The Years That Followed Read online

  This Calista has also understood. Maroulla shoots her daughter-in-law a look. The look says: It’s not worth it. Say nothing. But Calista can’t help herself. She feels indignant on her daughter’s behalf—on her own behalf, and on Alexandros’s. So what if all the grandchildren are girls? Isn’t Petros lucky to have such a healthy brood? Calista looks towards her husband, about to beg him to respond, but he turns away from her for just a moment and looks at his father. His face is shadowed by something Calista cannot read.

  Maroulla says something Calista doesn’t catch, and Alexandros turns around towards her. Then he begins to translate his mother’s words.

  “Such a lovely little girl,” Maroulla is saying. Her hand cups the baby’s soft cheek. “Have you decided on a name for her?”

  “Yes,” Calista says. She glances over at Alexandros and attempts a smile. “I wanted something Irish for her—or at least Celtic. My mother called me after someone in her family, from generations back, to remind me that I’m half-Spanish. I want our daughter to know that she is part Irish. I think we all need to be reminded of where we come from.”

  Maroulla nods and smiles as Alexandros translates Calista’s words for her. She says something softly to her son and he bends down at last, touches his new daughter on the forehead, and smiles. “Her name is Imogen,” he says. He kisses the baby and takes Calista’s hands in his. “She is wonderful,” he says. “And so are you.”

  At that moment, Calista is filled with love for her husband. It is a love that feels relieved, grateful. This baby will make everything better.

  * * *

  When Calista had first come to Cyprus almost seven months earlier, a new and glowing bride, she’d been thrilled with the excitement and optimism of this new place.

  Soon after she arrived, Alexandros took her away from his parents’ house for a whole, delightful five days.

  “Come,” he said. “We will spend our honeymoon touring the villages of Cyprus. I want to show my island to you. I have booked us a hotel in Lefkara.” And he smiled his brilliant smile. “Lefkara is special. You will soon see why.”

  During those days, the places she and Alexandros visited together cast a spell on Calista. The sun shone out of that blue, clear light that filled an enormous sky. Each village intensified the sense of ancient magic that she felt was still alive all around her.

  Lefkara was a tumble of old houses, the local stone glowing and warm to the touch. Crumbling steps led up and down the narrow arched streets; cafes nestled in the shadow of hills. Everywhere there were huge terracotta amphorae, the bright red blooms of poppies and geraniums spilling out of their open mouths.

  Women still made lace in Lefkara, and Calista was reminded of her grandmother in that brooding apartment in Madrid, her elderly head bent over the intricate design of the family’s tablecloths, centerpieces, christening robes. Here, too, Calista could see elderly women bent over their tasks, their work delicate, the colors light, the patterns exquisite.

  Walking hand in hand with Alexandros in the evenings, Calista saw her husband’s island as an enchanted place. Ireland seemed gray and flat and dull in comparison. She loved the exotic growth, the lushness of color everywhere. It was as though life here was lived in harmony, with the volume of some internal music turned up.

  * * *

  But all at once, out of nowhere, homesickness fells Calista. A sense of loss assaults her with a savagery that leaves her reeling.

  After their honeymoon, back once again under Alexandros’s parents’ roof, nothing is familiar. The food feels oily and strange; the heat is hostile. Ari and Spyros, along with their wives, Eva and Dorothea, have all returned to Athens, and their absence makes the large house feel empty. Although Eva and Dorothea have only a little English, they are warm and funny in a way that Maroulla and Petros are not. And they gossip, furiously, about their husbands’ family.

  From them, Calista understands that her parents-in-law are anxious that their eldest son marry. “Yiannis is old,” Eva tells Calista, shaking her head. Her brown eyes are large with the sincerity of her amazement. “He almost forty. He must have wife.”

  “Why doesn’t he?” Calista asks. She has wondered this herself.

  Dorothea shrugs. “He work. Too much.”

  And Eva shakes her head. “No. He does not find good wife here.”

  Calista is puzzled. “Do you mean nobody is good enough for him?”

  Eva brightens. “Yes! No woman good enough.”

  Calista grows more curious about Yiannis. She wonders what sort of man he is. Alexandros had been stung that his eldest brother had not attended their wedding.

  “Isn’t he in Asia somewhere?” Calista had asked. “It’s a long way to come at such short notice.”

  But Alexandros would not be appeased.

  When Ari and Spyros return to Athens with their families, Calista misses their noisy, welcome distraction. Alexandros is gone from early morning until late in the evening: all day, every day.

  Maroulla is occasionally kind in that casual, offhand way she has, once the two women are alone together. But she, too, has her own life, with friends and family and comings and goings that do not include Calista.

  By the end of September, Calista feels that she is the only one without a life of her own. And she still has at least four months to wait for her baby to arrive.

  During the long afternoons and the restless nights, Calista dreams of the cool, familiar rooms of her Dublin home.

  * * *

  When Philip’s letter arrives, Calista cries for a full morning. Her twin is a good correspondent. He writes regularly, affectionately, and his news is lively and witty:

  Oxford is astonishing. I can’t believe my luck. I’m settling in well, and Michaelmas term begins in a week or so. I’ve already met some of my lecturers, and I’m in the college residence with a couple of guys who seem decent enough. They tease me about my Irish accent, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. I can’t wait to dive headlong into philosophy—I feel as though I have found my way at last.

  I miss you, Cally—and I know that the parents do, too. But we will come and see you as soon as the little one is born. I find it hard to believe—but happily so—that I am about to become an uncle!

  Don’t forget to send me photos—I think where you are is a lot warmer and sunnier than where I am.

  Love always from your “better half”—you once called me that. But no more, I think: I am so happy that you now have Alexandros in your corner.

  Write very soon.

  Philip

  Her twin’s letter makes Calista feel suddenly suffocated. No longer by the heat, but by the oppressive smallness of her life. She feels hemmed in by her parents-in-laws’ house. She needs to escape with her own new family to a place that is theirs: a home just for her and Alexandros and their baby. But Alexandros gets impatient with her every time she brings it up. After the last time, she doesn’t mention it again.

  “Not yet, Calista. I keep telling you. My father says I must prove myself before I can have a house.” Alexandros had looked at her then, and something in her face seemed to make him relent. He sat at the table across from her and took her hand. “You have to try, too, you know? It upsets my mother to see you so sad all the time.”

  “I know,” she said. “I just can’t help it.”

  She misses having Philip for company during these long and empty days; she keeps seeing his face at the airport on that July afternoon as they’d all said good-bye. Calista even misses having her parents to fight with, and she misses Maggie. Maggie, that fund of information and conversation; that knowledge of a world way beyond Calista’s horizon; all that easy, familiar companionship. But above all, she misses a life she is unable to define, a life suspended somewhere beyond her reach.

  Maroulla speaks some sentences of halting English, Calista has little Greek, and somet
imes the strain of daylong silences drives her to the bedroom that she and Alexandros share immediately after lunch, pleading exhaustion. It is easier than trying to make herself understood.

  As Calista lies on her bed during these slow afternoons, windows shuttered against the sun, the air heavy with heat, she begins to wonder if this is what her mother meant.

  If this is to be her bed for the rest of her life, the bed she’s made for herself after all. The bed she now must lie on.

  pilar

  Madrid, 1966

  * * *

  Sister Florencia has said something, but Pilar hasn’t heard her. The young nun’s eyes are troubled and the words she speaks sound soft and compassionate, but Pilar has no wish to understand what she’s saying.

  “I’m afraid there is no doubt, Pilar. You are pregnant. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen weeks—have you not felt any quickening?” Sister Florencia places one hand on Pilar’s abdomen. She looks anxious.

  Pilar takes her hands away from her ears. It’s no use trying to pretend any longer. Petros told her so many times not to worry, that he knew about such things. That he would never let this happen. What is she going to tell him? What will he say?

  At first, Pilar has denied the evidence. Periods can be erratic for all sorts of reasons, as she knows from her experience in the past. Perhaps she is run-down again, tired, anemic; it happens. And it has been a particularly busy few months, with some changes of tenants, some unpleasantness about a flood, the need to call the police to intervene in a loud and bitter domestic dispute. So yes, that’s probably all it is. Overworked, exhausted, lacking in iron. Her mother had always been a great believer in iron.

  “Quickening?” she asks now, uncertain. It feels like an ancient word, as old as life itself. Although Pilar cannot remember having heard it before, she suddenly understands exactly what it means.

  Sister Florencia nods. “Yes—just very faint movements, like fluttering.”

  Pilar rests her head in her hands. She cannot look Sister Florencia in the eye. Perhaps three weeks ago, at the cinema with Maribel on one side and Alicia on the other, Pilar had felt faint but discernible tremors deep inside her somewhere: a sense of the flapping of tiny wings. Given where she was seated, she could not show panic. Instead, she sat still, rigid, her eyes on the screen, oblivious to the comedy that so delighted the audience. Pilar can’t even remember the film’s name anymore. All she remembers is that it was one of those nonsensical comedies about love triangles, the sort of film so beloved of Maribel and Alicia. Something about love’s enchantment, Pilar realizes now, bitterly.

  Even then, she knew. And the past week or so has confirmed it. The growing tautness of the skin on her breasts; the tiny appearance of fine blue veins; the annoying swelling of her ankles. And then there were those tiny shiftings, always increasing in intensity, that kept her alert and restless at night as she waited for them to happen again, needing to be sure they were real. With each agitated hour, her terror grew. It was desperation that drove her, eventually, to seek out Sister Florencia’s clinic. At least there, she knew, she would be treated with kindness.

  Petros has not been to Madrid for more than three months. His business has taken him elsewhere, he says. He telephoned Pilar once, recently; his voice was soft, apologetic.

  “I am sorry, truly I am. I have some pressing business matters to deal with at the moment. I don’t know when I’ll be in Madrid again. I will let you know immediately, of course, if things change. But right now, there are some difficulties that demand my attention.”

  What about me? she wanted to cry. There are some difficulties here, too. What about me?

  Pilar could feel her panic grow, its fingers closing steadily around her throat. She couldn’t tell him her suspicions, not over the phone. In all their time together, Petros has never once told Pilar that he loves her. Despite her resolve, Pilar has told him, many times, but has promised herself—and Petros—that she will never make any demands.

  The rational, adult part of Pilar understands whenever Petros reminds her that he is, after all, a married man, a family man, that he is not free to love Pilar in the way that she would wish.

  But she had hoped. God, how she had hoped.

  Pilar clutched the receiver to her ear, trying not to panic. Then she was angry—not so much at him as at herself. Just another stupid woman, she raged. How could she not have taken her mother’s words to heart? To live her life unbeholden to any man.

  She knew that she must not make Petros angry with her now. If she made him angry, she might never see him again. Her voice, when she heard it, was both strained and shrill. “For how long do you think? I mean, how long will your business take to fix?”

  There was a silence. When he spoke, Pilar could hear the disapproval in her lover’s tone. “It will take as long as it takes,” he said.

  There was another, lengthy silence. Then Petros spoke again, his voice kinder this time. “I know you are disappointed. So am I. I will come back to Madrid just as soon as I can. In the meantime, you have my private number. I should be back in Cyprus at the end of this month. Call me then and we’ll see.”

  “Pilar?”

  She looks now into the kind eyes of Sister Florencia. “Yes.” She can hear the heartbeat of defeat that pulses low and steady beneath the surface of that single word.

  “I can find you somewhere, a place where you can have your baby.” Sister Florencia takes her hand and grips it firmly. “I will help you find the courage. Afterwards, there are many good families looking for children, Catholic families who can give your baby a good home.”

  Sister Florencia is offering Pilar a solution of sorts. A solution that is still some months into the future, a very different future from the one Pilar has been imagining, but nonetheless, she can feel the flood of relief it brings with it. Perhaps, just perhaps, her life might not be over forever because of this. She might be able to survive after all.

  But for one fractured moment, Pilar wavers. A baby. Perhaps a baby—his baby, after all—might sway Petros. He had spoken often to Pilar about duty, about responsibility and loyalty. Might his own child—albeit one born out of wedlock—be enough to lure her lover back to her?

  And what if she were to keep the child, anyway, Petros or no Petros? Pilar imagines the sudden, defiant shape of the baby in her arms, the sweet weight of its downy head, the warm softness of its skin. She shakes herself, wrenching the thought away. A sob struggles at the base of her throat, smothered in something gritty, like sand. No. Impossible. Completely. Impossible.

  Señor Gómez. The tenants, the neighbors, the people at the market. The priest. Maribel and Alicia. Petros. Even her family. The shame of it all. Pilar shudders.

  She will tell none of them. Not ever. Particularly Petros. She will plow her own furrow, just as Mamá had always told her.

  “What do you think?” Florencia is waiting.

  “Will I be able to keep on working in the meantime?”

  “Of course. You are tall; you are very slim—your clothes can help to hide it for months. But there is a clinic you must go to right away—I’ll give you the address. It’s for—”

  “Fallen women,” Pilar says grimly. And she remembers Sister María-Angeles and her face on the day Pilar had stormed out of the hostel. Won’t she be pleased? Pilar thinks. Another arrogant, sinful, wayward girl finally brought to book by God. Pilar no longer believes in God, but nonetheless, she is impressed by His capacity for revenge, or punishment, or whatever it is that brings a small life such as hers to a sudden full stop.

  Sister Florencia looks at her. “No. Please don’t think of it like that. The clinic is for you—for your health and the baby’s. This will be the greatest gift you can give your child.”

  Pilar’s eyes fill at last. Baby. Child. Yours. Pilar doesn’t know if she can bear it. She fights for control. When she speaks, her voice is steady. “I don’t
want anyone to know,” she says. “Nobody at the hostel. I’ll go to the clinic and I’ll go wherever you say to have the baby, just not there. You have to promise me.”

  Sister Florencia nods. “I promise. I promise I will keep your secret for you. Come to me for help at any time. I will never turn you away.” She hands Pilar a piece of paper.

  Pilar wants to thank her, but she can’t. She feels that if she opens her mouth, she will howl. Instead, she glances down at the address Sister Florencia has handed her. An address in one of Madrid’s poorest barrios. A piece of paper that has been many times folded, just like the one Mamá had given her almost ten years ago, its surface ghosted with flour. How long ago all of that feels, that day when she’d fled Torre de Santa Juanita for Madrid in search of a better life.

  A life that was not to be an echo of her mother’s. A life constructed only by Pilar. A life that was not to be defined by any man.

  Pilar puts the piece of paper in her handbag. She does not want to think about Mamá right now, or about her escape to Madrid, or about Señor Gómez. She most particularly does not want to think about Petros, about all the parallels that are looming up at her like the hard, straight tracks of a railway.

  My life has not been an escape after all, she thinks. Just the same old journey as my mother’s, begun at a different station but ending up in the same place.

  Right now, those metal tracks are bars that have constructed a cell, a prison of Pilar’s own unhappy making.

  * * *

  At the end of September, Pilar summons the courage to call Petros’s private line. She knows he is never at the office in August. He ­retreats—his word—to his family and his home in the mountains, somewhere called Platres. Pilar prays he will answer his phone.

  He does, and his voice is confiding and regretful: “I have to tell you, Pilar, that my youngest son, Alexandros, got some young girl pregnant. It was not wholly unexpected, but my wife and I are most unhappy with the situation.”