Aftershock (9 page)

Sofia didn't think much of
Robin Hood
,but she worked hard at the words. She thought the story was strange – all that hitting people with long poles and shooting arrows all over the place.

Robin was on top of the castle wall
.

The moat was down below
.

His men were in the boat
.

“Come up!” Robin called
.

“Come up by the rope.”

Sofia read it with Makis. ‘Huh! Jump off, stupid Robin,' she said. ‘Make a splash. Fly like Icarus!'

They both laughed. ‘The next book's different,' Makis told her. ‘You're going to like it.'

‘The men went to the wall
.

They went in the boat,'

she read.

‘Very good!' She was showing some of her old spirit. But they soon put
Robin Hood
to one side, and from behind his back Makis produced
The Man Who Ran to Sparta
. Sofia's eyes shone at the sight of the cover – which showed the herald Phidippides running across rocky ground. Makis knew she'd enjoy learning to read even more if the story meant something to her.

‘Do you remember this story?' she asked him. ‘I used to tell it to you as a little boy, the way my mother told it to me.'

Makis nodded. He'd remembered it all over again when he was reading the book at Imeson Street. The famous runner Phidippides was a Greek hero – and Makis had imagined himself a hero, too, as he'd read it. It had made him feel that he had his own Greek place in the world, no matter where he was living. The world was a lot bigger than Denny Clarke's Camden Town.

‘Shall we start?' he asked.

But there was no reply; and when he looked round at his mother he saw that her eyes were welling with tears.

‘Tomorrow,' he said. And he whisked the books away, while Sofia went quickly to the kitchen to wash some vegetables under a noisy tap.

Makis was in the team for the Cup Final. He expected to be, after that handshake from Mr Hersee, but earthquakes do happen, and worlds do get turned upside down, so he couldn't be sure until he saw his name on the notice-board in the school corridor. All the details of the match were there today: the date, the time, the team they were against, as if Mr Hersee had decided that this match was important enough for a full sheet of paper instead of the usual half-sheet.

And pinned to the wall next to the notice-board was a red shirt from a sports shop, still in its boxed creases. The next morning Mr Hersee gave a talk in assembly about it – ‘Pride in the School Colours' – holding up the new shirt.

‘Bet he's only bought ten,' Denny Clarke moaned. ‘If anyone don't turn up, I'll ‘ave to wear an ol' vest.'

Makis stared at the shirt again. Its smell of newness was special. It made him catch his breath, and he was sorry it had been taken down to be shown in assembly. He wouldn't admit it, but every time he passed by, he made sure he got close enough to sniff it.

Saturday morning the sixth of March! Cup Final! Makis knew his mother wouldn't be going to Regent's Park to see him play, but he'd tell her all about it afterwards – and perhaps somebody would take a picture of the team, if they won. It might even be in the paper. And…

But he stopped himself thinking like that. Apart from an old grandmother in the north, there was no one back in Kefalonia to send the picture to, and that would have been the best bit of it – buying two or three copies of the paper for the village friends he no longer had.

The red football shirts were given out to the team during Friday assembly, when the twelve players on the teamsheet – including reserve Denny Clarke – were called out to the front. Mr Hersee presented the shirts with two hands as if they were military honours. And when Makis got his, he only just stopped himself from giving it a good sniff.

‘Take these home and wear them tomorrow with pride!'

Brian Cooper the goalie didn't get a new jersey – his old green roll-neck jumper would have to do. And Denny Clarke had been right: he didn't get one, either. The looks he gave Makis as the school sang ‘Glad That I Live Am I' poisoned the meaning of the joyful words.

‘Eleven o'clock tomorrow, Regent's Park. Imeson Street will be in action.' Mr Hersee waved a hand at the line of players as he jutted out his chin. ‘Let's have a good turn-out to support the lads.'

And that afternoon, Makis ran home with his face buried in the brand-new Cup Final shirt in Imeson Street red.

The night before the big match he hardly slept. He kept touching the shirt lying folded on the chair beside his bed. In his head he passed the ball with the insides and the outsides of both feet, and in a glorious jiggling run he beat four players before slotting home a cunningly deceptive winner. But that was day-dreaming; he turned this way and that, trying to get off to sleep and mostly, he turned to the red shirt side; but he was still awake. Why were nights so long? Why couldn't life be all days without these great waits in between? He wanted to be at Imeson Street, meeting up at ten o'clock for the team bus journey to Regent's Park – not having to lie here in bed.

In the end, he was deeply asleep when he felt himself being shaken.

‘Wake up, Makis! Wake up! It's half-past nine.'

He was woken by his mother – but what mother was this today? It wasn't the Sofia Magriotis who had bravely brought him to England. It wasn't the woman who had found ten green bottles to line up on the living-room table. And it wasn't the laughing woman who had invited a giant squid to jump up at Sally in her paddling pool. It was the red-faced and tearful mother Makis had found clutching his father's mandolin, weeping and rocking herself in her bedroom those weeks back.

‘What is it?' He forced himself up to see his mother clamping a hand across her mouth as if she dare not speak. ‘
What?
'

She turned her face away and went from his room. He got out of bed and followed her. She had been cleaning. Three cushion covers, ready for washing, were hanging over the back of a chair. The ornaments from the mantelpiece were on the table, lined up for dusting, next to the small pile of Colour Spot readers ready to be returned to school, closed and in their proper order. And lying there, too, was the book his mother was working her way through –
The Man Who Ran to Sparta.

‘What is it?' he asked again.

‘Get yourself washed,' she said. ‘Just look at the time.' The mantelpiece clock on the table said nine thirty-five. ‘You're never this late waking up. What time have you got to be at the school?'

‘Ten o'clock.'

Makis started dodging between the scullery outside and the kitchen as he gave himself a quick wash – while his mother filled a kettle, cut two slices of bread and put them under the grill. She threw an oilcloth across the table and set down a plate, all the time keeping her face turned away from Makis, bustling about as if everything was normal. Makis knew it wasn't, though – and this was suddenly proved by a huge hiccup, the sort that comes from nowhere after tears.

‘Mama! Something's the matter – what is it?' He wanted an answer, but he had to keep going, drying himself and looking for his trousers.

She burnt the toast. His tea wasn't poured. Pulling on his trousers and cramming his football boots, shin pads and the new red football shirt into a bag, Makis tried to move round in front of her, face to face. But it wasn't easy. She scraped the toast outside the back door, she buttered it standing against the cooker. She was hiding her face from him, and she wasn't going to tell him what this unhappiness was all about. So Makis went into the living-rooom to the book that she'd been looking at, lying upside down but open on the table.
The Man Who Ran to Sparta.
He turned it over.

And now he knew. He remembered this page from when he'd read the book himself, in school.

The picture of the runner's face at the end of his run – the only real close-up – looked like someone he knew; someone he loved. Phidippides was very like Makis's father – the same thick, dark hair, the same thinnish face, sharp nose and crinkled eyes. It could have been Spiros Magriotis there on the page, except that this man was in pain, his face screwed up in terrible anguish. During her tidying, Makis's mother must have let the book fall open right here. Now, the sudden noise she made behind him was like an animal in pain. She reached over and grabbed the book to close it. But he wouldn't let her.

‘Is it this?' he asked her. ‘Tell me… What is it about this picture?'

She stopped struggling with the book and stared at him. ‘He looked like this. Your father. When they pulled the Argostoli stones from on top of him. I saw him before they…' She couldn't go on.

This was something Makis had never known about, had never dared even imagine. He knew a lot about the day of the earthquake, but there were gaps.

He hugged his mother and she hugged him back; but he wasn't comfort enough for her. All her bravery – in coming to England, in working at a factory job she hated, in learning to talk and read in English for the sake of their new life – all this seemed to drain out of her at the sight of a picture of her husband suffering. With a wail, she slumped across the table.

‘Mama! Mama!' Makis felt helpless. He ran to the kitchen and brought a cup of water. He put his arms around her shoulders. ‘Drink this.'

She lifted her head to take a sip, spluttered and coughed, and racked her thin body. She stared at Makis and put her knuckles to her mouth. ‘What he must have suffered! Not a mark on his head or face, but suffocated, his body crushed…' She closed her eyes and leaned her head on Makis's shoulder, who held it there for a long time until slowly, slowly, she began to calm down.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘It just… caught me…'

Makis released his grip. To think that this was the book he'd brought to please her. And with his insides churning, he heard her words again and felt the pain of his father's death. Not the pain of the fact of his death – Makis was always feeling that, but the terrible understanding of how much his father must have been hurting to make his face look like the runner's in that picture. He imagined the agony of being buried by crushing stones, fighting to breathe beneath a fallen building. Poor man! Poor Papa!

Sofia was trying to pull herself together, to put on a brave face, but she looked as lost and alone as a child without friends in the playground.

‘What… time… is it?' she asked.

But right now, Makis didn't care what time it was. Cup Final or not, he wasn't going to leave his mother in this state. He must stay with her until he knew she would be all right on her own. Wasn't that what his father would have done?

‘Makis! It's your football match! You've been picked. You can't let your team down.'

With a steadying hand on the table, Sofia pulled herself up straight and became his mother again. And when a mood like this overtook her, there was no ignoring it. ‘Get yourself to school!' she ordered him.