Authors: Carol Mason
~ * * * ~
‘Where did you go?’ Mam is a bundle of exuberance. ‘We came back here to find you, thinking we’d all have breakfast, but you weren’t here!’
‘I went to the beach looking for you.’
She hovers over my bed, as I lie there with a book on my chest, pretending I’ve been reading.
‘Are you cross?’ she asks. ‘You are! You’re cross with me! I don’t believe it.’
‘I’m not! Just, well… it’s four in the afternoon for God’s sake, and you’re only just coming back now! Didn’t you think I’d worry?’
She does an aghast laugh. ‘No! I didn’t realise there was a curfew on me.’ She bends over, sticking her bum at me. ‘Here. Give me the strap.’
‘Don’t be a child. Where were you anyway?’
She looks tanned. Her eyes are the bluest of blue: true Tiffany gems, set off by the cornflower colour of her form-fitting, zip-up hooded top that strains slightly over the eye-catching shelf of her big boobs. Her fitted, white linen pants sit low on her hips, showing just the teeniest band of tanned midriff—I don’t know why she doesn’t just get a belly ring and be done with it. Even in this thrown-on-at-four-o’clock-this-morning little ensemble, she looks fantastic, and brimming with sex appeal. I feel a relic by comparison.
‘He rowed us out to Marathonisi Island to see the turtles.’ She claps her hands together. ‘Oh! It was fascinating. Their big heavy bodies… these gigantic, lumbering shadows in the water… I’ve never seen anything like it. It was magic.’ She sits down on the end of my bed, pats my leg. ‘Georgios is magic… We wanted you to come. That’s why we came back for you.’ She slips off her white thong flats that leave tan lines, making even her feet look glamorous. ‘Georgios wanted you to come. I could tell that he was entertaining me but it was you he really wanted to be with.’
‘Yeah. That’s believable.’ I realise I’m jealous, which is odd, given I’ve spent the last few hours lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the Englishman. Whose name I didn’t even ask. Who knows I’m leaving in three days. Who is married.
‘You’re jealous!’
‘Get real.’
‘Is that another one of your eloquent American turns of phrase? Get real? Very nice.’
‘How about get knotted? Or get stuffed?’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say to your mother. Get knotted, and get stuffed back. There.’ She blows a raspberry at me then goes over to her bed, unzips her hooded top, peels off her trousers to reveal her Bridget Jones’s knickers, which makes me hide my smile. Her bum looks lily white, like a baby’s. But young! Even her backside looks young. I want to give her a cuddle.
I get up and dig in my make-up bag to get the remover to take off my chipped toenail polish.
‘He only took me because when you weren’t there it would have looked very ungracious of him to back out. All he talked about was you.’
‘I’m not bothered, honest.’
‘We only went to see the turtles!’
‘To see my backside!’
‘I don’t want to see your backside. Certainly not if it’s half as sour as your face.’
I tut. ‘Anyway, what’s his girlfriend like?’
‘You mean, Eleni? She’s not his girlfriend. They’re just friends. She’s very nice. She’s dying to meet you.’
‘Why?’
‘I wondered that myself. Obviously she’s got a persecution complex.’
I tut at her. ‘We’re not seeing him tonight I hope.’
She plonks down on the bed, suddenly looking drained of colour. ‘You’re right. We’re not.’
‘Oh…’ Now I’m disappointed.
She starfishes her arms and legs, and blows a content, partially tired sigh. ‘Because he’s got a date.’
‘A date?’ I throw up my arms. ‘What? With another granny?’
She turns her face to mine. And I can tell that we are not playing anymore. ‘That’s really not very nice… It’s a sad reflection on you, Angela, if you’ve got to keep making disparaging remarks to your mother like that. A sad reflection.’
Now I feel rotten.
~ * * * ~
Rather than use the payphone in the hotel lobby, where I can be seen and heard, I find a call box up on the main street and ring Sherrie and bawl tears. ‘I don’t know what my problem is, Sher! One minute I’m fine, like I’ve passed some hump in the road. Then I’m odious.’ I gasp for breath. ‘I’m so mean! I dragged my mother on a holiday only to spoil her fun at every turn.’ I rub the pain in my head. ‘I’m so screwed up. Here I am leaving in three days, and I’m upset because there’s a very happily married Englishman who I’m never going to see again! And then there’s Georgios. I don’t know where I stand with this man. ‘
‘Errr… hang on. Is that the really rational one that sends you on a date with your dead husband?’
In spite of myself, I smile. ‘The very same.’ I sniff up and scrounge in my bag looking for a tissue to blow my nose.
There’s a long pause, where, for a moment, I think she’s gone off the line. ‘Christ. You’re desperately searching for a man, Ange… It’s like you’ve gone there on a mission to find one and you’re grasping at anything that comes by. Why?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ I stammer, vaguely insulted now. I really do not see myself as doing this. ‘Anyway, Sherrie, you do it all the time. Maybe it’s the popular pastime of singles and widows.’
‘But the difference is there’s an odour of desperation to you. I can smell it from here, and we’re not even in the same country.’
‘There is?’
‘Um-hum. Hang on….. I’m whiffing up….’ She pretends to cough. ‘Let me get out the
Febreez
.’
‘I’m not desperately searching for somebody, Sherrie, I’m really not.’
Am I though? If she is right, it feels horribly un-feminist, yet a tiny bit like progress. ‘In any case, I don’t believe you find people just by looking… After all, you never do. My belief is that the right people show up when you least expect them. Like that Roger I went out with, remember? He came along—possibly the right guy but the wrong time for me.’
‘Are you still convinced Jonathan is up there trying to help?’
‘No! Of course not. That was just wishful thinking. I mean I don’t
think
I am.’
She groans. ‘Oh, you had to add that last bit!’
‘But Sher, you have to consider that… well, it is possible that Jonathan has sent me Georgios for a holiday romance. I mean, a teeny weeny little bit possible. I know you think the idea’s ridiculous, but there’s something about Georgios that’s different from anybody I’ve ever met… ‘
‘But there is another possibility too. Isn’t there?’
‘There is?’
‘That maybe Jonathan has sent you nobody, Ange, Because Jonathan can’t send you anybody. Because Jonathan is dead!’ She has that triple-exclamation exasperation in her voice by the end there.
‘This conversation is starting to feel like old ground.’
There’s a frustrated pause. ‘You know, in Ouch-ya-eet-ma-arma, off the coast of Papua New Guinea—’
‘Not another penis-eating story!’
Pause. ‘No! Could it possibly be?’
I sigh. ‘Go on then.’
‘The Nibbils tribe perform a nightly ritual of beating their drums and dancing to ward off unseen spirits. They do this from the day they are old enough to stand, to the day they die.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. That’s it. The point I’m making is that even people who can’t read, can’t write, and go around eating each other, still have enough common sense to want to keep a sizeable difference between themselves and the afterlife… Because there’s something damned spooky about it man! So I wish you’d get the whole idea out of your head!’ She does a noisy shudder. ‘Ange,’ her voice turns serious now. ‘I’m just saying that maybe you’d be better off believing that nobody is gonna send you anybody. Maybe if you’re waiting around for Jonathan to send you somebody you’re using that as an excuse to not go out and find somebody yourself.’
I don’t know what to say. Which is okay, because she’s still talking.
‘Angela baby. I have some serious, one-time-only, take-it-or-leave-it advice for you…. Here it is. Are you ready? Drum-roll… Maybe you should give yourself a bit of a break hun.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, stop thinking in terms of soul mates and lost loves and happy ever afters, and allow yourself to have a bit of fun. You are allowed, and furthermore, what you’ve been through means you’re entitled to it. So… if you’re so convinced that Jonathan has sent you a lover, and Georgios is that lover, then my advice is go for it.’
‘And?’
‘Shag him senseless. There’s not much time left.’
When I return to the room, Mam says that Georgios rang and invited us to his house for dinner tonight, which feels like telepathy to me. Another definite sign. I find that once you tune yourself into this cosmic forces business it’s really quite good.
‘I thought he had a date.’
‘I think he cancelled it to spend time with us—or more like, with you, because he never got to see you earlier. He was awfully keen to know if you were back.’ She watches me closely. ‘I told him I was exhausted after being up so early. So I said you’d go on your own.’
‘Is this some sort of scheme? The Vivien I know would rather chew her own toes off that admit she’s too tired to go out for dinner with somebody like gorgeous Georgios.’
‘How little you know me… Actually, if the truth be told, I really am feeling tired.’
‘Are you okay?’ I stop tarting myself up in the mirror, and scrutinise her.
‘Just ready to sit and have a bit of peace and quiet.’
Her eyes look sore and almost puffy.
‘Should I not go, then I can keep you company?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
Okay, so here I am. The hair casually pinned up with a clear plastic clip. The khaki gypsy skirt. The tiny little white tank top—sexy when you wear it braless. Which I don’t. Then I do.
Don’t.
Do.
‘Get them out!’ Mam growls.
‘I think not!’ I slap my arms over my chest. ‘You’re a disgusting pervert of a mother.’
The sandals. High, strappy gold heels that my mother insists look good. I look in the mirror and deflate. ‘I look like a tiny-titted hooker!’
She glares at me. ‘Don’t call them tits! Call them buzzums. You look like a tiny buzzumed hooker. What’s wrong with that?’
I rip the shoes off. ‘Okay that does it. You can have your hooker shoes back. They look better on you.’ I put on my new hot pink H&M diamante flip-flops. Far more me.
‘Make up?’she reminds me, watching me hurriedly bung bright pink polish onto my toenails with a shaky hand, doing a botch-job in the process.
I look in the mirror, and miraculously I don’t look like I’ve been crying to Sherrie at all. I decide on only a dab of clear lip-gloss and the teeniest sweep of black mascara. There.
‘Maybe there’s a store you can go by, on your way,’ she says.
‘What for?’
‘You know.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You know…. some…’ She widens her eyes and nods rapidly. ‘Dulux.’ She whispers. ‘Just a little packet.’
For a moment I have to think what she can possibly mean. Then I get her gaff. Only my mother could confuse Durex condoms with Dulux paint. ‘And while I’m at it, I’ll pick up a roller, a pot of turpentine, and a pair of overalls,’ I wag a finger at her, and she scowls at me, clueless.
I pick my bag off the bed, look once more at her bemused face, and drop a kiss on her brow, before heading nervously out of the door.
~ * * * ~
‘There’s something else I never told you about Jonathan,’ I tell Georgios, as he and I sit on a tiny paved vine orchard at the back of his house, drinking amber Metaxa. The chances of us having sex might be improved if I could have one conversation with him that doesn’t bring up my dead husband.