A Saint for the Summer Read online

  “I think we’re too tired for more wine today,” he told me, “and anyway I’ve got no urge to be blootered these days.”

  “Your ticker will thank you,” I said primly.

  “It’s not the ticker I’m thinking of. I need my head to be a bit clearer than it has been …” He trailed off.

  “Why’s that?” I asked, thinking he perhaps needed to keep on his toes with the churlish daughter around.

  He gave me a searching look and was about to explain, I thought, but quickly changed his mind.

  “Och, plenty of time to talk in the days ahead, pet.”

  Intrigued, I wanted to probe him a bit more but was distracted. “Don’t take offence, Angus, but I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me ‘pet’. It makes me feel like I’m 12 years old.”

  He looked hurt, which surprised me.

  “Sorry, Bronte. I’m an old fool really.”

  “OK. Let’s not dwell on it,” I said, with a light flutter of my hand.

  Angus ordered two Greek coffees, which arrived in tiny white cups. I didn’t like this dark, muddy stuff on my first trip to Greece, but at least it was always served in mercifully small measures. Angus sipped his coffee with obvious delight, as if it was a rare malt whisky, and again I was intrigued by his new Greek persona.

  We walked back to the house in the dark. The cicadas were still rasping in the trees, a donkey brayed nearby and a few chained-up dogs barked a kind of syncopated lament. We trudged along, cocooned in our own thoughts. I was longing for that narrow bed under the watchful gaze of Saint Dimitrios. When I finally sank into it an hour later, the last thing I mulled over before I fell asleep was that final bit of conversation with Angus, about him wanting to be clear-headed these days. I had a strong conviction that there was another reason for me being summoned to Greece. I just needed to winkle it out of him − and soon.

  Chapter 4

  The Spartan arrives

  A shouty, repetitive voice seeped through the open balcony doors, waking me from a deep sleep. The voice was cartoonish and strangely amplified. On and on it went and finally tailed off into the distance, small and tinny. There was no chance of sleeping in now. I lay a while in bed, enjoying the warmth of the sun through the windows, the sound of a donkey braying nearby. The day promised to be very hot again.

  “Who was shouting this morning?” I asked Angus later as he wafted about the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

  “Oh that. You’ll get used to it. Hawkers go around the villages in trucks. They use loudspeakers to spruik their wares.”

  “What was that one selling?”

  “Oh, let me think …. Watermelons and chairs.”

  “Oh, of course, why not?” Only in Greece would fruit be paired with furniture.

  Angus was putting cold meat and cheese on small plates.

  “I take it you won’t be looking for porridge?” he joked.

  I shook my head. “I bet it’s a while since you ate it, right?”

  He shot me an amused look. “Aye, it is.”

  I had a sudden memory of being a kid of about 10 and how Angus made breakfast because my mother worked at a different school, further away, and had to leave earlier. He made porridge most days. He liked it very thick. “Stuff you could stot a ball off,” he used to say.

  “We don’t eat much in Greece for breakfast but I can cook you eggs if you like.”

  “No, this is fine. I’m not that hungry after the big meal last night.”

  “We can sit out on the big balcony. It’s cooler there in the morning,” he said, leading me through open double doors. He put the plates on a round wooden table, with a closed sun umbrella in its centre hole. If I thought my tiny side balcony was alluring, this was a revelation. It was a deep balcony running the width of the house, with several terracotta pots full of geraniums in the corners. The view almost made me feel dizzy; 180 degrees of it from the north Taygetos on our right, Kalamata below and the gulf spread out before us, as well as the Messinian peninsula directly opposite, with its spine of low hills. There was a hazy, balmy quality to the air and the light seemed to shimmer. A soft breeze toyed its way up from the sea. It had a tangy feel, with a hint of salt.

  “I know this house is a bit clarty inside, but this view is grand, isn’t it?”

  I smiled at his word ‘clarty’, messy, and the fact that even here, submerged in his Greek life, he still savoured his Scots vocabulary. Again, I had the acute sense of this being quite bizarre, sitting at breakfast with Angus after all this time. But in another way, it felt maddeningly normal, which it shouldn’t have.

  Suddenly the donkey was braying again, the same one I heard when I woke up, and a woman was shouting loudly at someone in the farm compound next door. I’d had a good look at the farm earlier that morning from my balcony, a messy space of olive trees and rural junk, and I sensed there were animal enclosures nearby because of the goaty smell wafting up in the heat.

  “Who lives next door?”

  “Ah, that’s Myrto. She has a farm of sorts and a donkey called Zeus, which she seems to argue with a lot, otherwise she’s arguing with her stepson Hector, who comes around from time to time. Hector’s a sour character, I must say. Don’t worry, you’ll meet Myrto soon enough. She speaks English and you might find her colourful and interesting, as a journo. Anyway, I thought you might like a walk around the village this morning to get your bearings.”

  I rather liked sitting on the balcony, soaking up the environment, but I dutifully went off to get dressed after breakfast for the walk and appeared in the sitting room wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt.

  “You need a bit of sun on those legs,” said Angus, smirking at my milk-bottle pins. “Maybe you’ll manage a tan this time.” He was referring to my previous visit to Greece, when I got sunburnt on the first day and had avoided the sun for the rest of the trip. I have the typical Celtic colouring of fair skin and wavy auburn hair – which I have always worn long. My eyes are hazel, like Angus’s, with flecks of green in sunlight, and not the cornflower blue of my mother’s.

  “I doubt I’ll have enough time to get a tan going.”

  “You’ll want to swim in the gulf though. It’s the best time now for swimming. Not too hot and it’s quiet. The place is packed in August, but the minute September arrives, the Greek holidaymakers all disappear back to the cities; kids are back to school. It’s as regular as clockwork,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “I didn’t think Greeks did clockwork.”

  “They don’t, but in some ways they’re creatures of habit. In fact, they can be damnably contrary in general. I’m constantly surprised by them. You will be too.” No I won’t. I won’t be here long enough for suntans or surprises, I thought.

  We set off for the village, walking on the edge of the road and crunching over wild herbs, their pungent aromas filling the warm air. The plateia, square, was busier today, with many of the tables outside the taverna and the café already occupied, mostly by men, and some labourers shouting in a language that didn’t sound Greek.

  “Albanians,” said Angus, noticing my confusion. “They do a lot of stone masonry in the Mani. They tend to keep to themselves.”

  Angus led the way through the square to a steep set of stone steps behind the church, leading to a narrow road. He called this the Palios Dromos (old road), from the days when this cobbled thoroughfare was the main residential road in the village, with traditional stone houses, and a few shops, their double wooden doors now sadly boarded-up. Only the old bakery that Angus used was still in operation here.

  Marathousa was said to date back to Byzantine times, though all that remained of this period was a small chapel at the top of the hill, kept locked because of its beautiful old frescos. Most of the village dated from the early 19th century, when the surrounding land was cultivated for olives. The 300 or so villagers still made a living from olive harvesting and goat farming.

  Along the lower main road were a few stone houses, a general store and an old and o
nce thriving olive press, now unused. It was a compact village, designed to have a clear view down the hillside to the coast and Kalamata, making it easy to spot interlopers in past centuries. From the hillside behind the village, narrow tracks led to high olive orchards and, to the south, the deep ravine of the Rindomo Gorge, where ancient caves were set into its perilous sides.

  We walked along the Palios Dromos, where ruined stone piles hunched against renovated houses, many bought by British expats, with handsome front doors and wrought-iron balconies. Despite having lived here for only five months, Angus seemed to know a lot of the passers-by and introduced me as ‘kori mou’ (my daughter). He repeated it so many times I finally remembered it. It was ironic that one of the first Greek words I should learn was ‘daughter’. Now all I had to do was tackle the word for father, pateras. That would take some getting used to.

  We came across one expat on our travels, a middle-aged woman whom Angus introduced to me as Cynthia. She was deeply tanned, wearing a long skirt and bright pink top. I sensed that she had been at the table of expat diners the previous night. She had blonde hair in a messy up-do held by clips and combs. My impression was someone artsy and nervous and not quite in her element on this Greek hillside, though I could see her more comfortably organising a village fete in Sussex, where Angus later told me she hailed from. She was a genial soul, however, and seemed to be quite taken with Angus.

  As she left, she said, “Come and have a drink with the expats one night at the kafeneio, Bronte. They’re good company; you’ll have a laugh. And get Angus to come as well. He never does now,” she added, with a small pout. “Anyway, yeia sas, goodbye.”

  Angus sighed after she flounced away. “Cynthia’s been here for years. She came with her husband to live permanently but he’s since died and she’s stayed on herself. She lives at the top of the village in an old house they were doing up. Don’t know how she manages.”

  “It’s brave of her to stay on alone here though,” I said.

  “She should go back to the UK. She can’t manage that old house up there. The Greeks help her out of kindness. A lot of expats are like her. They stay so long that they can’t go home again.” Like you, I thought.

  “So you do mix with the expats sometimes,” I said.

  “One or two, yes.”

  “I noticed Cynthia was flirting a bit with you.”

  “Don’t even go there, Bronte. I don’t get involved with expat women,” he replied sniffily. But I imagined that in the beginning he might have, when he was leading the hedonistic lifestyle he’d described the previous night. So, who would he get involved with now, I wondered, or was he just too old for love? Yet with his suntan and reflective shades, he looked craggily attractive, and the Scottish accent added to his charm. Despite his affability, I could see how my mother and he had grown apart in the end because they were essentially very different.

  Marcella was born on Mull and went to Glasgow University to study history. She was shy and reserved, apart from when she was in front of a classroom. As a teacher, she was quietly confident. Her Scottish accent was softer than Angus’s and sibilant, carrying an aura of the Western Isles and the wild Atlantic shore. Unlike Angus, whose auburn hair and hazel eyes I had inherited, Marcella was very fair, with strawberry blonde hair and a smattering of freckles. She had a fragile, luminous beauty in youth, but in middle years she had grown plainer.

  Despite our efforts to make Marcella more outgoing and fashionable, as the years went by, Shona and I accepted that she was happy just as she was. Away from school, she was a domestic doyenne, whereas Angus liked hillwalking and rock music. When he played his electric guitar, my mother would bake cakes, switching the blender on and filling the house with kitchen noise to blot out his riffs. Screaming guitars in one room, blenders in another. Shona and I would flee the house when Angus was feeling musical. Later on, he built a shed at the bottom of the garden and played there. We saw less of him − and we got fewer cakes as well.

  Some of Angus’s friends had blamed Marcella for him legging it because she hadn’t been interested enough in Angus’s life, his hobbies, his passions. It was a cruel kind of masculine logic. Had he ever asked Marcella how to bake a pineapple upside-down cake? But there was more to a marriage breaking down than all that. I was into my second day in Greece and already I felt that when I was growing up I hadn’t known Angus properly. And the years I wanted to know him, he wasn’t there.

  We had walked right along the old road towards the west side of the village, where the road curved down the edge of the hill and joined the lower road that wound down to the coast. Angus was puffing a bit.

  “The ticker doesn’t like walking much now,” he said, pointing to his chest as if he had incubated a petulant alien who dictated his life now. “Let’s go back by the main road and have something at the café. I haven’t taken you there yet. And it’s called a kafeneio, by the way. I think I’ll teach you a couple of words a day. You’ll be blethering in Greek in no time,” he chortled. Once a teacher always a teacher.

  The kafeneio was called the Zefiros, named after the Zephyr wind. I had a frappé, a cold instant coffee with a creamy topping, but Angus persisted with his Nile Delta brew. The café owner was almost as short as she was wide, like a voluptuous beach ball. She had a head of thick, coal black hair and curiously small teeth that made her smile seem mischievous.

  “I speak some English. You can come here any time and we will talk. I need the practice. My name is Elpida, by the way. Means hope,” she said with a shrug. “It’s all we can do now is hope.”

  She wandered off to another table to collect some empty cups.

  “Elpida will teach you some Greek too. She’s good fun and very patient.”

  Three weeks to learn Greek. I didn’t think so. But there it was again, this urge for Angus to keep me here longer, or not to comprehend that holiday leave usually has a time limit.

  “Do the people here know you have this health problem?”

  “Not really. I’ve only been here a short while. I don’t want them to think I’m done for already. They’ll never leave me alone. The women will want to bring me food and fuss over me.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “It is, when you’re on your death bed.”

  “But you prefer to keep something to yourself, even here.”

  “Yes, why not? I’m still a foreigner. We like our space too, don’t we?”

  After the coffee, he got up to pay. Elpida waved at me. “Come any time. I have free wi-fi too. Your father has no wi-fi in that old house of his,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  On the way back to the house, we passed the time with disconnected bits of chatter. “Do you still play guitar?” I asked him, wondering if he had shrugged off his old life completely.

  “Sometimes. I have one with me, and I bought a bouzouki a few years ago. I’m not much good at it yet.”

  “Really? A bouzouki?”

  I smiled to myself. What a curious man my father was, engulfed in a Greek metamorphosis, the reasons for which I had no great understanding.

  Cars passed now and then, mostly battered wrecks or small farm vehicles with chunky tyres, driven by the younger Greeks. One man rode by on a donkey with a bundle of sticks lashed either side of the solid wooden saddle. He waved a thin stick at us and offered a greeting. There was a sense of peace about this location that I might have preferred on my first visit to Greece rather than the more touristy beach haunt where Angus stayed when he first arrived.

  In the early afternoon, Angus’s landlord, the doctor, arrived after his morning surgery in Kalamata. He rapped at the door and Angus showed him in. The doctor was smartly dressed in a dark suit, his expensive-looking shoes tapping over the tiled floor. It was only then, in his presence, that I really noticed how shabby the house looked, particularly the faded tartan rug over the sofa and the scuffed coffee table. It all resembled the Scottish highland bothies I had visited with Angus when I was young and we used to go hillwalki
ng. Bothies were small abodes, often no more than rugged sheds in the middle of nowhere, with minimal charm, designed for shelter in foul weather.

  Angus hadn’t been joking about the doctor’s looks. He was extremely handsome. He looked robustly healthy, with glossy, loosely curled black hair, the locks hanging slightly over his forehead. There was a dusting of grey at the temples. His skin was smooth and tanned, his eyes were big and very dark and his best feature, except that the slight heaviness of the lids gave him a hint of aloofness. There was also a little stubbornness in his shapely top lip. Otherwise, you couldn’t fault him.

  Angus introduced me to Leonidas. “So, I finally get to meet the daughter of Kirios Angus,” he said, shaking my hand. I felt strong slim fingers, and a firm determination. At least he hadn’t called Angus a ‘goose’ – not yet.

  We strolled out to the balcony. “Sit down, Leo, we’ll have coffee, yes, or do you fancy a beer, or an ouzo?” said Angus, rubbing his hands and pointing to a chair, as if he were on a night out with his village mates.

  “I never drink between surgeries, my friend,” Leonidas said, with a sanctimonious glimmer in his dark eyes. He had scruples. That was good.

  We sat down and waited as Angus went into the kitchen and rattled about with cups and coffee makers. Leonidas’s eyes roamed dreamily over the olive groves.

  “I never get tired of this view. It is soothing, yes?”

  I agreed. Whatever else might be wrong with Greece, the physical beauty was not in crisis.

  “Your first trip to Greece?”

  “Second.”

  “And you like it so far?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t seen anything yet, apart from walking around the village.”

  “You must try to go further down the peninsula to the inner Mani. It is very special, very wild.”

  “I don’t know how much time there will be for sightseeing,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked, his thick black eyebrows arching up like two lazy cats stretching.