Mel Duckworth-Papadaki was late, having chatted to some of the British girls at the school gate. Stefan and Markos were quite capable of walking to the little primary school along the dusty main street but she liked to spend the time with them. It was early in the morning and the streets were bustling with pickups and scooters dropping off children from the outlying villages and it gave her ten minutes away from Yiayia Irini, their granny.
Mel passed a skinny young man walking down the street, one of the group of refugees who had found themselves on the island. ‘Yassas, Youssef,’ she called. ‘Where are you working today?’
He smiled. ‘Cleaning pool for Kyria – Miss Anna,’ he answered, in halting English.
Mel knew the newcomers would find it difficult to get work. Life was hard enough for the locals by the end of the season, and there were houses for sale everywhere. Last year three hotels had closed and a tourist shop was for sale. The financial crisis in Greece was hitting the island. Spiro was spending more time in their olive groves and vegetable plot. No one had money for extra labour, except the foreign residents. Cleaning swimming-pools, tidying gardens and chopping wood gave the refugees work, but times were hard.
Youssef always had a cheerful smile and something to do, but for his pretty wife, Sammia, there would be nothing other than occasional cleaning for the foreigners. As for their taverna, how could you make a living from Greek coffee and beer? No one came to dine, except the likes of Chloë and her group. Mel’s mother-in-law complained bitterly about lack of trade but they were surviving and tourists were still turning up.
Mel spent hours bottling apricots, preserving beans, making jam and marmalade from their oranges and mulberries to sell to the Brits. Everything came from their gardens and straight to the table. The children fed their chickens and rabbits in the cages. Mel hated what happened to those poor creatures, but that was the way of things – and rabbit stifado tasted like chicken in wine, if you shut your eyes.
Youssef and his brother, Amir, lived from hand to mouth. Mel didn’t know where they were staying, only that it was out of town somewhere. There was sadness in their soulful dark eyes. What had they suffered to reach the land of the gods, only to find no work, no welcome, no safe haven?
Mel had recruited three more voices for the choir from the English and Dutch expats. She didn’t want to be the only person under fifty and a bit of camaraderie would be welcome, now that Irini was in such a bad mood. Mel had forgotten to order extra bread for tonight’s gathering of Irini’s sewing group. There was a pot of bean stew and a dish of boureki to finish for their supper. Mel’s job was to clean the tables, check the cloths, polish the glasses, put cushions on the cane chair seats and make sure all Spiro’s ancestors in their sepia frames got a good dusting.
She needed to be free to attend the first rehearsal in the olive garden but Irini had a way of giving her time-consuming extra jobs. Now the numbers of tourists were dwindling the taverna opened only for coffee in the morning and supper in the evening: the foreign residents liked the warmth of the olive-log fire in winter and family Sunday lunches. It was still warm outside so daytime trade was thin indoors.
Irini’s sewing group was a chance for the local women to exchange family news and have a good moan. Mel was not fluent enough to understand their dialect but she got the gist of the gossip. Chloë called it Irini’s stitch-and-bitch club, which was a little cruel. Most old Greek women lived for their home, family and church. This meant spending many hours cleaning and cooking while their men spent similar hours over coffee and games of backgammon.
When the sea was cooling and the weather unpredictable, children were ferried to local tutors for extra study. Mel worried about her own boys’ future education. In the old days, island children had left school early to work on family farms and in olive groves. There was no secondary education on Santaniki, and British children were often sent to boarding schools in England. Mel knew that would be out of the question financially, unless her parents helped. She could home-school them in English studies, but when the season was busy it was almost impossible to spare the time. Spiro had taken on extra work building new villas but that market was failing since the financial crisis of 2008 had left Greece deeply in debt and crippled by taxes.
‘There you are, Melodia,’ barked Irini. ‘Gossiping at the school gate again? I want the floor scrubbed and the windows cleaned. I don’t want Maria across the road running her fingers along my ledges tonight.’
‘Don’t forget there’s a choir rehearsal this afternoon. Will you see to the boys until I get back?’ Mel hoped Irini had remembered.
‘Poof! Singing is for children. What is wrong with Greek music?’
Mel tried to smile. ‘Nothing at all, but we have our own customs, and singing at Christmas is one of them. The Greek children sing kalanda around the houses and in school.’
‘Now all they want is foreign music and television. The old ways are disappearing.’ Irini sighed.
‘It’s the same for British children,’ said Mel. ‘But we still want them to know our traditional carols.’
Irini turned to her baking, leaving Mel to find the mop and make the taverna shipshape for tonight’s gathering. Mel loved to sing when she was working, but not in Yiayia’s hearing. It was at times like this that she wondered how she had ended up in this backwater, but then she smiled, recalling the night when she had first set eyes on her husband. It had been after finals and she was on holiday in Crete. Spiro was in a line of handsome young men with black hair and beards, wearing black shirts, boots and jodhpurs, dancing and leaping to the hypnotic local music. It was the sexiest dance she’d ever seen and so very masculine in its intensity. Then, shoulder to shoulder, they’d sung ancient Greek mountain songs. She had lingered afterwards and got talking to them.
It had started as a holiday romance but she kept returning to the island, little knowing that his family home was a ferry-ride away. Both sets of parents were appalled at this unlikely romance across the cultural divide, but love has a will of its own.
Their wedding on the island was a thunderous affair of feasting, and as the priest put the customary coronets over their heads and blessed them, she knew she had made the perfect choice. She had no regrets… not big ones, anyway, but they had their fiery moments. They had been building their home when funds had run short, so only the ground floor had been completed: a living room-cum-kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms. Everything was surrounded by rubble and builders’ mess. She was ashamed of the clutter. When the boys played in other houses with finished gardens and pools, she felt envious. All the same, they were lucky to have a roof over their heads so she knew she mustn’t grumble.
All of those disappointments faded when she was in Spiro’s arms or when she watched him dance or swim in the sea, so lithe and fit as he played football with their boys on the beach. She loved him to the moon and back, even if he did have some funny traditional ways.
She might have the brains but he had the brawn and the know-how to build them a home. They were a perfect match, she thought now, and no mother-in-law was going to spoil that, or stop her singing in her own language.