Escape to Ikaria Page 17

  We walked a few yards until below us I could see a stream of pure water running along a gully before it disappeared underground. I realised this must be where the monastery’s water came from, but I still didn’t know what Sister Ulita wanted to show me. We walked further, to where the gully widened and the water flowed more strongly, and there lay some pickaxes and shovels. Stones had been cleared and what looked like some exploration work had begun.

  ‘Panagia!’ she said, raising her arms to the heavens. I didn’t understand why she was so upset and I knew she couldn’t explain. It was one of those frustrating times when I felt inadequate because I couldn’t speak the language. How could I help her if I didn’t know what was wrong?

  When we returned to the monastery, she hid herself away for the rest of the day, leaving Artemis and me to have lunch together in the courtyard. A strange unease had come over the place, not helped by Artemis, who didn’t bother to lay for the unexpected visitor in Sister Ulita’s absence. It showed me what she thought of her friend’s beliefs, as it was something the nun insisted upon. I suggested we should lay two more places in case Sister Ulita did decide to join us.

  ‘You will not see the sister again today, and neither will the unexpected visitor arrive,’ she said indignantly. I didn’t care for her attitude, so I laid the two places myself.

  ‘If you want to keep on believing in outdated ancient customs that’s up to you,’ she snapped, before storming off to fetch a bottle of wine. ‘If it will make you happy, I will be the unexpected visitor.’ She sat down at the end of the table.

  ‘What has brought about your bad mood?’

  She didn’t answer straight away, concentrating on removing the cork. ‘She gets hysterical. It’s always the same when they come to steal the water.’ She filled her glass, drank it and then poured herself another one. It was the first time I’d seen her have wine with her lunch. ‘And now she will stay in her room, and in the morning she will not speak, and I am fed up with it.’

  Artemis was going to get drunk. She told me about the history of the water wars, as she called them, the long-standing battles with the islanders over the fresh water that flowed to Aghios Kirikos from the land owned by the monastery. But it was not the past that was upsetting Sister Ulita. It was the new threat that Petros posed with the building of the Toula Hotel.

  A half-bottle of wine later, she began to eat, picking at the salad leaves, soaking up the olive oil with her bread.

  ‘I wanted to ask you, why was Sister Ulita playing cards with the old man who brought the firewood?’

  ‘He comes every year and they play an old Ikarian card game. If she wins, she does not pay for the wood.’ She took another sip from her glass. ‘So come on, talk to me . . . pretend I am the unexpected visitor. Let us begin our little game.’ She pushed the bottle in my direction.

  I could never act out a part. Even in the school play I’d been unable to remember my lines.

  ‘So we find ourselves together in a monastery. Why are we here? And what are we going to do, the two of us? Have you thought about that?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m meant to be saying.’

  ‘You would like to make love to me, wouldn’t you?’ She took the wine bottle back, running her finger up and down it before she looked at me and said, ‘We cannot make love in a monastery where invisible eyes are looking down on us.’

  Her frustration spilt over then.

  ‘I have many English swear words, angry ones that would tell you how I feel.’

  ‘Swear as much as you want, Artemis.’

  ‘I am here to embroider the altar cloth, because I made a promise to the bishop, nothing more than that. So if you are not going to play this game, go, otherwise I will curse you.’

  So I left her and went off to do my work in the gardens, unable to shake off the feeling of gloom in what was a glorious afternoon. I kept thinking about Sister Ulita, and about Artemis, while everything around me was just the same as it ever was, busy with butterflies, swallows fizzing through the air. It was strange how the heat altered the perception of time, the minutes slow as I worked under the cloudless sky, detached from my surroundings, with the relentless sound of the cicadas.

  It was the only time I had walked through the courtyard and left the monastery without seeing either Artemis or Sister Ulita. The shutters were closed across the windows of their sleeping quarters. The remains of our lunch had not been cleared away; amongst the plates stood the empty wine bottle, and flies were buzzing around the salad.

  I was all at sea as I walked back to Lefkada. Artemis disturbed my emotions; I’d never met a woman like her and I didn’t know what was going on. And I realised that perhaps I was getting too closely involved in the lives of others – in too deep you could say.

  It was only when Lysta came running towards me shouting that Gregory was showing off, trying to balance on a karpuzi, that I felt I had returned to my familiar world. I was home again.

  15

  All About Water

  Early August and Gregory the Gregarious, who had been here nearly two months, said he couldn’t remember a single day of rain. Yet when the wind blew the dust off the fig trees by the road the leaves were still bright green. The grapes were now beginning to turn purple in the sun, the olive groves growing heavy with fruit. The peaches that I brought from the monastery, which we ate with goat’s yoghurt, were large and juicy and a particular treat for Lysta, who lived mostly on aubergines and every kind of green bean grown on the island. It had concerned us to have a child so fussy about what she ate. At least after watching the nun making so many cheese dishes, she had added these to her diet. But for all of us, the food from the monastery was fresh and delicious and the children always asked for more.

  Since Gregory had taught Sam how to tell the time he’d become a sort of uncle, telling our son great stories about life in Canada, how cold the winters were, how heavy with snow. He invited us to visit him when he returned home to Montreal. We sat around a table in the taverna and he passed his camera to Sam, who took a picture of Ros and me, his first ever photograph. Then Gregory took a family snap and promised he would send it to us. Sam asked him what Ros and I had also been wondering: whether Lottie would be going with him.

  ‘Who knows, man? Not me.’

  But there was something in the air that evening, about making decisions, the talk mostly of home, picking up the threads of our lives again. Sarah was having to face up to a few things: returning to England, taking up her place at university. I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. Was the affair with Ilias just a holiday romance that she had already sorted out with herself, or was there more to it? What was going to happen between Julia and Stelios when the summer came to an end? Living on Ikaria had disconnected us from the outside world.

  Ros said we would have to decide soon: do we stay, or do we go and take on the future, whatever it may be? I had been waiting for her to raise the subject. She clearly loved the Ikarian way of life, and of course her friendship with Agathi had influenced her. They had already talked about the possibility of the children’s attending the school in Aghios Kirikos and Ros teaching English there. But when I asked Agathi if Ros would be paid she wasn’t sure, saying the school relied on donations from pupils’ families to keep it going.

  Did we really want to spend a winter here, without electricity, wearing our socks under heaps of blankets? We already knew what the island was like in February; it could be a lonely place when the sun wasn’t shining. However, I still felt we hadn’t yet run our course on Ikaria. But Ros and I agreed that by the end of the month a decision would have to be made.

  It was the first anniversary of Elvis’s death, 16 August 1978. Not that I had realised, until I heard the radio on the beach playing his songs. The first record I ever bought was ‘Hard Headed Woman’, in 1958. I saved up my pocket money for it, all seven shillings and sixpence. I used to lie in my bedroom playing it again and again. My mother, having heard it enough, made me kee
p my door shut. Now here I was singing it to myself as I waded into the Aegean to wash off the day’s work at the Toula.

  As I walked out of the water, I noticed Sarah sitting on the beach deeply engrossed in a letter she was reading.

  ‘Not bad news, I hope?’

  ‘You startled me . . . no, not really. Most of it’s good.’

  ‘You look unhappy,’ I said.

  ‘I was thinking about my father. As you know he’s a dairy farmer, worried about the price of milk.’

  I changed the subject, wanting to cheer her up. ‘Have you had a good day with Ilias?’

  ‘I’ve never had a day like it. I’ve been cracking open almonds with a pestle, hundreds of them, helping his mother.’

  ‘Do you get on well with her?’

  ‘I think she might see me as a future daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Oh? Are things that serious?’

  ‘I just don’t know.’

  ‘But you are staying in Ikaria?’

  ‘I’m trying to decide what I should do. I feel pulled in so many directions.

  ‘Anyway, I’m looking forward to this evening. There’s a big family gathering and Ilias has promised to play the spoons, that sort of American hillbilly music, which he does brilliantly. He tried to teach me after all the hours on the almonds, but I was useless. There’s a real skill to it.’

  That evening, Angelos appeared at the taverna. I had seen him working on the Toula site, covered in dust and cement powder like everyone else, but I’d never been able to speak to him; difficult with Zenas forever watching us, with that bloody whistle in his mouth. He was young and dark with a thickening beard and brown eyes. He looked like Cat Stevens, in fact so like him, he would have passed as his double. He finished his Amstel in one long, thirst-quenching gulp, leaving a white frothy moustache above his dark beard. His English was good and he told me he was a student at Athens University, studying engineering, and had come here for work. He was penniless, and Ikaria, where you could sleep on the beach and pick fruit from the trees, was a cheap island to survive on. He was working ten hours a day for Petros and would not leave until he had saved thirty thousand drachma. That’s how much he needed to get through the winter back in Athens. He thought Petros drove everybody too hard and was a fool to deduct pay for being just five minutes late.

  ‘He would get more out of us if he softened his attitude instead of being a bully.’

  Angelos had heard that a JCB was arriving on the ferry soon to dig a trench that would bring water to the hotel.

  ‘Where will this water come from?’ I asked him anxiously.

  ‘From some old monastery two kilometres away. I’m not sure of the exact location.’

  Ros came over to say the children were hungry and she wanted to order some supper. I was about to introduce her to Angelos when she smiled and said, ‘Hello. Has anyone ever told you you look just like Cat Stevens?’

  ‘I’d had the same thought,’ I said.

  ‘A few people have told me that. It’s a pity I don’t have his voice and can’t play the guitar.’

  I asked him if he wanted to join us, but he was eating in Aghios Kirikos that night.

  Over supper, I told Ros how I was getting involved in a Greek drama that was unfolding around us. It was all about water, something we took for granted, but the lack of which could bring out the worst in people. And the Toula Hotel would need a lot of it, with a hundred bedrooms, a restaurant and a swimming pool. Petros had no right to take the monastery’s water and, as Ros knew, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing to help Sister Ulita.

  Datsun Jim’s metamorphosis was ongoing. When I met him the next day with a trowel in his hand laying bricks, I was quite astonished. He had shaved off his beard and looked ten years younger. We managed to grab two minutes before Zenas appeared. He told me that on 1 October he would be marrying Thekla, up in the hills in the village of Mounte. I asked him how many people he was going to invite but he didn’t understand. Apparently on Ikaria whoever wanted to just turned up for the celebrations. Everybody, it seemed, invited themselves.

  As I worked, I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole Toula Hotel project. There were so many things I didn’t understand. Did Petros have planning permission, or was it required in the first place? What deals had been done? Could an Athenian businessman legally divert water for a hotel he was building? I needed to speak to Artemis, who could translate Sister Ulita’s side of the story. Was there no law to protect the monastery? But nothing was likely to happen until the digger arrived, whenever that might be. Avrio, no doubt, and avrio could be a long time on Ikaria.

  Already, as I walked from Lefkada, I could tell we were in for an extremely hot day. For the past week, temperatures had been in the high eighties. I’d not been on the road for long when I saw two people coming towards me and recognised Sarah and Ilias.

  ‘What are you two doing out so early? I don’t often meet anyone on my way to the monastery.’

  ‘We went to the panagiri in Arethousa last night,’ said Sarah, ‘which was amazing, but the bus broke down on the way back.’

  ‘Have you been walking half the night?’

  They had, and although Ilias knew the old drovers’ tracks it had still taken them four hours.

  ‘It was the most wonderful walk. Not the easiest in sandals, but I’ll never forget it. We met an old lady in one of the deserted villages who seemed to be the only inhabitant. She’s a distant relative of Ilias’s and gave us some raki to drink.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘We are,’ said Ilias. ‘We’re going for a swim at the hot springs and then we’ll sleep.’

  Artemis had never opened the door to me when I arrived at the monastery, but she did that morning. Sister Ulita was on the telephone and would be for some time.

  ‘She is organising the troops, is how I think you say it in English.’

  ‘Is she speaking to the police?’

  ‘No, not the police, to the bishop of Samos.’

  ‘Will he come to Ikaria and sort out Petros?’ I asked.

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Because it is he who needs the water.’

  But she wouldn’t talk about it, as if she had something else on her mind.

  ‘I have told you, I am here to embroider the altar cloth for the celebrations on Saint Adrianos’s day.’ And it appeared that the matter was closed as far as she was concerned. ‘Do you know how to kill rats?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘There’s Perseus. A cat should be enough.’

  ‘You mean the overfed animal who lies around sunbathing all day? Is this one of your jokes?’

  I could hear the nun on the telephone, but it was hard to tell her mood, because Greek always sounded to me like a language in a hurry, dramatic even when the subject was something trivial. When she eventually appeared, her sunglasses reflecting the cypress trees, she seemed in a much better state than when I last saw her. Maybe help was coming from Samos.

  All Artemis wanted to do was tell her about the rat, pointing to where she had seen it run into the stonework outside the pantry where the food was kept. Sister Ulita disappeared and came back with Perseus and pushed his nose into the hole, but as soon as she put him down he wandered off, not showing the slightest interest.

  ‘You see, the animal is useless.’

  When we met for lunch and Sister Ulita prayed, as she always did before our first mouthful, Artemis sat impatiently, looking agitated. If Sister Ulita knew how exasperated her friend was feeling she ignored it.

  We were all surprised when the bell rang out in the courtyard. I’d not heard it before within the monastery, and the sound of it echoed from wall to wall. Sister Ulita immediately raised both hands to her cheeks and got into an excited flap, sending Artemis to the kitchen to bring more food and pouring water into the unexpected guest’s glass. Then she ran to open the gates and we heard her cries of joy. It wasn’t one unexpected guest that appeared but four of them: Ros and the children. I
was surprised they had suddenly turned up uninvited, until Ros whispered to me that she hoped their visit might take Sister Ulita’s mind off the troubles she was facing.

  Artemis quietly left the table without acknowledging anyone. I thought perhaps she didn’t like children; she was clearly not the motherly type, and I could imagine them annoying her. Lunch went on for over an hour, without any let-up from the cicadas. The sun glistened on the church bell, while a lizard stood perfectly still on the flagstones, as if listening to every word we said.

  Sister Ulita only ever got out her phrase book if she had an important point to make, usually to do with the children. She thought Sam was tall for his age; eventually, after much patience and thumbing through almost every page, she said Seth lived in a world of dreams, ‘Oneiro, oneiro.’ He did indeed; Ros and I nodded in agreement.

  When Sister Ulita went for her siesta, I suggested to Ros that before they left we should go and pick some peaches and pears that were ripening every day now in the orchard. I had to lift each of the children up to reach the branches, and once we’d filled a basket we sat in the shade for a while. The scent of the warm peaches made it impossible not to eat some, the juice running down our chins and through our fingers. We watched the monastery chickens scratching in the dry earth, shaking out their feathers. Butterflies settled on leaves and dragonflies zipped through the quivering heat haze. It really did feel like the Garden of Eden.