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  Chapter Five

  The idea hit him when he was in Miss Baker’s room. This was the youngest junior class, where instead of being at an infants’ table Makis was squeezed with two other boys along the seat of a wooden desk, each taking a turn to read a line from a page of their reading – the Green Spot book. In it, Sally, the girl in the Colour Spot stories, was sitting with her mother on the grass in a sunny garden.

  “Read to me, Sally.

  Read to me from your book.

  Do you like the story?

  Is the story good?”

  As the lines were read, what was happening in Sally’s garden jumped out at Makis. Sally was being helped by her mother, the way Makis’s parents had always helped him with his school work. They already knew the things Makis learned at school, and went over them with him in the evenings. So why couldn’t he and his mother do the same, but the other way around? Why couldn’t he help Mama to learn English the way he was learning it?

  ‘Come on, Makis – it’s your turn to read!’

  “Yes, the story is good,” said Sally.

  The next boy took over, but Makis stayed concentrated on what he was doing. He didn’t want Miss Baker to think he wasn’t getting on, he wanted to make progress, to catch up with the children in his own class. From now on – and his mind was made up – he was going to learn English for the two of them: for Makis Magriotis, and for Sofia Magriotis, too.

  He deliberately missed the start of the morning playtime game in the playground. Today he was on a mission, a secret mission. As soon as he was out through the door, he turned round and ran back inside, as if he’d forgotten something. Silently he skirted the school hall, hurrying past his own classroom, and came to the double doors that would take him into trouble.

  He stopped. These doors were the crossing point between the juniors and the infants, doors he’d been allowed through up until the week before. But he didn’t go to the infants’ classes any more, so if he was found along the infants’ corridor, he couldn’t just pretend he’d left something behind. And he’d been in the school long enough to know where he was and wasn’t supposed to be; even today, standing up in the hall with the football team in morning assembly, he’d been reminded of it. Before the football announcement Mr Hersee had complained about stealing from the cloakrooms and the serious punishments it brought. Going through these doors could put Makis in big trouble.

  But this morning he’d had that good idea – and the thought of it gave him courage. Things were bad for Mama at home, and he had to do something about it.

  He pushed through the doors.

  Everything was nearer the floor on this side. In the cloakroom the long seats for changing were almost at ground level, and the slipper bags all hung low – beneath coat pegs which had fruits and animals on them instead of names. It was easier to be seen – but, high or low, there was no one about. Stealthily he crept along the corridor, keeping close to the classroom walls. It was a dry day, so all the infants would be out in the playground, their teachers in the staffroom, and he’d be all right if his luck held out. If. His heart thumped as he imagined a teacher standing silently behind a door, ready to step out and catch him. He felt so scared and out of place that he wanted to turn back, to get out to the game he could hear being played in the distance. But he was driven on by thoughts of his sad mother. Makis Magriotis had come into the Infants’ School for something, and he was going to get it.

  Mrs Carew’s classroom was the last in the corridor, and the nearest to the Infant teachers’ staffroom. Makis wouldn’t have long to carry out his plan; morning play lasted fifteen minutes, and the teachers went out a few minutes earlier ready to line up the children; so he had to move fast. If someone came out of the door, he could ask for what he wanted. The trouble was, if the answer was ‘no’, he was stuck, because then they’d know what he was after.

  But the staffroom door stayed closed, and when he passed the first classroom, no one came out. He came to the second classroom door: and again nothing happened. He came to the third classroom door: and – help! – there was Mrs Young over at the far wall, pinning pictures of sailing boats to the display board. Don’t look round, please! He crouched beneath the glass in the door and hurried on towards Mrs Carew’s classroom, the last in the line. The door was open, and Mrs Carew didn’t come out.

  He could hear the teachers in the staffroom, talking and laughing. Now for it. Quickly, he slid into the classroom and ran to the tall stock cupboard over by the window, hoping that it wasn’t locked. Like a wardrobe, it had two doors, and as he tried the nearer door it opened. Yes! He swung it fully open to give himself cover and looked inside. And there they were, a neat stack of Red Spot books, and a neat stack of Blue Spot books – the first two in the series, the books he’d gone through before being moved on to Mrs Young’s class. Quickly he took one of each and pushed them up under his jumper, holding them there with one hand. Now to get—

  ‘What’s all this?’

  It was Mrs Carew, at the classroom door! Makis was hidden for the moment – she wouldn’t see him straight away. But she could see the cupboard door was open when it shouldn’t be. He went cold; his throat tightened and he wanted to swallow, but he couldn’t – it would make too much noise. He was well and truly caught, like a lobster in a pot. Mrs Carew would see him with the books up his jumper, because he dared not move a muscle to put them back. No school books were allowed out of the school building.

  He held his breath and listened for her footsteps.

  ‘I said, what’s going on?’

  It was then he realised she was still out in the corridor.

  ‘Showing us all up, working through playtime? I brought you a cup of tea…’

  Makis squinted through the crack of the cupboard door. Mrs Young was there with Mrs Carew.

  ‘If I didn’t get those pictures up, they’d be so disappointed. They were from yesterday afternoon,’ Mrs Young said.

  ‘Drink your tea, Val. I’ll bring your class in.’

  ‘You’re a friend.’

  More like an angel sent by Saint Gerasimus! thought Makis. As he watched, the stolen books getting dangerously slippery in his hand, Mrs Carew went off towards the playground, and Mrs Young went back to her own classroom.

  That was close! But Makis was far from being through those double doors and back in the Juniors. The other teachers were coming out of the staffroom, and he still had to get past Mrs Young’s door.

  He stood there. He sweated. He’d got himself into a deep, deep, hole. If he got caught, no matter what punishment Mr Hersee gave him, no one would ever trust him again.

  Suddenly boldness paid off. Boldness and luck – the luck of seeing Mrs Carew’s milk crate of empty bottles over by the classroom door, and the boldness to pick up the crate and carry it along the corridor towards the Junior hall, where the top class monitors put them every day at dinnertime.

  Makis never knew if Mrs Young saw him go past her classroom – he didn’t look to find out. Instead, he walked with a purpose: to get those Colour Spot books safely out of the school. To start teaching his mother how to read English.

  Chapter Six

  Makis thought hard about the way he was learning to speak English, the fact that he was with a lot of English children all day. Words rubbed off on him like the lichen off a tree trunk. It had started on the ship coming over. While his mother and the other grown-ups stayed in their quarters, he had wandered the decks and the corridors. He’d grown friendly with the crew members, who taught him things like ‘Hello!’ and ‘See you!’ and ‘Get your backside out of it!’ At first, in the school playground, the most usual phrase he’d heard was ‘Clear off!’ And in the classroom, when a teacher was pleased, it was ‘Good!’ or ‘Excellent!’ Listening to people and talking to them was the important thing.

  So that was how he would start with his mother. Instead of talking Greek to her all the time, he would sometimes say things in English, so that at least she could hear the words
being spoken. That hadn’t been happening at home, or at Daphne Dresses with the other Greek and Cypriot women. Then, after a bit, he would start reading the books with her, and point out to her things in the street: signs, notices, advertisements. Some of these were the same advertisements that had been on walls in Argostoli, so straight off, he’d known what Persil washes whiter meant. It probably washed whiter all over the world.

  But an idea came to him as he walked into the living-room and saw the mandolin – a brilliant idea. At Imeson Street they sang a song: ’Ten Green Bottles’. He could pick that out on the strings. What made it a useful song to sing with his mother were the numbers in it – which he could use his fingers to show. And that afternoon, as he walked into the living-room with the Colour Spot readers under his coat, he felt proud of his idea. His mother had saved his father’s mandolin. Now he would use it to start saving her.

  She was in the kitchen washing the floor. The floor was never dirty. Only two rubs each way with the wet cloth and it was covered, and Makis knew it would have been washed once already that afternoon; but she had to keep finding herself something to do. In Alekata there would have been a hundred things keeping her busy: making goats’ milk into cheese, knocking nails into split fish boxes, netting olives, knocking down walnuts. Each afternoon, when Makis got in from school, she would smile, pour him juice or cold water and offer olives and cake before getting on with her work. But always, she would smile.

  Not like today, when she hardly looked up, but sent suds scudding across the stone floor.

  ‘Hello, Mama,’ Makis said, in English.

  ‘Hello, Makis,’ she replied in Greek.

  ‘Say hello in English,’ he said.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Say “hello”.’ He made a handshaking gesture. ‘Hello.’

  She looked at him as if he was mad, and with a tchk, she turned back to the popping soapsuds.

  ‘Hello… Goodbye…’ Although she wasn’t looking at him, Makis made the handshaking gesture again, and he waved goodbye, before adding in Greek, ‘I’m only speaking English tonight.’

  But his mother shrugged over her wet cloth, as if to say, ‘What silliness is this?’

  ‘I’ll make you laugh,’ he said. ‘Laugh. Ha-ha!’ – although he now had his doubts whether even miming falling off a wall ten times like the green bottles would raise a smile on his mother’s face. He kissed the top of her head and went back into the living-room.

  The mandolin was hanging on the wall like a decoration. Sofia Makis had removed a picture of fierce-looking cattle and put the Gibson in its place. Hanging there, the instrument seemed to please her. Now Makis took it down, and like his father he first stroked the chip on its body, before holding the mandolin to his chest in the position for playing. And, there, at that moment, he felt himself swelling, growing – with a sharp pang in his stomach, as if his father had just walked into the room with his eyes twinkling and his mouth making that Oh, yes! pout he’d always made when he was proud.

  Makis’s fingers went to the headstock, bringing the mandolin up to his ear and turning the A string tuning key. As he plucked and tried to imagine an A in his ear, he took the mandolin as far as he could from the kitchen because he didn’t want his mother to know what he was doing just yet. He opened the basement window to the street and sat close to it, hoping that the sound of his tuning would escape like a trapped fly. He tightened the A string up to something near pitch – or his memory of it – and when he was happy with it, he put his finger on the seventh fret and sounded the E, the way his father had taught him. Now he could tune the top string.

  But he hadn’t got the E up to where he wanted it before a quiet tap came at the basement door.

  Who was that? No one ever tapped at their door: Mrs Papadimas only ever rapped, knuckle-hard. His mother hadn’t heard, so he went to the door and opened it.

  Mr Laliotis was standing there stroking his grey beard, wearing his black cap and a velvet jacket; and hanging from his shoulder was an instrument case on a leather strap, about the size of a violin.

  ‘Hello. I hope you will excuse me.’ He spoke in Greek.

  ‘Yes?’ Makis didn’t know if he should ask Mr Laliotis into the living-room; but with his mother on her knees washing the kitchen floor, he decided not to. In Kefalonia she would have wanted to put on a clean dress for anyone coming into their home.

  ‘Just now, as I was coming in, I heard – I thought I heard – mandolin. It’s got a sound all of its own, mandolin.’ Mr Laliotis was smiling.

  Makis said nothing, but nodded politely.

  ‘I haven’t heard it in this house before. You’ve been in London for some weeks, but I haven’t heard such a sound up till now.’ He patted his instrument case. ‘You see, I am a musician.’

  Makis nodded again.

  ‘And it was not just plucking. It was tuning. I’m sure it was proper tuning I heard.’

  Makis felt shy. He knew Mr Laliotis played in an orchestra on the radio. His violin was heard all over England; perhaps all over the world. An important man was saying this to him!

  ‘It’s a Gibson,’ Makis said, quietly. ‘It used to belong to my father.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Laliotis nodded. He shuffled his feet as if he was about to go. ‘You must come upstairs some time. You and your mother. We can make some music together.’ He leant forward for a final word. ‘I don’t just play violin. I have a balalaika too.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Mr Laliotis went back up the narrow stairs protecting his violin case from banging against the wall. Makis quietly closed the door, and looked towards the kitchen – where his mother was standing in the doorway holding the top of her overall across her neck as if she was only half-dressed.

  ‘Saint Gerasimos!’ Makis said.

  ‘We can’t go, Makis. Not upstairs to them. We are country people, and they are very cultured…’

  And at that moment, for the first time ever in his life, Makis felt ashamed of his mother. Wouldn’t his father have gone upstairs to Mr and Mrs Laliotis to make music? Of course he would. Hadn’t Spiros Magriotis sat at the top table of musicians in the Mandolino restaurant on Saturday nights, singing and playing for some of the most important people in Kefalonia?

  Makis went over to the window to pick up the Gibson and hang it back on the wall. He would have to forget ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and he would have to forget the Red Spot and the Blue Spot books: they would have to stay where they were, hidden under the cushions.

  His mother wasn’t ready to be helped.

  Chapter Seven

  Makis half-hoped that the team sheet for Thursday’s Cup match would not have his name on it. Denny Clarke could play, then Makis would get home at the proper time. But it was only a half hope, because that other important half of him – Makis the boy, not Makis the son – thought it was great to be a member of a team.

  And on Tuesday there his name was, in the team on the notice board: the same boys picked as before. At playtime, this was the way the team lined up. They didn’t pick sides in the usual way, but played first eleven against reserves – with a moaning, foul-tackling Denny Clarke as captain of the second eleven. He was listed this week by Mr Hersee as a reserve who would walk to the match with them, but once the game started, he knew he wouldn’t get to play – whoever was injured, whatever happened. Those were the rules of football.

  ‘Why should I walk to Prince’s Fields?’ he growled, ‘if you’re all there?’

  ‘You could give us a cheer,’ David Sutton told him.

  ‘I’ll give the Greek a kick where it hurts! He’s rubbish! Hersee only picked him because his house was bombed.’

  Makis decided not to hear that. There were things to fight, and things to let go. He wasn’t sure whether or not ‘bombed’ meant the same thing as ‘earthquake’ in English, so he left it at that – he didn’t want to look stupid. And they all knew that what Clarke said wasn’t true about his football. He hadn’t been brilliant in the first proper
match they’d played, but he’d done quite well, and he was getting better all the time in the playground games. More and more, the team was feeding the ball through him because he did unusual things with it; and he was looking forward to doing it on Thursday at Prince’s Fields – as a schoolboy, and not as the son of Sofia Magriotis.

  On Tuesday evening he persuaded his mother to walk out with him again to Prince’s Fields, piloting her as they went.

  ‘Look, we go past the cathedral, past the street of Daphne Dresses, we turn right here…’ He marked the corner for her by the big Coca-Cola poster on the wall which said, Have a Coke! He was tempted to point out the words in English and tell her they meant the same as the words in Greek. But catch one tuna at a time; in the end, he just drew her attention to where they turned right. It would be enough if he could persuade her to walk to Prince’s Fields on Thursday.

  It was cold, and not many people went out for walks – the pair of them needed the duffel coats the English sailors had given them. But that was how Makis treated their walk – as a sunset walk towards the setting sun – until Sofia started shivering and said she wanted to go home.

  ‘OK, we’ll go back. Mama – see if you can lead me home. I’m not going to say anything. ’

  ‘Am I a child?’ she asked, looking cross, ‘or sick in the head?’ She thumped the heel of her palm against her forehead. ‘No, I’m not!’ And right then, Makis realised what a difficult Red Spot pupil she would be.

  But she did lead him home – she wasn’t stupid. He made sure he didn’t say, ‘There, you can do it,’ because the way she was behaving tonight, she’d just have shouted at him. He was pleased inside, but he would have to be as clever as Mrs Carew or Mrs Young with the reading books, if he was going to save his mother from herself.