Black Butterflies Read Free Page B

and jumping from the cave, but even so there are boys, now in knee-length shorts, ignoring the warnings, laughing, daring each other. She can hear Greek, English, French and German. Back then, it was only Greek.
    Marina looks up at the view across the sea, across the narrow strip of water separating the island from the mainland, dotted with islets. They float on white skirts, mingling with the sky. The view is a dreamy series of blues, each island a lighter shade behind the last, until in the distance they merge with the sky altogether, neither land nor cloud. Back then, she thought it was the best view she had ever seen. Today it catches in her throat, her chest swells, she’s glad she came. With a view like that, nothing else in the world matters.
    She walks on up the path, to another place she remembers, past the high rock where in her mind ’s eye she once again sees the two men daring each other to jump from higher and higher up. Her heart had been in her mouth; she felt sure they would hit the rocks below, or that they would plunge too deep. But again and again they reappeared, flicking back wet fringes, and laughing. Marina smiles. Today the rock stands bare, and she hears snatches of a French conversation drifting up from the heads bobbing in the water far below. No one is jumping from the rocks. A concrete platform has been built at the bottom, with iron steps into the sea.
    The stone-cobbled path continues unchanged until she comes to where the steps drop to a smaller harbour away from the main town. Here, before the descent to where the fishing boats are moored, is a freshly painted taverna. That is new. The most popular restaurant used to be down by the fishing boats, but as Marina descends she sees that the building is now derelict, its windows black, lifeless, the doors nailed shut, faded signs still hanging. It ’s a sad sight. Marina recollects all the black and white Greek films made in the sixties that had featured this, often using close-ups on the actors in a half-hearted attempt to disguise the location. She sighs.
    Marina heads inland, under twisted old pine trees that line the dry riverbed here, past dry wells, now used as dustbins, and onto the wide, gently sloping walkway that leads to the house she once knew. The houses here vary. Small whitewashed shepherds ’ cottages sit beside large cut-stone mansions. The island’s history preserved to become rich foreigners’ holiday homes. Passing some of the larger houses, she steps closer to look up through the windows at the ceilings inside. The ceilings in the grander houses have intricate wooden latticework decoration that astonished her as a child. She stares up through a high window. It impresses again today.
    A meow draws her attention, and she looks down at a black and white cat, just past kittenhood, lithe and muscular. She leans down to stoke its head and the cat raises itself on its back legs to meet her hand. As she walks on, it trots by her ankles. Her old shoes are comfortable on the warm, smooth stones. Marina watches her feet and wonders why her ankles are always so swollen. She ’s been on her feet for nearly twenty years in her shop. Maybe that’s it.
    Maybe her ankles need a rest? She sits on a low wall by the path. The cat jumps up next to her. She strokes it.
    ‘I didn’t have a choice after Manolis died,’ she tells the cat. Eleni had been eight and little Artemis only three. Marina can still recall doing the maths. The orange groves were not really enough without an extra income. It had been a sad time, but Marina had found she could not grieve for Manolis; he had been too unpredictable, too wild, too selfish. She wouldn’t miss him, and he was hardly ever there anyway. But there was a change, and in that change she needed an extra income.
    She recalls the day after his death, wandering around their house, coming to terms with the fact that it was now all hers. Thinking of it as her own gave her butterflies in her stomach;