Send Me A Lover (12 page)

The family and I step off the bus, into the early evening sunshine. The bus doesn’t pull away immediately and I am powerfully aware of the fact that he is still there.

‘Glad you put Costas in his place,’ the husband says to me. ‘Smarmy git. And that was a downright disgrace in that restaurant! Them not letting you sit where you wanted! We were going to ask you to sit with us. But then you sat with them fellas, and next time we looked, you were gone.’

The bus is going to pull away. I bumble some sort of smiling explanation that I sense they’re waiting for, and my eyes go back inside the bus again.

The Englishman is watching me, as though he has been watching me all the time. Our eyes lock, and neither of us looks away. And it surprises me what I see in his face. It’s a long, unsuppressed look of attraction. The sort you can give to a strange woman in Greece, when you’re married, when you know you’ll never see her again.

There are no real paths to the Kiritsakis Olive Oil Company. Only very rocky, dry soil that looks well trodden by enormous tires. Mam and I get off the tour bus, relieved that it’s cooler today.

This day trip sounded like it’d be a good one—a visit to a real olive grove and a chance to see some of the true Zante. We all pile off the bus and find we’re in the middle of a hilly, olive treed, barren-earthed nowhere that has a single, fairly large apricot-coloured stone house that dominates the landscape with its sense of peeling, decrepit un-lived-in-ness. Instead of weathered Greek men hauling olives in sackfuls, there are about three charmless tanker trucks parked outside of the house.

But it’s who is talking to the three charmless tanker truck drivers that makes our jaws drop. Just as we notice him, he notices us. It must be the hats; we’re about the only two wearing them. My mother sends me three sharp elbow digs. ‘Oh… Be still my beating heart!’

‘This is going from bad to disastrous,’ I say. But I’m wondering why my own heart is ticking fast now.

Within moments he is walking over to us, and then he drops two kisses on our pretty tour guide’s cheek, and they exchange a few words in Greek, his eyes sliding playfully from me, to my mam.

‘Do you think he ever shaves?’ I ask her, while he chats to Stella. He’s sexier than I remembered him. Riskier-looking. More Greek.

As though he hears me, he rubs a hand over his jaw and looks at me with twinkling eyes. ‘The ladies with the hats.’

‘We don’t always wear them,’ my mam tells him. ‘Not the same ones, I mean. We have different ones for different occasions. If I’d known you had a thing for hats, we’d have packed our whole collection.’

His eyes coast over her, like a man who appreciates anything this feminine, no matter what age. But then he says, ‘You’ve come on the tour. Good idea! Well, I hope you enjoy it. There is much to see.’ And then he turns and looks as though he’s going to walk away. Mam and I exchange,
don’t let him leave!
looks, than he stops, mid-step, and turns around again. ‘Or, there is always another option. I could ask Stella if I could steal two ladies from her and I could show you around myself. Give you a private tour.’ He says it matter-of-factly, and there’s something very appealing about his casual demeanour.

‘Corr!’ my mother leans into me. ‘I’d like the private tour.’

He studies me with a hint of wickedness in his eyes, like he might have heard her.

‘How do we know to trust you? You might be a mad Greek rapist,’ I tell him.

‘Oh, we can hope!’ my mother says under her breath.

‘I promise I am to be trusted.’ He looks at our tour guide. ‘Ask Stella.’

Stella flirts with him a bit too cosily. And I bet that, whatever they’re saying, it’s to do with the fact that he most certainly isn’t to be trusted.

He extends a hand to my mam and then to me. ‘Georgios! Your personal tour guide for the day.’ His hand is big and warm and leaves an imprint on mine that sends pleasant little waves through me.

‘I hope we can afford you,’ my mam flirts from under the brim of her enormous hat. ‘And you might as well know, we’re English so we don’t leave very generous tips.’

Those raisin eyes twinkle like wildfire.

‘Vivien,’ she says. ‘Or Viv if you’d like to call me that. And this is –’

‘Angela,’ he supplies. He looks at me cryptically.

‘Don’t you have work to do?’ I ask him, wondering how he can suddenly afford to take the day off. ‘Won’t your boss be a little peeved if you just go AWOL?’

Before he can answer, Stella says, ‘One of the perks of
owning
Greece’s fifth largest olive oil export business is this type of thing.’

Now I do feel like a fool.

‘Give me a moment.’ He holds up a hand, walks backwards. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ And then he strides off purposefully in the direction of the truckers, and I notice he’s really only average height, but being lean and long-legged, he appears taller.

‘
Today I met the man you’re going to marry!
’ My mam quietly sings in my ear.

‘Get out! Why on earth would you say something like that?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel it. Just like I did when you brought Jonathan home that first time.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah! But Jonathan and I got engaged during that visit, didn’t we?’

‘Are you scoffing at me again?’

I narrow my eyes at her. ‘What? Mocking the afflicted, you mean? Me? Never.’

She gives me a withering look, and goes back to marvelling at Georgios as he talks to the men. ‘Be still, be still, be still my beating heart!’

‘Oh shut up, you’ve said that already.’

Stella tells us that Georgios will have to have us back here, in front of the house, no later than five, if we are to join the rest of the group for the scenic ride back to the hotel. I must say, we get some very curious looks from the other day-trippers as we step out of the crowd and follow Georgios.

‘I’m having a good gloat, personally. Getting this special treatment. I bet they’re all wondering what we’ve got that they haven’t!’ She chuckles. ‘Oh, I love a good gloat. There’s nothing like it.’ She thrusts a kiss on my cheek. ‘I’m having a very nice holiday now. Are you?’

I swat her off. ‘What? You mean because of him?’

‘No! Girl!’ She sends an elbow through my ribs. ‘Because of you dear. All because of you.’ She digs in her handbag, takes out her compact mirror, peers in it, and twists her hat round to a more coquettish angle.

~ * * * ~

Georgios Kiritsakis knows a thing or two about olive trees. ‘In Greek legend, Athena—is goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon—is god of the sea—they two claim a city as theirs. There is big fight… The gods said that the deity who could leave behind the most important thing for the people would win… ‘ He looks at us to see if we’re following him. We are. He is melody to our ears. He smiles, a touch vainly, like he knows we’re really not listening to a word he’s saying. ‘Athena, well she produce the olive tree, symbol of peace and plenty. Poseidon, he produce a horse, symbol of strength and courage. So who win?’ He looks from my face to my mother’s. ‘The gods gave the city to Athena. And why? Because they think that the olive would be of more lasting use to humans than war.’ Georgios’ white Suzuki Grand Vitara navigates its way through dense terraces of olive groves, climbing higher and higher. He drives like a man who could feel his way blindfolded through these hills, swinging his gaze from the road, to my mother, to me in the back, as he talks. My mother chuckles skittishly and hangs onto her hat as we go over bumps so big they make your jaws slam together. From time to time she sends me her delighted, conspiratorial look over her shoulder, and I snap a photo, catching the exhilaration and young-womanliness in her eyes.

‘I’ve heard that story before,’ I tell him. ‘About how Athens got its name. It’s in all the tourist guidebooks.’ Why is it that when I meet a man I like, I get the urge to be contrary with them? It happened that way with Jonathan, when my friend who introduced us said he was a lawyer. Maybe that might have made other girls throw themselves at him, but not me. I was playing it ever so cool. The act didn’t last long.

‘Speak for yourself!’ My mam glares at me. ‘I haven’t heard that story before!’ Her gaze goes back to eating up Georgios. ‘I think it’s a charming story. It’s incredible to imagine that, thousands of years ago, the big powers of the day had the sense to see that war is a poor solution to any problem, which really does make you wonder if we really have evolved or just got more stupid.’

He looks at her, smiles. ‘I think we’ve definitely got more stupid.’ Then he looks at me again in the back seat, and there are touches of handsomeness to him, even though the face is too tanned and raw to be called anything as boring as good-looking. He comes to a sudden halt and swivels himself so he can more easily us both. The sun on his stubbly jaw makes it even more dark and shadowy, giving him a dangerous quality that contradicts his gentlemanliness and reserve.

‘You know, the ancient Greeks, they always think that the olive tree is immortal. It can survive almost any weather, and even if it dies, you will see new shoots quickly grow… The olive tree never lets go of life. It clings to the soil, to eternity, to its instinct to keep growing to the sun.’

‘Where did you learn such great English?’ I ask him. He has a big bump just below the bridge of his nose, as though it was once broken. I can see him as a boy: the first in there starting the scraps.

‘In school. And then I learn in travel. I work in America. I go often to London. All in business you know. The business of olive oil.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ my mother is oblivious to the temptress eyes she’s sending him. ‘I mean, your story about the olive tree. Maybe immortality of the olive tree was the gods’ gift to this earth.’

‘I think it was.’ His eyes hold my mam’s for a long, charmed while, and I’m thinking,
Yeah ma, where did you get this sudden brilliance about immortality and the gods from?
Then he shifts the jeep into gear again. There’s a violent scratch on his hand that runs almost the length of his index finger, which looks like it must have been painful, and I wonder how he got it.

‘How on earth do you collect all these olives?’ I ask him, astonished by the chaotic tangle of trees. ‘Do you have special machines?’

‘Machines?’ He waves the scratched hand out over his pride and joy. ‘No. This is all the work of hardworking men and women who have olives in their blood.’

‘Of course they don’t have machines!’ my mam throws a scathing glance over her shoulder, at me. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

I think I see Georgios smile.

‘But surely a machine
would make harvesting more efficient? Then if you harvested more olives you could sell more oil and then people would make more money.’ I sound so practical, so North American. The words don’t belong here, in this place. It strikes me, with a surprising disappointment, that neither do I.

‘We harvest what the trees yield. But machines don’t make people more efficient. People make people efficient. People work hard when others work hard, when it is in their blood. Machines make people not able to appreciate. That is all.’

My mam’s gaze steals over his profile once his attention is back on the road. He glances affectionately at her, as though he feels he’s being watched, and I take a quick photo, capturing their profiles, and her smitten eyes over him. I do believe my mother’s in love!

They go on talking between themselves—Georgios seems to find her scintillating conversation—and I’m happy to tune out and just look at the view: the true Zante. But if I lived here, wouldn’t I get bored with this rhythm of life? Wouldn’t I pine for Vancouver traffic and frustrating one-way streets? Lattes at Artigiano’s? Speeches to write, and rain, lots of rain, and falling apple blossoms that litter Granville Street in the spring? ‘Isn’t Italian olive oil supposed to be the best, though?’ I ask him, picking up on their conversation now.

He briefly meets my eyes again through the mirror. ‘It is Italian oil that you buy in great quantity abroad. But here is a fact not well known: Seventy-five percent of Greek oil is exported to Italy—it is tempting for poor farmers to sell to the Italians for quick money. So the Italians buy our excellent oil, and some of it will be packaged as if it comes from Italy.’

‘The scheming Eye-ties!’ spits my mother.

Those C brackets make way for a broad smile, and he laughs like my mother is the best thing since feta cheese. ‘Well, they have a reputation for having the best olives, so they use that. And who can blame them? Everybody has to earn a living. Mediterranean life is not always easy. But when it comes to quality, there is no such better virgin olive oil than Greek virgin olive oil.’