Aftershock (5 page)

Who was that? No one ever tapped at their door: Mrs Papadimas only ever rapped, knuckle-hard. His mother hadn't heard, so he went to the door and opened it.

Mr Laliotis was standing there stroking his grey beard, wearing his black cap and a velvet jacket; and hanging from his shoulder was an instrument case on a leather strap, about the size of a violin.

‘Hello. I hope you will excuse me.' He spoke in Greek.

‘Yes?' Makis didn't know if he should ask Mr Laliotis into the living-room; but with his mother on her knees washing the kitchen floor, he decided not to. In Kefalonia she would have wanted to put on a clean dress for anyone coming into their home.

‘Just now, as I was coming in, I heard – I thought I heard – mandolin. It's got a sound all of its own, mandolin.' Mr Laliotis was smiling.

Makis said nothing, but nodded politely.

‘I haven't heard it in this house before. You've been in London for some weeks, but I haven't heard such a sound up till now.' He patted his instrument case. ‘You see, I am a musician.'

Makis nodded again.

‘And it was not just plucking. It was tuning. I'm sure it was proper tuning I heard.'

Makis felt shy. He knew Mr Laliotis played in an orchestra on the radio. His violin was heard all over England; perhaps all over the world. An important man was saying this to him!

‘It's a Gibson,' Makis said, quietly. ‘It used to belong to my father.'

‘Ah.' Mr Laliotis nodded. He shuffled his feet as if he was about to go. ‘You must come upstairs some time. You and your mother. We can make some music together.' He leant forward for a final word. ‘I don't just play violin. I have a balalaika too.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

Mr Laliotis went back up the narrow stairs protecting his violin case from banging against the wall. Makis quietly closed the door, and looked towards the kitchen – where his mother was standing in the doorway holding the top of her overall across her neck as if she was only half-dressed.

‘Saint Gerasimos!' Makis said.

‘We can't go, Makis. Not upstairs to them. We are country people, and they are very cultured…'

And at that moment, for the first time ever in his life, Makis felt ashamed of his mother. Wouldn't his father have gone upstairs to Mr and Mrs Laliotis to make music? Of course he would. Hadn't Spiros Magriotis sat at the top table of musicians in the Mandolino restaurant on Saturday nights, singing and playing for some of the most important people in Kefalonia?

Makis went over to the window to pick up the Gibson and hang it back on the wall. He would have to forget ‘Ten Green Bottles' and he would have to forget the Red Spot and the Blue Spot books: they would have to stay where they were, hidden under the cushions.

His mother wasn't ready to be helped.

Makis half-hoped that the team sheet for Thursday's Cup match would not have his name on it. Denny Clarke could play, then Makis would get home at the proper time. But it was only a half hope, because that other important half of him – Makis the boy, not Makis the son – thought it was great to be a member of a team.

And on Tuesday there his name was, in the team on the notice board: the same boys picked as before. At playtime, this was the way the team lined up. They didn't pick sides in the usual way, but played first eleven against reserves – with a moaning, foul-tackling Denny Clarke as captain of the second eleven. He was listed this week by Mr Hersee as a reserve who would walk to the match with them, but once the game started, he knew he wouldn't get to play – whoever was injured, whatever happened. Those were the rules of football.

‘Why should I walk to Prince's Fields?' he growled, ‘if you're all there?'

‘You could give us a cheer,' David Sutton told him.

‘I'll give the Greek a kick where it hurts! He's rubbish! Hersee only picked him because his house was bombed.'

Makis decided not to hear that. There were things to fight, and things to let go. He wasn't sure whether or not ‘bombed' meant the same thing as ‘earthquake' in English, so he left it at that – he didn't want to look stupid. And they all knew that what Clarke said wasn't true about his football. He hadn't been brilliant in the first proper match they'd played, but he'd done quite well, and he was getting better all the time in the playground games. More and more, the team was feeding the ball through him because he did unusual things with it; and he was looking forward to doing it on Thursday at Prince's Fields – as a schoolboy, and not as the son of Sofia Magriotis.

On Tuesday evening he persuaded his mother to walk out with him again to Prince's Fields, piloting her as they went.

‘Look, we go past the cathedral, past the street of
Daphne Dresses
, we turn right here…' He marked the corner for her by the big Coca-Cola poster on the wall which said,
Have a Coke!
He was tempted to point out the words in English and tell her they meant the same as the words in Greek. But catch one tuna at a time; in the end, he just drew her attention to where they turned right. It would be enough if he could persuade her to walk to Prince's Fields on Thursday.

It was cold, and not many people went out for walks – the pair of them needed the duffel coats the English sailors had given them. But that was how Makis treated their walk – as a sunset walk towards the setting sun – until Sofia started shivering and said she wanted to go home.

‘OK, we'll go back. Mama – see if you can lead me home. I'm not going to say anything. '

‘Am I a child?' she asked, looking cross, ‘or sick in the head?' She thumped the heel of her palm against her forehead. ‘No, I'm not!' And right then, Makis realised what a difficult Red Spot pupil she would be.

But she did lead him home – she wasn't stupid. He made sure he didn't say, ‘There, you can do it,' because the way she was behaving tonight, she'd just have shouted at him. He was pleased inside, but he would have to be as clever as Mrs Carew or Mrs Young with the reading books, if he was going to save his mother from herself.

Within a week, Prince's Fields had become a different, wintry place. Everyone was shivering – and Denny Clarke sloped off home at kick-off with a look at Makis that was meant to turn him to ice.

The game was played on a hard, cold pitch – against Hawley Road boys who were hard, cold players. Running in strange boots on a frosty pitch jarred Makis, and the tendons in his arms sent twitches up and down. But Kefalonia can have some hard winters, too – and Makis was a boy who in the past would have gone out in his father's boat when ice .was creaking all the ropes and the cold stuck the fish to your hands. Also, a boy who can dodge a charging goat can easily get out of the way of a Hawley Road defender intent on kicking him up in the air.

Makis's style of football suited playing against a rough side. He wasn't big, and although his arms were strong from wrestling goats and hauling heavy nets, he couldn't boot the ball as far as some of the others, so he kept things tight, made short passes, running on and calling to get the ball back, then sending it somewhere else. And he used what he'd learned in the playground – how to make passes with the outside of his foot as well as the inside – so that a hulking defender would come in at him expecting the ball to go left, then see it going right and lose his balance.

The game was tight, and muscle gave Hawley Road a dubious goal when keeper Brian Cooper caught the ball and their centre-forward shoulder-charged him over the line, which their teacher allowed.

That was the score at half-time: nil-one. But after a word from David Sutton, Mr Hersee pulled a stroke. He told Makis to switch positions with Gordon Tremaine, who was at inside-left. ‘Keep those side-foots going,' he told Makis, ‘across and forward to Tremaine, and you both send balls to the wings – with Gull and Hickson running in.' He added a touch of assembly-time poetry – ‘Slink between their tree trunks like wolves in a forest' – which in plain language meant: use guile and speed and close control against these hefty foulers.

And Makis set up the equalizing goal. David Sutton had just been floored by the Hawley Road centre-forward – although Mr Hersee didn't whistle for a foul, having just given three on the trot – but Sutton managed to knee the spinning ball to Makis, who instead of controlling and using it, took a chance and met it in the air, volleying it out to Hickson on the left wing. Ray Hickson ran in and as the keeper came for him instead of the ball, shot early and slotted it between his legs.

Goal! Mr Hersee spun on the spot and whistled as if he were a referee at a Wembley Cup Final.

Sleeves were rolled up on the Hawley side. Socks were rolled down by Imeson Street. But the hero was Mr Hersee. With two minutes to go, as Michael Long went for a header in the Hawley box, out came their keeper and clattered him – long before the ball arrived. What would the ref do? The most likely answer was nothing, because the ref would be favouring his own team. But he blew his whistle. Penalty! The playing decision was easy; it was the ref's ruling that was brave. And on the dot of twenty-five minutes, after Sutton had scored the winning goal, Mr Hersee emptied his lungs blowing the final whistle. Imeson Street was through to round three.

Makis realised, as he walked home steaming-hot in the cold, that the next game could be played anywhere – even a bus-ride away if Imeson Street wasn't drawn at home. But he was too pleased with taking that chance when the ball spun off David Sutton to start fretting yet. He could have tried to control the ball and pass it short – but that volley had split the other team's defence. And he could still feel the warmth of Mr Hersee's pleasure after the game. He hadn't said anything, but he'd ruffled Makis's hair – and Makis hadn't had his hair ruffled since his dad died.

His mother was cooking snapper when he got in, not fretting in the living-room – so perhaps she was getting used to him coming in late on Thursdays. When the meal was over – with the two of them still at the table – Makis brought out what he'd been sitting on: the Red Spot reading book.

‘Mama, please will you help me with this?' he asked. He was far above this level now, but he put on a puzzled look as he opened the book.

‘What is it?'

‘My reading, in English.'

She looked at it. She frowned. But she was still Sofia Magriotis, Makis's mother, who had always helped him back in Kefalonia.

‘All right – after we've cleared the table.'

And then the pretence began. Setting the Red Spot book between them like two pupils at a desk, Makis opened the first double page.

I am Sally
.

I am Mum
.

“Hello, Sally.”

“Hello, Mum.”

Makis could read the words perfectly, but his fingernail grooved the page beneath them as if he couldn't. His mother tried to mouth the words with him, then he slowly went over them again with his mother joining in. He turned the page.