A Proper Mother, page 1
For R, R and N
BEFORE
August 1974
On the last day of their honeymoon, they thought they’d check out Agios Ioannis. Frankie had read in the guide book that although the cove was charming, tourists hardly ever went there because, unlike most of the other beaches on the island, it was small and fairly out of the way, unless you had a car, that is. But for those who persevered, it was well worth it, apparently.
So they hired a car for the day – a rusty black Renault with no seatbelts, a broken brake light and a cardboard air-freshener that swung, suspended by a string of brown prayer beads, from the rear-view mirror, emitting such a pungent fusion of citronella and furniture polish that they almost didn’t notice the crack that snaked across their horizon as they set off after breakfast before it got too hot.
Instead of turning right at the top of the main town, and down towards the harbour, they went the other way – the road climbing further and further up until they were approaching the island’s summit.
Frankie checked the map in the book as they juddered along. There was a chapel up on the rocks, it said, on the site of an ancient Byzantine monastery that had burnt down over three hundred years ago, and a shrine nearby, where two children in the 1930s had reportedly witnessed a vision of the Virgin Mary. There was a taverna, too, in the village of the same name, a couple of kilometres over the headland, run by a Daphne Mandrapilias – of the famous Mandrapilias Circus family – and her husband, Vasilis.
‘Daphne Mandrapilias,’ Frankie said to herself, imagining the owner of such an exotic name, frowning slightly as she pictured Daphne – lithe in a sequinned bikini, swinging from a trapeze. She checked her hair in the splintered wing mirror. It had lightened in the sun and she noticed the way her olive-green and gold striped going-away dress emphasised the flecks in her hazel eyes. She sat up straighter and turned her face to one side. Although the fabric was a bit scratchy, it hung pleasingly on her collar bone, reminding her just a tiny bit, whatever Callum might have said, of that little picture of Lauren Bacall with her second husband that she’d cut out of an old bridal magazine for the hairdresser.
When the Carpenters came on, Callum winced, fiddling with the radio until the fizzing dissolved into a tinny Greek pop song that Frankie had no recollection of having heard before. But by the time it finished playing, Callum was humming along as if he’d known it all his life. He winked at her, resting a hand – hot – on her thigh. Realising he must have seen her admiring her reflection, she squinted, pretending to wipe a speck of dust from her eye.
Callum’s perennial tan had darkened to such a deep nutty colour that people had been speaking Greek to him all week. She didn’t need to tell him how much it suited him and had been a little irritated when he, too, had looked over to notice the group of Greek girls watching him when he came out of the sea the previous morning, his faded red shorts slung low to expose a bright white stripe across his hips. She realised, glancing over at him – one elbow resting on the window frame – that he’d been singing not just for the whole journey, but for most of the holiday.
She had been feeling queasy for several days and the air-freshener wasn’t helping. Turning her face to the window, she closed her eyes and breathed in the hot dry aroma of pine and oregano as she tried to block out the smell of the car, not to mention the vision of the farm back home – sulking – in the dark and the rain, counting the hours until their return. She frowned, wondering how they were ever going to tear themselves away from this paradise the next day.
The sparse vegetation thinned out in time with the music, which grew more and more distant – like a child singing through a hurricane – until the road abandoned them altogether, leaving only a sandy track that looked as if it had been designed exclusively for donkeys. The car struggled to climb, tyres spinning in the dust. Callum swore under his breath as he tried to get it moving but it wouldn’t budge. And in the end, they got out and pushed it the final few metres to the top.
Everything was greener on the other side. But as the windscreen wipers scraped away the sand, Frankie was alarmed to see that the way down was narrow and steep, with almost no verge between the wheels and the cliff face. She gripped the door handle with one hand, Callum’s knee with the other, and didn’t open her eyes until they reached the bottom.
They parked on a desolate patch of gorse which suggested the edge of a dune but which gave way unexpectedly, a few metres on, to a strangely lunar landscape of bright white rock, adorned with large gleaming boulders.
Callum spotted a cleft in the rock that revealed, up close, a thin ravine of sand. Someone had drilled a spindly yellow rope banister into the side of the rock to guide people down to the beach, reminding Frankie – as she clung on, awkwardly – of a loosely carpeted staircase in an old country house.
She slipped, bashing her foot against the rock, and cried out, her hand flying instinctively to her stomach. Her toe was bleeding and she felt a flash of annoyance at Callum for not waiting, envying his easy barefoot agility as he dug his heels firmly in the sand, letting himself fall, in a steady gliding tread, like a skier, before clambering over the remaining rocks without so much as a glance over his shoulder.
The rocks concealed a perfectly formed cove, the colour of honeycomb. There was no-one else there. And the sea – prickling under the stark angry sun – was as still as a lake.
She hobbled over the burning sand and crouched down at the water’s edge to wash the blood off her foot. Callum came up behind her. ‘Look at the colour of that water.’ He grabbed her around the waist, as if to throw her in, so that she stumbled.
‘Careful,’ she said, too sharply.
He kissed her on the back of the neck. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he whispered, running one finger down her spine.
She leant back into him.
‘Get your cossie on.’ He waded out, snorkel dangling loosely from his slack jaw as he kicked the water behind him. ‘And if you’re lucky,’ he shouted, ‘when we get out, maybe I’ll help you take it off again.’
They left the beach just after one. Although Frankie felt they ought to visit the chapel, Callum was hungry, reckoning it would take a good hour or two to climb all the way up there – with no shade, either. The sun was directly overhead now, so that as they climbed the hill to the village, it felt as though someone were pressing drawing pins into her scalp. She reached into her bag for the thermos; they’d left it in the footwell of the car all morning and the water was warm with a strong petrol aftertaste. She was unsettled by how still everything was – as if the sun – having once been humiliated by the breeze – hadn’t yet decided whether to let it go.
Something caught her eye on the other side of the road – a little blue and white wooden shrine, like a bird house, on stilts. Inside was a candle, two plastic lilies and a tiny metal painting propped up against the back of the wood – an ikon, she realised, peering closer – of the Madonna and child, nestling in a bed of white ribbon that cradled a pair of powder-blue knitted baby shoes.
So this was the actual place where those children had their vision, she realised, half-remembering something she’d read in the guide book, and she called out to Callum to wait, but he’d already disappeared around the corner. The chapel must have been built later. She tried to picture them – laughing – barefoot in the dust and wondered where they’d been going that day – if they’d recognised the Virgin – whether she’d appeared as a spirit or whether she had looked like an ordinary woman at first.
Frankie stared at the little picture.
Mary’s face was flat, neither front-on, nor in profile, and the eyes looked sad – too pale – where the paint had peeled off – not quite meeting her baby’s gaze. Frankie leant in realising in that moment that, despite the way she was holding him, it wasn’t a baby. Jesus was depicted as a miniature man, with thick coils of auburn hair, wrapped in gold swaddling clothes. No – burial robes. And without knowing why, she crossed herself. ‘Please let it be a baby,’ she whispered. ‘I promise to take care of him – or her,’ she added, opening her eyes and glancing furtively around to check no-one had seen her pat her belly.
There was a crunch right behind her – like a smooth-soled shoe – slipping on the gravel.
She spun around.
There was no-one there – just a sudden intake of breath that arrived, from nowhere, to whip a fine grey dust through the pines.
And then it was gone, leaving everything even stiller than before.
She blinked hard and removed her sunglasses but her vision was still not right.
A cool sweat crept over her face.
She crouched down, hung her head between her knees and breathed deeply until she felt better. But when she stood up again, the sky looked wrong – too dark – as if a cloud had passed over the sun – the noise from the cicadas, that she hadn’t noticed until that moment – suddenly deafening, while out of the corner of her eye she caught a flicker, as the tail of a lizard disappeared behind a rock.
When they reached the taverna, although Frankie wasn’t sure quite what she had been expecting, she was a little disappointed by how dark and dingy it looked. The only sign of any famous circus heritage was a rather shabbily framed flier above the till from 1963 – the ink drawing – of a man leading a bear by a string – scarcely visible behind eleven years of intervening dust.
But the place was perfectly nice. She glanced around; drab whitewashed stone; battered wooden furniture; white paper tablecloths held down with metal clips. And the waiter coul
The air was hot and too close, their whispered conversation interrupted only by the occasional screech from a little girl in just a nappy and sandals, crouched under a table, trying to catch a cat, while her parents stared straight ahead. On the other side of the counter, two elderly men played backgammon in the shade of a trellised vine, slumped – in identical fishermen’s caps – over rounded tumblers of Metaxa.
Frankie flapped the back of her dress where it had stuck to her neck, and reached for the electric fan before realising it was broken.
The waiter who had shown them to their table was the owner, it turned out, introducing himself as Vasilis in such a soft reedy voice that Frankie had to lean in to hear him properly as he apologised again about the fans, explaining – one hand resting on her elbow – that they were having a bit of trouble with the generator.
He was quite a bit older than them – in his early forties, probably – slight, in a tight-fitting black suit, with an angular face and sparse black hair, slicked-back and combed, carefully, to conceal a prominent waxy forehead, which he wiped with an elaborate display of relief when Callum offered to give him a hand with the generator.
Although Frankie had insisted she would be fine with just a Greek salad, by the time the food arrived she was so hungry that she had to restrain herself from eating all of Callum’s moussaka, too, while she waited for him to finish helping Vasilis. She had just started to pick around the edges of it when the kitchen erupted into cheers as all at once the lights came on, the fans burst into life, and the unmistakable growl of Leonard Cohen came booming out of the stereo.
After bringing their change Vasilis lingered a little and struck up conversation once again with Frankie, asking if she had visited the chapel yet and whether she would like his wife, Daphne, to read her palm as a little gift, seeing as it was their honeymoon.
‘Oh, no, I…’ Frankie flushed, catching Callum’s wry smile as he put his sunglasses back on, brushing away a trace of sand from his cheek from where they’d been lying.
‘My wife’s incredibly superstitious,’ he confided, ruffling her hair a little too hard.
But she felt it would be rude to turn the offer down and, no sooner had she agreed, out came Daphne herself. She was not at all as Frankie had imagined – sturdy, forty-odd, about Frankie’s height, no make-up, with short permed hair and very flared jeans that almost hid surprisingly small feet, in brown, salt-stained espadrilles.
‘Ya, kalimera.’ She stared at Frankie, looking her up and down, as she shouted something angrily at her husband in Greek, before turning with curiosity to Callum.
Vasilis smiled, explaining how delighted she was to meet them.
‘She says your lines are unusual,’ Vasilis observed with a puzzled expression, leaning so close that Frankie could smell the rubbery scent of his aftershave as Daphne sat, perfectly still, staring through her in a trance-like state. ‘Very interesting for palm-reading… and so soft! Truly these are not the hands of a farmer’s wife.’ He laughed.
Daphne glared at him and shifted in her seat, pulling Frankie’s index finger so that the joint clicked.
‘And this line here…’ he explained, as Daphne scratched the side of Frankie’s hand ‘… is for children. You don’t have any kids, no?’
Frankie blushed and shook her head, resting one hand on her stomach. She stole a glance at Callum as he sat back to blow a lazy smoke ring, his face to the edge of the sun that was retreating now, behind the awning. But she could tell he was listening.
‘It says you will have a child, thanks be to God,’ Vasilis added, crossing himself rather half-heartedly as he glanced over at the other table to see whether they’d finished eating.
‘Oh, that’s good news.’ Frankie squeezed Callum’s arm. He smiled, almost in spite of himself, and idly examined his own hand while Vasilis and Daphne continued talking in Greek.
‘She sees an animal.’ Vasilis suppressed a yawn. ‘You have some pet? Little dog, maybe?’ He checked his watch.
‘My husband’s a farmer,’ said Frankie. ‘Like I was saying earlier – about the—’
‘Yes, yes.’ Vasilis waved away her explanation.
Callum rolled his eyes. ‘We should probably be heading back in a bit,’ he whispered.
Daphne was watching them carefully through eyes that made no movement. ‘No.’ She let go of Frankie’s hand and slammed the table with her fist, taking a deep breath.
Frankie looked to Vasilis, who seemed agitated. He muttered something to his wife, the words rattling out like bullets. But Daphne refused to interact with him. ‘No,’ she said again, more calmly now, switching to English and speaking directly to Frankie.
She drew a square with her finger in the air between them. ‘Children. One is special – very special for you, Mamá.’
Frankie shrank back in her seat. Her face felt suddenly much too hot.
Vasilis looked confused. ‘Special – how do you say – union?’ he suggested to Daphne.
‘No.’
They waited for her to go on.
‘Here.’ She jabbed Frankie’s hand with her finger. ‘This one is for a child – maybe two, although this second one is very soft which means, I don’t know, maybe a girl; it’s okay, no problem. But this third line…’ She pointed it out to Callum and shook her head. ‘This very strong special line is broken.’
‘What?’ Frankie looked down at the side of her palm, staring at the creases beneath her little finger, observing the way the skin still glistened, in the cracks, from the suntan oil, and unsure which lines the woman was referring to. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means this child has problem. You have problem.’
‘Ela!’ Vasilis raised his hands and barked something at his wife.
Callum was frowning. He leant in. ‘Shall we call it a day? I don’t think we should get too involved here.’
Frankie nodded, her face trembling. ‘Thank you. I think we’ll…’ She tried to withdraw her hand but Daphne’s grip tightened.
Frankie wrenched her hand away, knocking the table as she stood up, causing the glasses to wobble precariously. She hurried to catch up with Callum, urging him – even though she knew it was pointless – to leave a bigger tip. But as they headed down the hill, she glanced back and raised a hand, just in time to catch the look on Daphne’s face before the other woman turned away, leaving Frankie uncertain, for a moment, whether she hadn’t caught a glimmer of a smile.
They walked back to the car in silence, Callum a few steps ahead of her. And when they passed the shrine, although Frankie knew it was silly, she shivered.
Callum watched her approach through the wing mirror and started the ignition before she’d got in, revving the engine as she sat down, the scorched leather seat burning the backs of her legs, as she reached automatically behind her, forgetting, again, that there were no seatbelts.
He didn’t say anything as they set off.
‘That was all a bit weird, wasn’t it?’ she said.
He didn’t reply.
She rested one hand on his leg. ‘Are you okay?’
‘You’ve no business bleating all that nonsense about the farm. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He wrenched the gear stick too hard so that the tyres skidded.
‘What?’ She laughed in surprise but her face stung. ‘I was just being friendly.’
‘It’s not friendly, it’s fake,’ he muttered.
He drove too fast down the hill so that she had to push, hard, with both hands against the broken glove compartment, aware all the time of the pressure against her stomach.
She apologised twice, but he didn’t say anything.
‘There’s no truth in it,’ he said eventually, pulling up at the car hire office in the main harbour and walking off before she had a chance to respond. ‘It’s just rubbish.’
She tried to get him to chat while they waited in the car park for the man to finish his cigarette. ‘Can’t we just forget it?’ She squeezed his hand. ‘There’s no point arguing on our last day.’
