33

Evangelia

In the end, Evangelia gathered up everything she had found into a folder and set off for the cemetery. There wasn’t much – scraps of her own memories, of Nick and Xanthe’s, and a clutter of largely meaningless photocopies from the library that spoke more of her mother’s absence than of her presence. It had been exciting that night, unspooling from her children the stories they cherished of their grandmother, but it hadn’t really amounted to anything that would move her mother’s story forward, and nearly a year after her mother’s death she still had very little. It would make a brief collection of anecdotes, something to save in some never-to-be-accessed part of the computer, to sit and be forgotten. Maybe one day the children would rediscover it, scroll through the pages fondly, then leave it to gather more temporal dust in the recesses of the hard drive. And perhaps that was all it needed to be, the notes on this ordinary unexceptional life.

Evangelia followed the familiar path to her parents’ graves, the afternoon sun warming her cheeks. From a distance she saw a figure bent over the headstones, and as the figure straightened she realised it was Lydia. Evangelia paused, watching her. Lydia finished cleaning their father’s side of the plot then crossed to their mother’s. She scooped the withered, mismatched flowers from their vase, replacing them with fresh white roses so that they mirrored those standing tall on their father’s side. She swept the base of the headstone with her hands then stood there for a long moment, her hands brushing her cheeks. Lydia made to leave and Evangelia started, ducking behind a too-short gravestone. She stood sheepishly as Lydia noticed her and beckoned her over. The sisters stood before one another.

‘I didn’t realise you came here.’

‘Of course I do,’ Lydia replied, her face stern, hands dusting dirt from her trousers.

She surveyed the cheap flowers in Evangelia’s hands.

‘I don’t have to leave them here,’ Evangelia said sharply, glancing at the expensive roses already set out.

‘They’re fine,’ Lydia said after a moment. ‘Here, let me help.’

The sisters divided the flowers between the two vases, circling the roses with supermarket daisies. Evangelia flicked the water from her hands then bent to retrieve the folder. Lydia eyed it suspiciously.

‘What have you got there?’

Evangelia had planned to read through the papers one last time, sitting beside their mother, before putting them away for good. Her cheeks flushed.

‘Nothing. Just some papers. Memories and things from the kids.’

Her sister’s face was unreadable.

‘Can I see?’

Evangelia’s hands moved instinctively behind her back.

‘Eva, show me.’

‘No.’

‘Eva,’ Lydia insisted.

Evangelia eyed her mother’s grave. She could not make a scene here, not with God and all the departed watching.

‘Fine. Here.’

She thrust the folder at Lydia then watched her sister leaf through the papers. Lydia paused when she reached the photocopies from the library, peering at herself in the image.

‘Mum’s not there,’ Evangelia informed her. ‘She’s not anywhere. I mean, she’s probably in the kitchen cooking but no one ever took photos of that.’

Lydia traced a finger over the image, haloing their father with her fingernail. Evangelia noticed for the first time how tired her sister looked, her face drawn with the same weary lines their mother had had, as her own was now.

‘She didn’t go. That’s why she’s not there.’

‘What do you mean?’ Evangelia frowned. ‘It says the whole community turned up.’

‘She didn’t go. She protested the protest. People wouldn’t speak to her for weeks. Dad was mortified. She said she couldn’t abide by any of it – Greeks hurting Turks, Turks hurting Greeks. That wasn’t the Cyprus she remembered.’

Evangelia stared at her sister.

‘How do you know that? You were too young to remember anything like that.’

‘She told me.’ Lydia’s eyes were suddenly full of tears. ‘She’d tell me stories. Later on. Recently. I realised that I’m supposed to be the one that knows these things now. So I asked her and she told me.’

The tears spilled then, cascading down her cheeks in little rainstorms. Evangelia looked away. She’d never thought to ask Lydia, had never imagined her as the one who would carry this knowledge forward. And she realised that she had always supposed herself to be this person, despite being younger, because it had always seemed that way growing up. Had always seemed to be what everyone expected, even Lydia. And now tears were falling from her own eyes, great cascades of frustration and sadness because they were two grown women standing beside their mother’s grave learning something new about each other after all these years.

‘I miss her,’ she whispered, searching her bag for tissues.

‘Me too,’ Lydia said, handing her one from her own bag. ‘It just hit me, suddenly when she got sick, that I’m supposed to be in charge now. And I don’t know how to do anything. I never bothered to learn and now I’m meant to be the one. You know how often I have to google shit? Like sit there asking the internet how I’m supposed to do our traditions? It’s embarrassing. She’d be horrified.’

Lydia drew a fresh tissue from the packet then blew her nose noisily.

‘I can show you,’ Evangelia said. ‘I know things. You were off being cultural.’

She said the last part with an exaggerated flourish, which made Lydia laugh.

‘I’d like that,’ Lydia sniffed.

The two sisters appraised each other.

‘We’re the frontline now,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s us until our kids.’

Evangelia thought of her children, their stilted ineffectual Greek and their noncommittal dancing.

‘God help us all.’

She shoved the soggy tissue into her sleeve.

‘I’m sorry about what happened. About the meat.’

Lydia raised her eyebrows. ‘It was very expensive jamón . . .’

Evangelia hid a smile behind her hand. ‘Do you have any more stories?’

Lydia made a face. ‘Plenty. Names, phone numbers, details. That woman was like a sponge. What I know could fill a whole bloody book.’

Evangelia shifted feet, clearing her throat gently.

‘Could you tell me more? I have memories but they’re all incomplete. Like, I remember she had to go to work when we were little and Dad’s back was playing up, but I don’t remember anything else. And I remember her coming into our room each night when I thought I saw the dragon but I don’t remember what happened.’

Lydia’s face brightened.

‘You don’t remember what happened to the dragon? Eva, she slayed it. She had no choice. You were certain it kept coming back. She tried the mati, ikoni, everything she could think of, and when that didn’t work, she burst in one night dressed like the tin man. Pot on her head, hiding behind this big old saucepan lid like a shield. She was armed with the mattock from the garden and she fought that dragon like she was Saint George himself or something. The poor dragon never had a chance. She buried it in the garden and we had a bumper crop of tomatoes that season. How do you not remember that?’

Evangelia frowned, watching the light fall across her sister’s face. Somewhere inside things shifted ever so slightly and a glimmer of something forgotten began to shine through.

‘You want stories, I’ve got stories,’ Lydia said, and she held out her hand to her sister.