Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
‘I don’t think all that drinking was a very good idea, Frank.’ I struggle down the ramp, feeling almost as tipsy as before I went to sleep, a gust of wind lifting my skirt, my feet landing on Santorini soil.
We’re here! The airport is in the middle of what appears to be nowhere, no hallmarks of the postcard Santorini. Instead, flat volcanic earth as far as the eye can see, with sparse clusters of white, square structures, like sugar cubes that astronauts have left on the moon. We look around for a moment, at the bluest of gemstone skies, a wash of island promise, and I brim over with excitement.
‘There’s really only one solution, Moira.’ He stares at our surroundings like a cinematographer scoping out a location.
‘If you say hair of the dog…’
We troop through the terminal to a taxi. I tell the driver to take us to Firostefani. If I know Harriet, she’s going to want to be somewhere romantic but less touristy so she might be in Imerovigli – the iconic, whitewashed, sapphire-domed town built on the highest point of the caldera cliffs. We can walk to it from Firostefani, but we won’t feel like we’re breathing down their necks.
‘When should we let them know we’re here?’ We have already decided that cycling around looking for churches is not the way to go. I am positively giddy with the idea of announcing our arrival to them now.
‘Soon,’ he says. ‘Or maybe never.’ When he sees my astonished face, he adds, ‘Look, I think we need to get ourselves into town, find a room, get our bearings, then we’ll text them.’ He winks. ‘Maybe get a small beer in the sunshine? Drum up a plan?’
I feign outrage. ‘Anyone would think you’re terrified to tell them we’re here!’
‘Hey, just saving the best for last.’
The cab tips us out – almost literally – at the main square. Where did the sun go? We stand under an angry canopy of cloud and take stock. Before us is a buttermilk-coloured church whose bell tower punches the sky like a giant, three-tier wedding cake. Ordaining the cliffside, white buildings merge with pastel, their walls draped with cerise bougainvillea, their views bowing onto the spectacular caldera. Nothing moves except for a gusty Greek flag and a cat who hurries across our path.
‘This is where a bit of forward planning would have come in handy.’ I park my wheelie case in front of my feet. ‘Good thing it’s low season, so getting a room shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll probably have our pick of the town.’
‘What do you say to that beer?’
‘I say we should secure our accommodation first.’
‘Because all the empty hotel rooms you just talked about are clearly going some place, and then there’ll be none left?’ He plucks off his glasses. He looks as green as he looked when he stumbled out of his hotel room this morning.
‘’K, alky pants,’ I say. ‘If we go for the beer now, then you’re going to stop talking about having a beer, right?’
‘We can take that theory for a spin. No promises, though.’
We walk the pebbled street that etches a trail along the cliffside, with its jaw-dropping view into the blue, passing a few closed shops selling jewellery and souvenirs, a pharmacy, and a coffee shop populated by older men. I don’t know if it’s the combination of the shitty weather, or the time of year, but not everything appears to be open. ‘This looks like it used to be a restaurant before the apocalypse,’ Frank says, as we stop in front of a taverna with an empty menu stand outside.
Just when I’m thinking there truly is no sign of life, we are suddenly surprised by a voice. ‘ Kalimera .’ A stocky, bald man, with a disproportionate amount of facial hair, appears out of nowhere and inspects us – not exactly an open-arms welcome.
‘Where are all the tourists?’ I ask. ‘This place is a ghost town.’
He throws a hand to the sky. ‘Wind. Rain. More wind. More rain. Tourists go somewhere else.’ He grins, revealing teeth that belong in the Natural History Museum, and says, ‘Spain.’
Frank asks him if he’s open, and he says, ‘If you here, we open.’ He directs us to follow him down the path, telling us that if we want more things that are open we should go to Fira, the main town, a fifteen-minute walk along the cliffside. He shows us to a table that perches on the edge of the caldera some four hundred feet above an indigo Aegean Sea; still beautiful even on a cloudy day. ‘Today no charge for the best view in the house.’ He gives us his blindingly black smile. Frank orders two Greek beers. The owner says he will come back and tell us what’s on his menu. I imagine him going inside, calling upstairs to his napping wife and telling her she’d better shift it because they’ve got business.
‘It’s annoyingly perfect.’ Frank looks around us in awe. ‘I almost want to spoil it just to know that someone can.’
‘Annoyingly perfect. Maybe you should write guidebooks? I see a bestseller in your future.’ I tell him what I read: that some say Santorini is the lost city of Atlantis, the legendary kingdom that plunged into the sea when it was at the peak of its power, disappearing without a trace.
‘So no metaphor there, then?’ he says.
I smile. I immediately open my phone’s camera and snap some pictures of the white confectionary houses, the occasional one painted lemon or pale green or pale pink, clinging to the side of the rock, the steep, stark incline to the sea.
‘Have you noticed that since the advent of the smart phone, no one can ever just enjoy the moment the old-fashioned way?’ He is studying me like I am now way more interesting than the view.
‘Nope. Oddly, I have not noticed that.’ I start recording a video, steadily panning the camera. ‘Can you move your big fat head out of frame, please and thank you?’
He slumps sideways. ‘Has anyone ever told you your descriptive powers rival Hemingway?’
I play it back for him. ‘Look, you totally ruined the view.’ This calls for a selfie. I dash around to his side of the table, crouch behind him, my warm ear touching his warm ear. ‘Say feta cheese.’
He says, ‘Oh Jesus,’ instead.
I sit back down and admire my handiwork.
‘You’re going to send that to Harriet, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But not now.’
‘I’m not?’
‘Nope. So put the phone down. Like a good girl.’
This makes me cackle. But I do put the phone down. Our beers arrive. ‘ Yamas !’ the owner says. Cheers!
I sip it and already feel a little less hungover. This is nice. I close my eyes, take a long slow breath in. When I open them, he is looking at me in a way that makes me say, ‘What?’ I glance at the phone in his hand. ‘Did you just take a picture of me?’
‘Why would I do something like that?’
‘Give me your phone then.’ I hold out a hand.
‘Come and get it.’ He sends me a rascally smirk.
‘I am not going to do that. I am not a child, like you.’ I feign great interest in my fingernails.
He says, ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’
Ding-a-ling! I’m convinced he just texted me the picture, but then I realise this is a Ding-a-ling, not a Ping. Rupert’s face again. Why all this urgency? Did the universe let him know I’m so very close to home – geographically, at least?
‘Who is it?’ Frank asks.
‘Nobody important.’
The owner comes back out and sets down small plates of food for a couple of cats, then he reels off our menu options. Moussaka straight from the oven. Greek salad. Grilled calamari in lemon sauce. English chips. Frank says, ‘Are all of them a possibility?’
My phone rings now. The old-fashioned phone call. I look at the screen. The familiar blue eyes. I put it in silent mode, turn it face down. Next, he’ll be sending up a drone.
Frank is watching me almost forensically. ‘Is that nobody again?’
‘Yup.’
‘Question.’ He cocks me a curious look. ‘Why isn’t he here, if his daughter’s getting married?’
I roll my eyes back in my head, not really ready for this. ‘That’s a very long story.’
‘We’ve got time.’
When I just stare silently across the water, he says, ‘How did you meet, then? You can surely tell me that part. We could begin at the beginning, where the least challenging fiction starts.’
I watch a ferry blazing a solitary trail to somewhere other than here. The sun is suddenly trying to break out. We do have to eat before we contact Aiden and Harriet. Something in me uncoils.
‘I managed a bar in my last year of university.’ I can see it in my mind’s eye, the way you always see the moment where your life’s path was being carved out in front of you, but you didn’t know it at the time. ‘I was serving a group of guys. One of them – the cute one with a mop of curly black hair – kept looking over. Later, one of my busboys said the cute one wanted to take me out, and he’d asked him to give me his business card. I looked over, but they were just walking out the door. The cute one glanced back and smiled.’ The memory makes me smile now. ‘I’d just read a fascinating book about love at first sight, and I remember thinking, hmm… does that ever happen in real life? Or is it a just concept that songwriters and novelists sell to us, so they can make millions and we’re left chasing a figment of their imagination?’
He is listening to me like he’s utterly captivated. ‘What did you do?’
‘Well, I was intrigued. So I rang him.’ I try to ignore his rapt expression. ‘He was bright and funny, and we agreed to go on a date. When I showed up…’ I throw up my hands. ‘It wasn’t him, was it? Not the cute one. It was one of his mates. Someone I could barely recall.’
He beams. ‘Hate to say it but I kinda saw that coming!’
‘He was a little nerdish and uptight. But he had amazing blue eyes, like the Maldives on a human face.’ I loved Rupert’s eyes. ‘He’d just taken over his dad’s estate agency and regaled me with stories about selling homes to the rich and famous.’ I smile. ‘Rupert can be very entertaining… We went out for a year. I had to come off the pill due to medical reasons, then I fell pregnant.’
I stare across the water again, think how best to phrase it. ‘The thing was… up to that point, you know, he was great, and it was comfortable, but I wasn’t sure I’d spend the rest of my life with him. But then the decision somehow felt made.’ I meet Frank’s eyes again. ‘I don’t know if I felt like I belonged with him in the way I imagined you should feel you belong, if you’re committing your whole life to a person.’
‘But you could have always terminated? We always have choices.’
‘Could have. But I suppose once I got over the shock that I was going to have a baby when I was barely out of university, I quite loved the idea of being a mother.’
He nods, like he’s making something of this. After a studied pause, he says, ‘So before, when we talked about this, you said the first time you questioned how happy you were with him was when you wondered if he had something going on with your friend. But sounds to me like you knew he wasn’t right for you even before you married.’
I’m a little taken aback by this unsolicited evaluation of my marriage. And by how he seems to be banking everything I tell him, like we’re in some sort of therapy session.
‘What’s happiness, anyway?’ I say. ‘Unless you’re actively un happy, then you’re probably happy enough.’
‘That’s a pretty low bar. You were a little young to settle.’
‘It didn’t feel like settling. It felt safe.’
‘Safe?’ He says it like it’s an obscene word.
‘By the time I met Rupert, I think I’d decided, on some subconscious level, that I wanted a guy who would never mess me around. A guy who would always show up for me, the way I would show up for him. And I thought that guy was him.’ I lower my eyes for a moment. I almost can’t handle the way he is looking at me – like he feels sorry for me. ‘Rupert was a good husband. He really pulled his weight with Harriet when she was little, so I could pursue my career as soon as I was able. We were equals in every possible regard, and he’s easy to be with.’ I shrug. ‘Maybe there was no extraordinary passion. But we weren’t on the emotional rollercoaster that comes with that, either.’
I tell him how I’ve seen some married couples who are so into one another that they’re riddled with distrust and jealousy – not a way I’d want to live.
His silence is really bothering me. I meet him firmly in the eyes. ‘If you don’t adore them with everything you have in you, then they don’t get to have that power over you. And that was partly why I was so worried for Harriet. Because of how much she seems to adore Aiden. I worried that might come back to bite her.’
‘This conversation is starting to trouble me. Don’t think I can take any more.’
I give an ironic huff. Fortunately, our food arrives.
‘Maybe I’m just not a romantic like you,’ I say, popping a hot chip in my mouth. ‘Mr Beating Away Beneath Every Encounter Is The Desire For A Love of Epic Proportions. Maybe I’m just too practical.’
I dig into the luscious moussaka, thinking about the lies we can tell ourselves. How could I ever admit that if I’ve missed out on anything, it’s that sense of true connection with a man? Not just the sex. Not really the soulmates thing, either. Just one of those feelings buried deep inside you, that your day-to-day life conspires to help you ignore – but occasionally the profound undeniability of it hits you. You were not in love. You were capable of feeling so much more.
As if he can mind-read, he says, ‘From everything I’m learning here, I think you’re in denial about yourself.’
‘In case you’re wondering,’ I say, after an overly long silence, trying to inject a note of levity into my tone. ‘I did sometimes wonder how my life might have been different if the other guy had shown up.’
He is staring at me, steadily. No smile. ‘Do you always have to make light of things the second you’ve expressed a serious emotion?’
‘Do I?’ I throw it back a little bit defensively.
He turns his focus back to his food. ‘There’s something I need to remind you, though,’ he says. ‘You may not have been in true, passionate love yet, Moira Fitzgerald, but your life probably isn’t even half over.’
I stare at the burnt cheese stuck to the edges of the white bowl, stare until it blurs, and I cannot make out what it is any more.
‘I think I’m going to text Harriet,’ I say.