Authors: Carol Mason
She is flopped out on top of her bed in her petticoat. Her face has caught the sun. There’s a finger of red running right down her nose, making her look like a rather glam Hiawatha Indian, and a triangle of it on her chest, which makes her look like a burnt English rose.
‘Why do you always have to make things of people, Angela? I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be made of him. He’s nice. He’s a gentleman. He’s comfortable to be around.’ She looks across at me. ‘He’s a charming, delicious full-blood and I’d have a bit of the rumpy with him as sure as Bob’s your Uncle.’
‘Do you think he does this with all the tourists?’
‘What? The rumpy?’
I tut. ‘No! Not the bloody rumpy! I mean, singling one or two out to work his charms on.’
‘Girl! Put a higher price on yourself than that! Of course he doesn’t! It’s us! We’re irresistible.’
‘My backside.’
‘Yes. Your backside is too. And so is mine.’ She bounds off the bed, turns around, bends over and shoves her bottom in my face.
‘You’re a bit disgusting sometimes, for a mother.’
She grins at me over her shoulder. ‘And you’re a boring, stick in the mud daughter. Gosh, if you were Eve in Adam’s garden, we’d all never have got here, would we?’
I stare at the ceiling, feeling a soft exhaustion settle around me. I think of how he absently massaged the vein in my arm, even though his mind was clearly on the subject of his olive trees.
‘What are you thinking?’ Mam interrupts my thoughts.
‘Nothing. Just that he
is
easy to be around. You’re right.’ Jonathan never was. From the moment I saw him at that house party, Jonathan was never easy. I was dating another guy at the time—Paul somebody; I can’t even remember. When Paul somebody went to the kitchen to get us another drink, Jonathan took the opportunity to move in on me.
‘I’ll give you three minutes to tell him it’s over,’ he said.
I said something like, ‘Oh give me a break! Is a line like that ever going to work?’ Meanwhile I was trying to work out how fast I could dump Paul.
As I walked over to the kitchen to dump Paul faster than he’d ever been dumped, I happened to glance back; Jonathan was deliberately looking from me to his watch. I narrowed my eyes at him as though to say,
I’m not really going to do this! I’m just going over there to get a drink, and keep you hanging in suspense…
But Jonathan knew he had me right from the start.
Even when he proposed to me, twenty-five dates later—a date for every year I had lived—it was slightly mad how he did it. We were in the middle of Tesco’s in Sunderland. ‘Marry me,’ he said, getting down on one knee, as I picked deodorant off a shelf.
‘And have your babies?’ I asked him, pressing my hands into his shoulders.
‘And have a great many of our babies.’
‘And be with me when I die?’
He plucked a hair off my mouth. ‘And die with you when you die.’
See, that was Jonathan. He wanted a contract for eternity, not just for life.
~ * * * ~
‘I was just thinking of Jonathan,’ I tell Mam, because she knows I’ve just been off in space, and she will know what I was thinking about. ‘You know, some time ago, Jonathan and I had a strange conversation… He said that if he ever died before me he’d send me somebody from the other side.’
‘What?’ she looks puzzled. ‘Do you mean a dead person?’
I tut. ‘No! Not a bloody dead person! A man… A lover. A love. Somebody to follow in his footsteps. The next him.’
Just the concept of there ever being a next him is depressing and encouraging at the same time. I’ve often wondered if Jonathan will somehow cease to hold primacy with me when he’s no longer my last. I can’t bear the thought that he might diminish in my eyes, because some other man, who I would never have been with had Jonathan lived, might come along and stamp his personality in the place where Jonathan’s should have been. Maybe stamp it so indelibly and love me so vigorously and for far many more years than Jonathan got to love me. Then Jonathan will just be the man I was married to before I met my husband.
She gazes at me softly, as though this touches her. ‘You know, I could see Jonathan doing something like that. He loved you so much, and he knew you so well. You know what he’s like. He’d want to make it his mission to find you the right person…’
‘Actually, those were his words. He said if he could do it, he would do it. He would make it his mission.’
She studies me through her tears.
‘Do you think it’s possible, Mam? That he could do something like that?’
She seems to give this some thought. ‘Really, seriously possible? I’m not sure… I tend to think that we have to paddle our own canoe. But still though, it’s a nice idea to hang onto—that the dead never truly leave us. And if that’s what you take away from it, then it is surely a good thing.’
She doesn’t believe it. Of course she doesn’t, and neither do I. I just want to, or need to. I experience the stab of a reality check: they put Jonathan in a box and then they burned him. Jonathan is dead. When you are dead, you’re are gone, and you no longer have decision-making power. You can’t pull any strings any more.
‘What’s that look for?’ she says. ‘I’ve upset you haven’t I? You want to believe, don’t you…’ She seems touched. ‘It’s a nice thing to believe in. I’d love to think that when I die I can still be not too far way watching you and looking out for you, and gently steering you away from trouble.’
‘Did you ever feel like Dad was watching over you?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, after your dad died, I just felt… left. At a road’s end. Like it was the end of an era.’
She studies my glum face. ‘But you know what? I hope that if Jonathan does send you somebody he waits until he’s sure you’re ready. Because the way things stand now, if somebody came along and was staring you right in the face, I don’t think you’d see him, Angela. I don’t think you could.’
This observation is not what I want to hear. ‘See, this is why I prefer not to tell you anything.’
‘But you can’t stop yourself. Because you know I get you in ways that nobody else does.’
She’s right.
‘Well, on another topic,’ she says, after a moment or two. ‘I hope you know I’m not coming with you tonight.’
‘Where?’
‘For dinner.’
‘With Georgios? Don’t be silly! Of course you are! He invited both of us. I mean half the time it’s you he’s talking to in any case.’
‘He’s respecting his elders. The best way to the daughter is to impress the mother. I’m not going to be a spare wheel, or a heel. That’s worse than not being a wheel at all, or having no feet.’
I stare at her and think what on earth is she rambling on about!
‘Hang on a minute… this doesn’t have anything to do with what we’ve just been talking about does it? About Jonathan sending me someone? You don’t seriously think I’m thinking that Jonathan has sent me Georgios.’
‘No!’ she says, and nods her head manically. Then she dives off the bed and leaps into the air. ‘It’s him!’
‘What?’
‘Who Jonathan has sent! It’s Georgios. I am sure of it.’
‘Two minutes ago you didn’t believe in that!’
She jumps up and down, all gleeful. ‘I’ve just found religion.’
‘You better be careful. It’s one size fits all, and it shrinks in a hot wash.’
She’s on a roll. ‘That’s why he knew you were called Angela, and he knew you lived in Canada and you didn’t have a husband any more, and why I said I knew right away that you were going to marry him.’ She’s panting. ‘It all fits. And Jonathan’s sent me along on this holiday to ensure I keep you two on course.’
‘Get away! Like you reminded me before, you were the one who told him I lived in Canada. And he didn’t know Jonathan had died, just that I used to wear a wedding ring. And, well as for him knowing my name, he must have heard you call me by it… So I don’t think there’s any mystery. Anyway, all this is great, but you’re still coming to dinner!’
She flops back down on the bed, pants. I know she isn’t.
‘You can’t make me go on my own!’
‘Oh come on! Go and kiss him, and tell me what it’s like.’
‘I’ve got no intentions of kissing him. I don’t even fancy him. He’s too short. And too old.’
‘He’s at least five nine, and he’s probably mid-forties. What’s wrong with that? He’s aligned in your stars, Angela; the rest is just details.’
‘I’m not going on my own, so tough tits.’
‘Girl!’ she says. ‘Tough buzzums, if you must say that horrible expression.’
~ * * * ~
‘My mother is not coming,’ I tell him when I step outside of the lobby into the mid-evening air that dances with the chorus of crickets.
‘Oh?’ he says. ‘Why not?’ He looks really disappointed and I try not to take it personally.
No reason in particular—only that she’s convinced that you’re the man I’m to marry who has been sent for me by my dead husband. No pressure there.
He’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, slightly more form-fitting than the one he had on today. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘I think she’s worn out.’
Because her imagination is working over-time
. ‘Or she’s sick of me… It’s a mother-daughter thing.’
His eyes slowly travel over my face, over my hair, which I’ve washed and left hanging, and which somehow feels shinier and fuller than it’s ever been with the mineral-heavy Greek water. Then his gaze travels down the front of me.
I am conspicuously lacking in GAP T-shirt. The choice decided on by She Who Knows These Things was a white wrap-around cotton sun dress that’s simple and knee-length and shows off my new tan, and too much inner thigh when I walk.
‘You look like a model, but I think you should go back upstairs and try to make her come with us,’ he says.
If only he’d left an attractive pause between the words
model
and
But I think
…
‘It would not be right to leave her alone,’ he adds, probably because he sees my face.
‘We won’t change her mind. You don’t know my mother.’ In fact, if he hadn’t mentioned my mother at all, that would have been fine too.
His gaze falls to my sexy gold strappy sandals (well, not exactly mine; we won’t mention whose). But he just continues to stand there.
‘We don’t have to go,’ I tell him, desperate to put us both out of our misery. Maybe he wanted an innocent meal out with the three of us and now he feels he’s going on a date. Maybe he doesn’t want to go on a date with me. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend. ‘In fact, we could totally abandon the idea if you like…’
‘You sure we should not phone her from lobby?’
‘Go ahead, if you want to. Why not?’ I knew that she should have just come. I do an about-turn on my heels when he grabs my hand and pulls me back. ‘If you think she doesn’t want to come… we go alone. I would enjoy that too.’
It’s not like he’s out to get cosy with me though. He drops my hand the second we are walking to his car.
~ * * * ~
He takes me to Bohali, pulls up outside of the rooftop restaurant that has stunning views of Zante port and town, twinkling under a black sky.
‘You must be psychic,’ I tell him. ‘I saw this place this morning on the tour bus, and I thought how fab it would be to come back here and eat.’
‘But we’re not eating here.’
‘Oh.’ I try not to look disappointed. ‘We’re not?’
‘It’s bad food.’ He studies my face warmly. ‘But if you have your heart set on it, we may come out later for a drink, if I haven’t made you bored over dinner.’
Where he takes us is a place I would never have ventured without him. From the outside it looks like a house. Apricot walls of ancient, crumbling stone, capped off with an ochre tiled roof. Knotty vines, and hot pink bougainvillea running rampant up the sides of the doors, across the walls to the roof, and then back down a narrow twisting stone path. Outside of the front door frolic two scrawny black cats.