The Santorini Summer (6 page)

Behind the centrally-placed door was a small room which was lit by two windows, left and right of the door, and a skylight above. There was a table, two chairs and a stool at one end and in the corner was the kitchen, which comprised a sink and a hotplate. A pair of glass doors curtained with panels of lace led into another room beyond. We sat at the table and Irini made coffee, shyly placing a plate of honey cakes before us.

They questioned me politely about my journey, about Cambridge and London in particular. Christos had obviously spoken of me in great detail. I asked about their families, knowing how important family life is to Greeks, and we talked about the baby, which made Irini blush. Then Christos explained their routine.

‘Niko, Dimitrios and I leave early in the morning to sail out to the fishing grounds. We are back in the afternoon for sleep, and then we eat. We go early to bed because we must rise early. Irini will show you the way things are done here. Will you be all right while I am away?’

I was thinking that I was going to be very bored and lonely, but of course I replied that I would be fine. Then they showed me where I was to sleep. Beyond the glass doors there was a tiny vestibule and off this two other doors, one of which led into a room which had been made ready for a baby. In a corner stood a wooden cradle draped in muslin. Beside this was a narrow bed and a chair. A rail fixed to the wall held two empty coat-hangers. There was no natural light - the glass panel in the door borrowed light from the vestibule which in turn borrowed light from the living room. It was claustrophobic and I was glad to leave it, although I smiled and assured them I thought it was charming and I would be very comfortable.

‘Our bedroom is next door’, Niko told me, causing Irini to blush again, ‘so if you need anything…’

Christos, who must have been reading my mind, said, ‘We take turns to wash in the kitchen, and the lavatory is out in the yard. Let me show you.’ He squeezed my hand both to reassure me and, I understood, to beg me to accept these primitive arrangements.

The yard was communal, serving Niko and Irini and two other dug-ins. There was a stone hut which enclosed the lavatory, a copper laundry basin of the sort I’d seen at my grandmother’s house and a stone-built oven.

‘The women work together out here,’ explained Christos. ‘They do the washing and the cooking out here because it is cooler.’

His anxiety was plain to see, so I smiled and said it all sounded great fun, although my heart was sinking.

‘If this will not do for Olivia, my mother will find her a room in her house,’ said Irini, peering anxiously from the doorway.

I thought that would mean seeing less of Christos, and I could not hurt Irini’s feelings, so I smiled again and thanked her for allowing me to stay in her lovely home where I was sure I would be very happy. Irini smiled, relieved, and Christos looked at me gratefully, squeezing my hand again.

‘It is time for Niko to sleep now,’ he said, ‘for we have been up since dawn. You and I can take a walk down to the harbour and I will show you the
Ariadne
.’

I realised that he, too, should be sleeping, but I was glad that he was not going to leave me so soon.

As we walked along the path he thanked me for agreeing to stay. ‘I know that these conditions are not what you are used to in England, Olivia, but I think you will be happier here than at Stavros’ house. He is not a kind man. He speaks roughly to his wife and shouts. He is a bull, I think.’

Smiling, I corrected him. ‘The word you mean is “bully”.’

‘A bully, thank you. The house is very fine, although it needs restoration, but the air? – the atmosphere? – is not happy there. Niko and Irini have very little but they are happy and they have become my friends.’

I was suddenly very proud of him. His values were fine, noble even, and I would not let him down. ‘It will be an adventure, and as long as I am close to you it doesn’t matter where I am.’

The
Ariadne
lay beached in the silt of the harbour, tilted on her side and frighteningly small.

‘Is it strong enough to go far out to sea?’ I asked fearfully.

‘
She
, Olivia, please. Boats are ladies. She is just like all the other fishing boats, look. They have been building boats like these for many, many years and the men who sail them are very knowledgeable about the ocean and the weather. Niko and Dimitrios have been fishing with their fathers since they were children. I am quite safe, my love.’

‘Do you enjoy fishing?’

‘It is a good feeling, to be out in the wind and the waves. And to work in a team, with Niko and Dimitrios. When we have a good catch it takes all our strength to bring it aboard, and we sing songs of the old heroes as we sail home for we know we have done a good day’s work and will feed many people. It is a simple life. It makes Athens seem like another world.’

We climbed down onto the sand and curled up there together. Christos lay with his head in my lap.

‘I fear I must sleep a little,’ he said.

I sat very still so as not to disturb him. How strange it seemed to be sitting on a beach with Christos, so far away from Basingstoke, listening to the seabirds cry and the gentle swooshing of the waves at the mouth of the harbour. I looked down at his curly head and felt so full of love that my body could hardly contain it. I tried not to move so that he should sleep undisturbed.

When he awoke we were both stiff. ‘We need a walk’, he said, ‘and I have somewhere in mind.’

We climbed up from the beach, past Nikos’ house, and on up the steep, winding path to the centre of the little town. The shops were just opening again after their midday closure, and goods were being replaced in doorways.

‘Here’, said Christos, stopping outside a jeweller’s. ‘We need a betrothal ring.’

I caught my breath. He was, after all, quite serious about marrying me. He had never actually asked me, proposed in the traditional English manner, and I had never actually said yes, but here we were, looking at rings.

The window displayed a few watches, some gold necklaces and a selection of rings. ‘Which do you like?’

I was overcome with shyness and surprise. ‘I don’t know,’ I answered lamely.

‘I prefer the simpler ones. Perhaps that one, with the Greek key design?’

The jeweller treated us with great ceremony, insisting that we sit, that we drink coffee, and bringing each ring in turn on a little velvet cushion for me to try. It was apparent that we must consider each one gravely, although we had already made our choice. But finally we left the shop and I was wearing a gold ring on the third finger of my right hand.

‘Now,’ said Christos, proudly, ‘everyone will see that I have chosen my bride.’

To my surprise, I settled into life in Oia without too much difficulty. We would rise at dawn and arrange our movements tactfully to allow each other time to wash in the kitchen, then a breakfast of coffee and bread dipped in hot milk, which they told me was called
paxamadia
. Irini would pack up lunch in a canvas satchel for the men and I would walk outside to meet Christos and Dimitrios, leaving Irini to kiss her husband goodbye in privacy. It became my custom to watch
Ariadne
set sail and to wave to my fisherman until the boat was at the harbour mouth.

Then I would return to help Irini clean, for she was very proud of her home and kept everything spotlessly clean. Someone would have filled the copper outside and got a fire going beneath it so three households’ clothes were soaked and scrubbed. I tried hard to join in the gossip with the other women, but their island dialect and colloquialisms were often beyond me. They seemed to appreciate my efforts, however, and their laughter at my clumsy Greek was kind rather than cruel.

When the washing was hanging up to dry, we would take baskets and climb the steep path up to the town where Irini would buy bread, cheese and tomatoes. On our way home we would pick
horta
, the greens that grow wild on the islands and provide an abundance of free vegetables. By now the sun would be high and it was a tiring walk for me. For Irini, who was seven months’ pregnant, it was exhausting.

‘Why don’t we buy enough bread for two days, so you don’t have to make this journey every day?’ I asked.

She was quite shocked. ‘But the bread must be fresh,’ she answered.

On our return she would make us a simple lunch – aubergines with fava puree, a salad of tomatoes and feta, and yogurt with honey or fruit – and then we would sit outside in the courtyard, preparing the food for that evening’s meal, sewing and gossiping, but mostly waiting for our men to return. For me it was the worst time of the day, for I longed for Christos to return, but when he did so he must take his rest in Dimitrios’s house, and I would lie on my narrow bed in my claustrophobic room and try not to hear Niko making love to his wife in the room next door.

When the sun started to drop towards the horizon, the households arose and began to cook the evening meal, and then we would all be together again out in the courtyard, grilling fish on skewers and roasting vegetables in olive oil. Jugs of wine would be passed around and the men would tell us about their day, often pretending they had been attacked by giant squid or octopus to make the women scream. Christos would smile at me, grateful for the way I tried to join in and, whenever I wasn’t basting something with oil, or turning something over to cook on the other side, would take my hand and squeeze it.

We would carry our meal into Niko’s house, where sometimes Dimitrios and his wife joined us. Eating seemed to take a long time, interspersed as it was with stories from the men about their voyages, and many glasses of wine. I was becoming quite used to it, my head no longer spinning after two glasses. The Greeks don’t care to eat their food at a hot temperature, so it never mattered that we were still finishing two or three hours after we had started. Irini would excuse herself early, because of the baby, but I would sit with the others and try to understand their jokes, waiting for everyone to leave so that Christos and I might snatch a kiss before parting.

Every night seemed to fly by, and every day dragged until the fishing boats came back to the harbour, so that I lived in a perpetual cloud of anticipation and longing.

Chapter Four

‘Oh, Nan, it’s so romantic. And I think you were very brave, to come here alone and try to be Greek.’

‘I was in love, Alexa. It was the most…’ I search for words to express that ecstasy, but can only shake my head, as tears trickle down my nose.

‘Oh, Nan,’ she says again, hugging me.

We sit like that until I have composed myself. ‘Sorry, darling. It’s being back here. It really does feel just like yesterday. Shall we go back now, and have a nightcap?’ I am stiff from sitting on the wall and the sky is almost black. The tourists have all disappeared. I take a deep breath and, with Alexa tucking my arm safely beneath hers, we walk back to the hotel.

That night I am unable to sleep again. My memory has been stirred, and I lie re-living it, while the muslin curtains billow around me in the draught from the open windows.

*

Early one morning I awoke suddenly, feeling the strangest of sensations. My bed was shuddering. There was a rumbling noise outside, like thunder, and at first I thought there must be a storm, but the air felt thick and unusually heavy. I heard Irini give a little scream, and then Niko shouted ‘Olivia, come outside quickly!’

I put my feet on the floor, but the ground seemed to be slipping away from me. I fell forwards on to my face, and now the ground was swaying beneath me.

‘Olivia!’

Niko was on his hands and knees in the doorway. ‘Earthquake! You must come outside!’

We crawled out of the house and found the air filled with dust and an acrid smell of sulphur. Irini was crouching, cradling her belly, on the pathway which had cracked and opened, forming a pattern like the threads of a spider’s web. We could hear screams above the noise of breaking masonry and, as we watched, buildings began to disappear as if swallowed up by the ground. Great humps of earth grew up in front of us. Rocks rolled down the hill and splashed into the churning sea. Irini screamed as the front of her house collapsed into the courtyard which was now split in two. The noise was incredible, the earth groaning in protest as it heaved and buckled. And then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

Niko, clutched me with one arm, and Irini with his other. We were both coughing and she was sobbing.

‘Olivia!’

I looked up to see Christos crouching on a piece of pathway just yards away from me, but between us was a deep chasm from which dust was still billowing.

‘Olivia! Stay there! I’ll come to you!’

‘No! Don’t move! Please – ’

I watched in horror as Christos felt his way across a pile of stone which shifted beneath him. He fell flat to the ground, but lifted his head to shout, ‘I’m coming!’ Crawling and clutching at any piece of rock which looked stable enough to hold his weight, he began again to inch his way around the fissure. The earth had stopped shuddering beneath us, but rocks were still falling and you could not tell if the ground was firm beneath your feet or would crumble under your weight.

Demetrios and his wife were clinging to rocks on their side of the chasm, too terrified to move. All around us I could hear the sounds of women, terrorised and grief-stricken, while the noise of falling masonry went on and on, as buildings continued to collapse like so playing cards.

Christos was now further away from me as he tried to find a way around the fissure. I was torn between my terror for his safety and my need to be in his comforting arms. By slithering and crawling he got to me at last, covered in dirt and panting, and we clung to each other, shaking, coughing and weeping.

They told us later that it had been 7.3 on the Richter scale, the largest natural disaster in the Aegean for the past seventy five years. Given that it occurred just after five in the morning, when most people were still at home, if not in bed, the miracle was that so few died – about fifty, they said. But Oia was a major casualty. Very few of its buildings remained intact. Most people had lost their homes and many their livelihoods. Fira also suffered badly, along with some of the inland villages. The east coast was the least affected area, and some Oians who had relatives there left Oia for good and eventually built new lives in Kamari and Monolithos.

Niko, Irina, Christos and I stayed huddled together until we were sure that the worst was over. Dimitrios shouted to us, saying that he was taking his wife up to the town and we should make our way there too. Irini, anxious to know how her parents had fared, begged Niko to take her to them, so we made our way, slowly and cautiously, up the hill.

All around us was devastation. Women were hugging each other and crying whilst the men clawed at the rubble to see if they could rescue any belongings from their ruined homes. Water gushed from a broken pipe main, and the stink of ordure confirmed our fears that the sewers had fractured too. A journey which normally took no more than ten minutes took us almost an hour as we navigated a safe path through the fallen rocks and masonry, stopping to check that neighbours had survived, commiserating with them about the shock and damage.

Irina’s father’s house seemed to have suffered very little, perhaps because it had solid, stone foundations. Part of the pediment above the door had fallen, the windows had broken and the garden had a pyramid-shaped lump in the centre.

Stavros and his wife were greatly relieved to see their daughter unharmed, and made room for all of us without question. I knew that they would have done so even if they had not possessed so large a house. They had also taken in several of their neighbours, the women being found places inside while the men sat in those parts of the front garden which remained flat and not completely covered in rubble.

By nightfall, with the aid of many jugs of wine, and the relief that naturally follows when you realise you have survived something deadly, the atmosphere was jovial, almost party-like. The women were cooking over a fire-pit and people took turns in relating memories of other near-misses: a minor eruption of Nea Komeni in 1950 which caused the island to be evacuated, and the earthquakes in 1953 and ’54. Stavros found an old photograph of an eruption which he could not date, and arguments broke out as different people came forward with their firm beliefs that it was 1925, or 1927...

Irini had been put to bed by her mother by then, but Niko, Christos and I sat on the rocks which had fallen into the garden and listened.

‘If everyone knows how dangerous it is here, why have they stayed?’ I asked in bewilderment. ‘The volcano is obviously not dormant, and there have been three earthquakes in four years.’

‘Santorini is our home,’ explained Niko. ‘Where else would we go? We know there are risks, but there are risks every day when we go out to sea.’

That did not reassure me. I had been waving Christos off every morning in the
Ariadne
, without thinking that fishing in itself is a potentially dangerous occupation and in the Aegean Arc, where volcanic activity is always a possibility, particularly fraught for the seamen of Santorini.

‘Christos,’ I whispered at last, ‘can we get away from everyone for a moment? Just to be alone?’

He took my hand and we rose as if to stretch our legs. There were so many people packed into the garden that our escape went unnoticed. We climbed over rocks, Christos having to lift me over some of the fissures, until we found the steps leading down to the small beach at Amoudi. Some of the steps had disappeared, whilst others were covered with rubble, but we managed to clamber down what remained. The beach was littered with rocks and pieces of timber but it was deserted, and I turned into his arms with a sigh of relief.

‘You might have been killed today, Christos.’

‘And so might you, Olivia. I was in agony until I saw you emerge with Niko.’

We kissed with a fervour born of fear. I had never been made to feel the fragility of existence until that morning and now that I knew how easily everything is lost, I felt panic rising inside me.

‘Hold me, hold me – ’

We slithered down onto the sand, locked together, and Christos pulled me on top of him.

‘I love you, Olivia.’

‘I love you, too, Christos.’

I had no qualms. He searched my face to be sure I knew what I was doing, but I whispered ‘Yes, Yes,’ so fiercely that he could have been in no doubt. We were celebrating being alive.

Afterwards we swam in the sea to wash, staying in the shallows where the water was still warm and relatively calm. Then we made our way, slowly, and with great difficulty over the broken steps, back up the cliff face.

It was dark as we approached Stavros’ garden, and if anyone noticed our arrival wearing damp clothes and having sand in our hair, no-one commented. After such a day, our absence and return meant very little to the devastated townspeople, but I was still amazed that nobody commented on a difference in my appearance, for hadn’t I just become a woman?

The next day the neighbours went back to their ruined homes to see what might be recovered. Most of the food eaten in Oia was fresh, so there was little to save from kitchens except cans of olive oil, but these were precious and were diligently searched for. Items of furniture which had survived were dragged outside and Christos and Niko tried to rescue the cradle made for Irina’s coming baby, but after hours of digging away at rocks they found only splinters of wood. Niko comforted his wife by telling her he was already working on a new one. Everyone had suffered some damage, and many had lost everything. There was no running water and no power. The town’s children had suffered a great trauma, and clung to their mothers either weeping or dumb with shock.

Terrifyingly, there was an aftershock that afternoon, which set everyone screaming again, and those who still had an indoors running outside. More damage was done, and some of the women became hysterical. The older men tried to calm everyone down by explaining the nature of aftershocks, but for many it was simply another earthquake and to hear that we could expect more shocks over the next few days and weeks was horrifying.

In the evening everyone reconvened at Stavros’, telling uplifting stories of unexpectedly recovered items or dismal tales about the destruction they’d found. Rumours were circulating that a state of emergency had been declared and the Greek Army was already sailing to the island with emergency aid. In the meantime, food was the priority. The shops had been largely destroyed, and the donkey paths from Fira were blocked in many places, so the people of Oia needed food and water.

Niko and Christos decided that the best they could do in the circumstances was to go back to sea and catch as much fish as they could to provide sustenance for the town.

So the next morning they went off in the
Ariadne
and Irina and I joined the general move to repair the houses that were not beyond help.

Stories were circulating that homes damaged beyond repair would be bulldozed and compensation paid to those who had lost everything. People were trying to make the best of the situation. There was a sense of unity, everyone trying to help everyone else. I felt part of it all, that I was accepted. I did not know that it was the last time I would feel like that.