The Gypsy's Dream (15 page)

With a cough and splutter the lights at the kafenio come back on. Abby blinks.

‘
Panayia
! Marina!’ Vasso stands beside her.

‘
What is it?’ Abby follows her line of sight to a dark corner of the square where the people are gathered and the fallen tree has splayed its branches. The man from the kafenio, Theo, is running about in the dark space, pulling branches out of the way, calling something.

‘
Oh my goodness, the shop!’ Abby exclaims. She looks to see if she can recognise any of the remains, and then, ‘Oh my God! The people! Marina!’ She steps forward but has no idea what to do and she stops. She looks at the other villagers also standing staring, shock on their faces, unmoving.

Theo shouts louder and then turns to the waiting group of people to call something. Some of the villagers go running in various directions, others head towards the r
emains of the shop. Discarded umbrellas flutter across the square in the breeze. Abby has no idea what is going on and she turns to Vasso to try to make some sense, but Vasso is gone, running to her kiosk. Only Abby remains stationary.

She is fixed, not st
epping in any direction until she hears her name. Vasso is calling. The kiosk has many torches in stock. Abby quickly catches on and pulls a packet of batteries from the plastic display strip, three for the price of two. She loads them into the torches, clicking each one on and off to ensure that it works, a Morse code of semi-panic. Vasso stuffs them all into a plastic bag.

Abby finds a rhythm, batteries, click, batteries, click, but Vasso pulls her by the sleeve and they run to the darkened catastrophe a
nd pull torches from the bag, flicking them on and handing them to everyone there.

‘
Natos
!’ someone shouts. Abby recognises the word from when she had made her fruitless phone call and got some old woman. ‘There.’

There is a tangible change in the air. The
people are animated, but the thunder rumbles its disagreement. The lightning briefly provides a view of the immense task before them. The branches and leaves of the tree cover the area, the thicker branches spiking the earth and denying access to the shop.

Those who had run off return with axes and saws, and in the torchlight a furious determination of work begins. Abby can do nothing but watch. She wraps her arms around herself, even though the air and the rain are warm. Vasso is back in the kiosk on the
phone. The villagers work in unison. The thunder cracks with such a noise that Abby puts her hands to her ears. The clouds crash together to signal their disapproval.

The villagers chop and saw, and large branches shift their weight as they become detach
ed. Abby at last can see a part she can play, and leaving her umbrella to spin in the square she grabs the nearest felled tentacle and pulls, heels slipping on the wet road, her weight arched backwards, across the road, to the still fountain. Other villagers are doing the same and the tree is quickly thinned to its trunk. The rain is lessening, and as it does so the voices of the men, inside what is left of the shop, became more audible.

Abby again finds herself without a role, her hair plastered to her fac
e and neck, her clothes soaked.

The grumble of thunder
– no, not thunder, the sound is too gentle, too earthly. A tractor rolls into the square with its lights full on. It drives straight for the shop’s remains. Its headlights make the enormity of the event plain. The shop is crushed beneath the trunk of the eucalyptus, its tortured, de-limbed core straddling the spine of the shop’s roof. Theo is shouting and gesticulating to the tractor driver. The driver manoeuvres his vehicle slightly. The sound of another diesel engine can be heard and a JCB appears out of the swirling rain.

Vasso is by her side again. She nudges Abby and points to the JCB driver, and then to herself.
‘Cousin,’ she says in English.

Stella hobbles as quickly as her ankle wil
l allow.

She stops abruptly in the road.

The black shape of the upturned tree strikes her as ungodly. She crosses herself and sidesteps its roots.

‘
Ti egine
?’ she calls to the people hurrying in front of her as she reaches the church. The wind and the rain whip the words into the sky unheard. She hurries on to find out what has happened. The possible enormity grows the more people she sees in front of her, rushing.

A tractor sits in the square, its lights blazing, lighting up the world in orange relief. A J
CB grumbles into view.

She hears Vasso
’s voice say the word ‘cousin’ close by. She shuffles towards her and sees Abby is also there. Relief mixes in with her chaos around her. She wastes no time and wraps both her arms around her and hugs, losing herself in the balm of Abby’s proximity.

Through Abby
’s hair she asks Vasso ‘What happened?’ but there is no need for an explanation of the tree to which Vasso points. Stella releases Abby enough to turn her head and looks the length of the trunk. ‘
Panayia
!’ she exclaims, ‘Marina!’ as she realises where the trunk has fallen. Her own emotions over Abby are forgotten in the greater calamity.

Vasso mutters in Greek, which does nothing to calm Stella
’s wide-eyed shock.

‘
Is anybody in there with her?’ She turns to Abby as she asks, her arms still around her. Abby shrugs. Stella repeats the question in Greek. Vasso shrugs. Abby and Stella turn fully to face the shop, letting go of each other, but standing close enough that their shoulders touch.

The men put a chain unde
r the eucalyptus and it is attached to the teeth of the JCB’s bucket. The digger’s wipers are on full speed. As the bucket is lifted there are many shouts of
‘Siga’
from the workers and watchers, and the tree is lifted very ‘slowly’ from the collapsed little shop. No sooner is the strain taken by the chain than Theo rushes under the trunk and within a couple of minutes he reverses back out again, pulling a man.

Abby gasps. Stella takes hold of her arm, using her for a support. Abby has never witnessed an a
ccident like this before. She wills the man to move but he lies motionless.

‘
Mitsos,’ she hears Stella gasp, and she feels the juddering of Stella’s sobs through the arm that is bearing her weight.

Abby turns to her. Stella
’s eyes do not move from the prone man. She takes a step towards him but Vasso is by her side and puts a restraining arm on her.

‘
Ohi
Stella,’ Abby hears Vasso say gently. Abby puts an arm around Stella, who is crying openly now.

The village men converge around Mitsos, and he is lifted
as if made of eggshells and carried right past Abby, Stella and Vasso. Stella reaches out an arm as if to touch him but Vasso gently pulls it back to her side. They take him up the road behind the shop and into a house. Theo is not with the carriers. He has gone back under the hovering trunk, emerging to point and shout instructions. The tractor judders forward and pushes the trunk to one side while the JCB still holds it clear of the shop’s main roof beam.

Theo disappears again, accompanied by another ma
n, under the trunk, and this time they come out carrying a woman.

‘
Marina,’ Vasso shouts, and runs towards her. Stella stays in Abby’s arms, crying. The village women converge and, holding hands beneath Marina, carry her in the same direction as Mitsos. As she passes Abby and Stella, she smiles. Vasso’s face is grave as she bears her weight.

‘
Ela
,’ someone shouts back in the collapsed shop.

The skies are brightening by the minute and the lights of the tractor and JCB illuminate someone gathering armful
s of goods from amongst the debris of the shop.

‘
Ela
,’ he calls again, ‘Come on,’ and other people hurry into the mess and pick out goods, unconcerned about the contents, gathering like hungry ants. Abby is appalled at the looting. She remembers hearing on the news about looting in England where a millionaire’s daughter had taken a pair of trainers. The idea disgusts her. She steps forward, unsure how to make her stance clear, enraged and ready to do battle. As she nears someone they hand her tins of dog food. Abby searches for a way to express herself but the man passes two more tins and pushes her by the elbow and points to Theo’s kafenio. She at once realises her mistake.

Abby can feel her face growing hot, the heat prickling around her neck. She is glad of
the still-dim light. The tables in the kafenio have growing piles of goods upon them. The villagers are hurriedly saving them from the rain for Marina.

Abby springs into action, gathering as much as she can, stretching her T-shirt in front of her to act as
a pouch. She runs back and forth with flour, biscuits, bottles of bleach and plastic dolls.

Stella is doing the same but she is moving slowly. Abby wonders what is wrong, she seems to be limping a little. The tension in her throat has gone since she hugge
d her but she wonders how long before her next turn of emotions.

Stella ignores the burning in her legs and the pain in her ankle. The bag of sugar she is carrying splits in her hand. She drops it and wipes sticky fingers down her dress before picking up a plastic-wrapped mop head. She takes the couple of steps up the kafenio steps carefully. Her ankle feels weak.

‘
Are you OK?’ Abby asks as she drops dozens of packets of tights from her T-shirt pouch. ‘You’re limping.’

Stella drags her thoughts away from M
itsos and reaches for a lie, and then wonders why she should save Stavros from the embarrassment he deserves. But the events of earlier seem small in comparison. She has ascertained from Theo that Mitsos is alive, but no one knows how badly he is hurt. Besides poor Abby cannot know if she is coming or going, literally, she certainly doesn’t need added complications. She will explain everything at a more suitable time. She wipes her face on her sleeve and turns to collect more goods.

‘
Stella?’

‘
Ti
? Oh, limping, yes, I fell.’ She hurries back into the rain, washing away the tears. One minute she saw Abby as everything in her world. But then she felt life was over when she saw Mitsos pulled out of the rubble. Her chest had sunk inwards to her stomach and all life force had drained from her limbs. An overreaction , perhaps, after all that had happened, her upset with Abby and Stavros.

The crying was probably from the shock of earlier and the storm, she reasons. Marina has worked so hard to make that shop work and
now, in the space of minutes, it is all gone. All that hard work, gone. All the chat and banter building up regulars, pointless. The years of refining her methods, wasted. All the fiddling with the grill to get the optimum heat.

Then she realises she is i
nternalising about herself, and the tears stop.

A gaping hollow insides her chest heaves. She needs to see Mitsos. Calm, safe, caring.

She breaks from the line of people recovering all they can and goes to the house behind the shop, Marina’s house.

She d
oesn’t knock. She walks in, hears voices upstairs, people in the kitchen, a kettle boiling. She goes up the wooden stairs.

‘
She’s fine, she’s fine,’ Kyria Katerina from opposite the church consoles her at the top of the stairs. ‘The doctor is looking at her now.’ Katerina was a nurse before her arthritis got so bad and her hands knotted up.

‘
Mitsos?’ Stella asks. Her bruises seem to have come to life again, throbbing and aching.

‘
He’s ok, he’s in there.’

Stella goes into the next room. Kyria Katerina follo
ws her. Stella looks at Mitsos, lying so still.

‘
He’s unconscious, but his breathing is steady. The doctor says he is not worried. Nothing broken, it seems. Lucky man.’

‘
Yes.’ Stella hardly moves her mouth to reply. She cannot believe the surge of feeling rushing through her. She wants to hold him, kiss his sunken cheek, smooth his thick grey hair. He is older, but not that much older. Some women in the village have married men more than fifteen years their senior.

Marina, for example. Her husband was thir
ty and she was fourteen, or perhaps fifteen, when they married.

Marina. The thought comes like a lead weight. Mitsos
’ lifelong love. Here he is, in her house, both of them having escaped disaster. And how is it that he was in the shop anyway? Mitsos hasn’t spoken to Marina properly for years. Now they will have plenty of time to talk. This is bound to bring them together. How could it not? She sighs.

‘
He’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ Kyria Katerina says with the positivity of someone happily employed, and she steps forward to smooth his bed and tuck in the edges.

‘
Yes, now he will be fine.’ Stella closes her emotions back into the box she has only just learnt she has. It doesn’t seem to want to shut.

She takes a last look at Mitsos
’ relaxed sleeping face and leaves.

Vasso is downstairs in Marina’s kitchen. They return outside together and find Abby. They walk homewards together.

‘
Abby, so much is happening, my feelings are everywhere but I made a very big mistake this morning. I cannot ask you to understand but please stay, give me a chance to explain everything to you, Will you? Will you stay?’

Abby nods. Now is not the time to talk of passports or money, they are all exhausted, emotionally and physically. Despite Vasso
’s insistence that Stella comes into her house with them for something to chase out the effects of all that has happened, Stella returns home alone, squeezing Abby’s hand before she leaves, promising they will talk.

The clouds have lifted, but it is evening so the sky is still dull. No lights are on in her home and Stella is sure Stavros is still out. She did not see him amid all the activity earlier.

She
needs to sleep. There is no denying the pain in her ankle and, judging by the way her left arm hurts to lift, she thinks she may have at least one broken rib. The weight in her chest pulls her shoulders forward. She refuses to think of Mitsos, or Marina.

The house is all echoes and silence. Her bed is waiting for her.

When they first moved in, they complained to the landlord that the bed was not suitable. He promised a replacement, but it didn’t happen and they got used to the gap. Stella splits the two beds apart with her knee. The two singles are cheap and light, the mattresses thin. Stavros’ side has a dip moulded into it. Using her weight against her lower leg, she pushes it with disdain. Her right leg seems to be the only part of her that doesn’t hurt.

She lifts the bed onto its side, the thin mattress falling off. She slides the base through to the kitchen. She pushes the mattress after
it and throws some sheets on top. He can put it together himself. She grabs a kitchen chair and takes it into the bedroom.

Locking the door and wedging the chair under the handle, Stella carefully lies down on her right-hand side, pulls a sheet over her he
ad and falls asleep, cutting Mitsos food for him, their knees touching under the table.