Daughter of the Winds (3 page)

Chapter three

Without even seeing the room, I knew that this was going to be the perfect base for me.
The Pleiades was a low, uneven white block of a building. It was all on ground level but it spread out generously, oozing across the mountainside. The window boxes at the bright blue shuttered windows were exploding with fierce colour. They were brimming with geraniums of every shade of red, orange and pink bowing down before the white-washed walls, their heads heavy with masses of fiery blooms.

The late afternoon was still glowing with buttery sunlight and the warmth in the air was soft and comforting, even in the shade that was growing in front of the
house. Sounds of people talking good-naturedly, dogs barking and the hum of a distant car reminded me that I wasn’t alone in Paradise. Insects made their presence known by flitting in front of my face as I batted them aside.

The main road, if you could call it that, ran close to the front of the house.
On what should have been the pavement sat an old lady, dressed head-to-toe in black, on a starkly plain wooden chair. I hadn’t noticed her motionless form when I first stepped out of the taxi. She leant forward, stooping over her gnarled wooden walking stick. Her hands were a mass of liver spots and protruding knuckles.

“
Kalispera
. My name is Leni. George gave me this address. I am looking for Antheia. Are you Antheia?”

The wizened woman looked
up at me and narrowed her hooded eyes. They were encircled with a milky white ring that confirmed her advancing years. Her hirsute top lip curled to reveal a gap where her front teeth should be. She muttered something unintelligible, but unmistakeably harsh, and spat on the pale dirt at her feet. With no more explanation she turned her skeletal face back to the empty road.

I
stepped backwards, startled. After my initial shock, I fought back a laugh. After all, I wanted a more genuine ‘Greek’ experience away from the tourists and it appeared that I was getting exactly what I asked for. I made my way to the blue front door bumping my bag across the ground behind me. I could hear voices, both adult and child, from within. A roughly hewn wooden plaque announcing
The Pleiades
informed me that I was in the correct place but there was no doorbell or knocker. I tapped on the middle of the door, painfully aware as I did so that it wasn’t nearly loud enough.

The voices continued inside the house but there was no sound of movement towards the door.
I counted to ten and then tried again, louder this time. I didn’t want to give up, and certainly didn’t want to go back to the spitting woman at the side of the road, so I grabbed my courage with one hand and the door handle with the other.

“
Kalispera
?” I called shakily into the cool dark room beyond the door and my voice echoed back at me from the terracotta-tiled floors.

“
Ahhhhhhh! Leni!” shouted a female voice, assaulting my ears with its force. “Come. Come.”

A large doughy woman appeared in the arch towards the rear of the house
and beckoned me. She disappeared back into the other room talking to someone in Greek. I closed the door behind me and followed timidly towards the hubbub.

As I stepped through into a large kitchen area
an amusing scene greeted my eyes. Two young boys, with chocolate-smeared faces, were running around naked. One of them had a colander on his head and the other was brandishing a wooden spoon menacingly. There was a slightly older girl of about six standing on the table. The woman, who I assumed was Antheia, was pinning up the hem of the girl’s yellow dress while holding pins in her mouth. One last twirl and the older woman nodded with satisfaction. She said something to the girl in Greek, slipped the dress off her slender shoulders and then lifted her off the table. The young girl, now in her underwear, ran out of the door following her two brothers while the hefty woman put her sewing kit away.

Another
girl of about ten or more stood in the corner looking wistfully out of the half open window. She turned her head to me sadly and, when our eyes met, her face illuminated with a smile that brought light and warmth to the kitchen. I couldn’t explain it but she looked so pleased to see me that I thought I must know her from somewhere. I shook off the unlikely thought and smiled back at her. There was a peculiar connection between us, and for a fleeting moment I thought she was going to embrace me. She took a step towards me but just raised her hand in my direction.

Antheia
turned her attention to me as if she was appraising me with her enormous bovine eyes, which were topped by generous black eyebrows, and then she grinned so that her cheeks bulged and her nose wrinkled up. She was almost as tall as I was, which was a rare occurrence for me. To say she was plump would be an understatement, but I wouldn’t really have called her fat either. Her face wasn’t conventionally pretty but it held a strong beauty that comes with age and self-assurance. She had that allure that only women truly comfortable in their own skin have and I couldn’t look away from her clear, deep brown, almost black, eyes.

“
Leni!” she said as if greeting an old friend. “How are you?” Her Greek accent was strong but her English confident. “George telephoned and said I must look after his good friend, the writer.”

I opened my mouth to respond but all of the air rushed out of my lungs as she squeezed me in an embrace.
I didn’t quite know whether to hug her back so instead a stood with arms limply and self-consciously by my side. By the time I decided that this was too awkward, and that I really should hug her back, she had let go of me.

“Come. You are tired. Let me show you your room and then I will make tea. I have PG Tips. That is what you drink in England, yes?”

She weaved her way out through the open double doors of the kitchen and through the shrieking whirlpool of children.
She cuffed them playfully as we dodged past them and they squealed with delight. In front of me, an open terrace held uninterrupted views down the mountainside and towards the sea.

D
espite the cries of the children at play, tranquillity washed over me. The house was set around three sides of a courtyard with the right-hand-side wing protruding further towards the sea than the left. The focal point of the courtyard was a stone trough and water pump and, judging by the pools of water on the ground, was still in use. A quick glance around me revealed that there were two sunshades canopying four assorted and mismatched chairs and a table each. I was almost overwhelmed by the smell of warming rosemary, and looking behind me, I found raised beds beneath the kitchen window holding aloft thick bushes of herbs with small purple flowers hanging between wide pungent needles. The older girl was watching me from the doorway, unwilling to play with the others but surely not too old for games. Much as I wanted to, I had no time to engage in conversation with her as Antheia had already crossed the courtyard and was descending some hidden steps. I hastened after her leaving the three youngest children encircling the water-pump.

A few yards down the hill, along a sloping track, was a
grey stone cottage with its stooped back to the main house. As we rounded the corner I didn’t know where to look first, the picturesque landscape or the quaint Cypriot cottage. There were only two windows in the entire building and they were hidden behind blistered wooden shutters on the front wall. Cracked irregular tiles paved our progress to the narrow door that stood lazily against the large grey stones. Dry, but fragrant, lavender bushes skirted the house, their elegant silver stems topped with violet butterflies. A small oblong table with a low, sun-bleached bench offered an invitation to come sit awhile. My legs started to ache at the thought of the possibility of taking the weight off them. A low level vibration in my thighs coupled with the throbbing of my tired muscles suddenly became very apparent. A sharp ache erupted between my eyebrows and I rubbed at it with the heel of my hand.

Antheia pushed open the door on surprisingly silent and well-oiled hinges and then took a step back.
I brushed past her into the cool darkness. The room was sparse and dark but clean. The walls and floor were bare and all that was in the room was a double bed with a canary yellow bedspread, a hurricane lamp with a chunky, partly used candle, a box of matches and water jug. In the corner was a chair and, behind a crudely constructed low wall, a toilet and sink. There was the slightly bitter smell of toilet cleaner sharpening the air.

“
I leave you now and get some tea and some biscuits. See? I know English people.” She laughed, a round and hearty sound. “You tired?” Antheia questioned as she placed my suitcase by the foot of the bed.

“
A little, yes. This is wonderful, Antheia. What does ‘The Pleiades’ mean?”

“
Ahhhh! The Pleiades! They are stars that were the seven daughters of Atlas. Zeus made them… ah…
immortal
, yes? He put them in the sky. There are seven rooms here and each one is called after one of the sisters. This room is
Merope
, the youngest sister.”

“
Merope,” I echoed. “I like it. It’s lovely.
Efcharisto polo
,” I mumbled, not at all confident of my accent and hoping my vocabulary didn’t disgrace me.

The large woman beamed at me.

“
Parakalo
. You’re welcome.”

She bustled away with a wave
that was more like a salute, leaving the door open. I listened to her footsteps crunch into the distance until there was silence. The cottage felt completely and suddenly remote now that I was on my own. The room had more or less everything that I needed. Briefly I wished that Dom was here to share it me with but I shook the feeling off. This was something I had to do on my own without a crutch.

I couldn
’t remember the last time I had done anything on my own but I had to stop relying on other people. They only let me down anyway. I was beginning to realise that the fewer people you let yourself get close, to the less you got hurt. If you give people the keys to your heart it’s only a matter of time before they take advantage, let themselves in and trash the place.

I sighed.
Even in the privacy of my own mind that sounded pathetic. The truth of the matter was I’d been hurt by someone I loved. They’d lied to me all of my life and now I felt like a fool. I never wanted to feel this way again. Crushed. Abandoned. Useless.

I opened up my case at the same time as kicking off my shoes and sloughed
my jeans. The sticky heat had caused them cling to my thighs uncomfortably and it was a relief to be free of them. I pulled on my pale blue linen trousers and noted that they hung loosely off my hips. Part of me was pleased; who didn’t want to lose a few pounds? However, they didn’t look as good as they used to and it was more evidence, if any were needed, that I hadn’t been eating much lately. Looking after myself wasn’t my priority at the moment. Days passed when my only sustenance was wine and crisps. Not exactly an athlete’s diet, and not what was expected of a self-declared ‘foodie’ either.

I hung my jeans over the wall that separated
the bedroom from the toilet, poured myself a glass of water and lay down on the bed, planning to sit outside at any minute. Yes, any minute now. The bed was saggy in the middle and creaked as I melted into it. I could smell the soothing scent of lavender as it washed over me, even though there was no breeze to blow it through the open door. According to a story I heard when I was a child, the lavender was given its scent when Mary had hung Jesus’ baby clothes upon the bush for them to dry. The scent of the baby’s clothes imparted itself to the bush rather than the other way around. Some Christian houses in Greece still hung sprigs of lavender over the door for protection. Buoyed by the scent of the lavender I started to think that this was one superstition I could embrace as I let the aroma cradle me.

When I woke
over an hour later, the sun was melting into the sea in a golden puddle. I eased myself off the bed and swam through the glow bare-footed to the open door. Before me on the little table, some food was laid out. It looked like I’d missed my cup of tea. I still hadn’t spoken to Antheia about how much the room cost or how long I would be staying. The fact that I’d already fallen asleep on the bed was probably a clear enough indication to the Greek woman that I had made myself at home.

Even though I wasn
’t feeling hungry, I sat down and looked at the delights in front of me. There was a small carafe of white wine in the centre of the table by a larger jug of water. The water still had ice-cubes bobbing in it, suggesting that it had only recently been placed there. There was a bowl of green olives, a tomato salad, a basket of heavy-looking bread and a dish of sauce that was the same colour as hummus but thinner in consistency. I broke of a piece of the bread and dipped it in the sauce. The bitter, but moreish, taste woke up my mouth and I greedily reached for another chunk of bread. I searched my memory banks for the name of this sauce. Tahini, chickpeas and lemon juice.
Tashi
sauce! That was it.

I helped myself to a glass of dry white and felt the tension evaporating
from my shoulders. I wouldn’t say it was the best wine that I had ever had but I welcomed it more for what it represented than for its taste. It was a perfect accompaniment to the sweet tomato salad made with mint and hair-width strands of red onion. There was still considerable warmth in the sun and I basked in it, savouring those last moments until the sun would lose its fight with the dusk. I felt content in a way that I hadn’t for weeks. Somewhere in the back of my mind the possibility grew that life would once more be manageable again and the task before me might not be an insurmountable hurdle.