Aftershock (6 page)

I am John
.

I am Dad
.

“Hello, John.”

“Hello, Dad.”

After one go-through, Sofia read the page with him, the two of them saying the words together.

Makis risked one more page. This idea of him needing help seemed to work, but he didn't want to keep going on until it didn't. He had to be patient. He would always remember how one summer his father had tried night after night to catch a large grouper lurking in the bay. He had used this bait, he had used that – but most of all, he had used patience. And on the fourth night he had come home with the grouper in his arms, heavy, with a dorsal fin that scraped the lintel of the door as he carried it through. There was a look on his father's face that couldn't be bought for silver or gold.

So Makis would be patient. For tonight, they'd do just one more page.

“Hello, John,” said Sally
.

“Hello, Sally,” said John
.

“Hello, Dad,” said Sally
.

“Hello, Mum,” said John.

‘Thanks,' said Makis. ‘That helped me a lot.'

‘Good.' His mother turned to the front of the book and looked through the three double pages again, the words on the left-hand side and the pictures on the right – of a sunshiny garden with trees, under a blue sky.

‘Aaah!' she sighed.

‘I'll wash the plates,' Makis offered. He wanted to move things forward, not back. Back was too sad.

And at the sink, he couldn't help feeling pleased with himself. He'd helped to win a football match, and he'd got his mother saying words in English!

Even Denny Clarke's jealous spite couldn't take away Makis's glow the next day. The Cup match result was announced by Mr Hersee in assembly. The Head's pride was the school's pride, too, and some of the children dared to cheer.

‘We do not boo, we do not cheer at Imeson Street,' Mr Hersee admonished. ‘We clap, like English gentlemen.'

‘Magriotis isn't one!' Denny Clarke growled. ‘Dirty little Greek!' He came out with insults in the playground every time Makis touched the ball. ‘Dirty Greek! Dirty Greek!' But Makis didn't let them get to him. The others, led by David Sutton, were shouting encouragement at him, and in the end Denny Clarke shut up.

No one could take away what had happened the afternoon before: Makis had been one of the team that had scored a David and Goliath victory. He was beginning to feel at home in Camden Town. And his reading in English was moved on to the Purple Spot in the lesson after dinner break. He couldn't ask for much more.

But when he got home, more was given to him.

After their meal, again he asked his mother to help him with his reading – and she read with him the first three pages of the Red Spot book. He hesitated before he read the first
Hello
, and she said ‘Hello' before he did. Then they moved on to page four.

“I can run, John.”

“I can run, Sally.”

“See me run, Mum.”

“See me run, Dad.”

Makis's mother stayed silent as Makis painfully spelt it out – but she joined in with him as he tried to speed up, to make more sense of it. And it was while they were doing this – heads touching, minds together at the age-old task, that Makis had his next big lift.

It came with a knock at the door.

‘Forgive me for intruding.' Mr Laliotis said.

‘Of course.' With Kefalonian courtesy, Sofia gestured for him to come in.

He glanced around the room. ‘You are working…?'

Sofia looked at Mr Laliotis, then at Makis, who was holding up the Red Spot book for their visitor to see. And, lifting her head, she said, ‘Makis is teaching me to read English.'

Makis nearly fell off his chair.
What?
Was she saving face for him – or had she guessed what he was doing? Had she worked out that he was tricking her into learning English? Whatever it was, he could only smile like a good loser.

‘Well, I don't want to interrupt such a worthy enterprise…'

So did she feel OK about learning to read English? Or was this just to let him know that she had seen through him? Some footballs go where you want them to go by bouncing them off a player's legs.

‘…However, my wife is out this evening, and I've dusted off my balalaika. When you've finished, perhaps Makis would like to come and rehearse a tune or two?' Mr Laliotis looked at the mandolin hanging on the wall. ‘The Gibson
looks
good, but it always sounds even better.'

And Mr Laliotis, the famous BBC violinist, knew his name!

‘We'll read the next page, and then he can come up to you. Thank you.'

‘And another time, we'll make it a little party, eh? When Mrs Laliotis is at home…?'

But Makis's mother was vigorously shaking her head, and shrinking a little, back into the other, sadder Sofia Magriotis. ‘Thank you, but I don't go out,' she said.

Mr Laliotis rode over the refusal like a gentleman. ‘That's very sad. But it would give me pleasure to play balalaika tonight,' he said. ‘Is it all right for Makis to come?'

‘Of course.' Sofia Magriotis was a Kefalonian lady. ‘I'll send him up.'

‘Thank you. Then for the moment I'll say… ‘ and here Mr Laliotis smiled, and with a look over at the Red Spot book, finished in English – ‘Goodbye.'

To which Sofia bowed her head, ‘Goodbye,' she said, also in English and very matter-of-fact, as if she'd been saying it all her life.

Mr Laliotis's flat was everything that Makis's wasn't. It was high above the street, it was light, and it had matching furniture. Where Sofia and Makis walked on linoleum and mats, Mr Laliotis had carpets; and while Sofia and Makis had one armchair, up on the middle floor there was a long sofa and two armchairs. But it was the piano that really set the places apart. It was a baby grand, near the window where the light fell across the keyboard. Makis stood in the doorway and felt like a delivery boy wringing his cap in his hand.

‘Come in, come in!' Mr Laliotis had swapped his jacket for a short-sleeved pullover, his bow-tie for a collarless shirt. And in his hands he was holding his long-necked, maple balalaika. ‘Let's tune our instruments, eh?' He took the mandolin from Makis and plucked the E string. He then plucked the first of his three balalaika strings, also an E. ‘That's not bad!' The tuning Makis had done downstairs brought a little nod from the man, and a wink as he began to tune the other strings of both instruments. ‘Please check it,' he said to Makis, handing back the mandolin. It was perfect, of course, and Makis found himself doing that same sudden uplift of his face that his father had used to do, to say that he was ready. But he didn't have a plectrum, and a mandolin needs a plectrum.

‘Here.' From a small leather pouch Mr Laliotis took a couple of plectrums, held them in front of him, and handed the smaller of the two to Makis.

‘Makis, do you know, “The Cuckoo Sleeps”?‘

Makis nodded. Of course he did. Every child of three knew the bedtime lullaby; but the way Mr Laliotis pronounced the title, it could have been one of the classics. ‘So, how about if you play the D chords? I'll bring you in.'

Makis set his fingers on the E and G strings and checked the sound with a couple of strokes of the plectrum. He looked up again – to see that Mr Laliotis was now wearing a serious BBC face, the professional musician giving respect to his instrument as he played a concert introduction to the simple tune. In came Makis with his D chords, picked rhythmically across the strings like the tick of a clock. And as they got into the tune, they both began to sing.

“The cuckoo sleeps on the hills, and the partridge in the bush;

And my baby sleeps in his cot to fill his soul with slumber.”

Only pride held back Makis's tears. At one and the same time he was his father playing mandolin under the olive tree, and the small boy he had once been, hearing the words of the lullaby.

They stopped. ‘Will you take the melody now?' Mr Laliotis asked. Not
can
you, but
will
you? And Makis thought he could – in fact, he knew he could. It was simple.

‘So… ‘ Again Mr Laliotis did the fancy introduction, and with a nod to Makis, he dropped to the chords while Makis took the tune. And again they sang the lullaby.

‘Bravo! Well done!'

Makis was pleased with his playing. He rested his father's mandolin across his knees. No, not his father's mandolin –
his
mandolin, inherited from his father. Makis Magriotis's Gibson. His lips quivered, which he quickly turned into a smile; because if he hadn't, he'd have burst out in a mixed-up wail.

Makis was disappointed when the next round of the Fred Berryman Trophy was drawn. Not by the team they had to play – Larkson Lane was a name that meant nothing to him – but by being drawn away at Chase Fields, Kentish Town – not even in Camden. Makis should have been proud to know he'd been picked to play; instead, he wanted the name on that team sheet to be Denny Clarke. But it wasn't, and Denny looked at it and swore when he saw the note underneath: Reserve to travel: Clarke.

‘Dirty Greek! Comin' over here an' taking the place of a proper English boy.'

‘How do we get to Chase Fields?' Makis asked Costas.

‘Get a bus after school,' Costas told him. ‘It's a good long way.'

Under his breath, Makis said a Greek word that he shouldn't have known. The game was on Thursday next week. What was he going to do? Tell Mr Hersee he couldn't play? Or work on his mother, prepare her for him being extra late that evening? Well, he didn't know right now, so he just had to leave things as they were.

The problem went out of his mind when he walked in on her. She was sitting at the table with a Red Spot book. It wasn't open, but it was there – and somehow her face seemed different. The no-hope look wasn't there tonight. Instead, she looked the way she'd be on a bad day in Kefalonia, not a bad day in Camden Town. There was a world of difference.

‘Are you going to help me again?' he asked.

She gave him a look, as if to say,
who's fooling who?
He broke away and warmed his hands at the electric fire, rubbing them enthusiastically, the way his father always did when he saw his favourite meal on the table.

Like a girl in school, Sofia opened the Red Spot reader at the first page, and even as Makis was pulling up a chair she read from the beginning with hardly any prompting from him. It was only her accent that was different from a London schoolgirl's. So now there was no pretence. She wasn't helping him – he was teaching her.

They came to the next new page.

“I can jump, John.”

“So can I. I can jump, Sally.”

“See me jump, Mum.”

“See me jump, Dad.”

See you jump off Mount Énos! Stupid kids! Makis thought. But after helping his mother with a phonic sounding-out of
j-u-m-p
, he was delighted with the way she raced down the page. In his chest he felt a teacher's pleasure, thinking how she was going to enjoy
The Man Who Ran to Sparta
when they got to it. He'd enjoyed it best of all the books when he'd read it himself. It was a proper Greek story.

Sofia finished the Red Spot book, and with a flourish Makis pulled the Green Spot book from behind his back.

‘Red,' Makis said in English, tapping the first book. ‘Green.' He pointed to the colour of the second. ‘Like the traffic lights. Red and Green.'

His mother nodded patiently. Yes, she understood.

The green book started with Sally in a sunny garden, standing in a small paddling pool:
“See me in my pool, John.”

Sofia looked at the picture and put the back of her hand to her mouth, the way she used to laugh at her husband's jokes. ‘See me get eaten by a giant squid!' she said in Greek. ‘Silly girl!' It was the first time Makis had heard her chuckle since sunnier times.

He laughed, too. ‘No, squid, wait till John gets in the water. Get two together!' Sofia gave a little squeal – and on an impulsive surge, Makis went to the kitchen and brought back a green bottle of cleaning fluid. There wouldn't be much sensible reading done for a bit. He unhooked the Gibson from the wall and, with his fingers finding the right chord, he put a foot up on his chair.

‘Bottle,' he said in Greek, pointing to it. ‘Bottle,' he repeated in English. ‘Green bottle.' He showed her how it was the same colour as the big spot on the cover of book. Now with his free hand flashing five fingers twice, he told her, ‘Ten.' He showed where nine imaginary bottles were standing beside the real one. ‘Ten green bottles.' And he started on his song:

‘Ten green bottles hanging on the wall,

Ten green bottles hanging on the wall,