Daphne scowled at the cliché of ‘difficult teenagers’, and pictured Nina in the house in Pelion. She’d stayed there with her family a year earlier and had witnessed Nina as a hostess – quiet but gracious and generous. Wonderful meals appeared, ‘As if from nowhere,’ Ellie had remarked in admiration. It was true that, in a group, she was unobtrusive. ‘A peahen to Ralph’s peacock,’ Ed said to Ellie, and they both chortled, unaware that Daphne was listening. ‘I’m not so sure,’ replied Ellie. ‘That bird has a glint in her eye. And she has him exactly where she wants. He might be preening his fancy feathers, but he needs her. She’s a marvellous mother. And she’s strong.’ Daphne had also perceived the underlying strength, even ferocity in her rival. While everyone else was sleeping, Nina got up at dawn to go and paint in the woods, returning before breakfast with incomprehensible but vivid, abstract pictures in a million shades of green. Nina might not gabble away like lots of grown-ups, but Daphne didn’t underestimate her power and avoided too much direct contact.
‘No, don’t come to Athens,’ continued Ralph on the phone. ‘There’s no need… Better to stay and be quiet. No, I’ll see what it’s like when I drop her off, but I don’t think so. I’ll check out the timetable in the late afternoon… No, thank you. I’ll make my own way from Volos. How are you coping with the heat? And our little man? I know… I can’t wait to see you both… Yes, me too.’
She noted Ralph’s easy lies, but also perceived the genuine tenderness; Nina was pregnant again. She walked slowly into the room which contained two unused single beds and flopped face down on to one. She wondered whether she was sad about Pappou and a tear rolled from her eye, but she knew the main cause of her misery was not due to this loss. Ralph’s division of life into different spheres came so naturally to him, but it wasn’t like that for her. There was no husband and child waiting for her.
When Ralph came upstairs, she was still lying spread-eagled. He sat at the end of the bed and stroked her feet, sweeping the dust from her soles and pulling each toe with matter-of-fact practicality. ‘I love you completely and utterly, Dafflings. You are my muse and my inspiration. Nothing can change that.’ She didn’t react, but lay breathing in the clean linen scent of the pillow. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t love Nina and Jason. They’re different.’ He patted her feet in rhythm with his words and appeared entirely confident with his system. ‘With you it’s another thing. We’re not bound by old-fashioned morality or small rules made by churches or by leaders who want to keep you under control. We’re free. You’re a free spirit.’
She paused, then nodded, believing him. Maybe she was free, even if it was unclear what this meant.
Ralph’s bedside manner gradually altered from inspector of feet into something slower and more intense as he massaged her legs and then he squeezed alongside her on the narrow bed. She turned to face him and they kissed hard, as though it hurt. Teeth, tongue, lips pressing as if they were becoming one welded creature. I am free, she thought. And this is what I want.
She enjoyed it more this time, as if she’d grown up since yesterday and was getting the hang of this sex business. It didn’t hurt nearly so much. Once more, it didn’t take long from start to finish. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said before finishing on her belly like the night before. Afterwards, she lay there, feeling the wet turn dry. Yes, I like it, she thought. This is a whole new world I’ve entered.
She remembered the return to Athens as a series of disappointing snaps. The crowded boat to Piraeus that left their faces spotted with black soot. The obese driver of a rusting taxi, who refused to open the windows for fear of catching a chill. The perfunctory goodbye when they dropped Ralph at the KTEL bus station. Her angry tears on the road to Maroussi.
Yiayia’s house was airless and shadowed, curtains drawn against the blinding light and insupportable heat of an urban summer afternoon. Yiayia was stiff-backed, black-dressed and tearless. She was clear about the protocol, imposing order in the chaos of death, welcoming people, accepting their condolences. She held Daphne’s hands and said, ‘He loved you very much,’ though Daphne doubted it was true. Mourners moved from room to room, voices hushed. It was her first sight of a dead person and there was a strange fascination in Pappou’s waxy face in the coffin, skin pulled tight over his pointed nose that jutted ceilingwards.
Ed arrived before Ellie, having caught an earlier plane from Germany. He looked outlandishly tall and pale beside the Greeks and was dressed wrong, with a flowery shirt and silky scarf. Daphne held his hand when he paid his respects to his father-in-law and heard him emit a small groan of sadness. ‘Poor George. All over now,’ he whispered.
It was early evening when Ellie entered the house, face swollen, eyes hazy, and wearing a black dress. Daphne ran to her, horrified by the sight of her mother in disarray. Ellie rarely showed anything but strength or anger in a crisis, yet she looked like a forlorn child. Daphne held her tight, not wanting to let go, breathing in the soothing mother smell tinged with aeroplane and competing with ambient wafts of coffee, cigarette smoke and burning incense. Yet even now, her mind returned to Ralph and what they’d done together: the hot joining of bodies, the smell of his sperm, falling asleep in bed with him, the bloodied sheet. Nobody there knew she was changed.
She finished tacking the silk sunbeams to the backcloth so they sliced through the Putney clouds, then she went into the kitchen to ponder the puzzle of supper. It was one of the daily challenges of parenthood, this providing of meals. The dull contents of the fridge gazed back at her as though there was a camera lurking inside and this was a crude TV game show she was doomed to lose. Not that she didn’t like eating good food, she just hated the planning and preparation. Nobody had taught her. As a girl, she didn’t notice; after she married Constantine, they ate out or were too high to care; and then, in the dreadful years, she didn’t eat. Not quite true, she thought. Of course I ate, but I didn’t give a damn. Probably too many fried eggs. There had been some bad times. In the worst phases, she had resorted to ‘dumpster diving’, before eco-warriors gave it that quaint label. The memory still provoked a quiver of shame.
That was all long ago. These days, she was accomplished at the art of culinary cheating. She’d buy a ready-made pizza and throw on some fresh mozzarella and tomato before it went into the oven, or she’d make scrambled eggs on toast and chop some herbs or smoked salmon to go with it. Anything on toast was the best bet.
She was still standing before the open fridge hoping for inspiration, when Libby joined her.
‘Toasted cheese? We’re clean out of boeuf en croute.’
‘Yum, with mustard on the toast? And baked beans?’ Sometimes, Libby’s tender appreciation of these meagre efforts made Daphne feel worse.
They ate the toasted cheese watching television. It was companionable and undemanding. This might not be what ideal mothers did for supper, thought Daphne. They probably laid tables and had instructive conversations. But this was startlingly precious. It was ordinary. And for a long time she’d feared she would never have that in her life. There was no doubt that her existence was divided into before-Liberty and after and, despite all the tests of motherhood, it was like the difference between dank darkness and brilliant, warm light.