One Cretan Evening and Other Stories.

Victoria Hislop.

For my agent, David Miller.

Victoria Hislop read English at Oxford, and worked in publishing, PR and as a journalist before becoming a novelist. She is married with two children. Her first novel, The Island, held the number one slot in the Sunday Times paperback chart for eight consecutive weeks and has sold over two million copies worldwide. Victoria was the Newcomer of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007 and won the Richard & Judy Summer Read compet.i.tion. Her second novel, The Return, was also a Sunday Times number one bestseller, and her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Her third novel, The Thread, is published in autumn 2011.

To find out more, visit www.victoriahislop.com.

One Cretan Evening.

THE TOURIST INVASION was over now. The shop that made its living through sales of pink lilos and cheap bikinis from Taiwan was now shut until spring, its windows firmly boarded up. Roadside tables now groaned beneath mountains of grapes, and olives steadily ripened, ready for harvesting in December. The pa.s.sing of summer brought new fruits, welcome rain and, for local people, this was the loveliest of seasons. They were alone again and the clear, sweet air allowed them to breathe.

The real machinery of this Cretan village continued to run well beyond the departure of the foreigners. The zacharo-plasteion still baked its daily quant.i.ties of sweet pastries and the best of the tavernas remained open even though the owners of the others had now gone to their winter homes. The priest conducted his services in the tiny chapel on the water's edge.

Life resumed its quiet, ordered ways. Widows in black dresses, their fabric as densely ebony as the day they had begun to mourn, sat on their doorsteps, away from the men, who entertained themselves with backgammon. Dice gently tick-tacked against the side of the board as the players whiled away the hours, moving counters from one triangular s.p.a.ce to the next. Counters clicked together in conversation, more talkative than the men themselves.

Their knowledge of each other's lives went so far back into earliest memory that these septuagenarians had little to say to one another. They almost breathed in unison. They would discuss some piece of local news, perhaps the election of a new deputy mayor or a birth or death, but the wider events of the world at large, a crisis in the money markets or an earthquake in Peru, did not touch them even for a moment. Their universe was this small seaside village, this square, the same one where their fathers and grandfathers had sat before them.

Only the elderly lived here now. Most young people had long since deserted, escaping to the bright lights of the island's capital or Athens and only returning with the tourists for a week or two during August to remind themselves of where their ancestors had once lived.

Even now, with night falling, the men carried on playing and drinking their raki. There was a stillness in this moment. All day long, shadows of trees had danced against the pale faded walls and now the curtain had been drawn across their stage. Afternoon became night, as though a candle had been snuffed.

For the men outside the kafenion the transition of daytime into night went unnoticed. The tossing of dice, the refilling of small tumblers of the clear, syrupy fire water, the silent communication between them continued as before. Light or dark. It was all the same to them.

In spite of its almost noiseless arrival they were all immediately aware of the arrival of the taxi. For a moment their game of tavli ceased and they turned to stare as it pa.s.sed. More lovingly cared for than a millionaire's limousine, the vehicle's polished chrome wing mirrors reflected the gleam of the dim street lamps.

It was not a number plate they recognised. All the drivers from the nearest big town were known to them, but this one was from further afield, from Heraklion.

When it drew up further down the street, they watched as the door of the pa.s.senger seat opened and a man got out. He was incongruously dressed, as though for a funeral or wedding, a slim figure in a dark suit, and they could just make out the neat shape of his hair. More than that, they could not see. He was a figure in silhouette.

After summer, the arrival of a stranger was relatively rare. In July and August, tourists came and went leaving behind them their money and, less desirably, their carelessly discarded rubbish. Now, only the very occasional outsider appeared, wanting to experience some of the island's legendary hospitality. By coming out of season they hoped to be welcomed in for raki, to be offered new olives and even invited to play backgammon.

The woman who owned the kafenion, Despina, came out to the front of the cafe and leaned against the doorway. She had heard the taxi and a.s.sumed it meant business. Clearly its pa.s.senger was not yet going to come her way. The old men shrugged and Despina retreated into the bar. Perhaps he would return later.

A thin stray of a dog had stirred as the man pa.s.sed and now got up to follow him. The animal's emaciated condition made him little threat and after a hundred yards or so the man dropped the stone that he had picked up to scare away this wasted mongrel.

Walking purposefully down to the end of the street, his fingers pressed against the smooth, cool contours of a key.

One of the old men looked up from the backgammon board.

'Maria,' he said quietly to the others. 'Maria Makrakis.'

There was a muttering among them.

The man was aware of being observed and could feel the eyes of the village's residents upon him, but he did not turn. He needed to find something and only then would he return to speak to them. The two-roomed house was at the end of the street and the door, once painted deep blue, was now back to the bare wood with only the odd patch of its original colour.

His hand sweated a little as he grasped the key. Now he was turning it in the lock, marvelling at the way this door, even after ten years or more without use, still opened. The mechanism seemed miraculously to clunk and turn and soon he was pushing open the door to be enveloped by the smell of the past.

In the gloaming he struggled to see his way across the room and flicked a cigarette lighter to guide his way. The shadows of a room untouched by time leaped about him and his memories were stirred to life by the shapes of a table, chairs and even the icons on the walls, though curiously he had never been inside this house.

The truth was that n.o.body at all had been inside this home for the decade since its owner had pa.s.sed away. There had been no one to tidy her things, to air the room upstairs or to fold away the sheets that still lay askew across the bed. Though devout, she had been despised and unloved, her spinster state making her an object of suspicion and derision. She had not grown up in the village and though she had lived there for nearly fifty years had always been regarded as a newcomer. This was how it had been in those days. No one could recall her having any visitors, or any friends; she was the outsider and the island's famous hospitality had not even once been extended to her. The place smelled of abandonment and dust.

The man had been watched entering the house but no one stirred. They did not feel protective towards it. Their concern was no greater than it had been for the woman who had lived there, who had existed in the shadow of rumours that she could never dispel.

The men were whispering among themselves and the women too, though the two groups still kept their distance.

'What's he in there for?' they asked each other. 'How did he get a key?'

By now the stranger had looked in the bedside cabinet and underneath the bed itself and was going through every drawer in a small chest in the corner of the downstairs room. They were all empty except for the last, which contained a small prayer book. Opening the cover, he held up the small flame to read the inscription: 'To Sofia Taraviras with love'

It was what he had been looking for.

He slipped the book into his pocket and emerged once again into the gloom of the street, carefully locking the door behind him.

Now he approached the kafenion and nodded his greeting. None of the men smiled. No one spoke. Despina was waiting for him. The man was much older than he had at first appeared. The dusky light had obscured the silver greyness of his hair and the deep lines on his face. He was no younger than the men who sat outside, but he was a city type, a businessman, obviously wealthy.

'What do you want?' she said. The brusqueness of the question surprised him.

'What do you want to drink?' she said, this time more politely.

'Coffee please, with sugar,' he answered, his accent revealing that he was from Athens, not from Crete.

'So what business did you have at Maria Makrakis' house?' she asked bluntly.

'Maria Makrakis?'

'Yes, the woman who lived in that house.'

'I don't know a Maria Makrakis,' he replied. 'My sister lived there. Her name was Sofia Taraviras.'

'Sofia Taraviras . . .' the woman repeated, puzzled. 'I don't think so.'

'Look,' he said firmly, producing the prayer book from his pocket. He carefully opened the cover and showed the inscription. 'Sofia Taraviras. I found it in the house. That was what I came for. It was my sister's.'

He handed it to Despina, who stared at the pale handwriting on the page.

'But the woman who lived in that house was called Maria Makrakis.'

'Well, she may have called herself by that name, but she was born Sofia Taraviras and this was given to her at her baptism.'

Despina closed the small leather-bound book, well worn with age and use, its pages as fragile as b.u.t.terfly wings.

'Let's go and sit down,' suggested the elderly man. 'It sounds as though there was a misunderstanding.'

Despina felt herself go pale. Maria Makrakis had lived in that house for longer than she could remember. In fact she had lived there before Despina was even born and her parents had always warned her against going too close. She had not questioned her parents. Children never did in those days.

'All I can tell you is this. Before I was even born, my older sister Sofia brought disgrace on the family and was despatched from Athens.'

The man paused to take a sip of his coffee.

'At the age of sixteen she had a child and my father sent her away. As far away as possible. To Crete.'

'But the woman in that house had always lived there. As long as anyone could remember. We were told she was a witch,' Despina said quietly. 'We were told not to go near her. And we never did. In fact I don't think I ever heard her voice.'

'Well she wasn't a witch,' said the stranger firmly. 'She was just a woman who had made a single mistake. She paid a high price for it, I think.'

Despina looked thoughtful. 'So why are you here now?'

'I only found out about her a few months ago when this came.' He produced the key from his pocket. 'It came from the priest. He was the only person who knew her story. She had told him everything, but being the priest he presumably never saw fit to share her secrets with the village. He had found the address of the family home. Look, it's written here.'

He turned the first page of the prayer book and there, on the reverse of the inscription from Sofia's G.o.dfather, was an address. It was written rather proprietorially in neat schoolgirl script. An Athens address.

Despina listened in silence.

'There was some aunt of my father's who had lived here in this village and so this was where she was sent,' the man continued.

For her entire lifetime, Despina, like everyone else of her generation, had ostracised this woman without questioning why and now she felt the force of this community's shame. This 'Maria', this 'Sofia', had been forgiven by G.o.d, but never by His people. They had never even given her a chance.

Soon after, Sofia's brother left in the taxi. All he took was the precious prayer book. It was the only thing he had come for and he could feel its warmth in his pocket.

Early the next evening, as light faded, even the men who rarely stirred from the kafenion went to say prayers for the woman who had died alone. Whatever the old woman had done in her past, tonight it was they who needed absolution.

Autumn was a time of new beginnings here, not a time of melancholy endings, and the following day, Despina went in to Sofia's house. The shutters were thrown open and the light flooded in.

The Pine Tree.

SNOW FELL, DEEPLY, crisply and evenly. Slowly the row of pine trees turned from green to white and their needles sparkled. A crimson-breasted robin puffed out his chest. It was the perfect white Christmas.

Santa Claus looked out from between the trees. His huge, round belly was accentuated by a wide belt and his head moved from side to side, as he mimed his maniacal 'ho-ho-ho'. Over his shoulder was slung a sack from which spilled out a dozen presents wrapped in metallic red and green.

And beneath one of the trees nestled a crib. Mary and Joseph bowed over the manger, while shepherds and wise men queued patiently to catch a glimpse of the baby. The bearded figure in red velvet who stood behind them was as tall as the trees and all five of the sheep by the crib would have fitted into the palm of one of his big gnarled hands. Everything was out of scale.

In the centre of this tableau, there was a woman, tall and slim-waisted, with bare, strong arms. Claire caught sight of herself as the figures in the seasonal fantasy faded and the polished shop window mirrored her reflection. She looked into a pair of dark blue eyes.

She had been transfixed by these symbols of Christmas, conceived in northern Europe, manufactured in China and now in a window display in a hot and dusty street in Cyprus. They seemed so incongruous here. This was a city where pavements still shimmered in November and where snow was never more than a fantasy. People strolled down the promenade every day of the year, contemplated a swim in the sea and sought shade under the palms.

And yet here was an entire shop given over to selling tinsel and tat, an emporium of seasonal symbols for customers who yearned for the kind of cold snap that Claire herself was happy to have left behind. The sight of them did, however, provoke a strong twinge of homesickness and a wave of longing for the fog and ice of northern England and her family's annual get-together.

She was nervous about the prospect of her first Christmas away from home, but she would not be alone. It was more than the lure of sun and the certainty of daily blue skies that had brought her here. It was Andreas. Like so many English women before her, she had taken a one-way journey for the sake of a dark-eyed foreigner.

Though they had met in Manchester, where Andreas was studying, he had no plans to be away from his patrida for long and if she wanted to be with him there had been no question of compromise. Soon she followed him to the sunny island where he had been born and his intense love gave her no cause to doubt her decision.

Andreas returned to his village near the capital, Nicosia, and Claire found herself an apartment on the edge of the city. The view was predominantly of the other white-washed blocks that surrounded her in all directions, some of them only a few decades old but their paintwork already chipped and the plaster falling away in lumps from the concrete walls. What the architects had failed to visualise in their blueprints of these fast-expanding cities were the air conditioning units hanging off at angles, the jumble of solar panels and satellite dishes, and the metal rods that protruded from the roof tops like walking sticks. Lines of garish laundry pegged out on every balcony completed the picture of chaos.

There was no lack of opportunity in Cyprus for an articulate expatriate willing to work hard for little pay and Claire now had a job in a bookshop and a routine that was not so unlike the life she had left behind. There were details that differed, however. The working day was longer and the heat made it seem longer still as she struggled home on foot, carrier bags bursting with quant.i.ties of seasonal vegetables and household goods whose names she still struggled to decipher. Though corners of this island were almost English, it was nevertheless distinctly a foreign country. In her apartment, with the doors and windows thrown wide in an attempt to catch the breeze, the air was filled with the competing sounds of a dozen different TV stations. Some evenings, driven demented by the relentless cacophony of blaring music and voices, she would shut the windows and, though the heat was stifling, at least she could then enjoy the silence.

It was not the ex-pat life that her friends envisaged, of late nights and parties and daily visits to the beach, but she was strangely contented. She and Andreas saw each other at weekends and for now that had to suffice.

That December day, she was standing outside the Christmas shop waiting for Andreas to pick her up. He was finally to take her for the much-antic.i.p.ated visit to her prospective in-laws. In-law, to be precise. And she was nervous. Such an introduction carried more significance here than it would in Yorkshire.

'I know she'll like you,' said Andreas attempting to rea.s.sure her. 'But don't be put off if she seems a bit unfriendly.'

'Why should she be?' asked Claire, with faux naivety, knowing already the reputation of Greek mothers.

'It's just the language barrier,' he answered. 'She won't really be able to talk to you, that's all.'

As they drove up into the hills above Nicosia, they could see the faraway s.p.a.ces of the part of the island occupied by Turkey. The division of the country was rarely mentioned by Andreas but, with the clear view of a Turkish flag provocatively carved into the hillside, Claire was reminded of this uneasy separation. Soon they reached his village and the streets narrowed. The buildings were warmly characterful and most of them had been home to several generations of the same family. Several of them seemed to be held up by thick boughs of bougainvillea and vine that were now inseparably entwined.

'Look,' he said, as they pa.s.sed a blue door. 'There it is.'

An elderly woman, slim, with birdlike features, appeared at the entrance of one of the larger houses. She looked frail enough to be blown over in a breeze. Her arms were folded and her face expressionless. Until she caught a glimpse of her son. And then it was as though the sun had emerged from a rain cloud.

Andreas parked his car in a dusty s.p.a.ce at the top of the hill and they strolled back down towards his home. His mother waited on the doorstep, her smiling eyes now fixed on her son. Although she was as thin as a stick, Kyria Markides had the strength to embrace her son with bone-crushing warmth and effusive cries of 'Angele mou! My angel! Matia mou! My eyes!' and all the while she looked over his shoulder at Claire and fixed her with a steely glare. In spite of the warmth of the day the young woman almost felt her heart freeze.

They went inside the house and gradually her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. They sat awkwardly at the table for some time as the elderly creature in widow's weeds bustled about in the kitchen. Claire looked around her. The walls were covered in the same icons that she had seen in other Cypriot houses, but in addition there were perhaps thirty photographs. Some of them were wedding pictures but most of them were formal portraits of the same man, handsome, moustachioed, proudly wearing army uniform.

'Your father?' enquired Claire.

'Yes,' Andreas replied.

'You look quite a lot like him . . .'

'That's what my mother always says. Sadly, I don't remember him.'

Claire had known that Andreas had no siblings. She also now saw how much this only child was doted on and adored by his mother. She suddenly felt the awkwardness of being here. It was not just the nostalgia for home, a place where even if it did not snow on Christmas Day, the likelihood of frost was strong. It was also the sense of being an outsider, particularly here, in this house.

She sat quietly through the meal. A few other relatives had joined them: cousins and their children, three aunts and two very aged uncles. Claire smiled when she was spoken to, though she did not have a clue what was being said, and took a little from every plate that was handed to her, even eating one of the minute baby birds, ambelopoulia, cruelly caught and killed on their maiden flight. She did not want to let Andreas down, but at the end of the meal, when gla.s.ses of fiery zivania had been swallowed and it was time to depart, she was exhausted from keeping up the pretence of enjoying herself. Kyria Markides gave her a cursory handshake as they left.