TWO

Jason skipped down the steps from the first floor office and wondered why he felt so cheerful after that little talking to.

Slipe was a repulsive man. He had a way of making everyone feel small, guests included. He was never subtle and he had no idea how to do his hair, it was always greasy and badly combed. His position of authority, the one that he had lied and cheated to get to, had gone straight to that ugly head of his. None of the other reps liked him and all of them admitted to looking forward to the end of the season so that they could go somewhere else and be rid of him. All apart from Jason.

He did not want the summer to end. When it did he would have to go back to England and take a boring job in some call centre just to keep him solvent. He had no money, no savings and no means to stay in Greece once his job ended or Slipe fired him, whichever came first. Since first seeing Symi he had loved the island, it felt like he had come home. As he had settled into his job so he had settled into the island’s hypnotic pace of life. He had quickly been intoxicated by its charm and mystique.

Admittedly it was not the clubbing, party island that he had first had in mind when he dreamed of becoming a holiday rep. It was quite the opposite in fact. It was small, underdeveloped by holiday island standards and quiet. Very, very quiet. There was little for a twenty three year old single guy to do after dark other than drink in a bar or visit one of the two night clubs, both of which were no bigger than a suburban living room. His one big adventure these days was taking his guests back to Rhodes airport every Wednesday morning. He thought of it as something of a Mission Improbable:

‘Your task, should you chose to accept it, is to get the “package”, (a group of up to ten old age pensioners and their assorted luggage), from a small Greek island off the coast of Turkey to their aeroplane seats by any means necessary. Your agents selected for this mission will be; “Lefteris the truck” who may or may not collect the luggage from Villa Sargo at six thirty a.m. and who may or may not deposit it on the boat. “Captain Phil” of the Symi Two you have worked with before and you can rely on him to transport your guests across to Rhodes. Remember, however, that tide, time and Captain Phil wait for no one. Once safely on Rhodes you will be met by “Dino the coach”, (code name ‘Roadrunner’). Transferring the package into the coach will be your next problem, closely followed by unloading it at Diagoras Airport. Here the going gets tougher. You will have two hours before the package leaves the country, enough time for people to wander off, get locked in toilets, lose teeth and have strokes. Once the package is in departures you will collect another set of guests and make the trip in reverse; delivering the new package to Villa Sargo by eight thirty p.m. the same night, in one piece and in time for your welcome meeting. This message will self destruct…”

Jason stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps and looked to his left. He was strangely tempted by a McDonald’s burger but knew he had no time. So far today his mission had gone according to plan, thanks to some help from Rhodes special agent Kate, the Kiwi with the foul mouth. Because Slipe had demanded to see Jason in the area office in Americano Street, Kate had offered to escort his departing guests to the airport for him. She had met them all from the Symi Two with her customary greeting to Jason of ‘yasou queer-boy’ and bundled the old folk into the coach. Jason had said goodbye to his group of eight pensioners (combined age five hundred and fifty one years) before crossing the main road cautiously. Rhodes was always a culture shock even after only one week on Symi. It had traffic lights, pedestrian crossings that drivers could ignore and two lane roads where cars could get into fourth gear; Symi had a road and lads who drove too fast on their mopeds but, to get out of third, you had to drive up into the middle of the island, put your foot down quickly and then break before you went over a precipice. Rhodes was noisy and fast whereas Symi was quiet and slow.

And that was one of the things Jason had come to love about it; it’s tranquillity. He had taken to long walks in the hills where he could walk for hours listening to Kylie on his walkman as he picked herbs and talked to the wild goats. He could run across the rocky escarpments dodging boulders and revelling in the fresh air and freedom. At times he felt like Heidi on acid but that was o.k. There was hardly ever anyone around to see him running wild and free. And if he did meet someone by chance then it was bound to be someone he knew. Having only been on the island for a few months he had already gotten to know many locals. It was that kind of place, friendly, intimate, like living in a quiet English village only with better weather.

And beaches.

He loved to walk through the valley down to the Pedi bay of an evening to have a swim in the clear, cool water. The hotter the day the cooler the water. Afterwards he would take a beer at one of the bars, then wander back up the road stopping for another drink on the corner bar before heading into the village again. Even though his guests tended to congregate in the village kafenion and would seek him out to disturb his time off, he didn’t mind. By that time of day he would be relaxed, he would have reminded himself of what his life was all about; taking his time, going slow, only knowing that it was time to eat because he felt hungry, only knowing it was time for bed because he felt tired. And then Slipe would ring on the damn mobile phone and ask how many guests had signed up for the midnight cruise. None. It was a crap excursion. The ‘cruise’ was a quick dash to a nearby island, ‘midnight’ was actually seven p.m. and the cost was ridiculous. No wonder Slipe was now putting pressure on Jason to come up with something new and exciting.

The thought dragged his mind back to his job and the new set of guests who would be arriving in twenty five minutes. Jason stood and waved at a passing taxi.

And then he remembered why he was in such a good mood. He had a special guest arriving today. His granny.

Suddenly he felt sad. The change in emotions hit him as a taxi drew up and he got in slowly.
‘Aerothromio,’ he said flatly to the guy behind the wheel. Airport.

As the taxi pulled back into the slow moving traffic Jason forgot about the time and his rush. He stared out of the window at the nondescript concrete apartment blocks, dusty unmade pavements and tatty palm trees. He was suddenly a mix of emotions and he couldn’t decide which one to settle on.

He was excited at seeing his gran, he had not seen her for twenty years, but he was sad because of the circumstances. His granddad had recently died; what he had told Slipe just now had been true. Finally. And he was feeling guilty because he had used his granddad’s illness as an excuse for bad performance a few times this season. But now the old man had actually died. After something like fifty years of disability and pain, granddad Stan had finally ‘slipped away’.

Slipped away. It was an odd expression for his grandmother to use in her letter. Jason couldn’t imagine granddad Stan slipping anywhere. To slip one needed feet, and to have feet one needed legs. Granddad Stan had no legs. He’d lost them in the war somewhere, a very careless thing to do Jason used to think. On the rare occasions that his mother actually spoke about his grandparents she would tell Jason that, ‘granddad Stan lost his legs in the war.’

She had first told Jason this strange news when he was three, it was one of his earliest memories. That day he had searched the house all afternoon before finally arriving at the tea table in tears.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jason’s father had growled. He hated any sign of weakness in boys, particularly crying for no reason.
‘I couldn’t find them,’ Jason sniffed.
‘Find what?’
‘Granddad’s legs.’
‘Betty!’ his dad had roared over his shoulder into the kitchen behind him. ‘Your boy’s barking.’
Jason was always ‘Betty’s boy’ or ‘mother’s boy’ to his father. He still called him these things but now he had added ‘bum boy’ and the more straightforward ‘arse-bandit’ to the list of pseudonyms for his only son.
‘What’s he saying?’ Jason’s mother had called back, sticking her head around the door and wiping her brow with an oven glove.
‘He can’t find Stan’s legs.’ Jason’s father had started to laugh. ‘What have you been telling him?’
‘Oh dear,’ Jason’s mother had also smiled and Jason felt stupid without knowing why. ‘You will never find them Jason dear,’ she said, trying to keep a straight face.
‘I might if I look hard enough,’ Jason said hopefully. ‘He needs them.’
‘Sit down and grow up, you pansy,’ his father had said before returning to the back pages of The Sun.

Jason remembered his mother coming to him and crouching down. Her apron was dusted with flour and her hair was glowing yellow with the sunlight that came through the window behind her.
‘Granddad’s legs aren’t here,’ she had said kindly. ‘He lost them far away.’ And then she had said where but it was a strange sounding place and Jason could never remember the name.
‘For god sake don’t tell him abut the eyes or he’ll be digging up the garden,’ Jason’s father had laughed again and that had confused the boy even more.
‘Eyes?’ he asked, wiping his own.
‘You’ll find out one day,’ his mother said and lifted him into his chair.

But his parents never did explain about the eyes. In fact they rarely spoke of granddad Stan or grandma Margaret after that and Jason never knew why. He only knew that it had something to do with his mother losing a baby and his father going into a mood that seemed to last for years after. There was a lot about his family that his parents had never told him but now, with grandma Margaret making a special trip to see him in Greece, he hoped that he might find out.

In the back of the taxi Jason opened his flight bag and pulled out the letter. He had a few minutes before reaching the airport and the letter was so strange it deserved yet another read. Luckily the taxi driver was of the rare, silent breed and so Jason had time to read what his grandmother had written one last time before meeting her.

Dear Jason
It is with a mixture of three feelings that I write this letter to you today: trepidation, sadness and intrigue.
Trepidation. We have not spoken to each other since you were a very small boy and I have no idea how you will take this communication. You are an adult now, you will be twenty three and I find it hard to imagine even what you look like. I picture you as tall, like your mother, strong of body like your father, intelligent and handsome of face like your grandfather.

Jason flicked his hair back from his face and bit his lip. He wasn’t tall like his mother, being only five feet six against her gangling five feet ten; he was reasonably fit because of his swimming and running through the hills pretending to be Julie Andrews but he wasn’t built like a WWF wrestler like his father. But he did like to think of himself as intelligent, he was something of a linguist and a hoarder of knowledge both general and local. As for handsome? He considered himself as having the looks of the typical ‘boy next door’; kind of public school meets youthful catalogue model, but without the posh accent or the polyester underwear. He hoped Grandma Margaret would not be disappointed when she met him. He read on:

And I know that you will be of your own mind and will have your own opinions about your grandmother, whom you have not seen in such a long time. And so my excitement at seeing you is tainted with just a little nervousness at what we both may find. Therefore it is with trepidation that I am coming to see you. I fear I rather took your mother by surprise when I telephoned her just five days ago to pass on my news (see below in a moment) and to discover your whereabouts. I did not tell her why I needed to see you only that I wanted to and, after a certain amount of beating about the proverbial bush she told me who you worked for. I then spoke to a very pleasant lady and arranged a holiday at the last minute. I shall therefore be one of your guests, arriving on September 8th by an airline with the rather dubious name of Britainair. We shall meet at last!

Now the sadness. A week ago your grandfather, Stanley, slipped away. You may have known that he had not been well for many, many years and his passing came as a release to him. I am left, of course, with a gaping hole in my life that, at my age, will never be filled again. You, on the other hand, did not know your grandfather but he knew of you. I am also sad that we never had an opportunity to see you grow up. That is an issue I had out with your mother on several occasions many years ago and one which was never resolved. Now, however, with your grandfather’s passing, I too find myself somewhat released; from my previous life. I no longer need to spend my days tending to him and, although that is a strange and upsetting feeling, it is also gives me a new lease of life. Therefore this visit to you will be my first, and likely only, trip out of the country. I only wish I had been able to make it with your grandfather as he would have loved to have been on Symi again. And he will be. (Again all will be revealed later.)

And finally the intrigue. Your grandfather left a will. In it he mentioned only two beneficiaries, me and you. And through it he left only two things: a list of instructions for me and an heirloom for you. I will be bringing your bequest with me. Quite simply put: We both have duties to perform while I am on Symi. I will explain this in much more detail when we meet but in the meantime Stanley left one last cryptic set of instructions for us both. I quote them here:

“Margaret and Jason: Tell no one of the contents of my will. When you get to Symi do not mention my name or the name on the case to anyone on the island. The music will guide you. And, above all, trust each other.”

There, that is all I have to say at the moment. I am assured by the nice lady at your Sutton branch that I will be well looked after by you and your company on my ‘holiday’, and I look forward – with the above three feelings excepted – to meeting my grandson again after all this time.
Margaret Rhea (nee De Lacy)
Surrey

‘Airport,’ the taxi driver grunted. ‘Fifteen evro.’

Jason paid the man, tucked the letter away and stepped out into the baking tarmac. He looked around at the coach loads of departing and arriving tourists. He checked his watch, his flight was not due for at least another ten minutes and it would take a further forty at least to get through baggage reclaim and onto the coach. As long as the flight had not been delayed he would be able to get them all to the ferry in time.

He headed across the road towards the terminal building to check in with Kiwi-Kate and make sure his departing guests had gone through into the departure lounge without too many problems.

Long queues of boiled lobster coloured people waited impatiently outside in the afternoon sun, tempers already starting to fray. After a week or two of nothing but relaxation it took most tourists no time at all to fall back into their old routines. Dads with beer-bellies kicked suitcases ahead of them and grumbled at each other about the wait. Someone moaned about how the ‘Bubbles’ (bubble and squeak, Greek) should be more organised. Jason resisted the temptation to point out that over fifteen thousand people a day passed through the airport at that time of year. Mothers broke off their chatting and cigarettes to holler at their children, ordering them to stand still and stop running off while teenagers slouched in small, noisy groups. For the lads their ‘Falaraki shagathon 03’ tee shirts were already out of date. For the girls the conversation was all about love and how Costas had promised he’d write, and Michaelis was definitely coming to live in Billericay.

As Jason pressed his way into the building, pushing burnt shoulders out of his way, he overheard snippets of conversation.
‘Fifteen degrees in Birmingham, aint stopped raining for weeks.’
‘I blame the seafood.’
‘I heard there’ll be snow come October.’
‘I was never off the toilet.’
‘Coming back next year?’
‘No, can’t stand hot weather, me.’

Jason sighed heavily as he prepared himself to become a smiling, bubbly yet responsible holiday rep and psyched himself up for another SARGO arrival and transfer.

Had he known what the next forty-eight hours had in store for him he may well have marched straight up to a check in desk and booked himself on the first plane to Birmingham, rain and all.