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  “Fat Christos has promised to send Iraklis on a management course and we’re both saving up towards our future,” Sofia confided.

  “I is ‘appy to ‘ear yous ‘ave a more responsible attitude to money than yous Nona,” Tasos applauded.

  “But if Nona hadn’t been such a spendthrift she would never have had to rent out her harbour-side house and move in with you Taso,” Sofia said quietly as Thea returned.

  Toothless Tasos dwelled morosely on Sofia’s words when the two women left the house. He couldn’t bear the thought that Thea was only with him because she couldn’t afford to live without him. His thoughts turned to Friday and he cheered a little, thinking “Thea will ‘ave no doubt about my feelings when I slip the ring on her finger an’ officially make ‘er my goddess.”

  Chapter 14

  Skinny Dipping in the Moonlight

  Tables and chairs lined the street outside ‘Mono Ellinika Trofima,’ carried outdoors by Takis as soon as the tourists began to arrive for the summer season. Blue and white chequered paper tablecloths flapped in the breeze, with four plastic corner clips preventing them blowing away. Plant pots fashioned out of old olive tins, home to aromatically scented basil plants, were dotted beside the tables, and feral kittens played skittishly in the hope of winning scraps from gullible tourists and tentatively learning it was best to avoid Takis when he rushed out to make a clean cat sweep with his broom. Pancratius the village policeman was called out at least once a week by Stavroula complaining Takis’ customers were talking too loudly. Takis wasn’t petty enough to return the complaint even when Stavroula’s customers chatted just as raucously, although at times he was sorely tempted.

  Quentin found a table with a fresh down-wind breeze, conscious his guest Pedros was a bit off-puttingly pungent and that his distinctive goat smell might overpower the natural scent of geranium blooms, citrus and jasmine. Yiota greeted her favourite American by dragging him into the toilets where she ministered to his blood caked artichoke wounds with a bottle of stinging antiseptic, sympathising how awful it was that his puncture holes had attracted so many blood-sucking mosquitoes.

  Pungent Pedros’ eyes nearly swivelled out of his head when mail order Masha strolled up to take a seat at the next table, trailed by that old fool Vasilis who tethered Onos the donkey to a nearby orange tree, joining the tethered goat kidnapped from the mountain. Masha managed to project a combined image of virgin and hooker in a short strappy white lace number, so low cut her curvaceous breasts would have spilled over the top if the silicone wasn’t so rigidly immovable. Her rounded belly pushing against the lace was a glorious symbol of lush fecundity.

  Deirdre arrived, driven in style by Prosperous Pedros who’d stopped to give her a lift in his pick-up. Pungent Pedros’ face dropped when Deirdre explained Hattie wouldn’t be joining them as she’d stayed at home to minister to Melecretes who’d apparently had a bit of a queer turn.

  “It’s probably this heat,” Quentin suggested.

  “Mother didn’t elaborate,” Deirdre replied, slapping down the groping hand of the goat-herder.

  “I ‘ope Fotini shows her face, I really want to see ‘ow the years ‘ave treated ‘er,” Pungent Pedros said. “Oh what a vision, this must be Fotini now,” he cried excitedly as the clashing colours of Quentin’s Hawaiian shorts heralded the attention seeking arrival of Nitsa.

  “You thieving old hag, what on earth do you think you’re doing prancing round in my shorts?” Quentin spluttered, so driven to fury by Nitsa’s brazen washing line thievery that he forgot his usually impeccable good manners.

  “I’m sure she has a perfectly good reason to be wearing your clothes,” Deirdre defended their neighbour, revelling in the knowledge she would never have to be seen in public with Quentin wearing those ghastly loud shorts ever again. He’d think they were fit for nothing but the garden scarecrow or the mulch pile after Nitsa had contaminated them.

  “That’s no way to talk to Fotini,” Pungent Pedros reprimanded Quentin, instantly bowled over by Nitsa’s bright and cheery appearance. Rushing over to greet her he threw his arms around her in a smelly embrace, saying “Fotini, yous ‘aven’t changed a bit, ‘ow long ‘as it been?”

  “’Ere get yous ‘ands off my Aunty Nitsa,” Tall Thomas shouted. “Yous is bein’ far too familiar.”

  “I do begs yous pardon Kyria, I thought yous was Fotini,” Pungent Pedros excused himself.

  “Fotini ‘ad to take the parrot ‘ome after its surgery,” Nitsa said, batting her single false eyelash and the dead caterpillar at this charming old rogue before swivelling her head to look daggers at Tall Thomas for his unwanted interference. Without waiting for an invitation she hastily joined Quentin and Deirdre’s table, smooching up close to the goat herder and hissing at Quentin “why is yous bein’ so precious about yous shorts, Hattie didnt’s ‘ave a problem with me borrowing ‘em.”

  “Mother is perfectly free to let random neighbours go through the contents of her wardrobe but she has no jurisdiction over mine,” Quentin said possessively, clueless that at that very moment Hattie was confronting Melecretes over cramming his hairy legs into her stockings and his manly hairy chest into her twinset.

  “I’m in need of a brandy; it was very traumatic watching the parrot nearly drown an’ then ‘ave surgery. I ‘ave to say I don’t think much of the new quack’s bedside manner,” Nitsa rambled, swatting away a swarm of mosquitoes which had gravitated from Quentin’s artichoke puncture holes to the dead caterpillar glued to her eyelid.

  “Allow me to get that bug out of yous eye Kyria Nitsa,” Pungent Pedros offered, leaning in closely to grab hold of the dead caterpillar. The grub was so strongly super glued in place it refused to budge and it was only the fortuitous arrival of the mosquitoes soaking up the surplus glue that prevented Pungent Pedros’ fingers from being permanently stuck to the caterpillar.

  With the weather perfect for outdoor dining, tables were filling up quickly. Thea began to mellow as she relaxed in the company of Sofia and they tucked into kolokithokeftedes and tzatziki. Gorgeous Yiorgos arrived with a handsome cuttlefish he’d caught earlier and Yiota cooked it up with spinach and a nice lemon dress. The bountiful fisherman shared the delicious dish with Vangelis the chemist, Prosperous Pedros and Tall Thomas, with Fat Christos looking on enviously and drinking a glass of liquidised watermelon, still stuck on his stomach stapled restrictive diet.

  Mail order Masha had binged on so many tart pickled lingonberries she only had an appetite for feta and watermelon, a simple choice that appealed to Quentin and Deirdre once the breeze died down, leaving the evening shrouded in a layer of stultifying humidity. Pungent Pedros was vocally disappointed to hear Yiota didn’t have goat on the menu, prompting Quentin to whisper to Deirdre,

  “How can he even contemplate eating goat while that creature we kidnapped is staring at us? It’s positively cannibalistic.”

  Thea recognised the English tourists who had tried to order Spanish food in Stavroula’s taverna earlier. Watching them struggling to make Yiota understand their ploddingly mispronounced words from a dog-eared Spanish phrasebook Thea intervened, telling Yiota to bring them a jug of Retsina poured over chopped nectarines as they wanted fruity wine.

  “They seem to think they is on holiday in Spain an’ are clueless they ‘ave landed up in Greece,” Thea told Quentin and Deirdre.

  “Why disillusion them? It’s an easy mistake to make with international travel. Remember when I botched up that romantic break to Paris by booking it online, Quentin,” Deirdre said.

  “How could I forget? It was a bit of a shock to see a huge metal cowboy hat stuck on top of the Eiffel Tower. I should have twigged when we didn’t need to flash our passports at the airport that we weren’t flying into Paris France, but Paris Texas.”

  “We made the best of it though dear,” Deirdre reminded him.

  “We did indeed, it was a lovely vacation darling,” Quentin agreed.

  “I’d no idea there was more than one Ei
ffel tower,” Sofia said in amazement.

  “Oh there are lots of them,” Quentin enlightened her. “After visiting the one in Texas, albeit accidentally, we made a point of visiting the one in Paris, Tennessee, the following year. It wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat though.”

  “We were glad we saw them because when we did finally make it to Paris, France, we missed the real tower because poor Quentin had his wallet lifted by a grubby urchin in the Louvre and we spent the rest of the day in a Parisian police station,” Deirdre explained.

  “I bet them Parisian policemen looked dishy in their uniforms,” Nitsa cackled, prompting Pungent Pedros to wonder if he could still prise himself into the volunteer fireman uniform he still had from his younger days.

  “So about these lost tourists,” Thea interrupted. “Should we tell ‘em they isn’t actually in Spain?”

  “Well they don’t look as though they are enjoying themselves too much, but they could just have that type of face. If they don’t like it here let them continue under the delusion they are in Spain, rather than risking them bad-mouthing our lovely Greece,” Quentin advised.

  “’Ow could anyone not love Greece? There’s no other country with such wonderful scenery and such magnificent goats, and just look at the beautiful women,” Pungent Pedros reasoned, extending his arms to include Nitsa, Deirdre, Thea, Sofia, Yiota and mail order Masha in his gushing compliment.

  Looking over, Tall Thomas narrowed his eyes, grumbling,

  “He seems a bit of a ladies’ man, I dont’s like the way he’s all over Aunty Nitsa. She’s already got enough on ‘er plate putting up with that malaka Fotis Moustakos and his persistent marriage proposals.”

  “He seems ‘armless enough,” Prosperous Pedros said, having no idea the smelly goat herder was desperate to become reacquainted with his mother.

  Concerns over the possibly rogue romantic intentions of the goat-herder were soon overshadowed by the momentous gossip, shared by Thea, that Lecherous Lukas was due to arrive back in Astakos at any time. It had been years since Lukas had put in an appearance in the village, despite being the owner of the finest and most ostentatious house in Astakos, one that remained empty in his absence whilst he lived in his other fine house in Athens. Lukas, the uncle of Stavroula, was somewhat of an anomaly in this working fishing village, having inherited a large fortune that allowed him never to do a day’s honest labour. His inheritance afforded him a life of tedious leisure, yet ironically he was genetically inclined to be a miserly skinflint who made tight-wad Toothless Tasos look like a spendthrift.

  Each year Lecherous Lukas flashed enough cash to purchase a brand new automobile which he then drove home from the showroom and stashed in his garage under a plastic cover, satisfied his once yearly extravagance would impress all his neighbours. The shiny new car would be used for a single annual outing on Assumption Day when he would coax a fellow villager, who he insisted sit on the factory plastic seat cover to avoid sweating directly onto the upholstery, into splitting the petrol expenses for this religious pilgrimage. He preferred to make any necessary journeys he could not manage on foot by moped, after carefully assessing if the price of the petrol represented a saving on shoe leather. Recent technological advances saw him trade in the old moped for an electric model which he brazenly charged up at whichever local taverna could bear to endure his parsimonious custom, in a penny-pinching exercise designed to save money on his own electric bill.

  The village men were not averse to the company of Lukas, finding him an entertaining companion in the taverna, regaling them with tales of his embellished adventures. They were all too aware their womenfolk considered him a persistent sex pest with a nasty habit of frequenting brothels, which he boasted about indiscreetly. Lukas had been too afraid of any money grabbing claims on his fortune to ever marry, reluctantly opening his purse strings to pay for services such as cooking and cleaning that a wife could have provided for free. Whilst the women folk of the village gossiped about his rumoured brothel visits, Lukas openly bragged about them to any male audience he could bore with his seedy exploits.

  “Well I will make ‘im welcome in ‘ere of course,” Takis proclaimed, hoping Lukas’ tales would drive his other customers to drink more and boost his takings. Lukas himself was renowned for never partaking of more than a solitary glass of wine he would mull over all evening, unless someone else was buying the drinks. He would occasionally indulge in a single pita gyros, the most inexpensive dish on the menu.

  Quentin and Deirdre were fascinated to hear about Lukas, and mail order Masha’s ears pricked up at the talk of his wealth. Thea warned her goddaughter to be sure to avoid him, assuring her he wasn’t suitable company for an impressionable young woman. Deirdre’s morbid interest in salacious gossip overcame her natural prudery. Ignoring Quentin’s warning kick she blurted out “is it really true there used to be brothel in the village?”

  “Like that bordello museum K-Went-In took us to in Idaho,” Nitsa interrupted. “What a place that was, yous got that glow-in-the-dark thong there Did-Rees.”

  At the mention of the now infamous thong Deirdre blushed so much her sun-reddened face turned scarlet and Pungent Pedros gave her a knowing wink, remembering how she’d inadvertently flashed him with the aforementioned thong on her first visit to Ankinari.

  “The brothel wasn’t in the village as such Did-Rees,” Fat Christos said hastily, hoping to spare Deirdre’s blushes. “It was on the outskirts.”

  “How fascinating,” Deirdre gasped, desperate for more information.

  “It was a place for men to get away from their womenfolk in peace an’ ave a drink without bein’ nagged,” Gorgeous Yiorgos elaborated.

  “Over priced watered down drinks,” Prosperous Pedros reminded him.

  “We paid the high prices to be served by foreign floozies who was ‘appy to be a bit free with their favours,” Gorgeous Yiorgos explained.

  “But their favours weren’t free, was they?” Prosperous Pedros pointed out disapprovingly. “Yous came ‘ome fleeced enough times Yiorgo.”

  Prosperous Pedros and Bald Yannis were the only two of the village men to never avail themselves of the brothel services. Bald Yannis had never shown an interest in women until he took a matchmaker arranged wife and the prosperous fisherman had the strong belief that if he wanted a woman, which he didn’t, he could attract one without paying for the privilege. He had companionably joined his fellow fishermen in the downstairs bar on occasion but made his excuses when any loose floozy had attempted to lure him upstairs.

  “The brothel doors have been shut now for a decade and a half,” Vangelis the chemist stated. “Lukas will be mightily disappointed when he returns.”

  “If I recall rightly he left when it went out of business. ‘Appen without it the village wasn’t excitin’ enough for ‘im,” Takis observed.

  “Or maybe it was the other way round an’ the brothel went out of business without ‘is regular custom. It was the only place he would willingly part with any of ‘is money,” Gorgeous Yiorgos said, before remembering the police had shut the place down and the vile prosecutor had refused to renew its alcohol licence.

  “Of course brothels are legal these days, but there’s no need of one in Astakos anymore as all the old clientele are past it,” Vangelis the chemist remarked.

  Deirdre was still shocked to hear Gorgeous Yiorgos speak so casually about going to the brothel and wondered if Petula knew what her other half had got up to. Then she reflected his brothel visits were years ago when Petula was unhappily saddled to the Pappas. Casting her eyes over the other customers she speculated which of her friends had been brothel regulars and made a mental note to book an appointment at the beauty salon soon to get to the bottom of the more sordid details. Mail order Masha was too engrossed in untangling her hair extensions with her perfectly painted finger nails to give much mind to the conversation or even care if that old fool Vasilis had been one of the regulars in his younger days.

  Sighing wearily Yio
ta watched the female half of the English tourist couple emerge shame faced from the toilets with obviously damp feet. Grabbing her mop and bucket Yiota stomped into the bathroom, wondering how long it would take the latest crop of tourists to get the hang of not putting paper down the toilet. She was mightily sick of dealing with flooded floors and blockages. Deirdre smiled sympathetically at the tourists, remembering her own faux pas when she’d first flushed unwanted octopus down the toilet.

  “How are you feeling Masha?” Deirdre asked. “It can’t be easy being heavily pregnant in this heat.”

  “I’m coping better than Bald Yannis, he’s such a drama queen about all ‘is imagined symptoms,” Masha laughed. “But it is so ‘ard to keep cool Did-Rees.”

  “Here, take this battery operated hand-held fan, your need is greater than mine,” Deirdre offered, rummaging round in the depths of her enormous handbag.

  “That’s so kind of you,” Masha exclaimed, genuinely touched by the gesture. “Yous is always so nice Did-Rees, I would take it as a great honour if yous would be the baby’s Nona.”

  Deirdre flushed with pleasure, immediately proclaiming she would be delighted to be godmother to Masha’s imminent off-spring.

  “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl yet?”

  “They weren’t able to work it out on account of it turning its back to the scanner,” Masha grumbled.

  “So it’s still just a silicone chip at this stage,” Vangelis the chemist rudely butted in.

  “I feel in my blood it’s a girl,” Masha said. “I just ‘ope it looks like me an’ not my ‘usband.”

  Everyone agreed it would indeed be a tragedy if Masha’s baby resembled that old fool Vasilis rather than taking after the gorgeous and glamorous Russian.

  “I don’t mean to put a spoke in your plans Masha, but wouldn’t Deirdre have to convert to Greek Orthodoxy in order to be your baby’s godmother?” Quentin queried.

  “Po po, there’s nothin’ to it, she just ‘as to be dunked in a bigly vat of oil,” Gorgeous Yiorgos told Quentin. “I’m sure the Pappas can sort it out before Masha ‘as the baby.”