The Reluctant Baker (The Greek Village Collection Book 10) (18 page)

‘How
are you doing here?’ Stella addresses Mitsos as she enters the eatery again. She stuffs a bunch of papers detailing the illegalities of the hotel, which she was studying on the way over, back in her pocket. The less Mitsos knows about it, the better. He has a tendency to become anxious.

‘I forgot to order that charcoal the other day. Do you think that we will be alright if we get some brought over tomorrow?’ Mitsos’ eyebrows are raised and worried lines wrinkle his forehead. Stella looks in the bag by the grill and nods. There is enough for today. Whilst she is standing close to him, he says quietly, ‘I really messed things up, didn’t I?’

With the hotel foremost in her thoughts, Stella hesitates before realising to what he is referring.

‘No, Mitsos. It wasn’t you. I should have told Loukas, I even tried to, in an indirect way, but it was Ellie’s place to make her position clear.’ Stella looks over to the closed bakery. ‘Anyway, he is blaming me now, not you.’

‘That’s not good.’ Mitsos puts two sausages onto a plate which looks bare without the usual hunk of bread. ‘Lemon sauce?’ He shouts through to the customer in the adjoining room. Interpreting the grunt of a reply, Mitsos liberally pours on Stella’s homemade sauce before wiping his hand on his apron so as to take a firm grip on the plate to take it through. On his return, he adds more sausages to the grill.

‘Anyway, Sarah says she can come back, after taking the goats out, for an extra two hours to serve on the beach bar tonight, but she doesn’t know how to mix a cocktail,’ Stella says. ‘I have someone else who will come in to do a couple of hours before that but later on, I’ll go back and do it myself.’ She leans her elbows on the counter, her head in her hands. It is just possible that the hotel is more than she can handle. If she cannot get the staff and the papers, then what? The place will have to close. It will be worthless and their savings will be gone.

‘You cannot do everything yourself,’ Mitsos says kindly, as if hearing her thoughts as he steps from behind the grill to embrace her in a one-armed hug.

‘Right now there is no choice, and besides, it is not as if the bar is a real problem. Another barman is not so hard to find.’ She rests comfortably in his embrace, soaking up Mitsos’ love, offering hers in return. He is the most important thing. Forget the hotel, forget the money. A twinge of sadness shadows her thoughts as Ellie comes to mind. ‘It will be harder for Loukas to find another Ellie, and Ellie her Loukas,’ she says reflectively.

‘Have a little faith in life, Stella. Look at our paths. They were harder but we still found each other.’ Mitsos’ chin rests on the top of her head.

‘Yes, but how old were you?’ Stella laughs quietly, intimately, as Mitsos bends his head to lean his forehead against hers.

‘Well, I had to find some wisdom and courage first. Without those, I would never have found you,’ Mitsos declares and kisses the end of her nose.

‘Is this a dating agency or can a man get a meal here?’ Iason wipes his bald head with a handkerchief as he enters.

‘From what I hear, you don’t come here to eat these days, Iason my friend.’ Mitsos pulls away from Stella and goes back around the counter, colour flushing to his cheeks.

‘Is that right, and why else would I be coming here?’ Iason takes a beer from the fridge.

‘To save your voice.’ A farmer from the next room shouts into them. Iason leans through the adjoining door to see who is speaking.

‘Ah it’s you, neighbour!’ There is laughter in Iason’s voice.

‘Who else would know your business?’ comes the reply.

‘Anyone with ears,’ a new voice joins in. ‘Morning and night, you shout at that poor boy.’ Both sympathy and teasing are mixed, in equal measure, into the way this is said.

‘Is he actually looking for a job?’ Stella asks.

‘The boy’s fussy. I tell him he cannot afford to be fussy. I told him to take your bar job but he refuses.’ Iason takes a napkin from the counter, this time to wipe the back of his neck, and then he ducks through the doorway to be greeted by some well-meaning banter.

‘It’s harder for the young these days,’ Stella observes to Mitsos.

‘It never occurred to me that I would do anything different from my baba,’ Mitsos agrees. ‘Choice can be very distracting and stop you from getting on with life.’

‘I think life happens when you are distracted by making choices,’ Stella says.

‘Well, one thing’s for sure, none of us end up where we expect to be.’ Mitsos lifts the chips from the fat, gives them a shake and pours them into a dish. ‘Can you take those through?’ When Stella comes back in, Mitsos asks, ‘So will you be very late?’

‘Probably.’

‘It was my dream at one point, you know, when I was about Loukas’ age, to run a beach bar.’ Mitsos sighs and nods as he looks at his arm that is not there.

‘Everything alright?’ Stella greets Sarah, who is busy drying up glasses.

‘Yes, fine.’

‘Did you have to mix many cocktails?’ Stella asks with a smile. She had printed off some basic cocktail recipes, stapled them together, and put them behind the bar for Sarah just in case. In the sand around the bar, there are many cigarette ends. That’s another job for which she must find a solution. The beach must be clean.

‘Oh no. Everyone’s been drinking beer or fresh orange juice.’ Sarah seems buoyant but looks tired. Stella knows she will also have to find another receptionist to job share with Sarah if she wants things to run smoothly. There is so much to think about suddenly.

‘An easy shift then,’ she replies lightly, keeping her worries to herself as usual. It would be nice to share but then, her problems are her own, so what’s the point?

‘Yes. Oh, and a man I didn’t recognise who said he was from planning was down here looking around.’

‘Oh, did he leave a name, say what he wanted?’ She doesn’t manage to keep her voice calm now.

‘No.’ Sarah stops what she is doing to look up. ‘Stella, what is it? Is there a problem?’

‘There is a slight hiccup, shall we say, with planning.’ How much should she share?

‘Oh, but everything is illegal here. I thought you Greeks were used to that!’ Sarah chuckles.

‘It’s difficult to be legal, that’s true. Too many laws cross over each other. You stick with one and you break another.’ Stella tries to make light of the conversation but the tension in her voice cannot be hidden. ‘But this one with the planning could be a big problem. I will go into Saros tomorrow find out who it was and who really has the power there.’

‘It’ll be the mayor surely,’ Sarah says, laying her tea-towel flat on the bar. Even in the relative cool of the evening, it will dry quickly.

‘Yes, but the mayor said he was all for the hotel on the opening night and, with these local issues, everything can be overcome if everybody is willing. So that means someone somewhere is not willing. If I can find out who, find out why, then I can resolve it.’ She smooths out the tea towel Sarah put down.

‘I wish everything was fixable.’ Sarah takes her bag from under the counter and joins Stella in front of the bar. ‘I suppose it’s too soon for you to have heard anything from Ellie yet?’

Stella nods and looks out to sea as far as she can. Somewhere out there across the waters, poor Ellie is trying to make a bad marriage work. She feels for her. Maybe she will email her. She won’t have time today, but tomorrow, after Ellie has settled back into her life a little.

‘There was a couple down here earlier. I don’t know them, but you will. A tall man with a blond woman with hair extensions, long nails. The one who looks a bit out of place for the village,’ Sarah says.

‘Ah, probably Magdalene, the girl who worked on the television for a while.’

‘Oh did she? I didn’t know that. Anyway, I think they thought I was Bulgarian or Polish or something and couldn’t understand because they chatted away in English, here at the bar, as if I didn’t exist.’

‘He is half-Canadian.’

‘Oh, I did wonder why they weren’t speaking Greek. Anyway, it seems, their house backs onto the bakery.’

‘Yes I know,’ Stella says absently, still distracted by the thought of someone from planning nosing about whilst she was not there.

‘Right. Well, apparently Loukas, presumably straight after he left us here, went back to the bakery and was screaming at his in-laws. Then he stole a
tsoureki
that was on order for her, this Magdalene, and he also took the father-in-law’s ouzo bottle up to his room and about ten minutes later, he brought it back down empty, only to take a full bottle up. They were talking about him, saying he was banging and crashing about until the early hours. Apparently, he didn’t get up to make the bread…’

‘I know. We’ve had none in the eatery today,’ Stella says.

‘And this morning, they found the second bottle, empty, in their flower bed beneath his window. So I guess he is taking it hard.’

‘I imagine it is just as hard for Ellie.’ She looks at her watch. Maybe she could stop and email her right now.

‘Anyway, that’s the news, but I really need to get going if I am on reception tomorrow morning, so are you alright to take over now?’

‘Yes sure,’ Stella says, but now she is worrying about Ellie and Loukas too. Maybe she should not have let Ellie go. She could have stayed and worked out whatever she and Loukas had together. Maybe letting her go was the worst thing to do.

‘…and tonic water,’ Sarah finishes, but Stella was thinking about Loukas drowning his troubles in an ouzo bottle. That is not a good thing. Not good at all.

Loukas lifts his head from his pillow. The evening is still too bright. When it grows really dark, he will go into Saros, find a bar, maybe find some girl, any girl, and together they will drink the night away. He reaches for the ouzo bottle and then vaguely recalls he threw it out the window. The picture of Natasha smiles angelically from her photo frame by his bed. It is the last face he wants to see. He purposefully knocks it over, so it falls face down, but the table is too small, the weight unbalanced, and it falls to the floor. The sound of cracking glass does nothing to lift his mood. His sister continues to stare from her frame, unmoved.

At first he was angry with Ellie. She played with him, tortured him, teased him. A rich English tourist coming to his country for a bit of fun, to take her mind off her own troubles. She used him. Strutting around in that little t-shirt dress, showing her legs, leaving little to the imagination. How was a good Orthodox boy meant to deal with that?

The anger was fuelled by the ouzo. It grew into hatred; for her, for his mother-in-law, for Stella, for Natasha. If Natasha had been more like Ellie, none of this would have happened. Then the hatred turned inward, for his naïvety, his stupidity, his vulnerability, for Stella’s not taking care of him, for her introduction in the first place.

Now, with the ouzo all gone, the bread unmade, and the hours passing, his mood has become heavy, draining sadness. He has no future in the village making bread; any fool could see that. But neither has he a future in Athens, with his baba’s business gone. His mama holds everything together with a couple of hours a day making the beds in a fancy hotel that has recently open near the house in Gazi. A job in a beach bar in a hotel can only be seasonal and he will be forever surrounded by Ellie types. English girls looking for fun.

He could play that game. Hit on the older ones maybe, accept presents. Why not; he is no more important to them than a new purse or ring or something. Just a thrill for the moment, quickly losing its attraction.

He turns onto his back. The cracks in the ceiling are too familiar. How many hours over the last year has he stared at them, wondering about his future, only to fall asleep and wake with his mother-in-law’s rapping on the wall? At least the bakery is safe. If he was satisfied with that, he would never have noticed Ellie. But now that he has, the bakery is not enough. The circle of thoughts is driving him mad. Getting up, he pulls on his trousers, puts back on the same shirt he wore yesterday, and experiments with standing vertically. His head swims.

Having
started in the bars in the main square of Saros town, Loukas now slinks his way towards the backstreet bars. His shirt is hanging out of his jeans on one side and there is a wobble to his walk. The moon is bright but the occasional streetlight helps. The jasmine is releasing its fragrance and the day’s heat is absorbed in the walls and the pavements cocooning those who are out, slowing their pace. As it is a weeknight, the Athenians are not filling the bars. Occasional tourists brighten the pavements in acid-coloured summer wear, but mostly it is quiet.

The next bar is small. A converted narrow, downstairs room in one of the old houses, the plaster on the walls uneven, the wooden beams exposed and darkened with age. The counter is at the far end, modernised with a blue neon light under the drinks shelf behind. Four cheap wooden stools are lined up in front of a shelf that serves as a place to put glasses, ashtrays, and bowls of peanuts down one side. There is no more room for seating or tables than this. Above the shelf hangs a framed poster of a Greek man in a sharp suit, bow tie dangling and a bottle of Metaxa brandy in one hand. He strolls down his black and white street in nineteen-fifty-something, happy with just the bottle as his companion. Loukas understands how he feels. He slithers onto a stool, ignoring the only other customer who has chosen to sit next to the bar.

The bartender, unshaven, slightly pudgy, puts a fresh bowl of peanuts down in front of Loukas and waits for his order.

‘Ouzo,’ Loukas snarls.

The man on the stool by the bar looks over to him. When the ouzo is served, it is placed on a mat on the shelf with a small bowl of ice and a spoon, sunk into the melting cold.

‘Put that on my tab,’ the man on the next stool says loudly. ‘How are you doing, Loukas?’

In the village, he expects it. Everyone knows everyone; the
kafeneio
there is an extension of home, the streets an extension of the yards, families intermingled for years. There is no privacy. But here in Saros, he was hoping, nurturing the slightest possibility that he could, for a few hours, be invisible. Why can it not be like the anonymity of Athens, so he is lost in the sea of faces, left alone? With lazy effort, Loukas takes the time to look up at the man.

He has no idea who he is and searches the face to try to recognise some aspect but draws a blank and raises his eyebrows to say so. Whoever it is, he is not much older than Loukas, with thin, lank hair that needs attention. He’s obviously spent time waxing it rigid, but it does not look good. The man’s suit is cheap and too big at the shoulders but his white shirt is ironed, so someone is taking care of him. A mother, an aunt? He doesn’t look the married type.

‘Vlassis!’ The man introduces himself, patting his chest with a flat palm, bitten fingernails on display. He raises his glass with his other hand to salute Loukas.

Loukas still cannot place him, lifts his glass in return, but says nothing.

‘Vlassis!’ He says again. The barman watches the exchange from behind his counter, wiping out the inside of glasses with a crisply laundered tea towel.

‘Vlassis Tavoularis,’ he expands, but Loukas shakes his head. He neither knows him nor cares.

Usually he doesn’t take ice in his ouzo, preferring the drink’s warmth undiluted. The name Tavoularis sounds familiar. He plops a second ice cube into his glass.

‘Tavoularis?’ he asks slowly, a dull recognition fighting to the front of his messy thoughts.

‘Yes.’ The man grins at him with relief at being identified.

‘It took me a moment,’ Loukas says, but he cannot rouse much enthusiasm.

‘How are they?’ Vlassis tone becomes sober. ‘Such a shock to you all, my sympathies to you. I have not seen you since the funeral.’

Loukas does not want to talk about Natasha, her death, or her funeral. But the man continues, intent of conversation.

‘Aunt Stheno has got in touch with me since you know, a few months ago, but I have not seen her recently. Is she alright?’

‘She’s fine.’ Perhaps it is time to go to another bar, drain this ouzo and walk out. The last thing he wants to talk about is the old man and old woman, but what else has he in common with this man, whom he recognizes now as the old woman’s nephew.

‘Yes, I was surprised when she got in touch after the funeral. I think you know she has not been close to my mama for some years?’

Loukas nods numbly.

Vlassis raises a finger at the barman, who comes from behind his counter to pour two more ouzos. Loukas almost puts his hand over the top of his glass to refuse, so he can leave. But then, a free drink is a free drink.

‘My mama was pleased, as well you can imagine. But it was me that the old woman got in touch with.’ There seems to be some pride in this statement and Loukas turns his head to take a lazy look at Vlassis’ face to see if the egotism shows there too. It does.

‘I don’t know if you have heard or not…’ Vlassis sits up on his stool, smooths the front of his shirt, and adjusts his jacket to sit better. ‘I am doing well in the mayor’s office, Assistant Deputy Planning Officer.’ Loukas catches Vlassis looking at his own reflection in the glass of the framed print on the wall. His chin lifts a little higher as he runs a hand over his anointed quiff.

‘My congratulations,’ Loukas replies automatically.

‘Yes. Mind you, it is a lot of work. Many late hours.’

‘I bet you have to do the work of every one of those lazy fat cats above you,’ the bartender chips in. ‘Two years it took for the planning to come through to change use of this place. To open it as a bar.’

Vlassis colours in a second. A piece of his slicked-back hair falls over his eyes in an unbecoming curl as he turns his head sharply to face his accuser. ‘It is a very busy department,’ he defends. ‘And yes, I carry a lot of the workload.’

‘I know. I see the Deputy Planning Officer and the Planning Officer sitting in the
kafeneio
opposite most of the day.’

‘I think they hold their business meetings there…’ Vlassis stutters slightly.

The barman chuckles and Loukas snorts into his glass.

‘Well, your mother-in-law knows the extent and power of my position,’ Vlassis says sharply to Loukas.

The barman disappears behind a curtain to one side of the shelves behind his counter, leaving his customers alone. Loukas drops in an ice cube and watches the clear liquid turn opaque. He swirls the cube round with his finger that he then sucks. He will drink this and go, but something about what Vlassis is saying niggles him. It has been an hour or two since he could think clearly but somehow, this one-sided conversation feels like a dangling key to his future. He can feel the connection but he cannot see it. Metaxa and Ouzo have never mixed well. He should know that by now and have stuck to ouzo.

‘Power?’ Loukas summarises Vlassis’ sentence into one word so he can absorb it.

‘Yes, power.’ Vlassis has not recovered from the barman’s slight. His voice still bristles.

‘Power,’ Loukas repeats. It is all he is capable of now.

‘Yes, some people think they have the power, but they don’t. They flash their money about, trying to be better than everyone else, showing off and becoming like queens and walking all over good, honest, hard-working people. Honest people like your in-laws.’

Loukas opens his mouth to protest how little work his in-laws have actually done over the last year but then the Metaxa in his bloodstream convinces him that silence would be the easier option, so he shuts it again.

‘Queens,’ he murmurs instead, and an image of Ellie comes to mind.

‘Yes, queens. The old woman says she struts about like a queen.’

Loukas blinks hard and turns to face Vlassis. Why would he say Ellie struts like a queen, how would he even know her?

‘She’s not even Greek, you know.’ Vlassis leans towards him and speaks in hushed tone. ‘She is gypsy stock.’ He takes a handful of peanuts and throws one in the air and catches it in his mouth.

‘Who are you talking about?’ Loukas asks, his words slurring one into another.

‘That woman who did not give you the bread order for her flashy hotel. Why, who did you think I was talking about?’ Vlassis throws another peanut. It misses his mouth and lands in his ouzo. ‘She thinks she has it all, but she is not the one with the power. I am.’ And he downs the last of his ouzo, slaps Loukas on his back as he stands.

‘I’ll make sure you and the old woman are alright, Loukas. Trust me.’ As the barman returns, Vlassis leaves, and it takes a moment for Loukas to realise he has not paid. But the barman does not charge Loukas. Instead, he writes down the amount Vlassis owes in a big book that he draws from under the bar and when he has finished scribing, he shuts it with a thud.

‘He will be back tomorrow. Same time every night. Always alone,’ the barman confides. ‘His bar tab keeps me going during the week. But don’t get me wrong, I am pretty sure it is not his need for alcohol that keeps him coming back. He is just lonely. He stays longer and drinks less the more people are here.’ His laugh is short but uneasy.

It is night now and the sky is a deep inky blue. Loukas walks with his head back, hands in pockets. Somewhere, far away, if Ellie is looking up, she will be seeing the same stars.

‘Damn you, Ellie,’ he mutters as he staggers to the next bar. His conversation with Vlassis lingers.

Ellie hunches on the other side of the dry stone wall along the main road in an out-of-the-way part of Yorkshire. It is hard to believe that yesterday, she was too warm even in the lightest of clothing. The rain is coming down at such an angle that it is dry where she sits, but this is little consolation, as she is already soaked through. She feels as miserable on the outside as she does on the inside. It shouldn’t take much over an hour or two with the cold wind for the onset of severe hypothermia. First, she will continue to shiver as her body fights to keep her internal organs warm, then she will become confused, and finally, a warmth will seep over her. She will feel cosy as she falls into unconsciousness and her pulse will weaken until it stops. Not such a bad way to go. Her tears mix with the rain.

What on earth has she really just witnessed at Brian’s house? Was that a relationship, a fling, a moment of drunkenness in the middle of the day? The way they were with each other, so familiar, like they knew what each other would do next, Brian waiting for Marcus to take the cigarette end. Was it even a cigarette? It smelt odd.

How long has it been going on? The whole time they have lived there? And who knows? Maybe the whole of Lotherton knows and maybe that’s why Helen and Nev smiled. Maybe they are laughing, maybe the whole finger pointing is about to start again.

There is no reason not to, so Ellie opens her mouth and wails with the wind and the rain. She could not bear to go through that again.

Or is she being childish? Maybe experimenting, exploring is what life is all about. Maybe Marcus is right: maybe all adults do this sort of thing and they just keep it quiet from the children.

But that’s ridiculous. Mitsos would never explore away from Stella, not with anyone. It just isn’t in his nature. Nor would Sarah. She only had one man in her heart and she was even waiting for him.

It seems everyone has someone, but who can she turn to? Sarah and Stella said she always has them but they are over the other side of the world. Then again, so what, why should she not go back to where someone seemed to actually care about her?

Loukas, that’s why.

At the base of the wall is a small fine pile of soil next to a hole thin enough to poke a blade of grass in. At the moment, it is filled with rain water. In a sheltered, bracken-free spot that she found last summer up on the moors was a similar hole and she spent a couple of hours watching the industrious ants come and go. Some just marched; others hauled seeds and bits of dead insects four and five times as big as their own segmented bodies. There are no ants today, it’s too cold and wet. The ants in Greece were so much bigger and warmer!

‘Loukas.’ Ellie whispers his name out loud through chattering teeth. She lifts her head and looks up at the horizontal javelins of rain. He showed such care about what had happened to her in the stockroom. He uttered such supportive words. Her family, her peers, and the papers did nothing but throw their own javelins, spears of snide remarks, unthinking humour and downright nastiness. The only thing that stood in her way was her marriage to Marcus.

‘What marriage?’ Ellie spits and wipes the rain from her face. Marcus has broken all his vows. He has broken the promises he made and reduced their marriage to a falsehood.

‘There is no marriage!’ Ellie says bitterly. She repeats the phrase in her head, again and again to take it in, and with it comes a slow realisation.

‘There is no marriage!’ This time, the words hold joy. She stands shivering, face to the rain, shouting to the heavens.

‘There is no marriage.’ A sense of freedom surges through her. She climbs the wall and jumps down to the pavement on the other side.

Why on earth has she been sitting here waiting to die when, with an explanation, she could be in Loukas’ arms?

Her knee-jerk reaction to Brian and Marcus was to run, hide, wishing for her world to stop as if she is without power—as usual, just as she has been taught. But that is not who she wants to be. She will determine who she is by her actions and one thing is for sure, she will not be a victim.