Sixty-nine
His hair damp with sweat from the Greek dancing, Andras joined with his restaurant clientele in applauding the professional musicians who, like every week here, had put on an amazing show. Tomorrow the restaurant would be closed for the first time ever for a private event: Spiros and Kira’s wedding.
He shook hands with diners and nodded at others as he made his way through the restaurant to begin the task of clearing up. Tess was sitting with Sonya and her boyfriend at table seventeen, coffee grounds burning in a pot next to the candle after the man had been savaged by mosquitos within a few moments of sitting down. Kira was sitting on Spiros’s lap at the family table, brushing back his newly shorn hair, then squeezing his cheeks and laughing at the comical results. It was then he saw his mother, quietly making her way towards the exit, leaning a little more heavily on her stick than usual. He swallowed. Despite the formidable exterior, she was getting older, and they really needed to talk.
‘Mama,’ he called out as he got closer.
She didn’t turn around. ‘I am tired, Andras. It is a busy day tomorrow. I need to get home to bed. Fotis is coming to collect me.’
‘In his truck?’ Andras queried.
‘Yes, in his truck.’
‘But, Mama, how will you …’
‘I have been getting into trucks for years, Andras. Your father had a truck if you remember.’
He did remember. He remembered how much fun it was, clambering up into the lorry with Spiros and going out for the day in this huge wagon with space for everyone, but not at all conducive to the Corfu roads.
‘Mama, please, stop,’ Andras said, taking her arm as she descended the steps to the beach.
‘I said I am tired, Andras.’
‘And disappointed in me, I know,’ he replied, releasing a breath. ‘Please, Mama, sit down with me?’
With his arm, he indicated one of the beachside tables ahead of them, clear of crockery, but with a candle still burning from the previous diners. For a moment he didn’t know if his mother was going to agree, but then she moved, stick leading the way, stabbing at the shingle and sand.
He pulled out a chair for her.
‘Why are you fussing around me, Andras? I am as capable of sitting in a chair as I am climbing into a truck.’
‘I know. I am just …’
‘About to get your heart broken again.’ Isadora let out a furious sigh that somehow turned into a sob and had the Greek woman grabbing at the handbag over her arm and searching its contents.
Andras took a napkin from the holder on the table and passed it to her. She snatched it quickly and covered her nose, letting out a tremendous ‘honk’ as she blew into it.
‘This is all your father’s fault,’ Isadora stated, screwing the napkin up in her fist.
‘What?’
‘You are the same. You have feelings so quickly. You do not think about the long-term consequences.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘With your father it was this place,’ Isadora exclaimed, eyes going to the lit-up exterior of the taverna. ‘This restaurant. He loved it. He wanted it. And it killed him.’
‘Mama, the taverna is a success. I am going to make sure it becomes even more of a success. As my business.’ He sighed. ‘Spiro told me you gave him the money. You didn’t need to do that.’
‘He needed it now. What sort of mother would I be if I did not help him?’
‘I know. But I am arranging a loan with the bank. I will pay you back.’
‘Before you leave for England?’ Isadora snapped.
‘Mama, I am not leaving for England,’ Andras said.
‘No? That is not what comes next after this week of deep and meaningful love that was fake at the beginning, but is now everything you have been waiting for all your life?’
‘Mama,’ he swallowed. ‘What I feel for Tess is real, no matter how it came about.’
‘Like with Elissa? Trying to get you to leave the island with her. Always wanting something bigger, something better, just like your father with this restaurant.’
‘If Elissa had asked me to leave the island with her then I would have,’ Andras informed him.
‘And if Patricia asks you to?’
‘Her name is Tess, Mama,’ he breathed. ‘Just Tess. And she won’t ask me to leave the island.’
‘Why not? Because she will move here, marry you, take half the restaurant and wait for you to die through working too hard?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then what?’ Isadora demanded to know.
‘Because both of us are too scared to even talk about a future together. Because, a man left her at her own wedding and she never loved again and … because Elissa …’ He stopped talking, emotion burning its way up his throat. Could he really tell his mother the truth about the way his marriage had ended? ‘Because Elissa …’ he began again.
‘Fell in love with Stamatis Alexopoulos and was carrying his baby,’ Isadora stated.
The breath flew from Andras and he crushed his hands together. ‘You knew.’ He swallowed. ‘You knew, all this time.’
Isadora nodded, tears in her eyes. ‘And every day I would see you so broken, so heartbroken, working and working and paying too much attention to holidaymakers and it was breaking my soul into pieces because of what she did.’ Isadora gasped. ‘I did not like the girl. I did not want you to marry the girl. But you made your choice and no matter what I thought about it, I did not want my son to be so … torn apart like that.’ The tears fell from her eyes like the waterfalls at Nymfes, and Andras reached for her hands, shielding them with his.
‘You should have told me,’ he said softly.
‘No, Andras,’ Isadora replied. ‘It was up to you to tell me … but I knew you would not and I do not blame you. I had put up the barriers when I told you how much I disapproved. I just … did not want you to leave. Selfishly, it has always been about not wanting you to leave.’ She took her hands back, wiping at her eyes. ‘Spiro, he needs to leave, to learn, the boy does not have your independent nature. He needs Kira as much as she needs him but you …’
‘You made me independent, Mama. You are independent. Look how you lead the women of the village, look how you have got on with things since Papa died, look how you have planned the whole of this wedding tomorrow.’ Andras squeezed her hands. ‘You are part of who I am, not just Papa.’
His mother did not reply, still sniffing.
‘But you have to know that I will always make my own choices. In life … and in love.’ The sound of the lull of the waves on the beach made him pause. ‘I am no more right for Marietta than she is for me. You must know that. You must see that.’
‘I know that she would do everything she could to make you happy.’
‘But, Mama, that is not the kind of relationship I want, or the type of relationship anybody wants. Where is the partnership? Where is the equality?’
‘Can you see Tess picking the olive harvest and making stifado?’ Isadora asked.
Andras smiled as the image came to mind. Tess dressed simply, plucking ripe olives from trees, shaking the branches, twigs getting caught up in her hair. He shook his head. ‘I can see it, but it would be a terrible idea.’
‘See!’
‘No, it is a good thing, Mama.’ He leant back in his chair, stretching out his legs. ‘Because I don’t want Tess to pick olives or make me dinner. Those are not reasons to have someone in your life. In fact, they are the least important reasons to have someone in your life.’
‘But …’ Isadora began, leaning forward a little.
‘Was that why Papa married you? For your cooking?’
‘Andras, you know that your father was a far better cook than I am.’
‘So, you married him for his cooking?’
She shook her head, but there was the beginning of a smile at the corner of her mouth. ‘We fell in love,’ she admitted. ‘There was no way I was going to let him be taken in by my cousin Leda’s bottle-blonde hair.’ She tutted. ‘That girl was always such an attention seeker.’
‘Mama, I do not know what will happen with Tess,’ Andras admitted. ‘Perhaps nothing; perhaps everything. But whatever does happen, it will be our choice, because we came together by chance and somewhere along the line, despite all the odds, we fell in love.’
‘Andras,’ Isadora said, her eyes once again full of tears. ‘I just want you to be happy.’
‘I am happy, Mama,’ he answered. ‘Happier than I have ever been.’