The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay (7 page)

“What were you saying to him?”

“I have no idea.”

“People say all sorts of things in the back of the ambulance.”

“It’s strange how some details stick and some don’t. I don’t remember the cup of green tea I drank before I went to sleep at the other hospital, no memory of that at all, though the cup was there in the morning. But I do remember the smell coming through the open window of my room: stale seawater and tanning oils. I remember looking out of the window and seeing towels hanging over balconies.”

“The hospital’s surrounded by blocks of apartments. Holiday apartments, most of them.”

Even though they were acutely short of beds at Main Island Hospital, there’d been resistance to sending Nina back across the water and into Dr. Christos’s care. It was all down to health politics, he told her. Over there they had to cope with a shoddily built, tired facility, and were irritated in the extreme by the money that had flowed in from the European Union for Small Island, replacing the first-aid station, converted from a boathouse, that had been in place for the previous twenty years. Before that they’d made do with the home of the island doctor, who’d been sensible enough to marry the island nurse, and people had given birth in the family house, on their dining table. The boathouse had been equipped with a defibrillator, a well-stocked pharmacy, and a side room with gas and air for pain relief in labor, and most of the residents of Main Island judged that to be more than enough for their neighbors.

“Now that money is in such short supply, their point about our sucking up their funding is becoming less good-humored,” Dr. Christos said. “And we have trouble defending ourselves sometimes, when the only business going through here in an average week is about stitching cut feet, and dealing with sunstroke and jellyfish stings.”

“So you’re quite glad of my concussion.”

“Thrilled. Only disappointed that more people on the bus weren’t hurt.” He held his hands up. “Joke. But they might actually shut us down. We might have to go to Michael Ithika again.”

“Michael who?”

“Michael Ithika. I was going to be surprised you hadn’t heard of him, but then why would you? He’s our homegrown Internet millionaire. He has a weekend house here, his own compound hidden away on the other side. You wouldn’t know it even existed unless you saw it from the air.”

“Is it his helicopter that I’ve seen coming and going?”

“It is. He lets us use it for emergencies, as long as we clean up the blood. He put up half the money for the hospital and was influential in helping get the rest.”

“How wonderful, to be able to be a philanthropist.” The doctor had an odd reaction to this. He drew himself more upright in the chair, and seemed almost to shudder. “You don’t like him?”

“Do I like him? Well, I admire his focus. He’s been unfailingly generous to us.”

“But? I sense a
but
.”

“Everything’s always come easy to Michael. I hear myself saying that and know that I’m basically jealous … though not because of the playboy lifestyle. He has a good life, genuinely enjoys his empire and does what he wants. He’s distressingly at odds with the conventional idea of the miserable rich person.”

“He’s a playboy?”

“Oh yes. Yes, indeed. I don’t like the way he treats women, to be honest.”

“How does he treat women?”

“As an endlessly replenishing supply. The guy needs to go out with an American and have his consciousness raised, stat.”

Nina felt a wave of admiration. “Sounds like it.”

“But I feel bad dissing him, because he’s got a social conscience and he uses it well.”

“Were you at school together?”

“God, no. He’s not even thirty.”

“Ah. One of those.”

“There are people here who loop the two of us together, Michael and me. The people here: they get married as soon as it’s legal and then they stick, no matter what. There’s still a stigma about divorce. Divorced men act like widowers.”

“Why would they loop the two of you together?”

“Just because I’ve had relationships since my marriage ended. But things that look the same aren’t always the same.”

“That’s true.” His marriage had ended. But she mustn’t conclude anything from that. Or invest anything in it.

He dipped his head and rubbed at the back of it, at the hairline, his neck and scalp. Paolo had often done the same when he was weary. “I’m tired today. I didn’t get home till two a.m. and was called in again at six. I get rather low when I’m this knackered.
Knackered
. I like that word; it’s a good London word.” He lay back as if to sleep, shuffling lower so that his head rested on the back of the chair, and folded his arms over the belt of his jeans. A cowboy belt, she noticed, with a big brass buckle. “Tell me a story. Tell me about Nina when she was a child.”

“Only if you agree to take your turn.”

“Deal. Give me Nina at twelve and Nina at eighteen.”

“Nina at twelve … was bony and timid. She had waist-length hair always worn in a plait. She never wore skirts if she could help it.”

“A timid tomboy. I like tomboys. Did you climb trees?”

“Timid with strangers and at school but not with my friends. There was, yes, a lot of tree-climbing, haystack-climbing,
stream-damming, getting dirty and wet. A lot of playing with the boys next door.”

“Who were the boys next door? What happened to them?”

“My husband, my brother-in-law.”

“Oh, I see, I see. Right. Carry on.” His eyes were open now.

“There was a lot of bicycle-riding. Between the ages of seven and twelve, I was on a bike most of the time. I was part of a gang — don’t look like that, it was all completely innocent. We played in the street; the village was quiet then. There was a lot of reading — my dad was constantly buying me books — but I watched television when I came home from school until teatime, like everyone else, and did my homework afterwards. The TV wasn’t often on when Dad was in the house; he didn’t approve. Are you sure you want to hear all this? I ate a lot of sweets; sweets were a big thing back then. And board games — board games were a big thing. We’d have whole-day bouts of Monopoly. What else … I always wanted a cat but I was allergic. Eczema, asthma, sensitive. I was quite serious, I think, like my dad, though my mother jollied me out of it. I played the flute, though not very well.”

“I liked that. Okay. Okay, my turn. Let’s see. No flutes, no tennis, no TV. Bike-riding yes, and running wild — I can relate to that — but the books were few and mostly borrowed. We were poor. I had to work on the farm after school and on weekends. Had to go to church, too, but that was normal; everybody did. This place was one big family then, and not only in its ideas; I mean literally. We’re all related somehow or other, though there were always two factions, the two villages. And then things changed. I was good at chess and was sent to the adult tournament and won it. School realized I was an adept student and treated me differently. They found opportunities for me. I worked hard and went off the island.”

“I was always terrible at chess, though my dad tried. Wrong kind of brain.”

“Yes, your parents. Tell me.” He shuffled down a little more, crossing his legs at the ankles.

“Loving in different ways. My dad, Robert, was an academic at the university, a history lecturer.”

“Was he what he’d always wanted to be? Describe, please.” He closed his eyes again.

“He was. His ambitions were fulfilled. He’s tall, strong-featured, has brown and gray hair in a radical side parting; 1960s hair, my mum used to say. Gray eyes, and not quick to smile. He’s from the Western Isles and has an island accent. My mother’s dead but he’s still alive. She was a housewife. A homemaker, as Dad always introduced her to people. She was good at making a home. A happy person, the most energetic I ever met, and public-spirited; she kept an eye on the old people and got their shopping. The whole village came to her funeral. She wanted to have a homewares import business but it never happened. When she was young she’d wanted to be an artist. Or an actress. Both impossibilities, though.”

“Why so?” He opened one eye.

“Because of the family in Norway. Orthodox Lutherans, I suppose. Fairly orthodox. At any rate, no showing off was allowed. She was all set to be a primary school teacher when she met my dad.”

“So, Nina at eighteen.”

“At eighteen I was at university. Things changed then, as they do, and I didn’t see much of her, but up till then Mum and I were very close. We liked to do the same kinds of things. I didn’t have anyone else I could dress-make with, or who liked baking and photography and drawing. Even at university, it took me a while to make friends. Everyone around me was getting into booze
and decadence and it wasn’t really my thing. I shocked people by wanting to work hard.”

“You were a nerdy wallflower. Gotcha.”

“Pretty much. Shy. Useless at talking to boys.”

“Other than the husband and the brother-in-law.”

“Things had become complicated, though, on that front. It didn’t seem possible to be friends with both any longer. Not at the same time.”

“I bet.” Dr. Christos was frowning at his phone.

“Is everything all right?”

“It’s my daughter in Athens. Will you excuse me? I think I should call her.”

“Of course, of course. Go speak to her.”

He made as if to go out of the room, but paused at the doorway. “Nina, will you have dinner with me before you go home?”

“Oh — I’d love to,” she said. “Thank you very much; that would be lovely. What a treat.” The politeness was perhaps overdone.

“There’s a new restaurant over the water; it’s outdoors in a cove on the western side, and they have great sunsets. I’d love to take you. We can talk about your moving here and make a plan.”

She’d told him the previous evening that she wanted to live abroad for a year and was thinking seriously about Greece. He’d become excited; he’d pulled up a chair.

She didn’t see Dr. Christos again until she went out onto the terrace, slowly on her crutches to look at the sunset over the sea, and saw him standing on the beach, his back to her, looking out across the bowl of blackening water and towards the other shore, where a hundred tiny white lights were clustered and twinkling.
She was afraid he’d turn and see her, and so she returned to her room and settled herself in bed with a Jeeves and Wooster, one of only two books in English in the hospital library, but it proved impossible to concentrate. She swapped it for the novel she’d started on the plane, but found she couldn’t remember who anybody was or what’d happened to them, and so it, too, was abandoned, tossed onto the end of the bed. The restlessness was building. Perhaps dinner wasn’t just dinner at all. He’d said, “We’ll make a plan.” Not just a plan, but we who’d make it. It was rain on arid ground. In some ways hope is the worst thing; whenever there’s fresh hope there’s also something new to lose.

Nurse Yannis came into the room, adjusted the netted window for maximum breeze, filled Nina’s water jug with more ice, emptied the wastepaper bin, taking sly glances at her all the while, and seemed to be looking for something else to do. Finally she settled into the blue chair, and folded her hands in her lap. They looked at one another. The nurse was probably about her own age, Nina thought. She was of average height and wiry build, discreet muscles showing in her upper arms. Her nose was bony and her mouth narrow and full, and her short brown hair, which suited her heart-shaped face, was red with henna in the artificial light.

“My sister is on the bus,” she said. “She goes to the gardens on the bus.”

“She was on the bus that day? I’m so sorry. Is she all right?”

“It is fine. It is good for her.” She looked into Nina’s face for the first time. “My mother wants to thank you.”

“To thank me?”

“She wants to come, to hold your hands. She has no English.” She rose from the seat and sandwiched Nina’s hands between her own with a steady pressure, before releasing them again and
returning to sit. “That is what she wants. She will kiss your hands also. She has no English but I have taught her ‘thank you.’ Can I tell her you permit it?”

“Of course, if that’s what she wants. But I don’t understand.”

“My sister is been sad. My mother is despaired. Is that the right word? It isn’t right.”

They were interrupted by Dr. Christos, who put his head round the door and muttered something to the nurse. Sighing, she hurried out.

“Sorry,” he said. “You were having a good chat. I hope you weren’t getting ahead in your story.”

“Not at all. She was telling me about her sister. Apparently she was one of the passengers.”

He came further into the room. “She’s always been a little bit lost. The sister. But there’s good news: she’s going to work for Michael. He wanted to know if he could do anything for anybody who was in the crash. He enjoys that, being the benefactor. Anyway, she’s taken a job at his company on the mainland; not working for him directly, I’m glad to say.”

“Does this mean there will only be five women now, the women gardeners?”

“They’ve already recruited a replacement.” He was looking at the novel on the bed. “Did you buy that at the English stall at the market?”