Watching the Wind Blow (The Greek Village Collection Book 9) (7 page)

‘So from when I was a baby, they left my yiayia, my grandmother, in charge.’ She sighs again but with this sigh, her mouth draws into a straight line. ‘You know what I can remember, and people have told me it is not possible, that our memories don’t go that far back, but mine does. I remember my yiayia passing me when I was still young enough to be in a cot. You know the sort, with bars all the way around.’

Sam watches her face as she talks. He will not be shocked, he will not need comforting.

‘I didn’t like the cot because when everything was quiet, sometimes the rats would come out through the holes in the corners and from behind the few bits of furniture we had, sniffing hopefully, their claws tapping tiny sounds as they ran from place to place looking for scraps. Looking down on them from my cage, I found them frightening but I felt safe because I was high up. It was the sound of their claws on the wood. That scuttling, clicking noise. But if an adult was there, they didn’t come out, and there was usually an adult there. But this is not really the point. I was telling you about Yiayia.

‘Sometimes Yiayia would mother me as if I was the most precious thing in the world to her. Caring and kind.’ She smiles at this memory and then the smile drops. ‘The next moment, it was as if I did not exist. The change was so sudden, as if something had shifted in her head, in her thinking. Even if I cried at those times, it was as if she could not hear me. Her eyes glazed over and often, she would rock and stare out of the window and I would be frightened of her. Other times, it was even worse, as if I was something evil and dirty. If I cried for long enough at these times, she would throw the end of a piece of bread in my cot with me and then go out to the fields. During the course of the day, she would come in and out but each time, it was as if she was searching for something and she never seemed to see me.’ Irini stops talking to see if Sam will encourage her to continue.

With a glance, he does. She prepares herself before she continues. ‘But, and this is the bit that no one believes. I remember getting hungry and looking amongst the crumpled covers for the piece of bread and finding a rat with its teeth sunk into it. It showed no fear, this rat. I grabbed the bread and pulled and only then did it jump from my cot. After that, being alone was frightening. I thought the rats were going to eat me.’

Sam’s expression does not change. But nor does he show any signs of disbelief. Nor does he laugh, which someone did once. He just listens and Irini feels a great relief. She allows the feeling to settle within her before saying more. But eventually she feels driven to go on.

‘But although the rats were the immediate problem, it was my yiayia that caused the hurt. I never knew what mood she was going to be in, and what I did didn’t seem to influence her moods. It was all so uncertain and I craved her love, you know?’ She has never admitted this even to herself before. ‘Mama and Baba where there for so few hours a day, and when they were, they were either in the fields or sleeping. Yiayia was more like a mother to me because she was there the most. But trying to explain what it was like growing up with her. Well, it’s difficult to explain without sounding bad.’

‘You have told this to your husband though?’ he says, looking at her wedding ring.

The mental image of Petta fills her with love and yearning but also a loneliness. She cannot share this part of her life. He cannot even listen to it.

‘He finds it too hard to think of me in these situations.’ It is uncomfortable to confess this and she senses she is being disloyal. She waits for Sam’s judgement on Petta, but he says nothing.

Picking up the binoculars, he takes another look at the port police.

‘They will wait until it is dark,’ he says.

‘Wait for what?’ Irini asks, but he does not answer.

The clouds over the horizon have grown mountainous; where they meet the horizon, they are dark and foreboding. The sea in that direction is green and ruffled, not enough for white caps to form but not the smooth silk of transparent blue that surrounds them. The gentlest of breezes lifts the longer strands of her cropped hair.

An image of Stathoula comes to mind. Her plane will have landed now, and she will be in the car, on her way down from the airport. Irini pushes the thought away, but at the same time is interested to note that the intensity with which she was anticipating Stathoula’s visit has diminished a little.

‘Put the sails up,’ Sam says. Irini looks at him blankly. ‘You know how?’ he asks. In theory, she knows how, sort of. She could take the cover off the boom and undo the mainsail. She could probably figure which ropes to pull to get it aloft but then? She has seen tourists leaving harbour with the mainsail flapping pointlessly, more of a hindrance than an aid. She doubts she would be able to do any better.

‘You have no idea, do you?’ Sam asks. He looks at the port police boats behind them. They are getting no closer. ‘I don’t suppose we could outrun them anyway, even if there was a strong wind and we knew what we were doing.’

Irini wonders at what point he began to see them as a
we
. She suspects it is a positive sign as far as her safety is concerned. With that thought, she wonders if she had better check in with the port police, find out what is happening. Surely it is just a matter of coming alongside and telling him that he is under arrest. Would he be stupid enough to use his weapon against them? There are two boats and no doubt half a dozen officers on each - all armed, presumably.

She looks at Sam. He is in a bad position, a sitting duck. Why have the police not come already?

‘So, with two parents and a grandmother, how did you end up on the streets? Did you run away?’ He seems to have lost interest in the chess. He leans back and stretches his arms out on either side of him, along where the cockpit seat moulds with the upper decking. His head rocks back and he closes his eyes.

‘It was black and white growing up,’ Irini begins. ‘My parents loved me, adored me even.’ A smile crosses her face and she sinks, just a little, into her seat. ‘Sometimes, if they came home late, they would wake me just to see me, which I would love.’ Irini stretches out, mirroring his position but she keeps her eyes open, watching his face. Talking to him has taken such a weight from her, the least she can do is entertain him with a tale, a bit of her history, to keep his mind from the port police.

‘But Yiayia treated me like I was a problem. It got to the point as I grew that if I agreed with everything she said, then she was bearable, but I felt like I was living a lie to agree with some of her views. If I disagreed with her, it was as if I had unleashed a dragon.’ The simile amuses her and she laughs in the back of her throat, briefly. Sam still has his eye closed but he actually smiles. The creases on either side of his mouth are exaggerated and dimples form.

‘But one day, they did not come home. I went to bed and in my dreams I waited for them to wake me, but they didn’t. The next day after school, I rushed back to the farm expecting to see Mama bent from her hips weeding, Baba lifting and digging. But the field was empty.’

She stops talking. The emotions are still too fresh even though it was over twenty years ago. Yiayia didn’t need to tell her. She knew something had happened and the world she looked out on stretched away, seeming impossibly big and very, very lonely.

‘Irini,’ her yiayia called. She never did call her Rini, always Irini, as if being slightly formal would keep her at a distance. It did.

‘Come in,’ the old woman commanded. But Irini could not see the point of moving. There was no van in the drive. There was no Mama or Baba to love her. She stood in the drive unmoving and ever so slowly, she began to tremble. It started with her legs, up into her stomach, which quivered and knotted, seeped up into her chest, strangling her breath as it rose to her throat. Her mouth wobbled, her bottom lip quivered, and her vision blurred, swimming in unspilt tears.

‘Come in, do you hear me?’ Yiayia shouted, but her legs no longer seemed to be part of her and so she didn’t move. It took her yiayia’s hand on the back of her neck, gripping and pushing her, to make her walk into the house.

‘Where are they?’ she asked, once out of the glare of the late afternoon sun, but she knew the answer.

Yiayia just looked around the room, her eyes so wide, as if surprised. Then she began to lay the table for four people and talked to Irini as if she was her mama, asking her about her next trip to market, and how the last one went. Then Yiayia started asking Irini where Irini was and what time would she be home from school, complaining that the food would burn, even though none was cooking. So Irini shook her. Yiayia’s eyes rolled in her head and then she refocused and saw her grandchild and her mouth went small and tight and she walked out of the house.

Irini calms herself before she continues. She feels a little dizzy.

‘I just sat at the empty table. I knew but I also needed to know. So when she came back in about half an hour later, I asked her where Mama and Baba were and she said that it would be just me and her now.’ Irini’s eyes rest on the sea. The images are as clear as if it were happening right now.

‘What do you mean?’ She heard her own words, the squeal of the sound that was her voice, but she refused to let any tears fall in front of Yiayia.

‘A car accident. Fatal.’ That was it. That was all Yiayia said. This was her son they were talking about, and that was all she said. ‘Now you can start by making a salad,’ Yiayia commanded. Irini turned away from her and looked at the wilted, unwashed vegetables on the table that Mama had brought in the day before.

This house that she grew up in was no more than a few storage rooms that her mother had whitewashed and tried to make home with curtains that were too mean in fabric to close on the inside. Outside, with empty cans and old, split buckets filled with soil and planted with flowers, she had created the illusion of domesticity. Irini’s enduring image is of her mother toiling every day without rest, before she got up and after she went to bed. The sun beating down upon her bent back, her face the colour of a chestnut as she stood, dry and creased into a smile. As Irini grew older and her school days got longer, there was less time spent at home with only Yiayia, and life seemed easier for it.

There had also been an added element of excitement coming home from school, as Mama would be back from whichever market they had been to. She would be in the fields and when Irini came walking up the track, she would call her to come over and once close enough, wrap her in a hug and cover her head with kisses. She smelt of soil. Mama would ask her what she had learned that day and as Irini talked, she continued her work, her face glowing with pride.

Wet soil smelt best, after the rain. But the smell of dry, dusty soil was also good when mixed with the faint traces of Mama
’s
sweat and her own unique personal odour.

The day Irini learnt of her mother’s death, the soil was wet.

‘Salad,’ Yiayia commanded. But as she said it, a car drove up the track and came to a halt. It was one of the other stall holders, come to offer his respects. Then another car and another, and slowly the house began to fill with strangers. The level of talking grew as new people came in. Arrangements were being made; a funeral director arrived. With stiff limbs, Irini walked out of the storage room that they used as the kitchen and into the next room, which was her parents’ bedroom. From a nail in the wall, she unhooked her mama’s housecoat that she used to protect her clothes as best she could when she worked in the field. Slipping her arms through the sleeves, it engulfed her, but she pulled it tightly around her waist and fashioned a belt from some green twine.

‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’ Yiayia thundered. She hadn’t noticed her come in.

‘If they are dead, who will till the soil, grow the vegetables, go to the
laiki
to make the money to pay the rent?’ Irini asked, her voice quiet, everything on hold, nothing showing, nothing leaking, closed up.

Yiayia was not able to answer.

Within six months, most of the crops had failed. It was too much work for one person and Yiayia
’
s eyes grew more vacant and she took to wandering off, so much of Irini’s day was spent finding her and bringing her back.

The other problem she faced was how to get the produce to the markets. The traders who had shown so much sympathy initially were kind enough to come to her to buy what she had. But their compassion seemed to melt away when it came to haggling about the price. Before the year was out, the rent was so much in arrears that they were given notice.

The day the owner came to tell them that they needed to think about finding alternative accommodations, a strange look passed over Yiayia’s face. Once the landlord was gone, she suggested that Irini go to bed early and after years of habitual conforming, she complied. When she woke the next day, Yiayia’s coat and handbag where gone. There was no sign of the old lady either.

Sam opens his eyes as she finishes her story. With his head tipped back, he was looking through them half-closed. Crossing her hands across her chest does nothing to make her feel less exposed. What could he say to make what happened to her feel any better? She is now not sure why she has laid herself so open.

Unsure what to do, she does nothing. He continues to look at her through slitted eyes. His lips twitch. He is going to speak.

‘They loved you.’ His voice is soft and he says it like it is something so special, so precious, everything else should be eclipsed by this fact. Irini cannot meet his eye, but her arms drop from across her chest and she has a strange sensation of safety. Her breathing, which was shallow, now becomes even and deep. The sea’s blue around them seems to have lightened. The slight wind is creating more movement on the surface, which increases the sparkle.

‘Do you have family?’ she asks. But the openness that was there the moment before closes. His eyes are still green but they look only out. There is no invitation in. His mouth is a thin line.