Red Ink (27 page)

She lives here now, in the boxy, white building with its blue-painted roof. It’s just as Mum described it in The Story but now modern stuff hangs off the house like cheap jewellery – a stainless steel porch light, replacement windows with plastic frames, a satellite dish.

The rest of the plot does not look as though it has been tarted-up. A rough dirt track runs along the side of the house, just two gouges in the red earth. A large shed of corrugated iron sits, sorry for itself, behind the house. A couple of cars and a pick-up truck are playing hide and seek in knee-high wild flowers. The only thing that looks tidy is the row upon row of melon vines that spread out as far as the eye can see, down into the dip in the earth, up high on the crest of the hill. The mountains sit behind, black and solemn. There is snow on those mountains in winter, Mum used to say, which always seems unbelievable when you look at them in the sweltering heat.

It’s getting sticky in the car with the engine off and no air conditioning. But still we both sit there, waiting for the other one to take the initiative. We watch a ginger cat squeeze through a hole in the chicken wire, past the hens, who peck on, oblivious.

Paul speaks. “Shall we open the gate and pull into the driveway?” There is a wobble in his voice.

“No,” I say. “Don’t talk crazy.”

We get out of the car. In my hands I have the dove box. We approach the broad, mesh gate.

“She’s not going to say yes,” I say.

“Because she’s cremated?” asks Paul. “Or because they don’t do that here?”

“Because it’s Mum,” I say.

The gate blocking the driveway is a new thing too. An Auntie Aphrodite touch. Paul tries to open it, rattling its chainmail.

“It’s bolted,” he says, scanning the fenceposts for a doorbell. Red climbing flowers have wound themselves around the gate’s hinges, making it look like it has never been opened.

On the other side of the wire mesh, a small boy with thick, black hair pedals towards us on a plastic bike. His long-sleeved top is covered in ducks, although they’re hard to make out through the dust that covers him. An older boy, his brother maybe, runs barefoot behind, carrying a stick. The older boy’s palms are red from playing in the soil. He gabbles something at the younger boy in Greek.

Paul waves. I wave. The older boy’s face changes. Stranger-danger! He legs it back towards the house. The younger boy stays put, clutching his handlebars, eyeing us, curious.

“
Yia-Yia!”
yells the older boy. “
Yia-Yia!”

That word makes her sound so soft, my Great Aunt Aphrodite.

And then a figure emerges on the terrace. We hear the rasping smack of a door on a spring. A short, solid woman steps down onto the driveway. She has a waddle, a roll to her hips.

“
Ela, ela
,” she calls to the boys, sending them back towards the house with the swish of one fleshy arm. The small boy struggles to begin with, pedalling up that slope of a driveway, but once the children have gone, the woman moves forward, creasing her eyes, peering at us. She is wearing a grey smock, black trousers and a thick, knitted tank top, as if the August heatwave is just a figment of our imagination.

When her face is right up to the wire, I say, “
Thea Aphrodite, kalimera
.”

Paul looks at me a little stunned, as if I’ve just recited the Lord’s Prayer in Greek rather than saying a simple word or two.

“Melon?” Aphrodite looks truly surprised. Maybe she didn’t get Paul’s letters. I remember Mum saying the postman only came once a month round here, if he ever bothered to come at all.

Auntie Aphrodite starts undoing the lock, still without a smile. The sides of her mouth couldn’t do anything but turn down, the weight of those flabby cheeks is too much to fight against. She opens the gate, just a crack.

“
Pios ine aftos
?” She stares at Paul.

I speak back in English.

“This is Paul,” I tell her. “Paul, this is Auntie Aphrodite.”

Paul nods. Aphrodite nods.

“Paul is, was, Mum’s fiancé.”

This is the first time I’ve ever called him this. He smiles at me, then at Aphrodite. He offers his hand to shake but Aphrodite does not take it. She just nods her head again. She is respectful – iron-plated respectful.

“
Kalimera
,” she says, swallowing the word like a bad-tasting pill.

Flowers they are growing wherever she is walking, birds they are flocking wherever she is flying!

She eyes the box I’m carrying but doesn’t ask.

“
Ela, ela
.” She gestures for us to follow. She speaks it sternly. We do not dare dawdle. She lollops up the driveway and we walk behind, letting the red earth stain our toes and the edges of our flip-flops.

We sit around a table in the middle of a kitchen where ancient fitted cupboards stand next to a modern gurgling fridge. The tiles are old and cracked, painted with fading blue flowers. The dark wooden dresser leans to one side on the uneven floor.

I place Mum on the table.

Auntie Aphrodite puts a cup in front of each of us then asks us something in Greek. Paul looks to me, as if I’ve suddenly become fluent in the language. I’ve no idea what she’s saying, so I nod and say, “
Né
.” I decide that saying ‘yes’ to whatever she offers is the safest plan.

Aphrodite pours sludgy black coffee into the tiny cups, her face still set in a bad-dog frown. Then she drops a plate of bread on the table – great hunks of the stuff. She leans over, her huge boobs near my face, and drizzles oil over the bread with her thumb hooked into the neck of the bottle. Then she pours honey on top from a little jug. She turns her back and Paul gives me a look that asks,
is it ready?
I shrug.

What would Mum have done? She would have refused to eat it. She ate like a horse at all other times, only picking and fussing over what the family gave her. Why did she do that when she was trying to win them back? Could a little piece of her not resist the need to rebel?

I take a chunk of bread from the plate and bite. I get the flowery taste of oil first, then the sweetness of the honey that has stuck to my lips. Paul takes my lead, picks up some bread, starts chewing. Aphrodite stands over us, a thick ‘w’ of skin pinched into her forehead.

She is looking at the box.

Paul gives me a pleading look.
Ask her
, it says. He has turned into a mouse. His phrasebooks and guidebooks can’t help him here.

I put down my piece of bread, wipe my mouth.

“Inside this box,” I say to Aphrodite, tapping the lid, “is Mum.”

Aphrodite stares at me, giving no hint that she has understood. She has green eyes that would be really beautiful if only she would let them smile.

A shadow comes across the mesh flyscreen of the kitchen door. We all turn to see an old man in a peaked cap and blue overalls. This is Aphrodite’s husband – I remember him from our visits, always in the background, fingering his rosary. Another ‘Manolis’, like Granbabas.

The sun has carved itself deep into his face. He speaks to Aphrodite in words of just one syllable. His voice is low and bubbly like the sound a straw makes when you suck the last of a drink out of a glass. Aphrodite responds in a string of clanging sentences.

Uncle Manolis starts to push through the door.

“
Óhi! Óhi!
” goes Aphrodite, and then she throws more jangling words in his direction. Uncle Manolis eyes me and Paul for a moment, gives in to his wife and backs off.

“’
Daxi
,” he goes, lumbering away to be swallowed up by the sunlight. The door growls and snaps back into place.

Aphrodite’s attention is back on me, back on the box.

Paul gives me a tight, encouraging smile.

“In here,” I go again, “is Mum.”

Aphrodite is still pretending to be confused. But I know she understands me. This is the woman who used to tell Mum that if she turned to the side she would disappear. She knows her English.

“In here,” I say, “is Maria.”

“
Óhi.
” Aphrodite jerks her neck back, steps away from the box, as if it is cursed, as if the curse is contagious. She splutters a mouthful of disgusted Greek.

“
Né
,” I nod.

Paul nibbles at his honey bread.

“Mum wanted to be scattered here,” I go on. “Her ashes.” I make a throwing action with my hands.

“
Etho
?” she asks.

“Yes, here.”

“
Óhi
,” she replies with a firm shake of her head.

“
Se parakaló
,” I say, I beg.

“
Parakaló
,” says Paul, a word he understands.

“Never,” says Aphrodite, strong, loud.

I knew it.

I knew Aphrodite could speak English if she really needed to.

I carry Mum back down the red path. Paul carries a watermelon as big as his chest. It is a gift. I can still feel Aphrodite’s damp kisses on both of my cheeks.

She kissed me. She gave us fruit. This is more, so much more, than I expected.

When she kissed me, Aphrodite put a hand on the back of my neck and for a moment her green eyes lost their metal edge. She silently wished me well.

“If I was you,” I tell her, “I’d be angry, too.”

She nods. Her eyes tear-up – I don’t think I imagine it.

“I’ll come back and see you next year,” I say and that makes her smile – sort of. But I’m not sure that I really mean it.

But Aphrodite is right. This isn’t the place to be putting Mum to rest for all of eternity.

The day hasn’t even started and we’re on the road. The beginnings of the hazy sun are making cardboard cut-outs of the mountains. We drive the Akrotiri coastal route, then take a left where the road turns dusty and pot-holed. We follow the yellow line on the map.

We get to Tersanas beach as the sun is rising. We park the car, take off our flip-flops and sink our feet into sand that is cool from the night before. We walk past the wooden changing room on stilts, its door slung wide. We pass the volleyball net hanging loose and embarrassed in the quiet. Later, the beach will be filled with people and towels and squealing and action, but for now we have it all to ourselves. We pass the shack café with its chairs upside-down on the tables, the palm leaf roof rippling in the morning breeze. We go down to the edge of the sea and stand with our toes in the water. A fishing boat lolls, drowsy, in the distance at the mouth of the cove.

There is just us and the sea, the water moving in and out, lazy, like it doesn’t really have to.
Slurp, slurp
, it goes, licking the lips of the beach. It is clear in the shallows, then further out it turns green with a vibrant strip of turquoise dotted with a yellow buoy.

I have only ever seen this place busy, the beach heaving with oiled bodies, when Mum and me used to come here and sunbathe. Now it is still. This is the Tersanas beach Mum would have known as a kid, when she came here with Christos. With Yiannis. With whoever. This is the beach from The Story – my story, and Paul’s.

“Let’s climb through the rock pools and get to the smaller bay,” I say, and we start clambering over a tumble of pitted stone that divides the beach in two, stone that is so black that you expect smut to wipe off on your feet. Paul holds my elbow as I step from one salt-crusted mound to another, trying to keep hold of the dove box. Sea water glugs in and out of the pools and when my foot goes into one of the small pockets of water I’m surprised how warm it is.

We step back down on sand again and look behind us. The road where our car is parked curves round to this bay too. We could have reached this piece of sand easier that way. We both realise this at the same time and smile, shrug. I should have known that, I should have remembered.

A woman pulls up in a black car and parks under the shade of one of the tired, knotty trees by the roadside.

“Could it get any more perfect?” she calls out to a tanned man with a large stomach who is fiddling around on one of the few sleek, white boats moored at the jetty.

“It’s a wonderful day,” he calls back.

She locks her car and makes her way around to the quayside.

“Yes,” says the woman. “Thanks for inviting me.”

Then she boards the boat and their talk becomes too quiet for us to hear.

“Let’s wait for them to go,” says Paul.

So we stand and watch the sea wash over the rocks, furry with sea moss, watch the slippery seaweed waving and gesturing in the water.
Go away, come here, go away, come here.
Fish dance with their own shadows in the shallows. Flies find our feet interesting.

Eventually the man and the woman on the boat start puttering out to sea. Then the motor comes on full pelt, an angry lawnmower, and the boat moves out of the cove. There is no one to watch us now, just a squat orange house peering over the high rocks on one side of the bay.

I hold the dove box close to my chest, the wood warming in the sun. There is a light breeze in the air and I worry about Mum going in the wrong direction. But then, what is the right direction? Paul has felt the breeze too. He picks up some driftwood and some sun-crisped leaves and tosses them into the sea. He’s testing the current.

“We should say something,” he says. “Some words.”

I look down. Black dust from the rocks sways backwards and forwards in the waves.

“For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me,” I murmur. I can feel Paul watching me, listening. The words come easy, they are written across my mind. They will never be wiped away, even by time. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

I look up at Paul and he nods at the box.

“How do we do it?” I ask.

“With your hands. Take her in your hands.”

I open the box and the container inside. I drive my fingers into the silvery remains of my mother. The sun slicks heat along my forearm. The ashes feel cool in my hands. I toss a handful into the sea and watch it slowly sink, dissolve. It becomes one with the black rock dust that is already there.

“Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean,” I say. “Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.”