Chapter 26
26
They talked all the way back to the festival ground where dancing had already commenced. But it was ‘nothing’ talk. The kind of speaking you did when you knew you had to say something, but really it was worthless, for the benefit of nobody and you really did not want to converse at all. The moon was particularly bright. What was the name of the plants next to the sea lilies that spiked your feet? Should they be worried about not having seen Armeena yet? And all the time while this non-talking was going on, Christos was trying to get his body – and mind – to stop reacting to how they had been together in the water. He’d never felt like that before. So out of his comfort zone. A place he never went willingly when it came to his personal life. He could take risks in business, had needed to to get where he was today, but when it came to relationships, he allowed no one to get too close. But he seemed to be letting Molly see glimpses of the man behind the well-managed exterior. He needed to keep that in check, because there was still doubt in the back of his mind about the agenda here. Vaggelis had been a generous man, but to leave so much to someone he had apparently very little connection with? It didn’t add up. But he also knew if Molly hadn’t put a stop to what had been thrumming between them, he did not know what would have happened next. Or maybe he did. And that scared him more…
‘We need to get the hole in the deck of the boat repaired properly,’ Molly remarked suddenly.
‘Agreed.’
‘I had to answer some tricky questions about it earlier. Katerina took everyone to see it while we were halfway down a ravine and I didn’t tell them it was us who did the damage. I didn’t know what to say.’
‘OK,’ he answered.
‘OK. So you know someone who can repair it. With more than tarpaulin and tape?’
‘Molly, are you saying my repair was not adequate?’
‘No. I mean, it was, temporary, like you said at the time. But if we sell the boat or, if even we don’t, it will need to be fixed. I don’t know much about boats, but I do know that holes aren’t a feature.’
‘ We will fix it,’ he answered. Why had he said that? He didn’t have time for this. He needed to go through his accounts for the next quarter as well as deal with ordering a few new pieces of equipment for his Kypseli gym, and making sure he was ready for his staff reviews next month.
‘We?’ Molly queried.
‘Molly, I have seen you use your ingenuity just today. Driving an unfamiliar vehicle, hiking down a steep ridge, putting make-up on a wound, putting up with my aunt’s terrible orange cake.’
She laughed then and it was an immediate break to the tension he suspected she had been feeling too.
‘I didn’t want to say anything, but it was terrible cake,’ Molly said, hands to her mouth. ‘What was it that made it taste like that?’
‘I have no idea,’ he answered. ‘But I am sure whatever it is gets in there by mistake. She is spiritual. She burns things for good karma. It could be anything.’
‘Something to help mend the deck of a boat?’ she teased.
‘We do not need spirits to help us with that. Or perhaps only tsipouro . My godfather taught me many things.’
‘O-K.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We will begin to fix the boat and we will find the olive tree.’
‘ Find the olive tree?’ she queried. ‘You said you knew exactly where it was!’
‘I knew exactly where it was when I was many years younger. But I thought I had also remembered the best foot placements to get to it too, and look what happened.’
‘But Katerina will know, right? Is there a map of where individual trees are and who owns them?’
‘I think possibly you overestimate the Greek ability to keep up-to-date records. But, you know, it could go either way. There will either be no record at all or there will be at least ten bulging folders with intricate topography.’
‘Molly! Oh my God! What happened to you? Your hair looks awful!’ Siobhan exclaimed.
‘Are you wet?’ Magdalena queried.
Suddenly, Molly’s friend and Christos’s sister were there. Siobhan was holding a bottle of the frankly awful retsina and his sister had another tray of loukoumades in her hands. Christos didn’t think Molly’s hair looked anything like awful. The water had made it curl a little…
‘We—’
‘I lost a sandal,’ Molly interrupted him. ‘Took my shoes off to walk on the beach and… one of them ended up in the sea and it took ages to find it.’
He had only been going to say they were swimming, but Molly had led with practicality. He didn’t like it. Nothing about standing in the water with her and her eyes closed had said ‘practical’ to him. But, it was probably for the best.
‘It is a miracle you did,’ Magdalena remarked, chewing dough. ‘I lost a pair of sunglasses here three summers ago. I looked for two hours. Nothing.’
‘A miracle then,’ Christos answered. ‘So, please, tell us we have missed the part where Mama tries to get us all to join in the sirtaki dancing.’
‘Oh, you have not missed this. She is only just beginning her rounds. So far she has encouraged Janetto, Yiannis – but he was more than willing – and two German tourists who looked terrified,’ Magdalena said.
‘I’m going to dance after this wine,’ Siobhan declared, swaying left and right and pumping her arm in time to the music.
‘She will be doing more than dancing after that wine,’ Magdalena told them. ‘Does your apartment have two bathrooms?’
‘Magdalena,’ Christos scolded.
‘It’s OK,’ Molly said. ‘I will go and buy some water. Come on, Siobhan, you can dance over this way.’
She was leaving, heading to the makeshift bar with Siobhan and everything still felt awkward between them.
‘I see that look,’ Magdalena said, eyes wide. ‘What happened between you on the beach?’
‘Nothing,’ Christos answered.
‘I’m not stupid or as drunk as Siobhan. You don’t get that wet looking for a shoe. Christo, why can you not be honest with me?’
‘About what?’
‘About everything! It is this family!’ Magdalena exclaimed, arms widening, doughnut balls shaking. ‘We never talk about our feelings! We cover everything up until the very last moment. But what if the very last moment is the moment we die, like Vaggelis, and we never get to say how we feel about anything to anyone that matters to us?’
‘Is there something you want to tell me , Magdalena?’ Christos asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, eyes flashing. ‘Are you going to be honest with me about you and Molly?’
He thought for a second. Nothing had happened between him and Molly yet. The way he felt right now was telling him that this ‘nothing’ was more than he had felt for any one of the women he had been close with over the years.
‘Nothing happened,’ he said, exhaling. ‘And nothing will happen because who even is she? And who is she to Vaggelis? Did you not think about that? Why did he leave so much of what he owned to the daughter of someone he once romanced on The Greek Dynamo ?’
‘You think there is more to it? Something we don’t know?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘What are you saying to me?’
What was he saying? He had no evidence of anything. He had asked Molly about her father and she had told him who he was. A man called Simon. Yet…
‘Do you think Vaggelis could be Molly’s father?’
‘Christo! Are you really asking me that? No! Because that would mean he knew he had a child and he never saw her? Look how he was with us! Look how he was with you! Playing football and teaching you how to fix things. He was a father figure to his best friend’s family because he didn’t have a family of his own.’
This was true. If Vaggelis had known he had a child he would have been proud, the same way he had been proud when Christos had carried the flag at the Ochi Day parade or the first time he rode his bicycle…
‘He left things to everyone! Stupid things! Maria from the Post Office got a picnic blanket! Is she his daughter too? You know what, I think you are saying all this to convince yourself you don’t feel anything for Molly.’
She went to leave him, but he took her arm. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I… was not finished.’
Magdalena turned back, looked directly at him and her scrutiny suddenly made this feel like one of the hardest things he had ever done. Maybe she was right. Maybe the family had been practising keeping their feelings under wraps for so long they didn’t know how to let them out.
‘I… do like Molly,’ he admitted as if it was a terrible secret. ‘From the little I know about her. I like how she looks, obviously. But, she also seems… genuine and… caring and?—’
‘Wife material,’ Magdalena stated. ‘You would have very beautiful babies, I can see it now!’
‘And this is why I do not tell you and Mama anything,’ Christos said, sighing. ‘Because you always take things too far. It has only been a few days and we are joint owners of Vaggelis’s property, and we have some opposing views about that and…’ He stopped talking, suddenly realising he needed to take his opportunity. ‘OK, I have been honest with you. Now I want to hear what you have been keeping from me and Mama.’
‘OK,’ Magdalena said, sticking a fork into a dough ball. ‘But do not say anything to Mama yet. She has been even more annoying than usual at keeping track of where I am, what I am doing and who I am doing it with.’
‘OK.’
‘Swear it, Christo, like we did as kids when we did not want Papa to know something.’
He swallowed. There had been promises made between two tiny children who should not have had that kind of responsibility on their shoulders.
‘I promise,’ he said. ‘I swear it.’
‘OK,’ Magdalena said, taking a deep breath. ‘Well… I have a boyfriend.’
Christos smiled. This wasn’t news that his sister should be hiding away. ‘You have a boyfriend,’ he repeated.
‘That is what I said. Did you not hear me?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I heard you. Does he make you happy?’
Her face lit up like the sun on the brightest of days and that gave him his answer.
‘Yes, he makes me happy,’ she said, her eyes dewy now too.
‘Then that is all I need to know,’ Christos told her. ‘Whatever else you want to tell me I will hear when you are ready.’
His sister linked arms with him then, resting her head on his shoulder the way she used to when they had both been forced to go to church and were walking back tired from the endless litany.
‘It is hard to give some of yourself to someone, Christo, I know that,’ Magdalena told him. ‘But, it is harder to give nothing and end up alone.’
He squeezed her arm.
‘If you think Molly is genuine and caring, why do you not ask her who her father is? Then you will know for sure.’
‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I did ask.’
‘Well, what did she say?’
‘That is the problem,’ Christos admitted. ‘I don’t think she told me the truth.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t know, Magdalena. I don’t have all the answers yet, but?—’
‘The heart wants what it wants, right?’
‘I was not going to say that.’
‘I know,’ she answered with a smile, squeezing his arm again. ‘So I said it for you.’ She laughed. ‘Come on, stop looking so serious. We need to get this over with. Face our fate with the dancing.’
And as Magdalena pulled him back towards the showground, Christos started to wonder exactly what fate had in store for all of them.