking about. ‘You know, some time ago, Jonathan and I had a strange conversation… He said that if he ever died before me he’d send me somebody from the other side.’
‘What?’ she looks puzzled. ‘Do you mean a dead person?’
I tut. ‘No! Not a bloody dead person! A man… A lover. A love. Somebody to follow in his footsteps. The next him.’
Just the concept of there ever being a next him is depressing and encouraging at the same time. I’ve often wondered if Jonathan will somehow cease to hold primacy with me when he’s no longer my last. I can’t bear the thought that he might diminish in my eyes, because some other man, who I would never have been with had Jonathan lived, might come along and stamp his personality in the place where Jonathan’s should have been. Maybe stamp it so indelibly and love me so vigorously and for far many more years than Jonathan got to love me. Then Jonathan will just be the man I was married to before I met my husband.
She gazes at me softly, as though this touches her. ‘You know, I could see Jonathan doing something like that. He loved you so much, and he knew you so well. You know what he’s like. He’d want to make it his mission to find you the right person…’
‘Actually, those were his words. He said if he could do it, he would do it. He would make it his mission.’
She studies me through her tears.
‘Do you think it’s possible, Mam? That he could do something like that?’
She seems to give this some thought. ‘Really, seriously possible? I’m not sure… I tend to think that we have to paddle our own canoe. But still though, it’s a nice idea to hang onto—that the dead never truly leave us. And if that’s what you take away from it, then it is surely a good thing.’
She doesn’t believe it. Of course she doesn’t, and neither do I. I just want to, or need to. I experience the stab of a reality check: they put Jonathan in a box and then they burned him. Jonathan is dead. When you are dead, you’re are gone, and you no longer have decision-making power. You can’t pull any strings any more.
‘What’s that look for?’ she says. ‘I’ve upset you haven’t I? You want to believe, don’t you…’ She seems touched. ‘It’s a nice thing to believe in. I’d love to think that when I die I can still be not too far way watching you and looking out for you, and gently steering you away from trouble.’
‘Did you ever feel like Dad was watching over you?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, after your dad died, I just felt… left. At a road’s end. Like it was the end of an era.’
She studies my glum face. ‘But you know what? I hope that if Jonathan does send you somebody he waits until he’s sure you’re ready. Because the way things stand now, if somebody came along and was staring you right in the face, I don’t think you’d see him, Angela. I don’t think you could.’
This observation is not what I want to hear. ‘See, this is why I prefer not to tell you anything.’
‘But you can’t stop yourself. Because you know I get you in ways that nobody else does.’
She’s right.
‘Well, on another topic,’ she says, after a moment or two. ‘I hope you know I’m not coming with you tonight.’
‘Where?’
‘For dinner.’
‘With Georgios? Don’t be silly! Of course you are! He invited both of us. I mean half the time it’s you he’s talking to in any case.’
‘He’s respecting his elders. The best way to the daughter is to impress the mother. I’m not going to be a spare wheel, or a heel. That’s worse than not being a wheel at all, or having no feet.’
I stare at her and think what on earth is she rambling on about!
‘Hang on a minute… this doesn’t have anything to do with what we’ve just been talking about does it? About Jonathan sending me someone? You don’t seriously think I’m thinking that Jonathan has sent me Georgios.’
‘No!’ she says, and nods her head manically. Then she dives off the bed and leaps into the air. ‘It’s him!’
‘What?’
‘Who Jonathan has sent! It’s Georgios. I am sure of it.’
‘Two minutes ago you didn’t believe in that!’
She jumps up and down, all gleeful. ‘I’ve just found religion.’
‘You better be careful. It’s one size fits all, and it shrinks in a hot wash.’
She’s on a roll. ‘That’s why he knew you were called Angela, and he knew you lived in Canada and you didn’t have a husband any more, and why I said I knew right away that you were going to marry him.’ She’s panting. ‘It all fits. And Jonathan’s sent me along on this holiday to ensure I keep you two on course.’
‘Get away! Like you reminded me before, you were the one who told him I lived in Canada. And he didn’t know Jonathan had died, just that I used to wear a wedding ring. And, well as for him knowing my name, he must have heard you call me by it… So I don’t think there’s any mystery. Anyway, all this is great, but you’re still coming to dinner!’
She flops back down on the bed, pants. I know she isn’t.
‘You can’t make me go on my own!’
‘Oh come on! Go and kiss him, and tell me what it’s like.’
‘I’ve got no intentions of kissing him. I don’t even fancy him. He’s too short. And too old.’
‘He’s at least five nine, and he’s probably mid-forties. What’s wrong with that? He’s aligned in your stars, Angela; the rest is just details.’
‘I’m not going on my own, so tough tits.’
‘Girl!’ she says. ‘Tough buzzums, if you must
say that horrible expression.’
~ * * * ~
‘My mother is not coming,’ I tell him when I step outside of the lobby into the mid-evening air that dances with the chorus of crickets.
‘Oh?’ he says. ‘Why not?’ He looks really disappointed and I try not to take it personally. No reason in particular—only that she’s convinced that you’re the man I’m to marry who has been sent for me by my dead husband. No pressure there.
He’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, slightly more form-fitting than the one he had on today. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘I think she’s worn out.’ Because her imagination is working over-time. ‘Or she’s sick of me… It’s a mother-daughter thing.’
His eyes slowly travel over my face, over my hair, which I’ve washed and left hanging, and which somehow feels shinier and fuller than it’s ever been with the mineral-heavy Greek water. Then his gaze travels down the front of me.
I am conspicuously lacking in GAP T-shirt. The choice decided on by She Who Knows These Things was a white wrap-around cotton sun dress that’s simple and knee-length and shows off my new tan, and too much inner thigh when I walk.
‘You look like a model, but I think you should go back upstairs and try to make her come with us,’ he says.
If only he’d left an attractive pause between the words model and But I think…
‘It would not be right to leave her alone,’ he adds, probably because he sees my face.
‘We won’t change her mind. You don’t know my mother.’ In fact, if he hadn’t mentioned my mother at all, that would have been fine too.
His gaze falls to my sexy gold strappy sandals (well, not exactly mine; we won’t mention whose). But he just continues to stand there.
‘We don’t have to go,’ I tell him, desperate to put us both out of our misery. Maybe he wanted an innocent meal out with the three of us and now he feels he’s going on a date. Maybe he doesn’t want to go on a date with me. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend. ‘In fact, we could totally abandon the idea if you like…’
‘You sure we should not phone her from lobby?’
‘Go ahead, if you want to. Why not?’ I knew that she should have just come. I do an about-turn on my heels when he grabs my hand and pulls me back. ‘If you think she doesn’t want to come… we go alone. I would enjoy that too.’
It’s not like he’s out to get cosy with me though. He drops my hand the second we are walking to his car.
~ * * * ~
He takes me to Bohali, pulls up outside of the rooftop restaurant that has stunning views of Zante port and town, twinkling under a black sky.
‘You must be psychic,’ I tell him. ‘I saw this place this morning on the tour bus, and I thought how fab it would be to come back here and eat.’
‘But we’re not eating here.’
‘Oh.’ I try not to look disappointed. ‘We’re not?’
‘It’s bad food.’ He studies my face warmly. ‘But if you have your heart set on it, we may come out later for a drink, if I haven’t made you bored over dinner.’
Where he takes us is a place I would never have ventured without him. From the outside it looks like a house. Apricot walls of ancient, crumbling stone, capped off with an ochre tiled roof. Knotty vines, and hot pink bougainvillea running rampant up the sides of the doors, across the walls to the roof, and then back down a narrow twisting stone path. Outside of the front door frolic two scrawny black cats.
We descend a set of narrow, uneven stone stairs to a room that buzzes with the din of happily wined and dined Greek patrons. It’s white-walled, with one wall a virtual wine cellar of barrels, and an uneven, pock-marked floor painted, ‘Thalassa,’ Georgios tells me when he sees me studying it. ‘Greek blue.’ There are only about a dozen tables, but each is crammed with convivial Greeks. A handsome boy with a ponytail, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans—the owner’s son, as Georgios tells me—moves back and forwards between the tables and a tiny kitchen, keeping plates of food coming in steady waves. I smell garlic and charred aubergine and ouzo and wine and lamb and cigarette smoke and coffee and olives and hot pink flowers and fresh fish, and somewhere on my anatomy, the perfume that Mam assaulted me with before I disappeared out the door. ‘Want a little squirt of it up your skirt?’ she asked me.
‘No! You pervy old woman!’
‘Hey—less of the old!’
‘The only thing that might be getting up my skirt tonight is a mosquito. And even then, it’ll have to be lucky.’
She’d cackled.
At the far end of this room is a grubby, open window that looks carved, like an afterthought, into rock. Out of it is a view, not of the ocean, or charming Zante town, but of the inner belly of a hacked down cypress tree, and, the sky.
It’s by this window that Stavros, the son, seats us. Before we can even ask for it, a carafe of red wine lands splashing on our table, along with two glasses of ouzo and a plate of tiny white fish. ‘Marides,’ as Georgios explains, ‘flash fried, served with extra virgin olive oil, lemon and oregano. Ouzo and fish are a partnership you must try.’
‘And Stavros here just happens to know we wanted this?’
‘Stavros knows that what I like you will like.’
‘That’s pretty arrogant of Stavros.’
‘Arrogant Greek men. Are there any other kind?’
‘That’s why we love you.’
‘Of course.’
I gaze at the fish, unable to resist a small tease. ‘Pity I’m vegetarian though.’
He freezes with his fork on the way to his mouth. ‘You are?’
‘Yep.’
He frowns. ‘You don’t eat meat or fish?’
‘Neither.’
He appears to be fallen. I can’t keep up the tease for too long. ‘I’m not. I’m kidding.’
He narrows those raisin-like eyes. ‘You are not vegetarian?’
‘No.’ I grin. ‘Honestly. I love fish. And meat. But especially fish.’
‘I suppose this is you getting back to me for the olive tasting.’
My face breaks out into another smile. ‘I’m paying you back,’ I correct his English. ‘Yes, I could be.’
‘Here,’ he rolls up a thin disk of deep fried aubergine with mint—the newest arrival to our table—dips it in some twinkling honey-coloured liquid then leans across the table and aims it at my mouth.
‘Apparently since I was about three months old I’ve managed to feed myself.’
‘Open,’ he tells me. So I open and he pushes it into my mouth.
‘You can lick my fingers.’ He holds out his fingers.
‘I think I’ll pass.’
His turn to smile now.
We get through the appetizers, and the ouzo goes down far too easily, as does the conversation. Then we’re served long and strand-like fried cheese called saganaki, with lemon squeezed on it, followed by a traditional bourghetto, which he tells me is a seafood stew of courgettes, potatoes, tomatoes, sea snails, limpets, cuttlefish and octopus, piled high. Every ingredient tells a story for Georgios, reflecting his love for food. ‘You know once, as a boy, I spent the entire summer living on the island of Pretza and this is all I ate—bourghetto. Every day. I was so sick of it I couldn’t eat it for years. Now of course, I know that I lived like a god.’
‘That’s like the kid who gets filet mignon at home but always wants a McDonald’s hamburger. That’s what my husband used to say about growing up in a well-off Toronto family. He ate like a king but he wanted to eat like a runaway teen.’
‘McDonald’s hamburger is shit, no?’
It surprises me to hear him say shit. I laugh. ‘Not far off!’
He quickly says, ‘Did you love him?’
I ply sticky cheese off my fingers, looking at this table that’s so laden with food that I almost don’t know where to start. I don’t want to talk about him, and yet I want to talk about him. ‘I couldn’t have loved him more.’ I meet his eyes.
‘Did he know it?’
> I look back at my plate. ‘Oh… I fought with him a lot. Because I always had to have the last word. Jonathan expected it and I’d have hated to let him down.’ I roll my eyes at myself, at how I used to be, thinking of all the ways I would reinvent myself if I had the chance to have Jonathan back again. ‘Jonathan was very controlling and sometimes you had to argue with him or… get walked on.’
He ladles seafood stew onto a plate for me. ‘Fighting is good. If you fight it is because you care… But you grieve like how you loved. You loved him with passion and deeply, so you grieve for him deeply, with passion. It seems unfair.’
‘Love is unfair.’
‘Losing somebody, when you do not expect it, is unfair.’
I turn very still, can barely swallow the mouthful of food. I play over his words again, just to make sure I am not jumping to the wrong conclusion here. Then I ask him, ‘How do you know it was unexpected?’
He seems to contemplate this, and I think, wait a minute, this is something else I have noticed about him. He always seem a little puzzled by his own observations. ‘Well, he died young, yes? Unless you married an old man. Anybody who dies young… is unexpected.’
Unless it’s cancer, I feel like saying. But maybe I am making too much of this. So instead I tell him, ‘Well his death was unexpected. Jonathan was killed in a car accident.’ He doesn’t react, seems to just wait for me to tell him more. ‘We’d just got back from a holiday in Barbados... He’d gone out to work, and I was having a lie-in. When the knock came on my door, I just assumed he’d been in work ages ago, and yet there were two people standing there, telling me that Jonathan was dead.’ I feel a tension build between my eyes, but just as quickly, it subsides. ‘I don’t remember much after that, just going back to bed and his side was still warm… I didn’t know if it was from him, or because I’d rolled over there once he’d got up.’ I shake my head, the tension returning to my bones. ‘It mattered so much to me whose body heat it was. Because if it was his, I wanted to lie there and save it there… I wanted to keep his heat underneath me like that.’ I look up at the stars now, thinking how Jonathan once told me that stars are lights from suns that have long since burned out. Jonathan knew things like that. Because Jonathan would have paid attention in all those classes in school, whereas I would have just sat there rolling my eyes, because school was boring, teachers were boring, and I was just doing time until I could get on with living my life. I wonder, now, if Jonathan’s watching me from up there, from among those burned out suns. Maybe he too is a light that goes on shining long after the power source has been shut off. I hope. I hope with everything that is in me.