Greece, the Eighties
The speed with which Artemis became pregnant shocked them both, though perhaps there was an inevitability to it. Clive approached sex with the same hunger that he showed for food. She had heard people talk about submitting to their partner in bed, but that suggested an element of coercion or one-sidedness that didn’t resonate with her own experience. What surprised Artemis about the physicality between them was how fiercely she wanted him back. When she thought about the fact of her pregnancy, once it had happened, she saw it as an inevitability; there was an urgency to the energy that ran between them that would result in producing a new life – a life over which, once born, she had no control.
‘I’m not sure about this,’ Artemis said suddenly as they approached the port, when the day finally came to share the news with her parents.
From the footpath where she and Clive now stood, she could just make out the outline of her father’s body under the awning. Her mother was seated beside him at the table where they were due to have their first meal all together, away from the house. Markos had resisted at first – why go out and pay to eat when Rena’s cooking was better than any restaurant could produce? But Artemis had been uncharacteristically insistent and her mother, sensing the importance of it, backed up her daughter’s arguments. She was tired, Rena said, not in the mood to cook. They should go out. Artemis had shot her a grateful look. It was as though Rena intuitively understood that this conversation, whatever it might entail, had to happen somewhere outside of their four walls – somewhere that wasn’t Markos’ domain.
Her parents had met Clive a few times by now. Despite her apprehension, they had accepted his presence in their daughter’s life in a way that made Artemis believe things might be OK after all.
When she saw Rena and Markos waiting for them now, her mother dressed in her smartest clothes beneath the awning of Yannis’ bar, she realised it wasn’t apprehension she was feeling, but rage. Rage for all those years when Rena and Markos must have heard her crying at night but never came to ask her why she wept. Rage for the times they placed their own trauma at the loss of their dead child above the needs of the one who had lived. The fury that suddenly rose through her as she stood watching them in the blackness of the evening, her parents’ faces illuminated under the lights of Yannis’ bar, was shocking. After everything she had been through, not only had they failed to offer the warmth she had so badly needed in the years after Helena died, but they had trapped Artemis here, enabling her fear; allowing her to believe it wouldn’t be fair on them for her to go.
She felt her heels press down into the tarmac, as if pushing against what had been and, instinctively, what was to come. Feeling her resistance, Clive squeezed her fingers inside his. He stopped and turned to face her, his eyes moving discreetly towards her belly.
‘You’re not having second thoughts?’
‘No, of course not.’ She held his gaze. ‘I just, maybe it would be better if I spoke to my parents alone …’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Clive said reassuringly. ‘We are doing this together. What are you so scared of? You’re twenty-six, you’re not a child. Besides, it’s happy news …’
He applied further pressure to her hand, before releasing it. ‘Come on. Let’s not keep them waiting.’
Clive stepped ahead of her, stretching out his hand as they approached. ‘Markos.’
Artemis saw her father’s posture stiffen at the presence of the man who had stepped in and stolen the heart of his daughter. Artemis had always thought of Markos as a big man but she watched him physically shrink in Clive’s presence. Everything about her new paramour commanded space and attention, and even Markos could not resist compliance.
‘Rena … Kalispera.’ Clive saved a special smile for Artemis’ mother, kissing her lightly on both cheeks, trying out one of the few Greek phrases he had learnt over the intermittent months he had spent on the island.
Keeping her attention on Clive, Artemis kissed her parents hello, neither seeming to notice the energy that was coming off her like fat in a pan.
With little mutual language to bolster the group in small talk, Artemis waited only as long as it took for the appetisers to arrive before she delivered the first part of the news, avoiding eye contact as she spoke. There was a brief silence and then her mother cried out, in relief. A grandchild! Even out of wedlock, a grandchild with a foreigner was better than no grandchild, and they could marry before the baby arrived. She was not so old-fashioned; they were not the most religious family. Whatever God they might have once believed in had abandoned them one night more than twenty years earlier.
And a baby was a gift … Rena’s eyes brimmed with tears. She understood all too well what a precious gift a baby was.
Artemis couldn’t stay furious with her mother as she shared the second part of their news. Once she had spoken, Rena’s face dropped.
England?
Artemis hardly dared look at Markos. When she did, he stretched his mouth into a tiny smile, the best he could manage. For the first time since she was a child, she saw tears form in the corners of his eyes.
‘Yamas,’ he said, his voice gravelly, as if something was stuck in his chest. And then, in English, his eyes fixed on hers, ‘To your health.’
Athena was less diplomatic when Artemis told her the news the next day. ‘What do you mean, London? But you’ve barely even been further than Skiathos. You never even wanted to—’
‘Can’t you just be happy for me?’ Artemis snapped at her friend. ‘We’re having a baby together, we have to live as a family. Clive has a job, a business in London … and what is there for me here? My mother’s bakery? You think I want to spend the rest of my life doing the same—’
She stopped, realising what she was saying. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … Maybe you could come and stay with us …’
Athena turned angrily and wiped away her tears. This had been her dream for as long as either of them could remember, to find someone and move away; to start a life apart from the island. As far as Athena was concerned, Panos was only ever a stopgap, even though they had been together on-and-off since school. Artemis resented how dismissive Athena was of him; Panos was a good man, he deserved more respect, but it wasn’t Artemis’ place to say anything, certainly not now. After years of dismissing her friend’s ambition, rolling her eyes – a self-preservation tactic to defend herself against the prospect of her best friend leaving the island – Artemis had taken Athena’s dream for herself. And what – now she expected Athena to be happy for her? She was a traitor, and she knew it. In leaving, she was abandoning the only people who had ever really loved her, as well as the person who could never leave. For a moment, she let herself picture Helena’s face – fair skin, the cupid’s bow, the details diminished over time.
She turned away then, allowing her mind to fix in the present.
There was a ripple of satisfaction when she thought of herself leaving, a sense that she was transforming from an ugly duckling into a swan, and all those who doubted her were being forced to watch. After so many years of being complicit in her own entrapment, she was escaping the version of herself that always defined her, a version she had not chosen. So why was she shaking?
‘Hey,’ Artemis said, taking her friend’s hand, struggling to find the words to finish the sentence. When the words came at her, what she wanted to say was that she was scared – that if it was up to her she and Clive would stay forever, even if she hated it here in so many ways. She wanted to tell Athena that there was nothing for her in England, other than the father of her child.
‘Look, Clive’s business is just starting to take off and for now he has to be based in London. But who knows …’ she heard herself say instead.
‘Don’t,’ Athena replied, pulling her hand away. ‘Don’t pretend you’re coming back.’