The Art of Becoming Homeless (10 page)

‘
No, his place is too small.’

‘
So where are you staying?’

‘
Same place as you?’ He grins.

Is it wrong?

As they climb back to the coastal path she glances behind. He sweeps his fringe from his eyes and smiles at her. His skin has tanned an even deeper brown in just a day. He has on a new t-shirt, not quite as orange as the last, with ‘Greece, the Experience’ written in small letters across the front. The colour accentuates his skin tones. Every step is a bounce, so much energy. She lets him pass, and he holds out a hand to help her up. Bitten nails.

The last few steps seem steeper than they appeared going down. A lizard runs across the path, she jumps and lets go of Dino
’s hand. The lizard stops on a rock, flicks out its tongue, motionless, sunbathing.

Dino keeps going, but then he
’ll have seen lizards a hundred times before. He looks so Greek, so foreign to her eyes and yet so familiar. His kissing of her fingers on the cliff face seemed so natural. But then how can these things be judged? It was a very unnatural situation. Does the situation make such a difference? Would someone else in the same situation have done the same thing? Is it a cultural difference? After all, Greek people kiss even passing acquaintances on both cheeks when they meet. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything. Clearly there is no logical conclusion to this argument, but the questions continue to invade her thoughts.

Dolly
’s last moments flicker through her mind’s eye again. One minute so alive, the next . . . It could have been her.

There is bound to be a well-known psychological response that explains these feelings she has for her rescuer. Some syndrome or other. Yes, she has read about it somewhere, White Knight Syndrome. Everything is a syndrome these days. It doesn
’t mean that her feelings are reciprocated, or appropriate. He is the same age as Juliet’s boys, for goodness’ sake!

Blinking, she shakes her head at how e
mbarrassed he would be if she were to act on her feelings, only to find she had misjudged his. Her cheeks grow hot at the thought.

He reaches behind him and offers his hand for the last few steps. The dark hairs lie flat on his forearm, his fingers explore her palm as he takes her hand. Little actions like that make her feel almost certain she is not misreading the signs.

But his age. There is a word for people like her in England.

‘
Adonis’ aunt, Kyria Zoe,’ he states, not even slightly out of breath with the climb. ‘She has a place that she used to run as a pension.’

He leads the way along the coastal path, away from town.

His arm slips around her waist for the final step, but once they are on the flat he lets go.

Not far along the path they cut up past a house overlooking the sea and climb long, low steps that take them inland. The path flattens and houses appear either side, replacing the barren rocks. Soon they reach a meeting of ways, a small square at the bottom of a very long, steep flight of steps, with cats sprawling in the shade of a majestic eucalyptus tree half way up. In this heat, the steps look insurmountable. Michelle stops walking just at the thought of the exertion that will be necessary.

‘Here we are.’ Dino takes her hand again to gently direct her to a gate near the bottom of the steps. A grand house stands behind a walled courtyard. Tall metal gates offer entrance.

The courtyard has hardly changed at all, although it does not seem as tidy as he recalls. Some of the brightly coloured floor tiles are cracked. Potted plants line the perimeter and play sentinel on every step up to the grand double doors. Jasmine covers the walls, flowers explode with colour everywhere.

On the ground floor, the several doors into the building look as though they are no longer used. Ornately carved, with the paint now peeling, the hinges rusty. Wooden boxes lean against one, a fishing net is hung over the handle of another, which clearly functions as a storage area now. The main house is centred around the double doors at the top of the steps, the veranda leading away from this in either direction to less ornate doors that have been painted fairly recently.

Dino bounces up the steps and knocks heartily on the grand double door, turning to smile at Michelle.

‘
Yes?’ A voice calls from inside.

‘
Kyria Zoe? Have you a room for me?’ Dino can hardly keep himself from laughing. Kyria Zoe would give him biscuits, olives, oranges every time he and Adonis used to call on her. She would praise him whilst shooting disapproving stares at Adonis.

‘
Who is it?’ The voice asks. A creaky old voice, but then how long has it been? At one time she would have hundreds of guests every year supplementing her pension, helping to support her family.

‘
It’s Dino.’

The door opens a crack, releasing a faint odour of antiseptic.

‘Who is it? I am feeding my mother.’ Kyria Zoe’s hair is a white halo, like candyfloss, but lighter, like clouds.

‘
And how is your mother?’

The door opens fully and reveals her familiar smile, her kind eyes, a soft face no less beautiful for the loss of colour in her hair. She takes a minute and then her face lights up and she grabs him in an embrace that is strong for a lady of her age. She kisses him on both cheeks, then stands back so she can look at him, hands still clutching his shoulders. Her questions tumble out in a continuous stream, with no pause for an answer. Where has he been? Is he too clever to talk to her now? Is his English perfect? Does Adonis know he is here?

Finally she looks at Michelle and holds out a hand to shake. ‘Girlfriend?’ she asks with a sly fleeting look.

‘
This is Michelle, my friend.’ Dino can feel colour rising to his cheeks, and he is glad, for some reason, that Michelle does not understand Greek.

‘
Ha! I know what you boys are like.’

She gives first Michelle and then Dino a long hard stare.

Dino explains that the strike has kept them on the island and that Michelle needs a room for a few days. He will stay too, but he doesn’t know for how long.

‘
In separate rooms.’ She does not ask, she states. She returns indoors without inviting them in. There is a sound of wood scraping on wood and the tinkle of metal on metal. Dino can hear voices inside, a girl’s voice, high and shrill, and someone who is grunting. Zoe is addressing her mother and Uncle Bobby, who is really her deceased husband’s brother. A typical large Greek family. Dino sighs, and not for the first time wishes for his own family, but there is only his Baba. Zoe returns with several keys on different bunches.

‘
Uncle Bobby has not been well,’ she mutters. She addresses Michelle, ‘You can be here.’ She says it emphatically, but with a smile, as she opens the blue door nearest to her own.

‘
This one is for you,’ Dino translates.

‘
And you …’ she marches Dino to the end of the balcony to a yellow door. ‘Can be here.’ She glances at him before opening the door. He looks past her into the cell of a room, takes in the narrow bed with a sheet pulled tightly across it and an icon above the headboard. A jug sits on a three-legged table, and apart from that it is bare. Zoe steps across the room and pushes open the shutters and sun floods the space, the dust motes dancing in her wake.

‘
It’s lovely, thank you, Kyria Zoe.’ He feels he should bow or nod his head or something—she is one of those people who commands respect—but he refrains. She ambles back to her door, deadheading the geraniums in their pots along the way, pocketing the petals in her apron. After Zoe has returned to her own rooms, Michelle’s head pops out from around her door.

‘
Is the coast clear?’ She is giggling.

‘
She is, how you say, “old school”.’ Dino feels some rough skin on the edge of his thumb and chews at it.

‘
I gathered by her looks what she was thinking!’

Dino watches her mouth as she speaks, the way her tongue moves behind her teeth. Maybe he is just like Adonis.

‘What is your room like, or are all the rooms the same?’ Michelle asks, breaking his stare.

‘
I think you have to take vows to enter mine. Yours?’

‘
It’s charming.’ She steps back to let him in. She has opened the shutters in this room, too, and French windows lead onto a small balcony with two chairs.

From the balcony the view is of the island
’s interior, across to the convent where a solitary nun resides. It might be possible to see the larger, neighbouring monastery up on the ridge. He stares up to the skyline and can just make out the orange-tiled roof through the trees. He had thought of becoming a monk at one point to try and find his salvation, gain some peace, after his mother died.

At the time he really thought it was what he wanted. It
’s amazing how at one point in your life something can seem so right, exactly what you want, and then just a short time later it is the last thing in the world you desire.

‘
There’s a guidebook here. It says the monastery was founded in 1704.’ Michelle peers out beyond the trees. ‘1704. That was the year they tried to pass the Act of Security in England.’ Looking back to the guidebook she muses. ‘Unbelievably hard on Queen Anne.’ Dino has no idea what she is talking about, but her knowledge impresses him. ‘The Scottish and English parliaments were quarrelling about who should be the royal successor. But Queen Anne! At least seventeen pregnancies, they think. Gave birth at least twelve times, but only five survived the birth. Can you imagine?

‘
Poor lady. Four of them died before they were two, which left Prince William. And he, bless his cotton socks, died at the age of eleven. I’m sure Queen Anne couldn’t have cared less who succeeded her after that. She must have been beside herself.’

Like a bolt of lightning the thought strikes him. She is here alone. Her friend Juliet is single, but that does not mean Michelle does not have a husband back in England. And children, perhaps. He feels slightly sick.

‘You all right? You’ve suddenly gone pale.’ Michelle asks him.

‘
Are you married?’

‘
No. I was, not now.’

The warmth returns to his cheeks.

‘What happened?’

‘
Too tacky for words. His secretary. Just walked out with one bag. No fight. I even got the crumbling old house.’ She laughs briefly, but it seems to be unrelated to her words.

He must have been crazy.

‘Mind you, she was Lady Philippa Someone-or-Other, with her own crumbling house, so I guess he didn’t need ours.’ The same laugh.

‘
I am sorry.’

‘
I’m not. You know, it wasn’t until he left that I realised how much he set it up so we were permanently competing. I mean, we had no reason to. I was employed in chambers, he was independent, but every conversation, every case I took, it was all compared, demeaned, in relation to his work.’ She pauses, a far-away look. ‘Anyway, he is gone. Let’s forget about him.’

‘
Was she as clever as you?’

‘
Who, Lady Home-Wrecker? No, not very bright. I’ve met some secretaries who are astoundingly bright, but she wasn’t one of them.’ Michelle looks back up to the monastery.

‘
Maybe that is what he preferred.’

‘
What? Someone who wasn’t bright?’

‘
No, someone not capable of giving him competition.’

‘
Huh! I had never thought of it like that.’ Up on a high path, a figure leads a donkey, the pace steady, no rush.

Does she have children? What age will they be? His age?

‘Children?’

‘
No.’ She returns her attention to the guidebook, the conversation closed.

During his days at university, he had studied and crammed to pass the exams, learnt by rote even when he hadn
’t understood, all of which he has now forgotten. He pulls at one of the chairs on the balcony and sits down.

‘
Ah. It says here that the monastery that stands now was built at a later date. A Giorgios Felos built it for his daughter, who chose to become a nun.’

She might be single, but what about her family? Who are they? Are her parents still alive? Does she have siblings? Does it make any difference? If they were Greek it would, but in England everything is different. People are separate from their families. She is too independent to be considered in any way other than in her own right.

‘… Don’t you think?’ Michelle concludes.

‘
What? Sorry, I missed what you said.’ Dino breaks free of his thoughts.

‘
I said if we walk up to look at the monastery it would be best to go early morning before it is too hot.’

‘
Oh. Yes, definitely.’

Looking up, following Dino’s line of sight, she spots the figure leading the donkey, climbing higher and higher up a path that hairpins back and forth and into the trees near the ridge. Michelle is struck by a thought.

‘
I met a man today who was a waiter, only he wasn’t. He’s been to Princeton and now he owns hotels.’