Hard Word (17 page)

And that's why I hang around the kitchen so much because if Mum's looking frantic or Grandma Vera's playing up and Mum has to go off every second minute to sort things out and Philip's getting annoyed at all the interruptions, I can distract him and he'll sometimes end up talking to me, and I just go ‘Really? Really?', but I've got no idea what he's discoursing about except it's all
res
this and
res
that and Latin garbage and such, and when Mum comes back from settling Grandma Vera or Katie, she doesn't say anything to me but she just looks
Thank you, darling
at me, and Philip doesn't notice and keeps on talking to me for the next forty hours when he should be talking to Mum again because she's back.

‘I want you,' she's saying to me now, ‘to feel there's nothing you can't tell me. You may not
want
to tell me, that's different. None of us ever tells another person everything.'

‘Even you and Philip?'

‘Oh, yes. Even me and Philip.'

‘But that's different,' she says, ‘from feeling that you
could
tell me. That you'd trust me enough.'

‘I do, Mum,' I say. And I do, but I don't want things to get all wet and sentimental. I want to go up to my room and think about Friday, and Philip. I think Mum sees this. But she's in this soppy state now, and it's hard for people – once they have got into it – to get out.

‘It'd kill me,' she says, ‘if I thought my own daughters couldn't tell me what they were really feeling. Even about me, even if it's bad.'

We both think about this.

‘You know?' she says. And her eyes
are
going all soppy, I notice – until I say:

‘Do you think Grandma Vera feels the same way about you?'

‘What?' she says, and it's almost like I can actually see her mind coming back. Through her eyes. Mum's got these weird eyes, not like Katie's or mine at all. Hers are green or nearly yellow sometimes.

‘Grandma Vera,' I say again. ‘Do you think – ?'

‘You've got the strangest way, Laura, of turning things around. Did you know that?'

‘You've got to see the perspective of the Other,' I say.

‘
The perspective of the Other?
Where on earth –?'

‘Miss Temple,' I say. ‘It's in our Communication book. It's talking about culture really, seeing how other cultures see things. But when you were talking, I was thinking it could be about people as well. Individuals.'

‘And you're in Year 10,' she says. ‘My God, Laura –' she starts. And then she stops and says, ‘I've always tried to be honest with you about this. Grandma Vera and I – we've struggled with one another all our lives. I wanted to do so much when I was your age, and she'd never let me. I feel lots of things about her – including the fact that I now recognize a lot of it wasn't her fault – but I'd be lying to you if I said I could look at her and say, I love you. I know it's not right, I know it's a failing on my part …'

‘Yes,' I say, ‘but that's not what I asked. I asked whether
she
felt that way about you. That it'd kill her if she felt her own daughter couldn't trust her, couldn't tell her what she was feeling … ?'

When I do get up to my room, I find I'm not think about Philip or Friday at all. I'm thinking about Mum and Grandma Vera, and that's where it's all got so complicated and everything runs into everything else. And I keep wondering whether she and Grandma Vera would both be better off if she went in a home. I'm sure that's what Philip thinks, only he won't say. I think people should say, and trust one another because if you don't it makes it harder for the other person, because I sometimes think if Philip did come out and say it, Mum mightn't throw a spaz at all, and say, How could you?, but just be relieved. But he won't do it. And Mum is so determined. She won't even allow herself to think about it, not by herself – it would take a total crisis to make her do that. It's funny because she tells me she hopes I love her, without having to feel I have to, or faking it or anything, because you can't manufacture love, it's either there or it isn't, and for children or parents it goes back so far, even before children can think – it's like cats and dogs, I suppose, they know if they're loved even if they can't think about it – and I sort of agree with all that, but then I think, isn't that what Mum's doing herself … trying to manufacture love for Grandma Vera, only she can't see it because it's her and she's too close to it all?

And I wonder if she's doing it, doing everything she does, and doing it all perfectly – everything, like her teaching, and she's up half the night doing that, preparing and marking, and even doing some of it in bed because Philip always wants her to go to bed at the same time he does, and not just her teaching, but looking after Grandma Vera all the time and Katie and me, and Philip who wants her to pay attention to him all the time he's at home – I wonder whether she's doing all this so perfectly because she wants to, or because she's trying to hide the fact that she doesn't love Grandma Vera? And whether she's trying to hide it from Grandma Vera, or from us? Or whether it's just duty, or what? Because you'd think Grandma Vera would know, or maybe she does but she doesn't remember that she knows. And what would happen to Mum if all this stopped suddenly, if Grandma Vera just died one day? What would happen to Mum then? And I'm thinking about all these things and they go round and round, and my head hurts. And it's even time to go to bed because I've got swimming before school tomorrow, and I find I haven't thought about Philip at all.

And on top of all that, next day I still have Toni to face at school, but that turns out to be easy by comparison.

‘So,' she says, ‘what are you going to do afterwards?'

‘Oh, I don't know. We might just go back to our house for coffee.'

‘Ooooh –' she says. ‘Miss Mature 2010,' she says. We know each other so well, Toni and me.

And are you going to kiss him? Open?' she says. ‘Tongue?' she says.

‘
Toni
–'

‘Well, are you? You must have thought.'

‘I haven't actually,' I say. ‘I think it's better to let these things happen naturally. Let them evolve …' And I can't believe that it's me that's saying this. And for one strange moment, as Toni's mouth drops open for the second time in two days, I think it isn't me, it's someone else. And I can't stop her. Whoever she is. ‘Don't you?' I say, and start to walk off to the classroom.

And when I notice Toni's not beside me, I look back once, quickly, and I see her still standing there on the same spot by her locker and her mouth's not open any more but she looks sad and a bit lonely, there by herself, and I almost go straight back to her, but the bell's ringing and I think it won't hurt her to stew for a while. I'm trying to understand the look on her face, and I see it again when she goes past the window to her French class – I gave up French, I hated it, not because I don't like French, I do, but Mum can speak it much better than the teacher who's not French at all, so I learn it from her at home and do Chem. at school instead – and seeing Toni go past, looking in at me, I know suddenly what the look is. It's like you've known somebody all your life nearly, and one day they do something and they're not the person you thought they were at all but a complete stranger and you think you've lost them forever. And that's what Toni's doing with her face – appealing. For me to come back.
Laura?
she's saying.
Lolly?
And at the end of class, she must have worked it out too because I'm just walking to my locker and thinking about her, and all of a sudden from behind without anything being said, I know she's there, and then her hand grabs mine and we don't say anything for a bit, just walk to our lockers, together, before we look at one another.

‘Well, afterwards, then,' she says, still a bit sulky, but not really, and it's us together again, not strangers at all. ‘You'll have to tell me afterwards.'

And I hear the question in her voice.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘Afterwards.' And I remember what Mum said about nobody ever telling another person everything. Even her and Philip.

‘Because we're best friends,' she says.

‘Yes,' I say.

And we are.

Miriam

‘No, Farida,' I say. ‘Not
led
the egg. Laid it.'

‘Laid
it –?' she says. While I ponder the genius of her original suggestion:
The hen led the egg.

Into the world? I'm still thinking, as
Laid the egg
echoes in the room around me.

‘But you also say
laid the table
?' Farida wants to know. Her hands appealing to the rest of the class.

My God, I think then, this language – how does anyone ever manage to learn it? And thinking of this, I'm struck yet again at how lucky we are – how lucky I am, that is, and Philip, and Laura, and Katie – to have come into the world with the gift of this language, this English, already there, unearned, on our tongues – even Mother's, although in her case she's gradually handing it back – while the rest of the globe is forced to sweat and struggle just to fit their mouths around these impossible shapes. Sounds.
Lay, laid, laid. Slay, slew, slain
…

‘Maria,' I say, ‘can you give me a sentence using the past tense of
drink?'

Today it's irregular verbs. Last week it was irregular spellings and phonics:
off
and
enough,
and
cough
and
dough
and
plough.
I hadn't the heart to mention
hiccough
…

‘Of course,' Maria says without hesitation. ‘Yesterday …' she begins, rhythm and intonation blending like tequila and grenadine on her tongue. ‘Yesterday,' she says, ‘I drank my boyfriend over the table.'

‘
Under
the table actually, Maria. But
drank
is perfect. Okay, so let's see if you can give me the principal parts.'

‘
Drink
,' she says, less confidently now.
‘Drank, drunk.
‘Wonderful, Maria.'

This is a crazy way to teach a language, and an even crazier way to test it. But I have no say in the matter. They'll all be facing a progress test after the break, and Immigration – which has about as much idea of language learning as Mother does of fly-fishing – still has a say in its construction. And so we're revising.

‘All right,' I say to her then, ‘now what about
think
? Give me the principal parts of that.'

‘
Think
,' she says, in fact without thinking.
‘Thank, thunk
.'

The others look at me, caught between puzzlement and stifled laughter. Her answer is wrong somehow – they know that – and yet the sounds have a plausible logic to them.

‘No, Maria,' I say. ‘That's not right.'

‘I thought not,' she says, and the laughter finally breaks.

And this is Maria, God's gift to teachers, a mermaid among language learners. An hour later, and we are still slogging our way through this formal morass.

‘Shamila,' I say, as we limp towards coffee. ‘What about
to fly?
Can you give me the parts of
fly
?'

‘Fly, flied, flewn
,' she says, and my heart drags. Shamila would never use these forms in conversation or in her writing. She's no longer trusting her own knowledge and instinct, I realize, simply following abstract patterns of sound. And all the others are the same – today they're getting worse, not better. It is time to stop. ‘No, Shamila,' I say. ‘That's not correct. Sorathy?'

‘Fly, flew, flown. '

Ah, yes,' Shamila says then. ‘I remember.
Fly, flew, flown
is right,' she says. ‘But why?'

‘I have no idea,' I say. And the brows which have been knotted and furrowed for the best part of ninety minutes magically clear, and they burst once more into laughter – and mimicry. ‘I have no idea, I have no idea,' they repeat, happily, over and over, as we push towards the urn.

‘Well, Eleni,' I say, in the course of the coffee break, ‘are you ready to read your story for us today?'

‘Oh, yes,' she says, and I knot my fingers and pray that it will be something straightforward – some simple act of murder or pillage – after the agony that Maria's and Shamila's stories have put us through. I look at Eleni more closely and try to guess her age. She confounds me, but again I begin to worry. How old would she have been under the Colonels?

‘I will tell you today,' she says, ‘how we live in Greece –'

Thank God.

‘And about my mother,' she says.

Which sounds just about anodyne enough for the way I'm feeling this morning. Three days ago I found something in a drawer in our bedroom that should not have been there, and I've tossed and turned through each night since, worrying about how I could begin to talk to Philip about it. Because something else has also happened – or rather, has not happened – which means that I must.

And you, Mrs Miriam,' Eleni says. ‘You have been in Greece, I think?'

Yes, I have been in Greece. Twice.

The first time was for six days – a honeymoon snatched between terms of teaching.

‘You will love the islands,' Stavros had said.

Stavros, I learnt, had never actually travelled to the islands himself. Nor, on this occasion, did we. Though, strictly, I suppose, we did. The hydrofoil from Piraeus took all of forty minutes – ‘Why go further,' Stavros said, ‘after such a long flight?' And yes, the houses were white, the sea blue, the sky brilliant and, from our bedroom window at the Heraklion Hotel, we looked back across the strait to Galatas on the mainland, a full three hundred metres away.

Not that I saw anything much of Galatas, or even of the white houses on Poros, or the brilliant sky. Most of the six days was spent inside the hotel, most of them in one room – though in fact there were three rooms and a sunken bath – and mostly, in my case, stapled to the bed and waiting for Stavros to exhaust his missionary zeal, so that we could at least try something more inventive. I might just as well have waited for the Japanese to relinquish the Parthenon, or the British its Marbles.

Still I learnt something, even on that first trip. You can, I discovered – in the second-floor suite de luxe in the Hotel Heraklion on the island of Poros, two sets of rooms to the left of the main entrance and looking directly out across the strait to Argolis – fit exactly sixty-four plaster acanthus leaves, each measuring precisely eight centimetres across, tip to tip, along the moulded cornice of the ceiling running the length of the bedroom, and exactly forty-eight, widthwise, across a span of twelve feet … a grand total of two hundred and twenty-four.

This took me two days to discover and four to confirm. After a while the leaves tended to blur, or turn into onion domes, or even – on one occasion, when Stavros tired and lost his staple-gun rhythm – miniature bulls. Maths would have got me to the same answer much earlier, but I had done Languages, and the conversions from centimetres to feet were beyond me. Besides, I wanted to count each acanthus spear individually – if only out of solidarity with all the other women labouring in the classical world.

On the sixth day, four hours before the ferry left, I was released from the Heraklion, and fell in love. The island was mostly stone. Rocks, a few pines, some native grasses, low shrubs or heath – and a baking sun, so hot by midday that even the cicadas fell back into stupor and silence. But three miles from the cell of our room, on a plateau overlooking the island, we came on the ruins of a temple –
Shrine of Poseidon,
a sign said. The air here, amongst old trees, was fresh and clear after the stale, air-conditioned fug of our room. A breeze came up off the sea, and the blue limestone of the
stoas
and low walls glowed coolly in the afternoon sun. This, at last, was Greece, and I was, I convinced myself then and there, in love. I was also, I had no doubt, pregnant.

On the way back, through Piraeus, I met Mama Vassilopou-los, Yiayia Irini, who had come up from the village for the day to meet us. Meet me, the bride. Inspect. She came with Dimitros, Stavros' brother – and his opposite – a smiling, elfin creature. Who charmed.

‘My sister,' he said, and kissed me, while Stavros, locked hand in hand with Mama, stood and looked on, almost shyly at first. As if
they
were the newlyweds. ‘Come on,' Dimitros said, ‘take coffee,' and led me away towards Karaiskaki Square, with Mama and Stavros following in train.

Mama Vassilopoulos was as small as Dimitros, and I wondered where Stavros, a giant beside them, had come from. Genetically, that is. Years later, in their home village, I saw a photo of Stavros' father, and the mystery only deepened. He was perhaps only forty in the photo, but small, burnt, already wizened, dressed in cheap plastic shoes, three-quarter socks barely covering his shins and a cotton shirt, and squinting, unsmiling, into a blinding sun.

‘How old was he?' I asked Stavros. ‘When he died?'

‘Dunno,' he mumbled. Not wanting to share anything of his family, or his inner world, by then. ‘Forty-nine, fifty maybe.'

‘Fifty
–?' I said, peering at the hollow cheeks, the gnarled, ropey hands. ‘What did he work at?'

‘The vines,' Stavros flamed briefly. ‘For nothing. For shit wages. He was crazy.'

Mama Vassilopoulos, I learnt on that first visit, had no English at all. And few teeth. In fact that's what I mostly remember about her from that time: her desperate need of dentistry. She couldn't have been old either – Stavros, her eldest, was only twenty-six, after all, and Dimitros two years younger – and yet already the sides of her mouth were falling in, her cheeks collapsing. Was that the reason, I wondered, why she rarely smiled, indeed opened her mouth at all, even to her sons, just sat and watched, nodded sometimes when I spoke to her, made gestures with my hands, or when Dimitros brought coffee to the table – though it was Stavros who put sugar in her cup, stirred and put it in front of her. She nodded then, in approval – or recognition – I have no idea which. And went on watching. Until I became uneasy, and spent most of my time joking with Dimitros who was playful and attentive. To his new sister. While Stavros glowered and ducked his head to catch the few words Mama Vassilopoulos whispered to him – about me? – and helped her with her coffee and shortbread, almost to the point of consuming them himself.

‘How old is she?' I asked Stavros on the flight back, but he was evasive and sulky. ‘How old is
Meetera?
What did she say about me?' I wanted to know. But again he wouldn't answer, and I wondered whether I'd failed some kind of test. Having no language in common with Mama Vassilopoulos, I had no idea what she'd thought, of me, of us. And the gloomier and more withdrawn Stavros became, the more I realized that the same was true about him as well. It was the fact that he
was
so different, so exotic, so far outside my own circle, that had drawn me to him in the first place. Stavros was an instructor – weights, fitness, swimming, polo – in the university gym, the son – I smugly told my girlfriends, who looked on, in envy, who warned, gossiped – of Greek peasants from a small village in Attica.

Greece
at that time was a notion we were all in love with – its sun, its islands, its food, its olives and wine, its architecture, its men. Its Zorbas, its romantic men. Its visceral, authentic life, its
peasants.
But, behind it all, its men. Sex. Their sex. Which was the core of the life I had begun to lead with Stavros in Sydney, over the summer at the end of university – a life of beaches, of surf and naked sex. Above all, the taste of salt on hot skin – the perilous suck of that. Three months, and I'd lost my mind and could have lived on the beaches north of the city and been fucked, hourly, for the rest of my life. But –

‘You'll have to help me,' my mother had called me back from the beaches. From any thoughts I might be harbouring of escaping with Stavros. Living with him. Marrying him. ‘I can't manage your father by myself.'

She wouldn't let him go into hospital, even for that last week, wouldn't think of it, when, deep down, all three of us knew he'd have been so much more comfortable, even happier there. But that would have ruined her sense of her self – as martyr to her family, to her class and caste. And so she persecuted him with care and what passed in her mind – and, who knows, maybe even in his – for kindness. She did her duty by him, till the very end.

For the last two months of his life, I moved back home, saw Stavros only occasionally at nights when Dad slept and Mother could manage for a few hours by herself. Gradually the walls closed back in around me. When he died, without once in the final weeks saying Aloe Vera', in his old joking way, I was aware he was taking his own tiny revenge.

Afterwards I prepared to move out again, but there was now the problem of Mother – how was she to live? where? Brian, my older brother, was no help. He'd escaped North long ago, and he scuttled back to his own problems there as soon as the funeral was over. The longer I delayed my own actual moment of departure, the more I fell into Mother's power again, and the more my own will dissipated. ‘Poor Bill,' she'd say, ‘poor Dad, I know how much he wanted to be proud of you. Make something of yourself, Miriam,' she'd say. ‘For his sake.' And the emotion of his death was still so strong that I almost believed her, and it took all the effort of will that remained to force myself to remember not the myth she was now busily constructing, but the years of humiliation, of belittlement. Of him, my father. And it was in a fit of anger and revolt over that – though the argument itself was about staying out all night – that I finally prised myself free. And Stavros was the lever. Without him, I might never have made it.

It's only now, sixteen years later, in a second marriage, with my own children, and Mother herself dying, that I begin to gain some inkling of insight into Mother and Dad's lives, their quarrels – about anything, and nothing. About money, about the people they saw or didn't, about tastes in food or drink, about who washed and who dried – I knew they were always about something else but I could never see what lay between the lines, or understand the
non sequiturs
of their speech. As a girl, all I knew was that their speech made no sense, and yet it did to them – and always, I knew, Mother held the whip hand.