Escape to Ikaria Read online

  When we parted, he said, ‘My friend, I tell you this. If you want to know someone, go to sea with them.’

  It was Angelos who came and told me that Petros had started to dig a trench leading from the Toula Hotel across the open scrubland. A part of me hoped that we would have left the island by the time he reached the monastery. I could see it all quite clearly, the nuns standing with arms linked in front of the digger.

  In three days Artemis was leaving on the Saturday boat to Piraeus; not particularly good timing to be losing our translator. The idea of discussing tactics with Sister Ulita using a phrase book didn’t instil me with a lot of confidence.

  After an early-morning swim, I returned to the taverna where Dinos was saying goodbye to Maria and Yannis. It certainly was the season of farewells. He had made quite an impression on me that day when we took on Petros, showing fearlessness and strength of character. I wished I had got to know him better.

  ‘I will be back next summer. Maybe then you will taste some more of my Ikarian cooking.’

  ‘Maybe. Let’s hope so,’ I said, knowing full well we would not meet again.

  I could have done with Dinos by my side through what we were going to be facing at the monastery. I watched him walk away, heading for Aghios Kirikos, Maria weeping a mother’s tears, Yannis raising an arm above his head, waving a slow goodbye to his son.

  I awoke in the middle of the night, filled with anxiety. I didn’t want to be going home not knowing what I was leaving behind. I couldn’t just walk away from Sister Ulita, feeling I could have done more. No Ikarians would come to her aid, because of all the trouble over the water in the past. She would get no sympathy there, and I dreaded having to tell her we were going home. I looked at Ros sleeping; she didn’t know to what degree all this was affecting me.

  I got dressed and went and sat in the taverna, remembering all those who had been there through the summer. The eucalyptus trees swayed above me, their branches bending in the Aegean wind. I thought of Artemis, tomorrow being her last day, and how we would say goodbye to each other. Maybe she would just shake my hand, turn away and be gone. I was surrounded by empty tables, staring out to sea. The Aegean was so familiar to me now, the way it mirrored the night sky and invited you to dream its history. At last I told myself I couldn’t wait any longer for something to happen. We needed to seize the initiative. There was no other way. Tomorrow I would tell Sister Ulita we had to march on Petros, me and an army of nuns.

  When I arrived at the monastery, Artemis showed me the bodies of two dead rats on a shovel she was holding. She couldn’t look at them, telling me to find a spot to bury them as far away as possible. She was wearing a pair of rubber gloves, quite unlike her usually sophisticated self. She made me follow her, pointing out where she had put down little heaps of poison, and one extra-large pile in the pantry, where Sister Ulita kept her cheeses and pots of yoghurt. If I had not been distracted by other things weighing on my mind, I would have paid greater attention, but I was agitated.

  I told her that I needed to discuss Petros with Sister Ulita as soon as possible. To emphasise the urgency, I nearly said we were also leaving Ikaria soon, but stopped myself in time.

  When Sister Ulita emerged from her morning prayers I asked her to come and sit at the table in the courtyard, scattering the nuns like a flock of rooks. Apart from praying, how did they occupy themselves all day? I only knew they made jam, sewed garments and washed their clothes, which they hung between the cypress trees. One morning I saw them beating carpets with wooden poles, the most strenuous exercise I had seen them take. The rest of the time they seemed to spend walking around the monastery gardens reading prayer books, and coyly smiling at each other.

  When Artemis joined us, I told them both that we had to go and confront Petros that day.

  ‘All of us must walk to the Toula building site. And you must tell him he cannot take a drop of the monastery’s water. You must show him you will stand up to him.’

  I hit the table with the flat of my palm for emphasis and then waited for Artemis to finish translating. Her words were met with no enthusiasm whatsoever, just complete silence. I decided to give the nun a minute and if she didn’t agree I would walk away from the island with a clear conscience. But she didn’t need a minute, for a stream of words suddenly poured from her. I had noticed it before, this combustible side to Sister Ulita’s nature. Artemis translated for me, deliberately dropping her voice to not much more than a whisper. She said that the sister agreed we should march on Petros, all of us, and that if necessary fifteen nuns would lie in front of his digger.

  I also told the sister that I should say nothing, because it was not my argument. Having an irate nun raising her fists would be far more effective than a troublesome Englishman, who was already a thorn in Petros’s side. Then Artemis let out a horrified scream as a rat ran over her foot and scurried into a hole in the kitchen wall.

  19

  The End of Nearly Everything

  We could have done with a brass band marching ahead of us. We needed something rousing, not only to help concentrate the mind, but to put a livelier step in what seemed like a leisurely afternoon stroll. Although I suppose in loose-fitting sandals that would have been impossible.

  Sister Ulita had insisted we bring the goats, as far as I could gather because she thought they would enjoy a change of scenery. I didn’t argue the point. They were held on long lengths of rope that allowed them to graze the verges, or leave the road and eat whatever they fancied, stripping every bush they came upon. One thought she could climb a fig tree and got her rope tangled in the branches, holding us up for at least five minutes.

  Ambling along the coast road, we passed the taverna, where Maria and Yannis looked at us in astonishment. I had no idea whether Sister Ulita knew them. I’d never seen them together, but I hadn’t forgotten the time when Maria shouted at her as she sped past the taverna on her moped, covering the diners in a cloud of dust.

  After twenty minutes we should have been at the Toula building site, but were not even halfway. The sisters seemed more interested in having fun and gathering herbs and figs. No one was the slightest bit concerned about what lay ahead; perhaps they hadn’t been told what awaited them.

  Then Datsun Jim pulled up and in his typically exaggerated fashion knelt in front of Sister Ulita, kissing her hand as if she were the Mother Superior herself. I was beginning to give up on the day, which was making a mockery of the sleepless night I had gone through. They talked for a few minutes, and then Datsun Jim put the two goats in the back of the pick-up and, with Sister Ulita in the front, drove on slowly ahead of us.

  Finally, we arrived at the site gates, where Zenas came to meet us, obviously intrigued by the sight of so many nuns. He even smiled, something I’d never seen in all the time I’d worked on the Toula site. He tried to amuse them with some flirtatious behaviour, bowing and removing his cap, and then with a sweeping gesture of his arm inviting them in. But his mood changed in an instant when he saw Jim and me, and he warned us not to take another step.

  ‘Jim, stay where you are . . . let Sister Ulita do the talking,’ I said, reminding him that we had agreed not to set foot on the site again. The difficulty with Jim in these tense situations was that he lacked self-restraint. He threw himself into everything, whether it was God, a woman or a good brawl. He was not Hercules unchained exactly, but certainly unhinged. So I grabbed his wrist and said, ‘Jim, don’t move.’

  But now Sister Ulita, with palms pressed together, came quietly to Zenas in a way only a nun can, with a spiritual calmness. It created a passive setting for an aggressive man to listen with a receptive ear, while around us the building work continued, and all the men we had laboured with waved discreetly behind Zenas’s back. He seemed to be listening intently and only occasionally shook his head from side to side. Neither of them raised their voice, and their demeanour was certainly not that of two people discussing something so volatile.

  Only after Zenas shook Siste
r Ulita’s hand and escorted her back to the pick-up did I see her tears. As I helped her into the front seat I said, ‘Sister, are you all right? What has happened? What did Zenas say?’

  But of course she didn’t understand. She looked towards the skies, her hands together, holding her silver crucifix to her lips. It was strange seeing her in such an emotional state when there had been no drama, no raised voices, no extreme gestures.

  Half an hour later, back at the monastery, it became apparent that the God Datsun Jim had found was of the lenient variety. He started showing off to the nuns, moving the cross that hung around his neck to the front of his T-shirt. Jim wasn’t big on subtlety, and he thought this would convince them he was a likeable, pious man whom they’d find interesting. He hadn’t grasped the commitment that nuns give to their God. I suspected that for him this religious awakening would be no more than a dalliance until something else distracted him.

  ‘You have done enough for today, Jim . . . I’ll see you in the taverna tonight.’

  At last I could sit down with Sister Ulita and hear, through Artemis, everything that Zenas had said. He’d told her that Petros had nearly completed the purchase of the scrubland between the hotel and the monastery, and that soon they would begin drilling for water. Apparently, a water diviner had found an underground spring and shown them the exact spot. In a few days, they would bore some fifty metres down and pump the water to the surface. They had already carried out tests and there was more than enough to supply the Toula. Sister Ulita was to have no fears. He had given his word that not a drop would be taken from the monastery.

  So had those been tears of joy I had seen, or perhaps extreme relief? Did I believe it? I had to; we were leaving the island in a few days. Clearly Sister Ulita believed it; now in exceedingly good spirits, she continually patted my knee as Artemis translated the story.

  She beckoned me to follow her into the church and there she knelt, wanting me to kneel beside her and give thanks. No doubt she saw the resolution of the matter as an act of divine intervention, and nothing to do with the fact that Petros had found another source of water which for him was economically a much better alternative. God had been on her side and had looked after those who were his servants. So I knelt, because I wanted to share the moment with her; after all, it was something we had been through together. As she prayed, with her head tucked into her chest, she spoke only in a whisper, while I was watching particles of dust floating in a beam of light, thinking about when would be the right moment to tell her we were leaving. Her sunglasses had slipped down her nose, but I still couldn’t see her eyes, for they were tightly closed.

  As I was leaving the monastery, she came to me in her girlish way, pulling once again a piece of handwritten paper from her pocket, reading to me in English, ‘Ros and the children, yes will come for lunch tomorrow?’

  ‘Thank you, sister. Yes, they will come for lunch tomorrow.’

  Artemis was leaving in the morning. I wanted to be alone with her, if only for a few minutes to say an unhurried goodbye, and try to make some sense out of what had so attracted me to her.

  We had supper that night in the taverna with Sarah and Julia. Ros had already told them we were leaving in a week. They too had decided it was time to go and would be coming on the ferry with us back to Piraeus. Their Greek odyssey and passionate love affairs were coming to an end. Julia had decided to stay with friends in Athens and find work. She wanted to learn Greek and wasn’t ready to make her way back to New Zealand. Sarah said Ilias was going to visit her in England and she’d be coming back to Ikaria next year.

  Sam and Lysta had been helping Maria by serving on the tables to the handful of diners. A group of German hill-walkers demanded their attention, keeping them busy as the night clouded over. I missed the cicadas, the sounds of summer. It was much calmer now without all the usual noise of the taverna, people singing and dancing, shouting to Maria, wanting to know when their meal would arrive.

  Then, almost without warning, a thunderstorm erupted, a vast spectacular display of light over the Aegean, splintering the night, cracking open the darkness. It rained so fiercely that the drops bounced on the tables, while the branches of the eucalyptus trees swayed like the manes of wild horses. The downpour had us running for cover.

  In the morning I walked through a ghostly mist to the monastery. I had left earlier than usual, the air damp from all the rain that had fallen. Not just Artemis but the sisters too were leaving today. When I arrived they were already gathered by the gates with suitcases in their hands, milling around like excited schoolgirls going home at the end of term.

  I didn’t know how to say goodbye to a nun. Did I kiss her on both cheeks? That would be a lot of kisses, and besides, apart from exchanging polite smiles every day, I hardly knew them.

  So we shook hands, all of them giving me bashful looks. Had it been like a holiday for them? I’m sure they never knew what had really been going on, the unfolding drama. When Sister Ulita came to say goodbye to them, I slipped away to look for Artemis and found her smoking, sitting on the bench under the pear tree. This was how I would remember her, a woman who always seemed preoccupied, whom no one could get close to. She was wearing a raincoat, the collar turned up, her legs crossed as if she was waiting patiently for a train. The blue smoke from her cigarette floated in the still air, creating an aura against the greyness of the day.

  ‘I have come to say goodbye,’ I said. I didn’t know what to expect, though I thought it quite likely she would just get up and walk away, as she’d always done when it suited her to end a conversation.

  ‘So you are leaving too. I doubt it’s for ever . . . just a parting.’

  ‘No, it’s goodbye. I will not be back. I don’t think we will meet again.’

  ‘You will not be coming next year?’

  ‘No, we will not be returning to Ikaria.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette and turned down her collar. For a few moments we looked at each other, but I could read nothing in that impassive expression, not a sign, not a clue to what she was feeling.

  ‘Well, you can kiss me if you want,’ she said, standing up and coming towards me, offering her cheek.

  ‘I have a question,’ I said. Not that I expected an answer, but I asked it anyway, because I would have regretted it if I hadn’t. I wouldn’t have asked anybody else, but there was nobody like Artemis.

  ‘Has anything really been going on between us?’

  As soon as the words were out she laughed, and I wondered if it was to hide her embarrassment.

  ‘You are still a boy . . . you do not understand an older woman.’ And she touched my cheek with her fingers and gave me one delicate kiss on my lips. Then she walked away into the vaporising morning, as blurred rays of sun filtered through the lifting mist.

  Just before she disappeared, she turned back and I heard her last words. ‘I let you enjoy me only in your imagination.’

  For a few seconds I could hear her footsteps fading away, and then she was gone.

  I didn’t join Ros and the children for lunch. I had found a section of boundary wall in the vegetable garden that had collapsed in the torrential rain. I needed to rebuild it, and quickly, otherwise the wild goats that roamed the area would be through it and strip everything in sight. I had repaired countless stone walls in North Wales and it was always backbreaking work, every stone needing to fit precisely. It would take hours and I needed to have it finished before nightfall.

  There was a cool breeze coming in from the Aegean. Above me in the distance huge white clouds were swirling up over the ridgeline of the mountains, billowing downwards like an avalanche over the limestone cliffs. For a while I felt as if I was back at Dyffryn, remembering when Jack and I spent days bent double, our backs exposed to the biting winds, Ros rubbing Deep Heat into us later. My thoughts turned to the future, and the direction we’d be taking. We would just have to see when we got to Gloucestershire.

  I had been working for a few hours when I heard
Sister Ulita’s hysterical voice shouting for me. She was out of breath by the time she reached me.

  ‘Grigora, grigora!’ Quickly, quickly.

  Whatever could she want that was so urgent? She was frantic, pushing me forcefully in the back to make me run on ahead.

  When I reached the courtyard only Sam was on his feet, crying over Ros who lay unconscious on the flagstones. Lysta and Seth were sprawled nearby, their bodies outstretched as if they had been shot.

  ‘Sam, what’s happened?’ I said wildly, looking into Ros’s half-open eyes. They seemed glazed and lifeless.

  ‘They were eating the cheese that the sister always gives us. I didn’t want any.’

  ‘It’s the rat poison . . . they’ve been bloody poisoned!’ I shouted into the air. I told Sam to stay with them and ran from the monastery, down onto the coast road, heading in the direction of Xylosirtis, praying I would meet a car that could take us to Aghios Kirikos. I told myself to keep calm, but all I felt was a terrible panic, and then I saw the black BMW coming towards me. Of all the people it could have been, it was the one enemy I had made on the island. I stood in the middle of the road waving my arms. It was impossible for Petros to drive round me, so he had to stop. He wound down his window, aggressively gesturing, as if to slap me away with the back of his hand.

  ‘You fool, you want me to kill you?’

  ‘Petros! Please, I need your help! We must go now quickly to the monastery,’ I yelled, jumping in beside him. Seeing the state I was in he obeyed without saying a word, and when we rushed into the courtyard Sister Ulita was wiping Seth’s face with a wet cloth, tears streaming down her cheeks, begging my forgiveness.

  There was a Red Cross medical centre in Aghios Kirikos, but what facilities it had I didn’t know. Petros and I managed to get Ros and Lysta onto the back seat, and Sam sat with them.

  ‘Will they be all right, Dad? They’re not going to die, are they?’