‘I wish I could take her to show Mamma,’ Maria remarked wistfully.
‘Time enough for that when she’s a little older and you’ve got your strength back.’ Kassy was not having the girl get any wild ideas about walking over the hills the following day. It had become easier for her after her father had called and asked after her health a few weeks earlier. Babbis had been able to walk over with her in the evenings and it had been a weight off Kassy’s mind to know that her daughter-in-law was safe. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Anna will tell her how beautiful she is.’
Maria smiled. ‘Wasn’t she wonderful? Who would have believed that my little sister could have been so efficient?’
‘Good job she was,’ snorted Kassy. ‘The Widow is past it, and I know nothing. Without Anna it could have been a difficult time for you.’
‘It was difficult anyway. I had no idea it would take so long.’
‘Nor had I,’ agreed Babbis. ‘I ran like the wind for Anna and the Widow and I thought they would be too late the time it seemed to take them to get here.’
Tears began to roll down Maria’s cheeks.
‘What is it? What’s wrong? Do you hurt?’ Babbis was all concern.
Maria shook her head. ‘I’m just so happy,’ she sobbed. ‘She’s so beautiful and perfect.’
‘Then why are you crying?’ Babbis was way out of his depth with his wife’s unpredictable behaviour.
‘Leave her alone,’ his mother advised him. ‘It’s only natural she should cry. Mothers often do so. She’s tired and relieved that it’s all over and that both she and the baby are all right. Let her have her cry out and she’ll feel better. Then it’s a good sleep she needs.’
Babbis held her to him whilst she sobbed, waiting until she had stopped before he spoke again. ‘What are we going to call her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘After you and your mother?’
‘No, it gets too confusing, everyone having the same name.’
Babbis sat silently. Dare he suggest it or would Maria laugh at him. ‘Do you like the name Marisa?’
‘Marisa?’
‘You don’t like it. You choose what we call her.’
‘Marisa,’ repeated Maria. ‘I do like it.’
‘It’s half your name and a bit of my mother’s, but if there’s something else you’d rather call her I don’t mind.’
‘There’s nothing I’d rather call her. She’s Marisa, and it isn’t to be shortened.’
Babbis kissed his wife’s forehead. ‘May I hold Marisa for a short while? Then I think you should get some rest.’
Maria handed the precious child to her father and lay back on her pillows as he handled her inexpertly. Life was so good to her. She had a wonderful husband, a kind mother-in-law; her father had forgiven her and now this incredibly beautiful baby. She sighed with contentment. What more could one ask from life?
Yannis sat inside the house he had constructed. The floor of beaten earth felt cold and damp to the touch and the wind blew through the window and door opening unceasingly. Huddled beneath his blanket he felt more miserable than he had for months. This was only the beginning of winter. He shivered. His hopes and dreams of rebuilding had fallen on stony ground despite the enthusiastic reception of his first house building attempts.
It had taken weeks of begging and pleading with the mainlanders who brought over supplies before they finally agreed to bring a ladder to the island. Having the necessary elevation it proved impossible to climb the ladder carrying the heavy blocks of masonry and unwieldy tiles. Yannis eventually designed a sling that he would haul up with the necessary materials, but the work was arduous. Christos had propped himself against a wall, his crutch under his arm, and criticised everything Yannis tried to do.
‘It’s no good,’ Yannis finally declared to Spiro. ‘It’s impossible to do some things without tools.’
‘Then we must get some.’
‘How are we going to do that? Pop over on the next boat and buy them? What do we use for money for a start?’
Spiro shook his head. ‘Don’t talk foolishly. We have to beg them, the same as we begged for the ladder.’
‘How long is it going to take?’
‘Probably quite a long time, but if you can think of a better idea I’m willing to listen.’
‘I’m sorry, Spiro. It all seemed so easy when I talked about it at first and managed to build this. I can’t even hang a door without a saw to cut the wood and a screwdriver to drive the screws home.’
Spiro and Phaedra had taken it in turns to sit on the quay and plead with the boatmen to no avail; it was little Flora who was most successful, returning one day with a hammer. She had presented it to Yannis as if it was made of gold and he had thanked her in like vein. From that day she had taken it upon herself to be the one to sit on the concrete jetty and beg from each boat as it arrived. The sickly looking waif who accosted them, asking for nails, screws, hinges and tools intrigued the regular suppliers.
At first they had laughed at her, but finding her continually huddled in the same place and making the same requests they gave in and would bring a handful of nails or a couple of hinges which they had scrounged from a local store. Manolis would appear regularly and always had something for her. The gifts were not always items she had requested, but she would thank him gleefully, whether it was a nail or some homespun wool that he threw across the water to her.
Despite her apparent success their stocks grew slowly and winter was almost upon them when Yannis nailed the final tile on the roof of Christos’s house. Having examined the repair from inside Christos declared himself satisfied, but demanded that Yannis should also replace the shutters which had fallen off and lay rotting on the ground. Reluctantly Yannis agreed and used some precious pieces of timber he had been saving for his own house, despite criticism of his actions by Spiro.
‘You’ve got to stand up to him, Yannis. Tell him that is the last thing you’ll do for him.’
Yannis shook his head. ‘It’s not as easy as that. We need his knowledge and the only way we’re going to get it is by doing everything he asks.’
Reluctantly Spiro had let the matter rest and watched whilst Christos’s house became waterproof ready for the winter. Now, sitting in his miserable hovel, Yannis realised the sense of Spiro’s words. He had enough wood for one shutter, it was cut to size, but it would be impossible to fix until the rain stopped. There was no sense in getting his clothes soaked; they would take weeks to dry. He would just have to be thankful that he had four walls and a roof that he and his friends could use as a shelter.
‘Next year it will be different,’ Yannis promised himself. ‘Somehow I’ll make them help me.’
Next year! The thought suddenly hit home. He was beginning to accept that this was where he would stay until the end of his days. He groaned aloud. Kyriakos shifted uncomfortably on his mattress and Yannis looked at the old man. He should be somewhere warm and dry, not in this dank hut. Spiro returned from the storehouse, shaking drops of water from himself like a dog as he entered.
‘That’s all there is. The bread’s hard and the cheese is mouldy, but it’s food.’
Yannis shrugged. He had eaten worse in the hospital, but at least you knew there would be something each day, however unpalatable. Now unless a boat arrived soon they would all starve. The knowledge added to his misery and depression.
‘I think it’s easing off,’ Spiro tried to cheer him. ‘If it does I’ll help you fix that shutter.’
Contrary to Spiro’s optimism the weather did not improve for a further two days. By that time their clothes and mattresses were soaked and the food exhausted, despite severe rationing on their part. Spiro had lost his cheerfulness and lay, like Yannis, huddled against Kyriakos for warmth, trying to ignore the gnawing pains in his stomach that craved for food.
Silence woke Yannis and he struggled up stiffly from his mattress to look out of the open doorway. From beneath ragged wisps of cloud a pale sun was trying to emerge. With a resigned sigh Yannis realised that although he felt weak and miserable he was not going to die from deprivation. A boat would probably arrive that day bringing supplies which would fortify them all ready for the next spell of bad weather and enforced starvation.
Slipping and sliding down the path that was a sea of mud and exposed rocks Yannis reached the main path. He passed the patch of concrete and the wooden shack where they had passed the summer months and continued on beyond the ammunition tower. There he staggered across the bare, slippery rock to the Venetian wall and stood looking down at the sea, which sucked menacingly at the rocks below. Across the bay he could see the farmhouse where he had spent his childhood and he screwed up his eyes to try to discern any movement. He would have liked to see his mother once more before he died.
‘What are you doing, Yannis?’ He felt clawed fingers in his belt.
He stared at Phaedra blankly before sinking to the ground at her feet, shivering violently. ‘I can’t,’ he stammered back at her. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can’t what? You can’t face a few days of being cold and hungry?’ she spoke scornfully. ‘Some of us have faced it for years. It will happen more than once before the winter’s out. You just have to get used to it and accept it.’
‘I can’t,’ repeated Yannis.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she answered him curtly. ‘All the time it’s warm and you have food you’re full of grand ideas. The moment things become difficult you’re prepared to give in. The winter doesn’t last for ever.’
‘The house is cold and wet. The rain blew in on everything.’ Yannis tried to excuse himself.
‘That’s your fault. You shouldn’t have done so much for Christos. He’s quite capable of looking after himself.’
‘I have to help Christos if he’s going to help me,’ reasoned Yannis.
‘How much help did he give you when you repaired his roof? He watched you struggling and criticised from the ground. Did he ever tell you how to place the tiles, or even bother to thank you when you’d finished?’
Yannis shook his head. ‘I just placed them where the old ones had been.’
‘So what did you need him for?’
‘Nothing really,’ Yannis had to admit. ‘But we shall need him if we are to repair things properly.’
Phaedra shook her head. ‘That’s rubbish. You proved that when you repaired the house where you are now.’
‘He says I haven’t fixed the roof or corners properly. He doubts if it will last the winter.’ Yannis spoke miserably.
‘Then you’ll have to repair it as you go and prove him wrong. It’s not raining now, you and Spiro could fix that shutter you’ve been talking about.’
‘The rain will still come in the other window and the doorway.’ He shivered as he spoke.
‘Then go and find some more wood. Don’t be so defeatist, Yannis.’
‘I’m just so cold and hungry.’
‘I’ll make you a hot meal as soon as the boats have unloaded,’ she promised.
‘Have they come over?’
‘They’re almost here.’
Yannis breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I thought we were going to starve. I’ll find Spiro and see what he thinks about fixing that shutter.’ Yannis rose to his feet and shivered again. ‘We might get a bit warmer if we were able to work.’
For a week Yannis lay on his bed alternately sweating and shivering with a chill He was frustrated by his enforced inactivity, but had to admit that Spiro was right when he forbade Yannis to go out in the rain. Spiro and Phaedra tried to persuade Yannis to stay inside for another week, but he refused. ‘I want to see Panicos. I want to talk to him.’
Spiro shook his head. ‘If you go wandering out to meet him you’ll probably get chilled again.’
Yannis argued. He was well now and it would not hurt him to go out for a short while now it was no longer raining. He had to speak to Panicos urgently. Finally Spiro agreed to compromise.
‘I’ll go and ask Panicos to come up here. He hasn’t been well either.’ With that Yannis had to be content, although Spiro seemed to be in no hurry to fulfil his errand.
Yannis noticed immediately how hollow-eyed and thin Panicos looked. ‘I hear you’ve been ill.’
‘Haven’t we all.’
‘Are you still in the church?’
‘There’s nowhere else to go and it’s reasonably warm and dry.’
‘How many of you are there?’
Panicos shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, probably about seventy.’
‘Seventy!’ Yannis was horrified. ‘In that tiny church! Don’t you mind?’
Panicos turned troubled eyes towards Yannis. ‘I hate it. We all hate it, but we have no choice. It’s worse than it ever was in the hospital. There’s no room, no air, the smell is beyond description,’ he shuddered,
‘How many are bed-ridden?’
‘About twenty.’
Yannis sat thoughtfully. Panicos stirred uncomfortably and coughed.
‘Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘No, don’t go. I wanted to come down and see you, but Spiro thinks I should be wrapped in cotton wool. I’ve had an idea.’ Yannis waited for a reaction that did not come. ‘How is Christos keeping?’
‘He seems to be all right.’
‘Why do you think he’s keeping well when the rest of us appear to have been ill?’
‘How should I know? I’m not a doctor.’
‘You don’t think it might be because he has a dry, waterproof house?’
‘We’re dry and waterproof in the church.’
‘But you’re overcrowded.’
Panicos nodded. ‘What are you getting at, Yannis?’
‘I want to try to persuade people to repair the houses and if they’re suffering now it could be a good time. Whilst the summer is with us it doesn’t matter if you’re living in the open. Now they’ve spent part of the winter herded together the idea of having your own house could be appealing. You know them better than I do. If I come down to the church who should I talk to first?’
Panicos coughed again. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Will you help me?’
‘How?’ Panicos was suspicious.
‘Talk to them; tell them how much better it is up here.’
‘Is it?’ Panicos looked around critically.
‘It doesn’t smell.’
‘That’s because there’s only three of you.’
‘Exactly. If the houses were repaired small groups could live in them and they’d be healthier.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I know this isn’t perfect, but it’s better than being in the church. As soon as the weather improves I’ll be working on it again. By this time next year you’ll see a difference,’ boasted Yannis.