Watching the Wind Blow (The Greek Village Collection Book 9) (6 page)

‘I lived on the streets once.’ She says it nonchalantly. His head swivels to look at her briefly before returning his gaze back to the sea.

‘My parents died. My
yiayia
, my grandmother that is, she went a bit mad and just left me. The house and land were taken back and I was on the streets.’ She says all this watching the waves curling out from the side of the boat, spreading off either side into the distance.

Once, when she was with Petta on the taxi boat he captained for a year on Orino Island, he took her for a ride and dolphins came to play, racing alongside. They stayed with the boat for hours, weaving, jumping, shooting off and then returning to surf on the bow wave. When Petta slowed the boat, Irini ventured to the bow in her bare feet and lay down flat on the deck, looking into the water. The beautiful animal that was just beneath the surface turned onto its side and looked at her, its eye swivelling in its socket to take her all in.

The moment has stayed with her, helped put so much of her life in perspective, separated what is really important from the more trivial. It is difficult to say how it did this, but whenever something comes to her mind, if she weighs it against that moment, it puts everything in a truer perspective.

As she watches the waves now and thinks of Sam and his gun and his bid to get to Casablanca, the port police wanting to make an example of him,  she recalls the dolphin turning on its side, looking at her and making contact in that moment. Then a wave broke, churning the sea, and the moment was gone. The dolphin still played in the wake, she still watched it swim, but that intense contact was what she hung onto. That connection.

‘It was an unloving, uncaring, environment,’ Irini continues. ‘There were two types of people on the street. Everyone knew it was dog eat dog. You know that saying?’ She does not wait for his acknowledgement. ‘We all knew that the only person who would look out for you was yourself. That aside, some chose to strike out at anybody at any time, which I think was from fear, and the others tried to make the immediate world around them a better place, just by acknowledging the other person’s position, giving them space, or showing them care if it was appropriate.’

The land on their starboard side is getting further away. Looking to the port side, she is brought up short. Sam is staring at her. She swallows and her eyes widen, adrenaline released. But he does not move and her fear subsides. She understands the emotional shift behind his look though, and slides off her seat, picks up the iodine bottle, and tears open a packet of gauze.

‘This will sting,’ she says quietly. The autopilot buzzes.

Wiping around the wound shows how jagged the edge are. It is a tear rather than a cut and it’s impossible to imagine how it could have happened. The yellow tinges she saw inside the wound from a distance prove to be fatty tissue. She cannot recognise anything else in the oozing opening, although there are many textures. At least, she consoles herself, it is not down to the rib bones.

Pouring the iodine onto the gauze, she makes quick eye contact before touching it gently to the area and wiping away all that she can. He gulps in air sharply. The fingers of his right hand, all except the limp tattered little digit, take hold of his own tight muscle in his leg and squeeze.

‘Sorry,’ Irini mutters. His eyes land on her and flash of hatred and the desire to harm. The green irises appear black again and she recoils in fear.

‘Pour it on to wash it,’ he says through clenched teeth.

Irini wants to ask him if he is sure. If what she has done stung, she cannot imagine how pouring the iodine is going to feel. But to ask him would maybe be to suggest that he does not know his own mind so instead, she picks up the iodine bottle, pours some onto a new piece of gauze and without warning, splashes from the bottle into the wound. He spasms as if he has been shot. A piercing wheezing of air comes from a deep place in his gut, up and out through a tightened muscle in his throat. His face contorts as he explodes with the word ‘bugger’ which distils across the calm sea around them. He breathes heavily for a few minutes until he takes control, releases his clenched hands, put his chin against his chest, and nods. Irini takes this as her cue to place on the gauze.

He is quite limp as she passes the bandage around his body, across his acid- or fire-burned stomach, over the old scars, around under his other arm and over the defined muscles of his back to pass over the wound again and again, one bandage being attached to the next until the job is done as best she knows how.

She says nothing as she clears away what is left of the gauze and bandage packets. Taking the rubbish below, she puts it in the plastic bag that holds the wet crinkled toilet roll that she put there in what seems to belong to another lifetime. The radio crackles but she ignores it, instead taking on deck the chess set Captain Yorgos keeps in the saloon to challenge his clients in quieter moments.

‘Do you play?’ she asks as she comes on deck. But Sam’s eyes are shut. Lines where tears have washed through dirt trace down his cheeks, and he suddenly looks so young.

Far off behind them, the two dots that must be the port police boats have grown bigger. They really are hanging back! And what did making this ‘an example’ mean? Usually to use someone as an example means to be overly harsh with them. In Sam’s case, what does that mean?

She watches his face. He is younger than Petta, who will be thirty seven this year. But he is older than her, just turned twenty-seven last month. Or maybe he isn’t older than her, just more worn. His forehead is smooth and wide, he has no grey hairs. His day’s growth of stubble ages him but there are no permanent lines around his eyes, no bagging under them. His lips are smooth.

However old he is, what on earth would drive him to become a mercenary and how on earth is he going to get out of this situation? Being on a yacht in the middle of the sea with port police in speedboats tailing, who only need to push the throttle forward to catch up, he is a sitting duck.

His eyelids flutter.

As his eyes open, he bucks to his feet. The box of chess pieces is kicked. The pieces spill. A gun appears. His stance is rock solid. He fixes her in his sights, both hands on his weapon.

Open palms towards him, hands either side of her face, eyes wide, she stops breathing. He does not blink.

Slowly he lowers his arms.

Her heart slips from her throat back to its normal place, but it is still beating fast. She wraps her arms around herself, holds everything together, and tries to breathe deeply.

‘Did I sleep?’ he asks, looking over their wake first at one of the dots that is now close enough to be boat shaped, and then at the other. He does not seemed concerned or surprised to see them.

‘Just for a second.’ With the beating of her heart returning to normal, Irini bends forward to pick up the chess pieces.

‘Do you play?’ he asks.

Irini does not answer him. Instead, she pulls out the table that is folded against the helm and sets up the board. He watches.

When she has finished laying them out, the white pieces are on his side but as she takes her hands away, he turns the board so they are nearest her. Frowning, she decides to say nothing and opens. He plays aggressively from the start and within ten moves, she knows she has lost but she plays on anyway. The boat rocks as it moves, the land drifts by on either side, and the sun relentlessly beats down on them as they each take their turns, him taking more time to consider than her.

The first match is over fairly quickly.

‘Well, that was a good warm up,’ Irini declares and resets the pieces. It is becoming easier to be with Sam even if he is silent. His silence is not tense. Rather, it is tranquil, non-critical.

In the next game, she will think more carefully, take her time, not play so defensively, do something he is not expecting.

She makes the same opening. He makes a different response. She considers.

‘I made friends with two boys.’ Irini says it casually, testing him to see how he will react to her talking. Sam is leaning his chin into the plan of his hand, elbow on knee. He swaps hands. It gives her the feeling that he is listening.

‘Brothers, they were.’ She puts her finger on the rook but takes it off again. For years, she has wanted to talk about the things she witnessed on the streets, the things that are outside most peoples’ experience. ‘We lived in a disused carriage down by the railway lines. The older brother was a few years younger than me, the younger one, so young.’ Her finger is back on the rook but she does not play it, just thinks. She takes her finger off again. A few times, she has tried to tell Petta, but Petta could not hear. It distressed him to think she had lived in such a world and those attempts had ended with her comforting him, so she gave up. The images and memories have become locked away deep inside her so although she has continued through her ‘normal’ life looking like everyone else, she has felt different, not the same as other people, or that she truly belongs. It has always made her feel just a little bit dirty.

‘The elder brother went off each day to find food and I did the same. Food and work. The little one stayed and played with the stray dogs. He was too small to walk any great distance.’ To Sam, the mercenary, these things she has witnessed may be child’s play, daily events for him, no big deal, but it feels so liberating, refreshing even, to be talking about them. If Sam doesn’t understand why she is taking the opportunity to talk to someone who has been there too, let it out, exorcise it, he will at least not be shocked. That alone will be a relief. After all these years, she may at least no longer be alone in her horrendous remembered world.

Perhaps playing her castle is a better move. Her finger on the castle again, she twists her lips to one side. He might make the obvious return. She remembers when she returned that time.

‘I came back one day and found the elder with the younger in his arms. There was no sound from either of them.’ Rubbing her chin as if she weighs up her options on the board, but if she is honest with herself, she is relishing, just a little bit, the telling of the history she is about to share, getting it off her chest, out of her private memories and into the world. After a while she says, ‘The little one’s leg was missing, a growing black wet patch on the ground.’

Sam does not flinch. Leaning back against the seat gives her a different angle on the chess board, but it doesn’t help to know what move to make.

‘For a good few minutes, I could not understand what I was looking at. But we lived by a railway line.’ She lets the idea sink in so Sam will know what she means without the need to be more descriptive.

‘The elder one ever so slowly and gently was rocking the younger one, who lay back in his arms.’ Irini remembers wondering where all the people were, why there was no one else there. Why didn’t the train driver stop? Maybe didn’t see. Maybe he just didn’t care.

‘The younger one stared at me but as I watched, I saw his disbelief in those eyes of what he was feeling. He didn’t seem to be in any pain but minute by silent minute, the black area in the dust grew bigger and the brightness in his eyes dimmed.’ She puts her finger back on the rook and then picks it up, hovers over a potential placement. She squeezes out the tears that tremor on her lower lids, to clear her vision.

‘He had never even seen the sea.’ Still holding the piece, she looks up and out over the water behind Sam. The boy would curl up in her arms at night. Too young to be without a mother, he had forced her into that role. In the night, he would wake sweating and shivering, his eyes wide, his mouth opened in a soundless scream, clutching her until she rocked him to sleep again. She never found out how they ended up on the streets, but she suspected that rough living was better than what they left. Until that day.

‘I watched as the disbelief in his eyes turned to panic and from panic to acceptance and acceptance to peace.’

When she first knelt beside him, he reached for and gripped her fingers like a baby in a pram.

‘The light in his eyes grew dull. They no longer seemed to see even though he was still breathing and his chest rose up and down, up and down, smaller and smaller movements until it stopped.’ She stretches out her hand as if it is cramping but really, she is trying to rid herself of the sensation of the remembered touch of the boy’s fingers growing weaker and weaker until he finally let go.

She places the rook in its new position. ‘Neither brother made a sound. It was like we were frozen. Then the elder brother got up and just walked away. I never saw him again. I sat with the child until my legs went numb and then I went for a walk, wondering what I should do with his small body. When I came back, he was gone. There was not much of a trail, but there were paw marks everywhere.’

Sam takes his eyes from the board to look at her. Dolphin eyes are all black; his are definitely green. He stares at her. She lets the seconds pass and then he turns back to the board and considers her move. She has been heard. She is not alone in her experiences. It is a thrilling feeling. It brings a sense of freedom.

His next move is not so aggressive and Irini, although now convinced he is the better player, can see a chance of winning if his playing goes the direction she thinks it might. But it is her turn again and his castle is a threat to her bishop.

Sam looks at the boats following them in the distance.

‘Are there binoculars on board?’ he asks. Irini has been so absorbed in the game and in her memories, and so used to his silence, that his voice makes her jump.

‘Eh, yes. Shall I get them?’

His hand goes to stroke his bandaged side, an indication that it hurts to move. Irini bounds below, grabs the binoculars from a shelf above the chart table, and runs back up the steps on deck. Sam is standing on his seat, facing the boats with his hand open by his side, waiting for the binoculars to be placed in them.

He focuses them. What will she say if he asks why the port police are following them? A game of chess, a confession of experiences does not turn a mercenary into a friend. She closes her eyes. What will she say? But why would he suspect her anyway? Because the only two people who know he is on board are him and her and he hasn’t told them. Maybe he will think that someone saw him coming on board. But surely he will be trained, sneaky, able to avoid detection. So it would have to be her. If he thinks she has told them then he’ll know the only way it would have been possible is by radio. Surely he would have seen that danger. So why did he keep her below to begin with where she had access to it and has since given her free range to go below whenever she has asked if he knows the radio could be such a threat to him?

‘Port police,’ he says.

‘Really?’ She tries to sound surprised. ‘Well I suppose, why not? I didn’t know they just cruised about, though.’

‘They are not cruising about. They are following us,’ he says. She cannot hear anything in his voice to tell what he is thinking. There is no anger, no shock, nothing. ‘They have been following us since we left Saros.’

Irini feels a sudden heat in her cheeks that subsides as quickly as it rises. It is in sharp contrast to the chill that runs down her back. She swallows.

‘Ahhh.’ Her tone wavers as if she has just realised something. The truth is she has just thought of an explanation for why the boats are there. ‘We didn’t go in with our passport numbers.’

‘What?’ Sam lowers his binoculars and sits back down.

‘When you leave port, you are meant to go to the port police with the passport numbers of everyone on board.’ This is in fact true and there have been several occasions when Captain Yorgos has sent her to the port police office with a crew list for the next day’s outing on her way home, to save him the walk. So lazy.

‘Can you radio them in?’ he asks. Irini shrugs. She has a feeling the police are meant to actually see the passports and the only reason why Captain Yorgos can go - or she can go on his behalf - with just the numbers is because he has been there so long and the port police know him now so well, they even sit and drink coffee together when work is slack.

Sam turns his attention back to the chess board.

He is a wanted man, the port police are following, and he is serenely considering his next move in chess!

‘It’s your go,’ he says and gnaws on the side of his thumb in concentration.

She looks blankly at the board. Well, what is there for him to do? They are not trying to arrest him. The boat is still motoring along through billowing waves under a blue sky … The whole situation is all pretty calm, really. Chess does seem like the best option to take their mind off an unknown future. The only option, really. What else would they do?

She opens, a new move.

‘Me too,’ he says.

‘Sorry?’

‘I have held a good man whose leg was gone.’ He makes his return move. Irini is open-mouthed, the chess game forgotten. She wants to hear of someone else just like her. Find out how he has coped. She is scared that he will not say more. He points at the board, encouraging her move. It is hard to concentrate.

He looks at the dangling flesh on his little finger.

‘Did that happen at the same time?’

He says nothing, just stares at the board.

‘It’s still your go.’

Perhaps it is better that he doesn’t say any more. Her own images are enough to cope with. She makes a move but the moment she takes her finger off the piece, she knows it is the wrong move. Besides, witnessing all she has witnessed is not the issue, really. It is how she got to be there in the first place that eats away at her.

Sam makes a counter move and looks at her and narrows his eyes as if to chastise her for her mistake. The sadness she saw earlier is still there, but it is not so evident. He could easily have been one of the people she knew back then.

The next move she makes is defensive. What chance did she have?

‘I grew up on a farm. Well, a sort of farm. It was some fields up on the edge of Athens. It would be worth a fortune now. But we only rented it.’ With him bent forward over the board like that, she has time to study the top of his head. His hair is short but it grows strongly in two different swirls, a double crown. Is that unusual? They had a goat like that on the farm with a double crown. Sort of. Its fur grew in the normal direction up from its nose until it got to its forehead and then it swirled in the other direction, giving it a little fringe that stuck out.

‘Mama and Baba grew vegetables and took them to the
laiki
– the market. Every day, wherever there was one. Some days, they would be up at two in the morning and drive for three hours to sell what they could and then drive home, tend the fields, and go to bed to do it all again the next day.’

Marina, back in the village, grows vegetables. In the courtyard, she grows winter lettuces and tomatoes along the wall and out in their nearest orange orchard, she has cleared a space and has planted carrots and onions, herbs and squashes. Now that they live there too, Petta has planted potatoes, which Marina has avoided in the past because they are too hard for her to dig, and cheap enough at the market.

She sighs. A coffee in the courtyard, Angelos playing with… She stops herself. Thoughts like that serve no purpose.

Sam still hasn’t taken his turn. He looks back at the port police boats. She wants to distract him from thinking about them.