Being Shirley Read online

  “I really need a coffee.” Annie broke their trance as she steered Carl over to an empty table where they could sit and continue to enjoy the view. She was sure the prices would be exorbitant to reflect the throngs of tourists all clustered in little groups around the tables but it would be worth it just to soak up the ambience of it all.

  And it was, Annie decided now as she took a much-needed sip of her coffee and enjoyed it despite the temperature. An ice-cold beer could wait until later.

  Re-energised after their break and armed with water bottles bought from a street vendor, they made their way over to the Musuem de Acropoli. As Annie meandered along, unable to move fast due to the heat, she became aware of a slight stinging sensation between her thighs. Chaffing! she realised with a start. Just as Carl had predicted, and she’d only been out and about for an hour. This was not good. She would not let on to him that he had been right, so she gritted her teeth and tried to ignore her increasing discomfit. They followed along behind the mingling flow of different accents and crossed over a bridge, which took them to the walkway that led up to the museum’s entrance. As they came to a halt at the end of the queue, they found themselves standing on thick glass, beneath which were the ongoing excavations of ancient ruins. Annie’s excitement built at the sense of history.

  Despite the eye candy, it was still a relief to get inside the cool air-conditioned building and after they bought their tickets, they stood for a moment to get their bearings. The museum shop behind them did a lively trade and she made a note to herself to have a look around on their way out.

  “Let’s go and look over there first.” She pointed to several glass cabinets that housed models that depicted how the Acropolis had been built and what it would have looked like in its heyday. It would give them an idea of the scale of work involved in building it. As they strode towards them, she wished she hadn’t set forth with such gusto.

  “You okay?” Carl asked.

  “Fine,” she squeaked.

  “Because you look like someone just did something unpleasant within your personal air space and it wasn’t me.”

  Annie didn’t bother to reply, determined to ignore her burning thighs as she found a gap in the horde of people who surrounded the case. She studied the matchbox version of the Acropolis until Carl, who wasn’t one to stand around for long, pulled her away with a suggestion they head up to the next level. They stepped on the escalator with the swarm of tourists and glided upwards to step off at the next floor. As they moved out of the way of the escalators, they found themselves staring at a sea of marble. It was an auditorium filled with statues, each individually mounted onto its own plain rectangular podium, which were scattered between the thick concrete pillars—an echo to those of the Acropolis itself. The effect was mesmerising and, rendered silent, they threaded their way through them. Heads were missing on some of the statues and limbs on others; there were even whole torsos dismembered by time.

  “Imagine the stories they could tell if they could speak,” Annie murmured, caught up in the oozing sense of history.

  “Well, that one wouldn’t be saying much, sweets—he’s got no head.”

  She ignored him. “I don’t think I would like to walk around here on my own at night. It would be a bit eerie with all these broken figures gazing at you.”

  “Look over there.”

  Annie followed the direction his finger pointed and found herself staring at an impressive nude. Adonis perhaps?

  “Typical of you to spot that,” she muttered.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, girl. I am talking about the kids over there—watch them.”

  Two little boys, brothers she surmised, both under ten, were busy pointing at the statue’s well-endowed appendage. They giggled and made rude gestures, completely oblivious of their mother who stalked up behind them, her face purple with embarrassment. They watched the show play out with amusement and then decided to explore the second floor.

  This level was a rectangular-shaped space in the middle of which was the same thick-cut glass from the entranceway outside. It let them gaze down at the floors below and made Annie’s knees go weak. As she remembered she wore a skirt, she hoped no one had gotten an eyeful as she moved off the glass; she ventured over to the large windows on the left to admire the stunning backdrop of the Acropolis instead.

  “Stay where you are, sweets. I’ll take a photo with that in the background.”

  Annie sat down on the bench seat alongside the window and arranged herself into what she hoped was a flattering pose as a broad Aussie twang offered to take a shot of them together. Carl handed over the camera eagerly and joined her, draping his arm around her bare shoulders.

  “Say cheese.”

  “Cheese!” they chimed, smiles wide.

  Carl thanked their fellow traveller and retrieved his camera. He and the middle-aged Aussie, who looked every inch the first-time traveller abroad with his I Love Aussie T-shirt, compared notes briefly on their respective itineraries. His was a coach tour of Europe’s hotspots; theirs practically non-existent. They wished each other well and the Australian re-joined his tour group. Annie noticed Carl wince as he clutched at his stomach.

  “The toilets are over there.” She pointed to the middle of the floor space where the amenities were tucked away. “There isn’t a queue if you whizz over now.”

  “Hold this and wait here. Loitering outside the men’s toilet is never a good look.” Carl thrust his camera at her and with knees locked together, he scuttled off crablike in the direction of the little boy’s room. Annie had to laugh at the sight of him as he elbowed tourists out of the way and he said, “Excusez-moi.” In his desperation to get to the men’s, he had reverted to his schoolboy French as a one-size-fits-all language approach to the European continent.

  It was awhile before he reappeared but there were worse views to be looking at. Annie was happy to just sit and give her thighs a break while she gazed out at the stunning building on the hill behind her.

  So absorbed was she in the vista that she didn’t see Carl until he flopped down next to her. She jumped. “Oh, you gave me a fright. Are you okay?” She peered at his sweaty features.

  “I’ll live, or at least I think I will. Come on, I’d like to have a look at something other than the inside of the men’s loos while we are here.”

  They wandered up a ramp and paused to admire the different sculptures, many of which were heads, the ancients’ equivalent of a passport photo, perhaps, Annie thought randomly.

  “Have you noticed something?” Carl asked.

  “What?”

  “That a lot of the sculptures are missing their noses.”

  “Yeah, you’re right actually.” She scanned the nearby podiums. “Nearly all them are.”

  “I’ve a theory on that.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “It’s because the Greeks have big noses.”

  “Shush.” His voice was too loud for Annie’s liking and she gave him a light smack on his arm before she glanced around her and hoped she wouldn’t see any outraged Greeks glare back at them.

  “Well, look, you can see for yourself—it is a historical fact! That’s why they’ve all fallen off because they’re too bloody heavy for time to support them.”

  She had to laugh, especially as her eyes had just landed on a swarthy decidedly Greek-looking man who thankfully was out of earshot with a truly impressive schnozzer. “You could possibly be right.”

  As they reached the top of the ramp, they saw that the wall along the back had glass cabinets that housed various artefacts used in the day-to-day life of the ancient civilisation. By the time they had completed the full circuit, Annie felt she was almost on a first-name basis with the Ancient Greeks.

  The museum had whetted her appetite and she was keen to place all that she had just seen mentally in its former home up on the hill herself.

  “How about we hit the museum shop and then head for the Acropolis?”

  “Deal.�
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  So fifteen minutes later, armed with a couple of postcards and a picture book of Athens, Annie pulled her hat from her bag as they exited the building. As she stepped back out into the unrelenting sun, she pulled it down low on her head and flattened her curls in the process. She hoped no breeze would suddenly blow up to whip it off and reveal her hat hair to all and sundry.

  “It’s past lunchtime, you know,” Carl stated unenthusiastically after he glanced at his watch. “Are you hungry? Because there won’t be any fine dining to be had top of the hill.”

  To her surprise, Annie realised she wasn’t; it must be the heat. It might be bad for her hair but it might just prove to be good for her figure. “Actually, I’m not.”

  “That’s a first.”

  “Tell me about it.” Annie looked down at her stomach questioningly. “I’m itching to go up there.” She pointed to the Acropolis but thought that perhaps she should have said I’m chaffing to go up there. “What about you—do you feel like eating something?”

  “No.” He shuddered. “Ugh, the thought of it. Food would go straight through me. No, I’m with you—forward, James.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Annie and Carl wound their way back to where the line of café table settings began and crossed the road to the base of the hill. An arid, rock-strewn path led them to the ticket booth, where a handful of tourists waited for their passes.

  “Okay, here we go.” Annie pocketed her ticket before she linked her arm through Carl’s. “Carl?”

  “Hmm?” He turned to look at her, eyes hidden behind his Ray-Ban’s as they picked their way up the path.

  “Do you feel like she’s here with us?” Annie couldn’t read his expression.

  “I was wondering when you’d mention Roz.” He paused and pulled her to one side of the path to allow the group behind them to pass. “Do you know, it’s weird, but I thought there would be this profound sense of her from the moment we landed in Greece but so far nothing.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been too preoccupied with needing the loo. What about you?” He took his glasses off and looked at her quizzically from beneath his pork pie hat.

  Annie could feel a profound sense of chaffing but as for that instinctive knowledge that her sister was with her that she’d felt on that grey day of her Greek epiphany, then no. “I’ve been too caught up in the magic of actually being here to think too deeply about Roz. I think she’ll be with us when we sit down by the theatre ruins, though, whether we feel her or not.”

  Carl nodded and then Annie pulled his arm. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

  Olive trees dotted the umber soil where no grass grew and rocks littered the hillside; skinks skittered out of their path to hide in cracks invisible to the naked eye. Other sightseers paused to rest from time to time under the sparse shade of an olive tree, a mixture of impractical shoes and bright-red sweaty faces in the afternoon sun. Annie wondered how many feet had trod the path hers now walked and it made her shiver to imagine women in long white dresses carrying urns of water or men in togas toiling or whatever it was men in togas did back then.

  The Herodes Atticus Theatre tumbled over the hill to their right and as they reached it, Annie was assailed with a sense of having been here before. This sense of deja vu undoubtedly stemmed from having watched the Yanni concert time and time again. In a way, it was like when you saw someone famous off the tele and had that feeling you knew them from somewhere or other but couldn’t place where, and then when you realised they were a celebrity, you were amazed at how much smaller they were in real life. Now, though, as she gazed down at the stage, she was pleased to find that its scale didn’t disappoint because its proportions were perfect. She wished the place were empty, though. If it were, she would clamber over the barriers put in place to prevent any old Joe Bloggs from performing on the well-worn stone flags beneath her to marvel at their own acoustics. If she could be, she would be down there like a shot, arms flung wide as she launched into “Aria.” She and Carl weren’t alone, though. A teenage group were crouched about on the dry soil in cliquey clusters and took notes while a tall man who looked to be somewhere in his late thirties strode back and forth. His hands gesticulated passionately as he spoke. Annie frowned; it sounded like Greek but either way she couldn’t understand a word of what he said, so she turned her attention to Carl. He had fished out a water bottle from their day pack and was currently guzzling from it.

  “Can I have the iPod first? I promise I won’t forget that nobody else can hear the music and start singing.” As he screwed the lid back on the bottle, she saw that the colour he had only just begun to regain had once more drained from his face. Little beads of perspiration stood out like orbs of sago on his forehead. “Oh no, not again? There will be nothing left of you soon.”

  His reply was a low moan as he tossed the pack down on the ground by her feet and clutched his belly. “Please tell me you saw a loo on our climb up here.”

  Annie chewed her bottom lip. The only thing that resembled a latrine she had seen was a round rock with a hole in it that the Greeks might possibly have employed as a toilet seat back in the times of Apollo or Spartacus or whoever was head honcho back then. She looked round; there wasn’t even a decent bush for him to take cover behind. “The only toilets I saw were back down the bottom of the hill, opposite the café where we had coffee this morning.”

  “Oh my God!” Carl squeaked, “Wait here.”

  Annie couldn’t bear to watch him hobble off, so she found a free boulder on which to perch, well away from the teenagers and the other tourists. She grabbed her own water bottle from the pack and drank long and hard before she replaced the lid. That was better; they didn’t need her dehydrated on top of Carl’s little problem. She fossicked further into the pack to produce the iPod. With the earplugs in, she sat for a moment and imprinted the mellow gold of the theatre on her brain. She closed her eyes and let the haunting “Flower Duet” wash over her. The enthralled crowds as the two women blinded by the lights on the stage sang to the night air felt so very real. Their angelic voices carried, as the Ancient Greeks had known they would when they carefully designed this theatre for the very best acoustics. All the while, Yanni, resplendent in white, with his hair gently blowing on the whispering night breeze, looked on, bathed in the all-encompassing love of his countrymen.

  “I’m here, Roz. This is for you.” Annie didn’t know whether she had uttered the words aloud or not. So swept up in the moment was she that she was unaware of the man’s approach until he jolted her rudely forth with a tap on her shoulder.

  She swung round, removed a plug from her ear and stared up from under the brim of her hat. She saw the man she had noticed earlier with the teenagers. “Yes?” Her tone was curt at the interruption, unable to fathom why he bothered her. This was her moment, her deeply private personal moment, and now she had some strange man hovering over her.

  He held out a tissue to her and she looked at him blankly for a moment before she touched her fingers to her cheek. It was wet. “Oh,” she said in surprise. She took the proffered tissue and dabbed at her eyes. Hopefully, her waterproof mascara hadn’t let her down. All the dreams she’d had of actually being here sitting in front of this theatre had never featured her looking like the world’s first ginger panda.

  He said something and she shrugged to let him know she didn’t understand. “I’m from New Zealand.” She enunciated her words slowly and loudly, unaware she sounded as though she were talking to a simpleton instead of somebody who spoke a different language. “I only speak English. Actually that’s not true, I can say a few words in Maori like Kia Ora, which means hello.” She always babbled when she was caught off-kilter. At the bewildered expression on his face, she bit her lip in order to shut herself up before she demonstrated the fact she could also count to ten in Te Reo. Somehow she didn’t think her very limited Maori language skills would impress him much.

  “Ah, so you are from New Zealand? With that wonderful hair, I knew
you couldn’t be Greek. You’re a long way from home then.” It was a statement rather than a question and it was said in near perfect English. “Which part of New Zealand do you come from?”

  “Christchurch and yes, I am a long way from home.”

  “Christchurch, yes, I know this place.” He nodded his head in understanding. “Your city, it has had a hard time.”

  “Yes it has but things are getting better slowly.” Greece was no stranger to earthquakes either, as her mother had so helpfully informed, her brow creased with concern as Annie stowed T-shirts in her backpack. “Have you been there?”

  “No but I would like to visit your country one day very much. It looks beautiful.” He smiled. “So little people, so many sheep.”

  “More cows than sheep these days but you should visit it because yes, it is very beautiful.” There, she’d done her bit for New Zealand’s tourist industry. “Oh, and thanks for this.” Annie waved the sodden tissue at the man. She found herself liking the way his eyes crinkled at the corners whenever he smiled—which he seemed to do a lot. He looked kind, too. If he were to be cast in a movie, he would definitely be one of the good guys because there was no way that the dimple on his left cheek would ever lend itself to the role of a baddie. Good looks aside, now that she had her tissue and he could see she was okay, he could move on and leave her to it, thank you very much. She turned her back on him and told herself that rudeness was perfectly acceptable if you knew you’d never see the person again.

  “It is no problem but I am curious. I have known the sight of the Acropolis and this,” his hand swept over the Herodes Atticus Theatre, “to move people in here.” He tapped his chest. “But never quite to tears?” The question hung in the air as he crouched down alongside her and ignored her body language as he raised a dark eyebrow to invite her explanation.

  Annie frowned. She was torn between having been brought up to have good manners and telling him to not be so bloody nosy. Rather like a lapsed Catholic, though, when it comes to their faith, her long-ago instilled manners won out. “It’s a bit of a long story.”