As the pair stood at the altar, the priest crowned them with the woven halos of flowers and grasses. There was absolute silence in the church and the crowd standing in the sunshine outside were hushed as they strained to hear the words.
‘The servant of God, Maria, is crowned to the servant of God, Nikolaos . . . In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever unto the ages. O Lord our God, crown them with your glory.’
They all then listened as the priest read from the familiar marriage texts, St Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and to St John. There was nothing hurried or perfunctory about the service. This was the most solemn and binding of ceremonies and its duration reinforced its significance to the two who stood at the altar. Over an hour later, the priest drew the proceedings to a close.
‘Let us pray for the groom and the bride. That they may have mercy, life, peace, health and salvation. May Christ, our true God, who by his presence in Cana of Galilee approved the dignity of marriage, have mercy upon us, O Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us.’
A resounding ‘Amen’ reverberated through the church and finally the deed was done. Sugared almonds were distributed to everyone in the congregation and all of those who had stood outside. They were a symbol of the abundance and joy that everyone hoped Maria and Kyritsis would now enjoy. There was not a soul who wished them anything else.
Giorgis had sat in the front pew of the church with Eleftheria and Alexandros Vandoulakis. It was a public symbol of their reconciliation, and between them sat little Sofia, charmed and excited by the pageantry and colour of the wedding. For Giorgis there was a strong sense of a new beginning and a certainty that all the woes of the past were firmly behind him. It was the first time in years that he had felt at peace.
When Maria emerged, crowned, with her silver-haired groom, the crowd cheered and then trailed after them in the sunshine to the taverna, where the merrymaking would begin. The feast that Stephanos laid on for all the guests that night was munificent. Wine flowed and corks popped from bottles of tsikoudia long into the night. Under the stars, the musicians plucked and bowed until the dancers’ feet were numb. There were no fireworks.
They spent the first two nights of their marriage in a grand hotel overlooking the harbour in Agios Nikolaos but were both eager to begin the next stage of their lives. Maria had been to the house which was to be their marital home on several occasions in the two weeks leading up to the wedding. It would be the first time she had lived in a big bustling town and she relished the prospect of this change. The house was on a steep hill close to the hospital and had a wrought-iron balcony and floor-to-ceiling windows, as did all the others in the street. It was a tall, narrow house with two flights of stairs, and the paintwork was the palest aquamarine.
Dr Kyritsis himself was new to the town, so it did not attract gossip when he brought home his bride, and the place was sufficiently far from Maria’s old home for her to be able to start afresh. No one knew of her medical history here, except her husband.
Fotini was the first to visit, with Mattheos and baby Petros, and Maria proudly showed her round.
‘Look at these huge windows!’ exclaimed Fotini. ‘And you can see the sea over there. And look, boys, there’s even a little garden!’
The house was grander and more spacious than any in Plaka and the furniture less rough and ready than the village style which most people still had at that time. The kitchen too was a good deal more sophisticated than the one Maria had been brought up with: for the first time in her life she had a fridge, a modern cooker and an electricity supply that did not suddenly shut down with no notice.
For a few months, life could not have been more perfect. Maria loved her new home on the hill near the hospital, and soon it was decorated to her taste and hung with the samplers she had embroidered as well as framed photos of her family. One morning in early September, however, she heard the bell of their newly installed telephone. It was Giorgis, who rarely rang her, so she knew immediately that something was amiss.
‘It’s Eleftheria,’ he said in his usual blunt manner. ‘She passed away this morning.’
In the past few months Giorgis had grown close to the Vandoulakis couple, and Maria could detect the sorrow in his voice. There had been no warning of illness and no signs of the stroke which had taken the elderly woman so suddenly and unexpectedly. The funeral was held a few days later, and it was only at the end of the ceremony, when Maria saw her little niece hand in hand with her two grandfathers, that the reality of the situation dawned on her. Sofia needed a mother.
She could not shake the thought off. It followed her, stuck to her like the spines of a thistle clinging to wool. The little girl was only just three years old - what was to happen to her? Suppose Alexandros died too? He was at least ten years older than Eleftheria had been so it was perfectly possible that this could happen, and she knew Giorgis would never manage to look after her on his own. As for her father, in spite of Andreas’s plea for leniency at the trial, the judge had passed a harsh sentence that ensured he would not be out of prison until Sofia was at least sixteen.
As they sipped their glasses of wine in the semi-darkness of the Vandoulakis drawing room in Elounda, a room that seemed purpose-made for mourning, with its forbidding family portraits and heavy furniture, the solution seemed more and more perfect. This was not the time to discuss it with anyone, although she now ached to share it. It felt as though the walls themselves murmured as people adopted the low, restrained tones of those who felt that even the clink of a glass might ruin the strict sobriety of the atmosphere. All the while Maria wanted to stand on a chair and make an announcement about what she wanted to do, but she had to wait an hour or so until it was time to leave before confiding in Kyritsis. Before they were even in their car she seized his arm.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ she blurted out. ‘It’s about Sofia.’
There was no need for her to say any more. Kyritsis had been mulling over the very same possibility.
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘The little girl has lost two mothers now, and who knows how long Alexandros will live after this?’
‘He was devoted to Eleftheria and he’s heartbroken. I can’t imagine how life will be for him without her.’
‘We need to think about this carefully. It might be the wrong time to suggest that Sofia comes to live with us, but being with her grandfather won’t be a long-term solution, will it?’
‘Why don’t we go and talk to him about it in a few days’ time?’
Only two days later, having telephoned ahead to let him know they would like to come, Maria and Nikolaos Kyritsis found themselves once again in Alexandros Vandoulakis’s drawing room. The once statuesque man seemed to have shrunk since the funeral, when he had held his head high and proud throughout the service.
‘Sofia has already gone to bed,’ he began, pouring them both a drink from a bottle which stood on the sideboard. ‘Otherwise she would be here to say hello to you.’
‘It’s about Sofia that we’ve come,’ began Maria.
‘I thought it might be,’ said Vandoulakis. ‘The matter scarcely warrants discussion.’
Maria paled. Perhaps they had made a terrible faux pas in coming.
‘Eleftheria and I had a discussion a few months ago on this very subject,’ Vandoulakis began. ‘We talked about what would happen to Sofia if one of us died - though of course we were assuming it would be me who would go first. What we agreed was that if one of us were left on our own, the very best thing for our granddaughter would be for her to be taken care of by someone younger.’
Alexandros Vandoulakis had spent decades being in command, but even so it astonished them that he had so completely taken charge of the situation. They did not have to say another word.
‘The finest solution for Sofia would be if she went to live with you,’ he said, addressing them both. ‘Would you consider it? I know you are very fond of her, Maria, and as her aunt you are the closest of all her blood rel
ations.’
For a few moments Maria struggled to speak, but Kyritsis managed to say everything that was necessary.
The next day, when Kyritsis had finished work at the hospital, he and Maria returned to the Vandoulakis home and between them began to prepare Sofia for the next stage of her life. By the end of the following week she had moved to the house in Agios Nikolaos.
At first Maria was nervous. Within a year of leaving Spinalonga she had become a wife and now, almost overnight, the mother of a three-year-old. She need not have feared, however. Sofia led the way and adapted happily to being with a couple who were so much younger and more energetic than her grandparents. In spite of her traumatic start in life, she was an apparently carefree child and loved the company of other children, which she soon found in abundance in their very own street.
Kyritsis had also been anxious about becoming a parent. Although he had always numbered a few children among his patients, his contact with anyone as young as Sofia had been limited. The little girl was wary of him too, at first, but then realised that with the slightest provocation she could make his serious face crease into a smile. Kyritsis began to dote on her and was soon frequently castigated by his wife.
‘You do spoil her,’ wailed Maria, when she saw how Sofia ran rings around Nikolaos.
As soon as Sofia went to school, Maria began to train to work in the hospital dispensary. It seemed a perfect complement to her work with natural herbs, which she also continued to practise. Once a week Maria, who had learned to drive since her marriage, took Sofia to her paternal grandfather’s house, where she would spend the night in the bedroom that was kept for her there. The next day, when Maria collected her, they would usually continue to Plaka, where they saw Giorgis. Almost every visit they would see Fotini too and Sofia would play on the beach below the taverna with Mattheos and Petros while the two women caught up on the minutiae of each other’s lives.
Life continued in this happy and settled way for a while. Sofia enjoyed the routine of seeing both her grandfathers once a week and the excitement that growing up in a busy harbour town offered a child. Eventually the knowledge that Maria and Nikolaos were not her real parents slipped out of memory’s reach. The house where they lived in Agios Nikolaos was all she would ever be able to recollect of early childhood. The only gap in any of their lives was a sibling for Sofia. It was a subject they rarely spoke about, but it weighed heavily on Maria that she had not produced a child of her own.
When Sofia was nine, Alexandros Vandoulakis died. He passed away peacefully in his sleep having tied up every last detail of his will, leaving the estate to be split between his two daughters and their families and a generous lump sum of money in trust for Sofia. Three years later, Giorgis became bed-ridden after a chest infection and moved to the house in Agios Nikolaos to be cared for by Maria. Over the next two years, his teenage granddaughter spent hours each day sitting on his counterpane playing backgammon with him. One autumn day, just before Sofia’s return from school, he died. Both the women in his life were inconsolable. Their only real comfort was to see the throng that gathered for his funeral. It was held in Plaka, the village where he had spent almost his entire life, and the church was filled with well over a hundred villagers, who remembered with great affection the taciturn fisherman who had borne so much misfortune so uncomplainingly.
One chilly morning, early the next year, a typed envelope bearing an Iraklion postmark arrived. It was addressed to ‘The Guardians of Sofia Vandoulakis’. Maria’s stomach lurched when she saw the name. It was not one that Sofia had ever known she possessed and she snatched the letter up from the doormat and immediately stashed it at the back of a drawer. There was only one source for a letter addressed in such a way and Maria was full of trepidation; she planned to wait until her husband returned before finding out whether her fears were justified.
At about ten that night, Nikolaos arrived home from a long day at the hospital. Sofia had gone to bed an hour earlier. With some formality, Nikolaos slit the envelope with his silver opener and drew out a stiff sheet of paper.
To Whom It May Concern
They were together on the settee, their legs touching, and Nikolaos’s hand quivered slightly as he held the letter out for both of them to read.
We regret to inform you that Andreas Vandoulakis passed away on 7th January. The cause of death was pneumonia. Burial will take place on 14th January. Please confirm receipt of this letter.
Yours faithfully,
Governor, Prison of Iraklion
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. But they read, and re-read, the perfunctory note. Andreas Vandoulakis. His was a name which had carried such connotations of wealth and promise. It was hard to believe, even after the dreadful events over a decade earlier, that the life of such a privileged individual had finally ended in a damp prison cell. Without speaking, Nikolaos got up, returned the letter to its envelope and crossed the room to lock it in his bureau. There was no chance that Sofia would ever find it there.
Two days later, Maria was the only mourner as Andreas’s coffin was lowered in to a pauper’s grave. Neither of his sisters attended. They would not even have considered it. As far as they were concerned, their brother had been as good as dead for a very long time.
By now it was the late 1960s and the first wave of tourists began to arrive in Crete, many of them visiting Agios Nikolaos, which became a magnet for northern Europeans beguiled by the sunshine, the warm sea and the cheap wine. Sofia was fourteen and becoming wilful. With parents who were so conventional and such pillars of the community, she soon found that an effective way to rebel was to hang around in the town with boys from France and Germany who were only too pleased to keep the company of a beautiful Greek girl with a gloriously buxom figure and waist-length hair. Although Nikolaos hated to be in any conflict with Sofia, in the summer months battles became an almost daily occurrence.
‘She’s inherited her mother’s looks,’ despaired Maria late one night when Sofia had failed to return home. ‘But it now looks as though she might have her character too.’
‘Well, I think I finally know which side of the nurture versus nature debate I’m on,’ said Kyritsis ruefully.
Though she was rebellious in other ways, Sofia worked hard at school, and when she reached the age of eighteen it was time to consider university. It was an opportunity that had never been open to Maria and was one that both she and Nikolaos wanted for her. Maria assumed that Sofia would go to Iraklion for her studies, but she was disappointed. From childhood Sofia had watched large boats coming and going from mainland Greece. She knew that Athens was where Nikolaos had studied, and this was where she wanted to go. Never having left Crete herself, Maria was filled with trepidation at Sofia’s ambition to go further afield.
‘But the university in Iraklion is as good as any on the mainland,’ she said, appealing to Sofia.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Sofia replied. ‘But what’s wrong with going somewhere further away?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with it at all,’ Maria replied defensively. ‘But Crete seems a big enough place to me. It has its own history and its own customs.’
‘That’s precisely the point,’ snapped Sofia, showing a steely determination that nothing could bend. ‘It’s too wrapped up in its own culture. It seems almost sealed off from the outside world sometimes. I want to go to Athens or Thessalonika - at least they connect with the rest of the world. There’s so much happening out there and we’re never even touched by most of it here.’
She was displaying a desire to travel that was only natural for a girl at her stage of life. Nowadays everyone of her age seemed keen to go off and see more of the world. Maria dreaded it, though. As well as her own fears at losing Sofia, it raised in her mind the question of Sofia’s paternity. Manoli would have talked like that, about Crete being a small island on a very large planet and how exciting the possibilities were beyond it. There was something strangely familiar about this wanderlust.
By the time June came, Sofia had made her decision. She was going to Athens and her parents would not stand in her way. At the end of August she would be sailing away.
The night before their daughter was to take the boat to Piraeus, Maria and Nikolaos were sitting in their garden under an ancient vine which dripped with ripening bunches of purple-hued grapes. Sofia was out. Nikolaos nursed the last few drops of a large balloon of Metaxa.
‘We have to tell her, Maria,’ he said.
There was no reply. During the past few months the two of them had gone over and over the arguments for telling Sofia that they were not her true parents. It was when Maria had eventually admitted the possibility that Manoli might have been Sofia’s father that Kyritsis had finally made up his mind. The girl had to know. Now there was a chance that her father could be living and working in Athens, or anywhere else for that matter, she had to be told the truth. Maria knew that Nikolaos was right and that Sofia must be told before she left for Athens, but every day she deferred the moment.