Chapter 36
36
MARIA’S GARDEN, OLD PERITHIA
The pastitsio had been incredible. Pasta tubes cooked to perfection layered with rich tomatoey mince and thick and creamy béchamel sauce served with home-made garlic bread and Greek salad slick with olive oil and topped with the biggest slab of feta cheese Molly had ever seen. Now she couldn’t move, but that was OK. There was nothing to move for except to lean forward and sip this deliciously fruity kokkino krasi – red wine – or to stroke the heads of the many cats Maria seemed to own. There were more cats than there were people around this large outdoor dining table, which was taking up the majority of the space in this garden you would not have known existed from the tight terraced nature of the front elevation. The rest of the garden was filled with terracotta pots spilling bright blooms and fragrant herbs – oregano, rosemary and thyme – and wind chimes that all produced different sounds, some more pleasing than others. The only other sound so far had been convivial conversation, thankfully. After the fraught beginning it was heartening to be sitting in a much more relaxed atmosphere.
‘Would you like some kataifi ?’ Christos offered.
‘Is that food?’ Molly asked him.
‘Yes, it is dessert. Made from nuts and spices and syrup.’
‘No, thank you,’ Molly replied, putting a hand on her stomach. ‘It sounds very nice, but I’m so full. I had three portions of the pastitsio .’
‘And my aunt will make you leave with more for tomorrow,’ Christos said with a smile as he retook his seat next to her.
‘No one has smashed any plates yet,’ Molly remarked.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘And I know I am Greek, but this is a good thing tonight.’
She still thought he seemed a little tense though, his hand around the bottom of his wine glass like he needed the connection – to be doing something. For one ridiculous second she thought about putting her hand over his and then she swallowed that thought down with her next sip of wine.
‘Thank you for coming tonight,’ Christos said. ‘I know you are busy and I know I have monopolised your time so far and?—’
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. And I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Vaggelis but… I just worry when I take my eye off the ball for too long.’
‘With your make-up business?’ he asked. ‘Or with your mother?’
She smiled. ‘Both need equal amounts of attention if I’m honest but, my mum and I had a talk today.’
‘Oh?’
‘She insists that Vaggelis is not my dad.’
‘And you believe her?’
She nodded. ‘I do believe her, yes.’
‘So she has told you who your father is?’
‘No,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘I think she is embarrassed about it. I don’t know why. But when she said she didn’t know today, for the first time, I actually believed her.’
‘So many secrets,’ he said softly.
She watched his eyes go to the other end of the table where Maria had rolls of fabric and all manner of other decorations. Angeliki, Magdalena, Janette and Siobhan were all giving input about table settings and clothing like Vaggelis’s service was going to be a royal wedding.
‘Actually,’ Molly began. ‘It was something Vaggelis had told my mother once that made us talk instead of keep shouting at each other.’
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘He said something along the lines of it being important to make time to do nothing.’
Christos laughed out loud. ‘Oh my God! Are you serious?’
‘What’s so funny?’ Molly asked him.
‘My godfather! That is what! He was the most industrious and also the most lazy person I ever knew.’
‘What? How is that even possible?’
‘ Ela ! Come!’
He got to his feet and, grabbing her hand, he pulled her up too.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the spooky gallery.’
The little house with the large garden also had a basement and this was where Christos had taken them. It was so cool compared to the rest of the home and the humid outside air, with stones on the floor and walls dark like a cave until… Christos flicked on a light and literally magic appeared.
‘Oh wow!’ Molly said as she looked at the rows and rows of shelves lined with all manner of items from the usual household detritus to spiritual things – wands, ornate glass bottles, tarot cards, incense.
‘My auntie has a lot of belongings,’ Christos remarked. He picked up a candle from one of the shelves and gave it a sniff. ‘I have no idea what scent this is.’
‘It’s a lot but it’s very tidy,’ Molly said, looking at the leather books all lined up in alphabetical order.
‘I think this is because it is my aunt’s favourite room,’ Christos said. ‘And we were never allowed down here as children.’
‘But you came anyway,’ Molly said, smiling.
‘How did you know?’
‘I have spent enough time with you now to know that you think some rules don’t belong to you.’
He put a hand to his chest. ‘You think I break the rules? I am insulted.’
She shook her head. ‘I think it’s more like you say no to conformity and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like, you went off to Athens and you did your own thing, not what was necessarily expected of you.’
‘And you have created a make-up brand. That was not expected of you.’
‘Maybe we both say no to conformity a little,’ Molly admitted with a smile.
‘Like my godfather,’ Christos said, with a raise of his eyebrows. ‘With his trying to do everything and doing nothing mentality?’ He parted a curtain at one end of the space and beckoned her forward. ‘ Ela .’
What was behind the fabric stole her breath. There were framed photos all around the walls and the room stretched far further than it should for the boundary of the house. It was almost like a never-ending tunnel.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said, close behind her.
‘Is this a secret path to our olive tree?’ Molly asked. ‘The original route to Athens?’
‘That was not what I was thinking you were thinking,’ Christos admitted.
‘Where does it end?’
‘That was more like it,’ he said. ‘So, for some unknown reason, this property owns this space that goes under all the properties on this row.’
‘So, none of those houses have a basement?’
He shook his head. ‘No, they do. But this one that elongates across all of them is underneath.’
‘A basement underneath basements?’ Molly queried.
‘What can I say?’ Christos asked, shrugging. ‘We are Greek. And here we all are.’ He indicated the photos. ‘The Economou family since almost before time began, with the Baros family and Maria’s husband’s family, the Chronopoulos’s.’
Molly didn’t know what to look at first. Some of the photographs were so old and faded you could barely pick out the features on the faces. But it was obvious from the poses, the slightly stiff smiles, that it was old-age photography at its finest.
‘The first ones here are outside this house but then, on this row it looks like the same people but outside a different house.’
‘Yes,’ Christos said. ‘People left Old Perithia. In the 1960s it was practically abandoned. Tourism began and people here took the work, moved closer to the sea.’
‘There are so many churches.’
‘There are eight churches here. It was a wealthy village at one time and also a hideaway from pirate attacks. From here you can see the sea but not be seen from the sea.’
‘This photo is from Kassiopi,’ Molly said, pointing. ‘Who’s in it?’
‘That is my mother and Maria and their sister Gigi – sadly she has passed. There is my uncle, Thanasis, Maria’s husband who has passed too, there is Vaggelis. Ha! He is doing nothing. That is Old Theo, not quite so old here. He looks the very same age he does today. And that is my father. It is not a good photograph of him.’
Molly picked up on the disdain in Christos’s tone. Even to mention his father was painful and now, after what he had told her on the boat, she got why. ‘So they all knew each other, when they were young.’
‘It is like that here. You go to school with everyone, you grow up with everyone, everyone knows everyone else.’
‘And everyone marries someone from their school?’ Molly queried.
‘Unless you meet someone here on their holidays, or someone who has come to work here for the summer or maybe you escape to Athens.’ He paused briefly before continuing. ‘Or maybe you do not get married at all. Like Vaggelis.’ He pointed at another photo on the wall. ‘Here he is, on the bell tower of a church near the village of Nymfes with Spiros. Hard at work, no? You can almost feel the sun on his back and the sweat across his forehead from the exhaustion.’
‘O-K,’ Molly said.
‘Yes, well, that bell was never fixed. It still does not ring. Hard work for as long as it was not too difficult. Then, in the end, an uncompleted project. Here, look. This is when he offered to paint the outside of the dressing rooms for the local football team. He ran out of paint. It was cream and red for three seasons. They play in blue and white.’
‘This isn’t showing me that he did nothing though,’ Molly said. ‘This is showing me that he tried. A lot.’
‘He slept a lot and he smoked too much.’
‘He cared,’ Molly stated. ‘And people cared about him. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many photos of him hanging on people’s walls or in photo albums.’ She sighed. ‘My mum has lots of photos but they’re all either of me as a child or her when she was younger at parties or on nights out with her friends. There’s a few of my Aunt Maud and even fewer of my grandparents. There’s not real history and all the people in it like there is here.’
‘That is what you are missing from your life,’ Christos said. ‘Your beginnings. Your roots and the roots of your family who came before you and how everything fits together.’
She nodded, turning to face him. ‘Yes, because that’s your starting point, your diving board to jump from. You know where you’ve come from, how the past of the people closest to you have shaped your present day and you learn who you are and who you want to be from that.’
He was looking at her now, with those beautiful eyes, his expression indecipherable. Maybe he thought she was crazy…
‘You do not need to know who your father is to understand who you are, Molly. My father ended up being two very different people who no one knew even though he was present with us every day.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe his bits are just the pieces that are so not like my mother. Maybe, if she does know who my father is, they are the pieces she doesn’t want to see when we’re arguing.’ She smiled.
‘Maybe the bits of you she admires more because she does not possess them. Because she has raised the whole woman who is so strong and independent and curious of everything.’
Now she could barely breathe. He thought she was strong and independent and curious… This tall, athletic, intelligent, humorous and gorgeous hot-blooded man.
‘Maybe you only need to be satisfied with who you have grown to be because of his absence. That you could not be a more complete person even if he was there,’ Christos whispered.
‘I don’t know about that,’ Molly said, her words shaking.
‘From all I have learned, in this short time, there is nothing that the history of this man, whoever he may be, can add to who you are, Molly.’
He reached up, his fingers grazing a breadth of her hair.
‘But what about… who I can be?’ she whispered.
‘That is nothing to do with anyone else,’ he told her.
She watched the rise and fall of his chest, hypnotising in the intimate lighting of this basement cave of magic and memories.
‘Everything that comes next is your choice alone,’ he said, voice ragged.
There was only one choice she wanted to make now and, for once, she wasn’t going to overthink it. She closed the tiny distance between them until his body was connected with hers and then their mouths met in a fast, dramatic coming-together that she hadn’t quite been prepared for. But she was more than ready for these feelings. His mouth so hot with hers, his hands either side of her face, thumbs resting on her cheekbones. She had her hands laced behind his head, drawing him closer as her back fell up against the old stone wall.
‘Molly,’ Christos breathed, his hands moving from her face to her shoulders, fingers toying with the straps of her dress.
‘Don’t say my name,’ she begged, kissing his lips lightly.
‘You do not like it?’
‘Oh no. I do like it. I like it a bit too much.’
‘Molly,’ he said again, a definite glint in his eyes.
She kissed him hard then, clinging to his body, moving him backwards to the other side of the tunnel room. His back slammed against the wall.
‘I don’t do this,’ Molly told him, her fingers at the top button of his shirt. ‘Just so you know.’
‘Do what?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow and then dropping a kiss on her shoulder blade.
‘You’re right,’ she breathed, relaxing a little. ‘This is just a meeting between joint beneficiaries?—’
‘Working through all the fine details of the attributes of the estate,’ Christos added.
‘ Very fine details,’ Molly said, her fingers on the second button.
‘Beautiful in fact,’ he whispered.
She didn’t wait to taste him again and as their mouths met fast, then slower, tantalisingly unhurried, she let her hands drift under his shirt.
‘Two people connected by… assets,’ he breathed, easing the straps of her dress down over her shoulders. ‘Coming together.’
And as Molly’s stomach dived like it had just fallen into a delicious fondue of lust, something fell to the ground with a smash.
She jumped, Christos jumped and whether it was the sight of the broken glass from a photo frame, or the realisation that they were getting undressed in the basement of a basement, it killed the intensity like an ice-cold shower.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Molly said, pulling the straps of her dress up as Christos bent to pick up the photo.
‘I expect the pin has rusted,’ Christos said.
‘Or it was your aunt’s magic stuff,’ Molly suggested.
Make light of it before it turns into Awkwardness 101. Forget that a second ago you were almost ripping each other’s clothes off…
‘It is strange,’ Christos said, as he held the photo that was now out of its frame. ‘It cannot have been hanging up. I have not seen this picture before.’
‘What is it?’ Molly asked, stepping closer to him again.
‘It is my mother… in Athens.’
‘It’s a lovely photo of her,’ Molly said. ‘She looks so happy there.’
‘She does,’ Christos agreed. ‘But, she has only been to Athens once. On a school trip. And this photo is not from then.’
She watched his expression turn from confusion to almost suspicion. She put a hand on his arm. ‘Maybe she forgot about this trip?’
‘You do not forget you have been somewhere, when your son lives there and you make excuses not to visit him because you do not like it. And here you are smiling in a photo not more than maybe… twenty-something years ago?’
Now ‘bitter’ and ‘angry’ were being added into the mix of his temperament. And their shared closeness had been all but forgotten…
‘Christo!’
It was his mother’s voice now that burst through the space, not in the room but coming from along the corridor and up. Christos was still looking at the photograph in his hands.
‘Come on,’ Molly said, reaching out and refastening the buttons she had undone. ‘We should get back to everyone else. Before they start asking questions.’
He nodded rather soberly. ‘ Ne . Yes.’