Coming home from our fishing expedition, I was bent double with dangly arms and there were cheeky offers of bananas. When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t move my legs or roll over without agonising pain in the small of the back and down the sciatic nerves through the buttocks. Getting out of bed or sitting up was out of the question. Aspirin and hot flannels throughout the day made no difference. I lay on my back without a pillow and mentally designed a wheelchair ramp up to the front door. With Arfa helping me I could roll on my side to pee over the edge of the bed into the bucket I used to mix whitewash. In preparation for weightier deeds, Arfa washed out the old roasting tin I used for knocking up bits of mortar.
For some reason she took exception to my helpful comments on her nursing and after siesta, with wholly unwarranted remarks about not being able to stand my snapping and moaning any more, she said she was going down to the village to fetch Doctor Solomos. I sped her on her way with a categorical refusal to let any barefoot doctor, Balkan quack or spotty Hippocrat near my person and promised that by the time she got back I would be dancing the Hokey Cokey.
I summoned the children and told them to push this limb and pull that foot while I puffed and blowed according to the natural childbirth methods I had picked up from their mother when they were born. I managed to half sit up on the edge of the bed, but the pain was too much and we were all in tears. I collapsed back on the sweaty mattress.
Arfa was back within the hour. Youthful Doctor Solomos sidled in after her, lugging a shiny new black bag with hardly a scuff on it, probably a graduation present. He sat down nervously on the bed, goggled at me through bottle-bottom lenses and took my pulse while Arfa described my symptoms. He gazed into my eyes and tickled my feet. Together we rolled me on my stomach and he poked gingerly at the affected part. He sat with his arms folded, picking at a spot on his chin.
‘High do not thingit meningheetis,’ he said in English. ‘High do not thingit teetanos. High do not thingit poliomeealeetis.’
‘That’s good news. What is it?’
‘High thingit bad back.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘High ’ave medicine for this.’
He bent down and struggled with the stiff new locks on his black bag. He rummaged inside and pulled out a syringe like a cake icer. The needle! My earliest memory of primary school was the rumour that fired wildly round the class at the first glimpse of the school nurse’s white coat – it’s the needle, it’s the needle – and girls screamed and boys peed down their legs (their own, not the girls’). Usually we queued up and they did no more than look at our tongues and rummage in our hair for lice.
Once it really was the needle and the mothers of cissies like me stayed at school instead of dropping us off at the gate, while tough little Irish kids faced the ordeal on their own. One of them, a freckle-faced, red-haired hooligan called Rory, forfeited forever his post of school bully by fainting in front of me.
Since then I turn my head away from the needle as soon as it comes out of the packet and wait to feel dizzy afterwards. If anyone was going to jab a needle into my spine, it was not going to be a recent graduate doing a rural stint before continuing his training.
‘I’m allergic.’
‘Oh no you’re not,’ said Arfa, happy to be getting her own back for the day’s abuse.
‘Oh yes I am!’
‘Oh no you’re not!’
‘I’m a rare blood group.’
‘Oh no you’re not!’
‘I’m a Jehovah’s witness.’
‘What do you want? An injection or a suppository?’
I was saved from this terrible dilemma by the slamming of car doors and the kerfuffle of visitors outside. News had spread fast. First up the steps was Elpida, carrying a dish of meatballs and a stone hot water bottle. Behind hovered Ajax, who had brought her up, clicking his car keys like worry beads. Elpida put down her dish, threw her arms wide and began a lament.
‘O Blessed Virgin. What have they done to you? Why are you laid low? What evil eye has struck you down?’
‘See. About time I got some sympathy.’
‘Poor child. Show me. Where does it hurt?’
Doctor Solomos meekly moved out of the way to let Elpida stand over me. She pulled the sheet down to the top of my buttocks. With strong, waxy fingers she poked and prodded. Everyone crowded round the bed to see the fun. It felt like a ward round and Elpida was the consultant. Somewhere to the right of my spine she touched a spot that sent a shooting pain from my toes to my skull and a scream from my cracked lips.
‘There we are,’ she said to Doctor Solomos, one professional to another. ‘Please give me an egg,’ she said to Arfa.
‘A what? What for?’
‘GIVE HER AN EGG!’ I shouted.
Arfa went to the fridge and came back with the smallest egg she could find. Elpida cracked it onto the small of my back and handed the shell to Arfa. Muttering under her breath, she rocked my back from side to side and up and down so that the egg white was spread all over the area. I bit my lip with the pain. She finished her incantation and asked Doctor Solomos for a bandage out of his case. She tied it round me, the egg still in the small of my back. I felt the yolk burst. It was slippery and wet and warm against my skin. She wound the bandage tightly round me several times, pushing the roll under my stomach and making me wince.
‘Take the bandage off tomorrow. The bad will go with the good,’ she said and pinched the children’s cheeks.
Ajax wished me a speedy recovery and offered Doctor Solomos a lift back. Solomos looked awkward and embarrassed as he closed his bag.
‘Doctor, if it’s no better tomorrow, I promise I’ll take the needle,’ I said, with my fingers crossed.
The pain kept me awake most of the night. In the morning it was no better. I pretended to be asleep until the children came in, anxious to see the result of Elpida’s magic.
‘How is the fat toad this morning?’ asked Arfa, with a smug little smile.
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ I said.
With a struggle I could just about get my legs over the edge of the bed. The pain shot down to my toes. It was as bad as yesterday.
‘Ooh, that’s much better,’ I said. ‘Could somebody untie the bandage?’
Arfa untied the knot and unwound the cummerbund. The egg had turned pitch black.
‘Look,’ said Kate, ‘all the badness has come out of Daddy.’
‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ said Arfa.
‘I’m cured,’ I said, flinging my arms out wide and standing up like the picture of Lazarus in the Children’s Bible. ‘See, Elpida did the trick.’
Walking up straight, I strode over to the sink and put the kettle on. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ The five of them were goggle-eyed, open-mouthed.
‘It couldn’t have been very serious,’ was Arfa’s explanation.
‘Elpida’s a witch,’ was Jack’s.
‘Does she eat girls?’ said Jim, for his sister’s benefit.
For the rest of the morning I was almost my normal self. I said it was prudent to take things easy and avoid white-washing and other manual labour. Arfa accepted my recovery with bad grace. I caught her unawares inspecting the blackened bandage. She tossed it guiltily on the bed and pretended that she was clearing up. Young Doctor Solomos came up at noon and prodded and poked, diagnosed some swelling and inflammation and rabbited on about combining the old medicine and the new.
In fact, I have never before or since been in such agony. It was made worse by the effort of will to conceal it. I took double doses of aspirin. Every half an hour when no one was looking I took a large slug of ouzo straight from the bottle. I would have preferred whisky, but they would have smelt it on my breath. From my head to my fingers to my toes I was being dissected bone from bone with a hot, blunt knife.
Why did I do this? Dread of the needle? To pay back the mockery of my family? To rub in the innocent incompetence of Doctor Solomos? I prefer to think that it was for my friend Elpida, so she would not be made a fool of.
After lunch I collapsed on the bed face down to hide tears of pain in the pillow. I fell asleep with my head reeling with heat and exhaustion and ouzo and pain and promising myself to stay in bed until it was better.
When I woke up at five, I had a headache and a hangover but the pain in my back was truly gone. The twinges when I bent down were no worse than usual. It was a miracle.
‘Rise from your beds and walk,’ I shouted to the others, ‘we’re going to the beach.’
I swam and threw skimmers and chased beach balls with the brio of a father on his access day. On the way back we stopped in the square and I saw Elpida, sitting as usual outside her house with her crones and cronies. I walked up to her with arms outstretched and gave her hairy cheeks the most public of kisses. It was all the reward she wanted, although I bought her cakes and flowers the next time we were in Aliveri.
So there were more questions to ask myself. Did it go by itself? Was it Elpida’s magic? Was it her manipulation of my back to spread the egg? Was it the loosening of the muscles from forcing myself to move? Was it the ouzo? Probably a bit of everything. Whatever it was, I had avoided the needle and struck a blow for the folk wisdom of centuries.
Youthful Doctor Solomos had no hard feelings. He may have been secretly relieved that Elpida saved him from a difficult patient. He moved on soon after to a houseman’s job at Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham. I told him that was where I was born and we struggled to find this meaningful, but it was not so much a coincidence as one of life’s so-whats.
The fillip to Elpida’s reputation increased demand for her folk remedies. She was often to be seen on the hillsides in the early morning, bottom in the air, digging for roots and herbs with an old kitchen knife.
One evening, smitten by nostalgia for the English countryside, we took the children to pick blackberries by the side of the cemetery road. Because it’s hot and doesn’t rain, Greek blackberries are not luscious fruits of the autumn hedgerow but little nutty things ripe in August. Elpida spotted us on the way to her graveside duties.
‘Who’s got a cough?’ she asked accusingly, as if she had caught us raiding the medicine cabinet.
‘Nobody. We don’t have anything wrong,’ Arfa said. Elpida didn’t believe her. She tutted and tried again.
‘Who’s got diarrhoea?’
‘Nobody. We just like to eat them.’
‘How?’
‘We boil them for a bit with sugar to make jam for yoghurt instead of honey.’
‘Eh. We Greeks don’t do it like that,’ and that was the end of the conversation.
I’ve never been one for herbalism. The mother of a friend of ours grew medicinal plants in the garden. She had what looked like ordinary flower beds, except that the plants were labelled with the diseases they treated and not their proper names. Here was a bed of emphysema coming into bloom, there she was pricking out the angina, and doesn’t the anaemia have a lovely scent? For hypochondriacs like me it diluted the charm of the country garden.
Arfa was more intrigued. On her next visit to Athens she bought Medicinal Plants of Greece by George Sfikas. Elpida was right about blackberries. Allegedly they are a cure for diarrhoea and not a cause, as the layman might assume. Indeed, the main function of most natural remedies seems to be the loosening or constricting of the bowels. Many are recommended for ‘general lassitude of the organism’. More specific specifics are artichokes for tonsillitis, basil for stomach ache and celery for fever and diabetes. Mistletoe berries can be popped like pills for indigestion. Arfa promised me the nettle cure if my back gave out again. The practitioner puts on gloves and whips the affected area with fresh nettle stems. This causes burning and swelling, but is alleged to be a very effective remedy and doubtless takes your mind off what’s really wrong with you. It’s enjoyable for the practitioner too.
My favourite was the common-or-kitchen-garden onion. It was the most frequently depicted plant in the tombs of the Pharaohs and for good reason. It is a pharmacopoeia in your vegetable rack. Rub neat juice into stings and burns. Mix the juice with potassium carbonate and rub into the scalp for baldness. Eat a raw onion for lassitude, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, cirrhosis of the liver, stings and burns. Best of all, for haemorrhoids, fry an onion in pork fat and leave as long as possible in the affected place. Sfikas is silent about the size, but presumably you should take measurements. He advises letting it cool down first – you wouldn’t want to burn your fingers.
We were intrigued not so much by the efficacy, but by how they found out. Did they try it raw first, or boiled or baked in the oven? Did they try other vegetables on a testing panel? Was it pure coincidence that someone’s piles got better the day after a fried onion suppository? If so, what were they doing sticking fried onions up their bottom in the first place? Was it a dare, a cult, a whim? And how many people, having read Sfikas, have tried it for themselves? So many unanswered questions.
‘Hey kids, listen to this.’
‘Why? We’re busy.’ They were engrossed in harassing a column of ants. I caught Arfa’s Gorgon glare over her wine glass.
‘Oh, nothing.’
It was late August and the almond harvest was in full swing. The hillside echoed with the whack whack whack of long poles on the trees and the patter of nuts and twigs on sheets laid underneath. We collected our own almonds, peeled off the green husks and spread the nuts in their pockmarked shells on the terrace to dry.
Genial Spiros capped his generosity with the doves by presenting us with a hen. He carried her over by the ankles, spread-eagled, or rather spread-chickened, more stupefied than frightened at her unaccustomed view of the world. He sat down on the terrace and let her go to peck under the table for breakfast droppings.
‘Oh lovely, our own eggs,’ said Arfa, but I could tell she’d rather be given them in a paper bag.
‘Bah, she’s too old for eggs. That’s why I’m giving her to you. Simmered slowly with onions and tomato is best for the old ones. Isn’t that right?’ he said to his gift, who had found rich pickings under Harry’s chair.
The children, who had been hiding from clearing the table, emerged.
‘Maam, is that for us?’ said Harry.
‘Is it a girl chicken?’ said Kate.
‘What shall we call her?’ said Harry.
‘How about Pecky?’ said Kate.
‘Pecky’s not a name,’ said Jim.
‘Becky is,’ said Jack.
‘Pecky-Becky,’ said Kate.
‘Can she live in my bedroom? Can she?’ said Harry.
They chased her round the terrace while I got Spiros a whisky. When he had gone we had a family discussion.
‘Darlings, Spiros didn’t give us Pecky-Becky for a pet. He gave her to us for dinner,’ said Arfa.
‘What? Alive? Is Dad going to kill her?’ said Jim.
‘Why not Mum?’ I retorted.
‘Chickens don’t make very good pets. Especially old chickens. She’s probably got lice. You can’t cuddle a chicken.’
‘Yes you can, yes you can,’ squawked Harry and ran over to where she was grubbing in a geranium pot.
Had she known what was at stake, Pecky-Becky wouldn’t have pecked his finger. Despite Harry’s thumbs down, the majority vote was to save Pecky-Becky from the pot and welcome her into the bosom of the family.
A veteran of the free range was not to be so easily domesticated. First of all, she was not naturally endearing. She had lost an eye to a rat or a cat or a rival, she was bald under the wings and on the neck, the feathers that remained were crusted with dirt and droppings, she walked with a limp. A filthy, balding, one-eyed, limping chicken is not an ornament to the home. She refused to sit in a bed lovingly crafted out of cardboard with a dry grass mattress and a quilt of tattered blanket. Offered food, she pecked the hand that fed her. Lassoed with a piece of string and taken for walks, she either strangled herself to escape or ran full tilt at the legs of her leader. She was distasteful to cuddle. There was nothing nice to stroke. The tattered comb, like Grandpa’s earlobes, was unpleasant to fondle. It was a relief when night fell and she could be shut in the basement.
When the children were in bed, I delicately raised the subject of what to do with her.
‘What are we going to do about that effing chicken?’
‘Don’t swear at me. I’m not responsible.’
‘It wasn’t my idea …’
‘It’s too late now …’
Spiros took the decision out of our hands. The next morning he came over for a tot and saw Pecky-Becky gleaning the harvest under the table.
‘She won’t fatten up you know, she’s too old.’ I looked round. Arfa was in the kitchen fetching glasses. The children were in their olive tree.
‘I don’t know how to kill it. Can you do it for me?’
‘It’s easy,’ he said and it was. He dived for her and grabbed her by the leg. A quick flick of the wrist and he tossed her back down again, where she proved that the popular saying about a headless chicken is well grounded in fact. I can also tell you that it draws a veil over the prodigious amount of shit that is released. She scurried round with her head dangling until she ran into a wall and collapsed in a quivering heap of feathers.
While no one would admit that her passing was a relief, she went unmourned. Arfa did not ask what had moved Spiros to do the deed, so I did not have to tell lies. My expiation was to prepare her for the pot. The worst was plunging her into hot water to make her easier to pluck. I had the dreadful henhouse stench of hot, wet feathers in my nose, on my beard, my hair, my skin, my clothes all day.
After my initiation on the doves, I was used to the subsequent intimacies. Pecky-Becky looked up at me with her beady black eye and made little squeaks and grunts as I rummaged in her intestines. A lady of mature years, she had shrunken breasts, massive thighs and a wrinkled yellow skin. But when I chopped her up and covered her in cling film she looked like a proper chicken from Tesco’s, not the beady-eyed, strutting, limping, pecking harridan that crapped round our terrace.
Arfa adapted her favourite recipe to the local ingredients. Her coq au retsina was tough but tasty, despite the turpentine tang.