The Island Read online

  In spite of the fact that they had left home long ago, the children’s rooms remained untouched. Alexis’s was still painted in the rather oppressive purple that she had chosen when she was a sulky fifteen year old. The bedspread, rug and wardrobe were in a matching shade of mauve, the colour of migraines and tantrums - even Alexis thought so now, though at the time she had insisted on having it. One day her parents might get round to repainting it, but in a house where interior design and soft furnishings took low priority it might be another decade before this happened. The colour of the walls in Nick’s room had long since ceased to be relevant - not a square inch could be seen between the posters of Arsenal players, heavy metal bands and improbably busty blondes. The drawing room was a space shared by Alexis and Nick, who during two decades must have spent a million and one hours silently watching television in the semi-darkness. But the kitchen was for everyone. The round 1970s pine table - the first piece of furniture that Sofia and Marcus had ever bought together - was the focal point, the place where everyone came together, talked, played games, ate and, in spite of the heated debates and disagreements that often raged around it, became a family.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sofia, greeting her daughter’s reflection in the mirror. She was simultaneously combing her short blonde-streaked hair and rummaging in a small jewellery box. ‘I’m nearly ready,’ she added, fastening some coral earrings that matched her blouse.

  Though Alexis would never have known it, a knot tightened in Sofia’s stomach as she prepared for this family ritual. The moment reminded her of all those nights before her daughter’s university terms began when she feigned jollity but felt anguished that Alexis would soon be gone. Sofia’s ability to hide her emotions seemed to strengthen in proportion to the feelings she was suppressing. She looked at her daughter’s mirrored image and at her own face next to it, and a shock wave passed through her. It was not the teenager’s face that she always held in her mind’s eye but the face of an adult, whose questioning eyes now engaged with her own.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ Alexis said quietly. ‘When’s Dad back?’

  ‘Quite soon, I hope. He knows you’ve got to be up early tomorrow so he promised not to be late.’

  Alexis picked up the familiar photograph and took a deep breath. Even in her mid-twenties she still found herself having to summon up courage to force her way into the no-go region of her mother’s past, as though she was ducking under the striped tape that cordoned off the scene of a crime. She needed to know what her mother thought. Sofia had married before she was twenty, so was she, Alexis, foolish to throw away the opportunity of spending the rest of her life with someone like Ed? Or might her mother think, as she did herself, that if these thoughts were even present in her head then he was, indeed, not the right person? Inwardly, she rehearsed her questions. How had her mother known with such certainty and at such an early age that the man she was to marry was ‘the one’? How could she have known that she would be happy for the next fifty, sixty, perhaps even seventy years? Or had she not thought of it that way? Just at the moment when all these questions were to spill out, she demurred, suddenly fearful of rejection. There was, however, one question she had to ask.

  ‘Could I . . .’ asked Alexis, ‘could I go and see where you grew up?’ Apart from a Christian name that acknowledged her Greek blood, the only outward sign Alexis had of her maternal origins were her dark brown eyes, and that night she used them to full effect, locking her mother in her gaze. ‘We’re going to Crete at the end of our trip and it would be such a waste to travel all that way and miss the chance.’

  Sofia was a woman who found it hard to smile, to show her feelings, to embrace. Reticence was her natural state and her immediate response was to search for an excuse. Something stopped her, however. It was Marcus’s often-repeated words to her that Alexis would always be their child, but not forever a child that came back to her. Even if she struggled against the notion, she knew it was true, and seeing in front of her this independent young woman finally confirmed it. Instead of clamming up as she usually did when the subject of the past even hovered over a conversation, Sofia responded with unexpected warmth, recognising for the first time that her daughter’s curiosity to know more about her roots was not only natural; it was possibly even a right.

  ‘Yes . . .’ she said hesitantly. ‘I suppose you could.’

  Alexis tried to hide her amazement, hardly daring to breathe in case her mother changed her mind.

  Then, more certainly, Sofia said: ‘Yes, it would be a good opportunity. I’ll write a note for you to take to Fotini Davaras. She knew my family. She must be quite elderly now but she’s lived in the village where I was born for her whole life and married the owner of the local taverna - so you might even get a good meal.’

  Alexis shone with excitement. ‘Thanks, Mum . . . Where exactly is the village?’ she added. ‘In relation to Hania?’

  ‘It’s about two hours’ east of Iraklion,’ Sofia said. ‘So from Hania it might take you four or five hours - it’s quite a distance for a day. Dad will be home any minute, but when we get back from dinner I’ll write that letter for Fotini and show you exactly where Plaka is on a map.’

  The careless bang of the front door announced Marcus’s return from the university library. His worn leather briefcase stood, bulging, in the middle of the hallway, stray scraps of paper protruding through gaps in every seam. A bespectacled bear of a man with thick silvery hair who probably weighed as much as his wife and daughter combined, he greeted Alexis with a huge smile as she ran down from her mother’s room and took off from the final stair, flying into his arms in just the way she had done since she was three years old.

  ‘Dad!’ said Alexis simply, and even that was superfluous.

  ‘My beautiful girl,’ he said, enveloping her in the sort of warm and comfortable embrace that only fathers of such generous proportions can offer.

  They left for the restaurant soon after, a five-minute walk from the house. Nestling in the row of glossy wine bars, overpriced patisseries and trendy fusion restaurants, Taverna Loukakis was the constant. It had opened not long after the Fieldings had bought their house and in the meantime had seen a hundred other shops and eating places come and go. The owner, Gregorio, greeted the trio as the old friends they were, and so ritualistic were their visits that he knew even before they sat down what they would order. As ever, they listened politely to the day’s specials, and then Gregorio pointed to each of them in turn and recited: ‘Meze of the day, moussaka, stifado, kalamari, a bottle of retsina and a large sparkling water.’ They nodded and all of them laughed as he turned away in mock disgust at their rejection of his chef’s more innovative dishes.

  Alexis (moussaka) did most of the talking. She described her projected trip with Ed, and her father (kalamari) occasionally interjected with suggestions on archaeological sites they might visit.

  ‘But Dad,’ Alexis groaned despairingly, ‘you know Ed’s not really interested in looking at ruins!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he replied patiently. ‘But only a philistine would go to Crete without visiting Knossos. It would be like going to Paris and not bothering with the Louvre. Even Ed should realise that.’

  They all knew perfectly well that Ed was more than capable of bypassing anything if there was a whiff of high culture about it, and as usual there was a subtle hint of disdain in Marcus’s voice when Ed came into the conversation. It was not that he disliked him, or even really disapproved of him. Ed was exactly the sort that a father was meant to hope for as a son-in-law, but Marcus could not help his feelings of disappointment whenever he pictured this well-connected boy becoming his daughter’s future. Sofia, on the other hand, adored Ed. He was the embodiment of all that she aspired to for her daughter: respectability, certainty and a family tree that lent him the confidence of someone linked (albeit extremely tenuously) with English aristocracy.

  It was a light-hearted evening. The three of them had not been together for several months and Alexis ha
d much to catch up on, not least all the tales of Nick’s love life. In Manchester doing postgraduate work, Alexis’s brother was in no hurry to grow up and his family were constantly amazed at the complexity of his relationships.

  Alexis and her father then began to exchange anecdotes about their work and Sofia found her mind wandering back to when they had first come to this restaurant and Gregorio had stacked up a pile of cushions so that Alexis could reach the table. By the time Nick was born, the taverna had invested in a highchair and soon the children had learned to love the strong tastes of taramasalata and tzatziki that the waiters brought out for them on tiny plates. For more than twenty years almost every landmark of their lives had been celebrated there, with the same tape of popular Greek tunes playing on a loop in the background. The realisation that Alexis was no longer a child struck Sofia more strongly than ever and she began to think of Plaka and the letter she was soon to write. For many years she had corresponded quite regularly with Fotini and over a quarter of a century earlier had described the arrival of her first child; within a few weeks, a small, perfectly embroidered dress had arrived in which Sofia had dressed the baby for her christening, in the absence of a traditional robe. The two women had stopped writing a while back, but Sofia was certain that Fotini’s husband would have let her know if anything had happened to his wife. Sofia wondered what Plaka would be like now, and tried to block out an image of the little village overrun with noisy pubs selling English beer; she very much hoped Alexis would find it just as it was when she had left.

  As the evening progressed Alexis felt a growing excitement that at last she was to delve further into her family history. In spite of the tensions she knew would have to be faced on her holiday, at least the visit to her mother’s birthplace was something she could look forward to. Alexis and Sofia exchanged smiles and Marcus found himself wondering whether his days of playing mediator and truce-maker between his wife and daughter were drawing to a close. He was warmed by the thought and basked in the company of the two women he loved most in the world.

  They finished their meal, politely drank the complimentary raki to the halfway mark and left for home. Alexis would sleep in her old room tonight, and she looked forward to those few hours in her childhood bed before she had to get up and take the underground to Heathrow in the morning. She felt strangely contented in spite of the fact that she had singularly failed to ask her mother’s advice. It seemed much more important at this very moment that she was going, with her mother’s full co-operation, to visit Sofia’s birthplace. All her pressing anxieties over the more distant future were, for a moment, put aside.

  When they returned from the restaurant, Alexis made her mother some coffee and Sofia sat at the kitchen table composing the letter to Fotini, rejecting three drafts before finally sealing an envelope and passing it across the table to her daughter. The whole process was conducted in silence, absorbing Sofia completely. Alexis had sensed that if she spoke the spell might be broken and her mother might have a change of heart after all.

  For two and a half weeks now, Sofia’s letter had sat in the safe inner pocket of Alexis’s bag, as precious as her passport. Indeed, it was a passport in its own right, since it would be her way of gaining access to her mother’s past. It had travelled with her from Athens and onwards on the fume-filled, sometimes storm-tossed ferries to Paros, Santorini and now Crete. They had arrived on the island a few days earlier and found a room to rent on the seafront in Hania - an easy task at this stage of the season when most holidaymakers had already departed.

  These were the last days of their vacation, and having reluctantly visited Knossos and the archaeological museum at Iraklion, Ed was keen to spend the few days before their long boat journey back to Piraeus on the beach. Alexis, however, had other plans.

  ‘I’m going to visit an old friend of my mother’s tomorrow, ’ she announced as they sat in a harbourside taverna waiting to give their order. ‘She lives the other side of Iraklion, so I’ll be gone most of the day.’

  It was the first time she had mentioned her pilgrimage to Ed and she braced herself for his reaction.

  ‘That’s terrific!’ he snapped, adding resentfully: ‘Presumably you’re taking the car?’

  ‘Yes, I will if that’s okay. It’s a good hundred and fifty miles and it’ll take me days if I have to go on local buses.’

  ‘Well I suppose I don’t really have a choice, do I? And I certainly don’t want to come with you.’

  Ed’s angry eyes flashed at her like sapphires as his sun-tanned face disappeared behind his menu. He would sulk for the rest of the evening but Alexis could take that given that she had rather sprung this on him. What was harder to cope with, even though it was equally typical of him, was his total lack of interest in her plan. He did not even ask the name of the person she was going to visit.

  Not long after the sun had risen over the hills the following morning, she crept out of bed and left their hotel.

  Something very unexpected had struck her when she looked Plaka up in her guidebook. Something her mother had not mentioned. There was an island opposite the village just off the coast, and although the entry for it was minimal, miss-able even, it had captured her imagination:

  SPINALONGA: Dominated by a massive Venetian fortress, this island was seized by the Turks in the eighteenth century. The majority of Turks left Crete when it was declared autonomous in 1898 but the inhabitants refused to give up their homes and their lucrative smuggling trade on Spinalonga. They only left in 1903 when the island was turned into a leper colony. In 1941, Crete was invaded by the Germans and occupied until 1945, but the presence of lepers meant Spinalonga was left alone. Abandoned in 1957.

  It appeared that the raison d’être of Plaka itself had been to act as a supply centre for the leper colony, and it intrigued Alexis that her mother had made no mention of this at all. As she sat at the wheel of the hired Cinquecento, she hoped she might have time to visit Spinalonga. She spread the map of Crete out on the empty passenger seat and noticed, for the first time, that the island was shaped like a languid animal asleep on its back.

  The journey took her eastwards past Iraklion, and along the smooth, straight coastal road that passed through the insanely overdeveloped modern strips of Hersonisos and Malia. Occasionally she would spot a brown signpost indicating some ancient ruin nestling incongruously among the sprawling hotels. Alexis ignored all these signs. Today her destination was a settlement that had thrived not in the twentieth century BC but in the twentieth century AD and beyond.

  Passing mile upon mile of olive groves and, in places where the ground became flatter on the coastal plains, huge plantations of reddening tomatoes and ripening grapes, she eventually turned off the main road and began the final stage of her journey towards Plaka. From here, the road narrowed and she was forced to drive in a more leisurely way, avoiding small piles of rocks which had spilled down from the mountains into the middle of the road and, from time to time, a goat ambling across in front of her, its devilishly close-set eyes glaring at her as she passed. After a while the road began to climb, and after one particularly sharp hairpin bend she drew in to the side, her tyres crackling on the gravelly surface. Way below her, in the blindingly blue waters of the Gulf of Mirabello, she could see the great arc of an almost circular natural harbour, and just where the arms of it seemed to join in embrace there was a piece of land that looked like a small, rounded hillock. From a distance it appeared to be connected to the mainland, but from her map Alexis knew this was the island of Spinalonga and that to reach it there was a strip of water to be crossed. Dwarfed by the landscape around it, the island stood proud of the water, the remains of the Venetian fortress clearly visible at one end, and behind it, fainter but still distinct, a series of lines mapped out; these were its streets. So there it was: the empty island. It had been continuously inhabited for thousands of years and then, less than fifty years ago, for some reason abandoned.

  She took the last few miles of her journey
down to Plaka slowly, the windows of her cheap rented car wound down to let in the warm breeze and the fragrant smell of thyme. It was two o’clock in the afternoon when she finally rattled to a halt in the silent village square. Her hands were glistening with sweat from gripping the hard plastic steering wheel and she noticed that her left arm had been scorched by the early afternoon sun. It was a ghostly time to arrive in a Greek village. Dogs played dead in the shade and a few cats prowled for scraps. There were no other signs of life, simply some vague indications that people had been there not long before - an abandoned moped leaning against a tree, half a packet of cigarettes on a bench and a backgammon set lying open next to it. Cicadas kept up their relentless chorus that would only be silenced at dusk when the fierce heat finally cooled. The village probably looked exactly as it had done in the 1970s when her mother had left. There had been few reasons for it to change.

  Alexis had already decided that she would try to visit Spinalonga before she tracked down Fotini Davaras. She was enjoying this sense of complete freedom and independence, and once she had found the old woman it might then seem rude to go off on a boat trip. It was clear to Alexis that she would be pushed to get back to Hania that night, but just for now she would enjoy her afternoon and would deal with the logistics of ringing Ed and finding somewhere to stay later on.