Aphrodite’s Smile

‘It’s me,’ she said finally, and then there was another long pause before she hung up. I checked to see if she’d called back but there were no other messages and I hadn’t heard from her again.

The seat-belt sign over my head went out and I put thoughts of Alicia out of my mind as all around me people got up and began to haul luggage down from the overhead lockers. When we emerged from the plane it was to a sudden and unfamiliar heat. Even in June, England had been chilly and grey. As we crossed the Tarmac to the terminal beneath a cloudless sky I could already feel the prickle of perspiration through my shirt.

I said goodbye to the girls I’d sat next to and after I’d collected my bag went outside to find a taxi to take me to Efimia. Already a throng of people had emerged dazed into the sun, clutching their luggage. They mingled with the crowds heading home who had just been disgorged from a line of buses. A few sat on a low wall exposed to the sun, their brown or sometimes livid red bodies bared for a final time.

The airport is on the western side of the island, but Ithaca lies in the other direction, reached by ferries that ply back and forth across the strait from ports on the eastern coast. The road led over the mountains, climbing high above fertile valleys past olive groves and vineyards where the taxi driver kept offering to stop so that I could buy some of the local wine. When I repeatedly declined he eventually gave up and for the rest of the journey contented himself with chain-smoking.

At Efimia I found that I had to wait an hour for a ferry to take me to Ithaca so to fill the time I ordered coffee at a nearby kefenio. The town had been built on the slopes of low hills surrounding a pretty bay that formed a harbour. A few yachts were tied up against the wharf where some children were fishing and a group of Greek men smoked cigarettes and chatted. Beneath the hot sun I could feel life slowing down, changing gear. When the ferry arrived I went to pay my bill, remembering too late that I hadn’t changed any English currency into euros. The owner shrugged, waving away my pound coins.

‘Next time. Next time.’

I thanked him, making a mental note to be sure I remembered to come back here on my way home.

There were perhaps twenty or so passengers besides myself making the trip across the strait. Once out of the bay, Ithaca revealed itself as a hazy series of rocky humps resembling some sleeping sea monster. The colours of the landscape brought back memories of childhood visits. The sun flashed like silver on the impossibly blue sea. Kephalonia retreated, its coastal hills bare and brown while Ithaca’s coast in comparison seemed lush with dark green growth. I sat on the top deck wondering what I would find when I arrived.

Since my father had left the hospital he’d been making a steady recovery. According to Irene he was resting and eating properly and drinking only half a glass of wine a day with dinner. When I spoke to her she sounded strained, but I put that down to worry and the stress of coping with my father. My father had regained some of his old bluff manner on the phone. I kept saying that I would come out some time soon, but I had never been precise about dates. I had told him I thought it would be better if I waited until he was stronger and, though he was disappointed, he tried not to let on. My vague plans had changed abruptly two days earlier. Irene had called me at five in the morning. I was only half awake, but as soon as I heard her voice I knew something was wrong.

‘Irene? What is it?’ I said, glancing at the clock by my bed and sitting up.

‘It is your father, Robert.’ I gripped the phone tightly, fearing that she was about to tell me he’d had another heart attack, but instead she said, ‘He has vanished.’

‘Vanished? What do you mean?’

‘Yesterday he left the house early in the morning. Before I was awake. Since then, nobody has seen him.’

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I wondered how anybody could disappear in a place the size of Ithaca. ‘Do you mean he’s left the island?’ The first thing that occurred to me was that he might have gone to Kephalonia to catch a plane and was on his way to England. I even glanced toward the door as if at any moment I might hear the doorbell downstairs.

‘I do not think so,’ Irene said. ‘Nobody remembers him buying a ticket for the ferry, and the police found his car at the marina.’

‘The police?’

‘When he did not come home I phoned them. I thought something might have happened to him.’

I was fully awake by then and I tried to think logically. ‘Hang on, you said his car was at the marina. What about his boat?’

‘The Swallow is still there.’

‘But if his car is there surely he must be around somewhere.’

‘The police have asked everybody. Nobody has seen him.’ She paused and when she spoke again her voice caught in her throat. ‘They are searching around the harbour.’

I understood then that she was afraid he’d had another heart attack and I understood how worried she was. I tried to reassure her. I said that I was sure he would turn up but I was already thinking about how quickly I could get out there. By the time we hung up I’d promised I would get a flight as soon as I could. As it turned out, the next available seat on a scheduled flight to Kephalonia wasn’t for forty-eight hours. Even after I’d booked my ticket I expected him to show up before I left, but the last time I’d called Irene from London there still hadn’t been any news. By then my father had been missing for three days.

As the ferry approached the small port of Piso Aetos on Ithaca’s western coast I searched for Irene on the wharf. Nothing much had changed since I was last there. There was just a dock and a couple of low-roofed buildings at the bottom of a steep hill. A handful of people stood waiting and among them I spotted Irene. Despite the years that had passed since we’d last met, I had no trouble recognising her. She wore a simple sleeveless jade-green dress that clung to her figure in the afternoon breeze, reminding me that she was twenty years younger than my father. As a boy I used to spend a week or two with them every summer during the school holidays. When I was fifteen, Irene would have been in her thirties. I used to wonder what she saw in my father, who by then was steadily thickening around the waist. She had made an effort to be especially nice to me and, with youthful confusion, I misinterpreted her kindness and indulged in fevered guilt-ridden sexual fantasies. A father cuckolded by his own son. It couldn’t have been more fitting on a Greek island.

Once the ferry had docked, Irene scanned the disembarking passengers anxiously. I waved and when she saw me she raised a hand in return but there was something hesitant and forlorn in her greeting. When I met her we hugged briefly and then she took both of my hands in her own.

‘Robert, it is good to see you again.’

‘And you Irene. Is there any news?’ She took off her sunglasses revealing eyes that were reddened and puffy and I knew. Instantly I regretted not having come earlier. I was shocked. Somehow I hadn’t believed it could happen. When I found my voice I said, ‘He’s dead isn’t he?’

She managed to nod. ‘I am so sorry.’

I looked past her to the hills beyond. I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt but I knew that it wasn’t the grief that a son should feel on hearing such news. I wasn’t sure which was the greater tragedy; his death or my reaction to it.

The road that led from the port wound back and forth up a steep hill in a series of switchbacks. It was flanked on one side by an almost vertical plunge. From the top we looked down on the causeway that joined the southern and northern halves of the island. Beyond lay Molos Bay and in the distance were small hazy islands, faint smudges against the blue of the sea and sky. Mount Nirito rose almost vertically from the shore of the bay, its slopes surprisingly green from the wild oak that grew profusely all over the island, while on the other side a narrow gap between two headlands marked the entrance to Vathy harbour.

Instead of going to the house, we drove north. From the coast road I glimpsed the terracotta roofs of the occasional hamlet among the olive groves below. I remembered driving along this road with my father years before. I saw a curve of brilliant white beach where I was sure we had once gone for a swim.

When we reached the village of Stavros, Irene parked beneath the shade of a pine tree in the square.

‘I grew up here,’ she said. ‘When I was a child I came to this church with my family.’ Two towers flanked the entrance to the church opposite, and behind them was an impressive blue, domed roof. ‘If you do not mind waiting I would like to go inside. You can wait for me in the kefenio across the street. I will not be long.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Take your time.’

When she had gone I lingered in the quiet drowsy heat of the square, but after several minutes curiosity got the better of me and I followed her. I had never seen inside a Greek Orthodox church before. Compared to the sombre austerity of the chapel I remembered from boarding school, the contrast could hardly have been greater. Instead of cold stone walls and rows of unwelcoming pews, the style was almost gaudy. The walls and the inside of the dome were painted a pale eggshell blue and a strip of what had once been bright red carpet led up the central aisle. Massive glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling and elaborate painted icons looked down on the rows of seats. Several huge throne-like carved chairs stood on a dais where I imagined the priests sat during services.

Irene genuflected before an icon of the Virgin Mary and then lit a candle that she took from a brass holder. She sat on a chair with her head bowed, her lips moving in silent prayer. As I watched her I wanted to feel something, but quite what I didn’t know. I wondered if my father had become religious though I couldn’t imagine him in a place like this somehow. If there was an afterlife, if some essence of him was present here, I wondered what I would say to him. No answer was forthcoming and in the end, feeling that I was intruding on Irene’s grief I slipped outside again to wait for her.

When she emerged, she offered a wan smile and led the way to a kefenio where we sat on a shady terrace. Stavros was built on top of a hill where several routes converged. From where we sat we looked down on Polis Bay where a yacht drifted at anchor, gleaming white against the deep blue of the sea. Irene and the owner of the kefenio knew each other and when he brought us menus he greeted her as an old friend.

‘Yassou Irene,’ he said warmly and kissed her cheek.

They spoke rapidly in Greek and though I didn’t understand what they were saying I heard my father’s name mentioned.

‘Kalos-orissate,’ the man said before reverting to English. ‘Welcome to Ithaca, Mr French. I am sorry for your father. I know him a long time. He is a good man.’

I thanked him, and when he’d left with our order Irene said, ‘Johnny was very popular on Ithaca. He will be missed.’

We hadn’t talked about what had happened yet, but now I said, ‘I assume it was another heart attack.’

She hesitated. ‘It is not yet certain. There will have to be an examination.’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I do not know the right word in English.’

‘You mean an autopsy?’

‘Yes. That is it. An autopsy. Your father was found in the harbour, Robert. At the marina where he kept the Swallow. The police think he may have drowned. They are bringing somebody from Kephalonia.’

I was surprised, not so much about where he was found but at the circumstances. After my parents were divorced, I eventually spent part of the school summer holidays each year on Ithaca. It was an arrangement I went along with grudgingly because I wasn’t given a choice, but the one part of it I’d always looked forward to was spending time on my father’s boat. For a while at least I was able to put aside the resentment I felt towards him. I could picture him vividly as he dived off the side into the cool, clear sea. His body was brown and powerful and though he was beginning to run to fat, he swam like a seal. ‘I can’t imagine him drowning,’ I said to Irene.

‘They think he may have fallen from the boat after he had another heart attack.’

I could see how it might have happened. Perhaps as he climbed aboard he was hit with a sudden crushing pain and he stumbled backwards into the water. But I had read somewhere that drowning victims quickly float to the surface buoyed by gases in the body. He had been missing for three days. ‘Why did it take so long for anybody to find him?’

‘Apparently his clothes were caught up with the propeller.’

I imagined my dad struggling to free himself, eyes wide, his mouth opening in a silent cry, only a stream of bubbles escaping. Horror plucked at my insides and I banished the vision with a hasty gulp of wine.

Belatedly I realised that tears were sliding unchecked down Irene’s cheeks and I reached out for her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. They had been together ever since my father had come to Ithaca, almost twenty-five years earlier. Whatever my own feelings towards him, I knew Irene had always loved him.