Plain Sailing Read online

  The Village Idiots

  Part 3 – Plain Sailing

  Sara Alexi

  oneiro

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Oneiro Press

  The Village Idiots

  Part 3 – Plain Sailing

  Copyright © 2017 by Sara Alexi

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Also by Sara Alexi

  (Click the images below to buy on Amazon…)

  Dear Reader,

  This book is part three of a three-part series…

  If you haven’t read Part 1, you can find it on Amazon here.

  Part 2 can be found on Amazon here.

  Happy Reading!

  Sara

  Chapter 1

  ‘Fourteen thousand … fifteen thousand …’

  Babis, the ‘Lawyer for the People’, takes bundles of notes from his small and rather shabby rucksack. He peers into its dark depths and then turns it upside down, announcing ‘Sixteen thousand’ as the final bundle of cash drops onto the kitchen table with the rest.

  ‘Is that it?’ Takis stands, his hands eager to touch the money, but hesitant too, as if the amount offends him.

  ‘I did warn you that it would be less,’ Babis says, hands on hips, smiling down on the loot.

  ‘You told us thirty thousand.’ Takis’s voice is harsh and cold.

  Spiros looks nervously from the lawyer to his friend. The first sight of the money had thrilled him but it seems now that everything is not as it should be.

  ‘Yes. But where do you think I sold it? Gold with no provenance can only be sold on the black market. I took risks for you, went to dodgy parts of Athens, made contacts I would rather not have.’

  ‘Of course I expected a reduction, but not to half its value!’ Takis barks.

  Spiros’s eye is beginning to twitch. He looks up through the window at the hazy deep-blue sky. The lower half of the frame has a piece of grey sagging net pinned to it, and behind this there is a butterfly with red tips to its wings. It twitches as if it has almost spent its energy. Spiros scrapes his chair against the flagged floor. Neither Takis nor Babis pays him any attention as he struggles to open the paint-peeled window to allow his insect friend to escape.

  ‘Sixteen is not half of thirty,’ Babis retorts.

  ‘Eisai kala? Are we going to argue over a measly thousand when you have duped me out of fifteen!’ Takis is hissing as he speaks, spittle foaming in the corners of his mouth.

  Babis smooths his hair with a slick movement of his hand before he continues.

  ‘What did you expect? Everyone wants a cut when something is not straight. With no provenance you could have expected nothing else. Besides, it is not like you worked for this money!’ Babis is trying to stay calm.

  ‘Not work for it! I have had to fight with the port police and their attitudes, dived in the harbour when the damn boat was sunk …’

  Spiros’s attention is drawn back to the argument. It was Takis’s greed for the non-existent insurance money that made him sink the boat in the first place, and it was Spiros, not Takis, who had to dive for the gold!

  ‘Then there was that rabid dog that nearly took my arm off!’

  Spiros looks up at this. The dog was only doing its job – after all, they had broken into the boatyard, which it was the dog’s job to protect, and to be fair, it had barked and snapped at them as a warning. But it certainly wasn’t rabid, and once he had endeared himself to it with the mints, it had been the sweetest of creatures. True, it had not taken to Takis at all, growling and snarling when he tried to get under the fence, but rabid it was not!

  ‘No, Babi, you are mistaken. I have worked hard for this inheritance,’ Takis says, ‘and I would have thought that you, the “Lawyer for the People”, as you like to call yourself, would be the last person to diddle me out of what I have worked for!

  ‘Taki, you are out of order. I have gone beyond the call of duty to get that gold changed into cash for you. I wish I hadn’t bothered now. What would you have done with it, then? Gone to Athens yourself? Where would you have started to look for someone to buy it, eh? Asked on street corners, perhaps? Taken it down to the flea market in Monastiraki?’

  Babis starts to laugh, harshly. Takis’s face is dark red. Spiros puts his hand to his eye to stop it twitching. He hates this sort of thing. If it wasn’t the case that half of the money was rightfully his, he would be inclined to leave right now. He looks at the pile of euros. What did Babis say? Sixteen thousand? How much is half of that? He looks at his fingers but there are not enough. Sixteen is six and ten, right? There are ten fingers, that could be the ten thousand. He never thought he could do maths. He moves his hands away from each other. Takis gets five and he gets five. Then there is six thousand. He splays out six fingers, which is three and three. What did he have before? A hand each. So that’s five fingers on one hand and three on the other. Eight each. Eight thousand euros? The rod in the fishing tackle shop on the high street in Saros is eighty euros, so he can buy that now. In fact, he can buy ten fishing rods, or is it a hundred? Either way, he has more than enough. His eye has stopped twitching now.

  ‘And how much of a cut have you taken for yourself?’ Takis is still barking and whining as he leans over the table, his hands supporting him on either side of the cash.

  ‘Well, obviously I used my time to go to Athens and I see no reason why I should foot the hotel bill as it was impossible to get back the same day. Normally, of course, I would eat at home.’

  He glances around the kitchen, which shows no signs of any cooking having taken place recently. Pans are piled in the sink and dishes sit encrusted on the side.

  ‘But I had no choice but to eat out in Athens.’

  ‘And no doubt you treated yourself to an expensive place?’ Takis bellows.

  Spiros reaches out a hand and takes a bundle of cash, sliding it from between Takis’s hands to his corner of the table, and then more bundles. He counts them carefully, one, two, three …

  ‘I object to this, Taki. This was a favour I did for you.’ Babis is starting to shout now too.

  Four, five, six …

  ‘You call robbing me a favour?’ Takis’s face contorts with anger.

  Seven, eight. His share. He looks around the cluttered kitchen. On the counter, by an empty tin of dolmades, is an abandoned plastic bag. Spiros tentatively opens it to look inside and sniffs to see if it is clean. It seems it is.

  ‘I should have left you with the gold. You would never have found someone to sell it to. Worthless, it was!’ Babis’s eyes flash, fixed on Takis. Takis must be twice Babis’s age but right now they are both acting like a pair of children.

  Spiros places the eight bundles of notes into the blue plastic bag, and without a word to either of them he stands to leave.

  ‘And where are you going?’ Takis barks at his back. Spiros’s eye responds, rapidly spasming, before he answers.

  ‘I was just …’ he starts.

  ‘Don’t you care that this man has ripped us off?’ Takis demands.

  ‘We didn’t ask his price for changing the gold …’ Spiros says, thinking it might help. The deepening furrow on Takis’s brow tells him it hasn’t. ‘And we are now richer than we were, a lot richer,’ Spiros adds with a smile.

  Takis does not seem to have an answer for this so Spiros keeps walking, then struggles with Babis’s door. The midday summer sun is so hot it takes his breath away for a second as he steps outside, happy to be away from the arguing. He has taken several steps when he hears a roar from behind him.

  ‘Spiro!’

  It is Takis’s voice. No doubt he has discovered that half
the money is missing. Spiros’s legs begin to move fast, trotting, then running. His house is only just behind Babis’s and he desperately wants to be inside his own home, doors locked, shutters closed. Takis might be unhappy but he, Spiros, has a right to this cash. It was left to them both, and he has never had such a large amount of money. He needs to stare at it, feel it, make it real somehow.

  He slams his front door behind him, bolts it and breathes deeply. Then he turns the bag of money out onto his own table and thrusts his hands in his pockets, standing to look at it. His fingers curl around the paper-wrapped tube of mints he found beside the gold on George’s boat. George’s own handwriting was on it – Spiros – a gift to him after George’s death. George was kind like that; he often gave him tubes of mints, packets of sweets, bought him a milkshake if they met him at a café. George understood that despite being a man he had never taken to certain adult tastes, which often seemed bitter to him.

  And now here is the wealth George left him too. What a blessed man he is! What to do with so much money? He must be careful, not spend it wildly. He stands motionless, trying to calm his breathing. He is there for a minute, or maybe it is much longer – it is hard to tell with so much rushing through his mind.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Takis is using the fleshy part of his balled fist to knock hard on the door. If he could, Spiros would like not to answer, pretend he is not there.

  ‘Spiro, I know you are in there.’ Thump, thump.

  He hardly dare breathe. Then he looks at the bundles of cash on the table and, as quietly as he can, he gathers it up and stuffs it inside his rubber boots behind the door.

  ‘Spiro, will you please open the door? Babis just told me something important. We need to discuss the boat.’

  George’s boat, his beautiful charter yacht. Maybe they have enough money to repair all the damage that was done when it was sunk. Maybe that is what Takis wants to talk about. Spiros opens the door with a smile. His friend pushes past him and sinks into one of the wooden chairs at his kitchen table. This is normally Spiros’s cue to put the water on to boil for coffee, but today he just doesn’t feel like it. Instead, he remains by the door, his back to his rubber boots. Takis is looking around the room – maybe he is looking for the money.

  ‘So what did Babis say about the boat?’ Spiros asks.

  ‘Well, as we know the port police want to charge us two thousand euros for lifting the boat and hauling her to their yard.’

  Spiros somehow feels that, actually, Takis should pay this bill, as he never agreed to the sinking of the boat. He was against the idea, so why should he pay for the consequences of it? But he knows that is a conversation that will become an argument, one that will get loud and that he will lose, so he stays silent.

  ‘Well, apparently, they are also charging us for the pleasure of it remaining in their yard! Cheeky rats! A weekly rate! And Babis assures me that it is not a debt that will go away. It will grow and grow and if we show no signs of paying it will go to court and we could end up in jail.’

  Spiros tries to swallow, but his throat feels tight all of a sudden. He puts his hand to his cheek, his fingers on the muscle around his eye.

  ‘Also, you remember that little celebration for our inheritance that we had with the village in Theo’s kafenio?’

  Spiros remembers all too well Takis offering free drinks to everyone in the place, as well as every passer-by who put their head in to see what all the fuss was about. That had nothing to do with him either.

  ‘Well, Theo wants paying too. Five hundred euros those greedy drunken farmers drank! Can you believe it? … Are you making me a coffee or what?’

  Spiros does not want to leave his post by the door. But if he doesn’t, will Takis suspect? He must find a better place to hide the money.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Takis looks at him closely, and so before the question is asked again Spiros begins to make the coffee.

  He puts the water on to heat and adds the sugar. He is impatient for it to dissolve and adds the coffee before it is time. It seem to take forever for the grounds to sink and the concoction to boil, but just as it does Spiros lifts it from the heat and spills a little on the floor next to Takis in his impatience.

  ‘Watch it!’ Takis exclaims and he moves his legs out of the way.

  Spiros stops pouring and puts the cup down.

  ‘And what is that? You cannot have made it properly so quickly. It looks like mud.’

  Spiros stands sentinel by his boots again.

  ‘You are acting very oddly, my friend. Come and sit.’ Takis’s voice is almost friendly now, and he indicates the chair next to him.

  ‘I’m fine here,’ Spiros says.

  ‘As you like. So listen, to stop accruing charges for the yacht we need to move it. We cannot just slide it into the water from the yard because the water is too shallow there, so basically, we have to lift her with a crane onto a truck and take her back to the harbour, where we can put her in the water. And once she is there, I suggest we sell her cheap, get a quick sale so we don’t get charged a penny more for port fees or anything by those grabby port police characters. Maybe we will make a little money if we are lucky, and hopefully get back the cost of the crane and the fees.’

  He fiddles in his pocket and brings out a scrap of paper.

  ‘Two hundred for the truck and three hundred for the crane. Babis rang the crane man for us. Daylight robbery! But at least then we are done, we have got rid of this liability and we still have a few thousand in cash.’

  What Takis is proposing makes sense, but Spiros likes the boat. That’s the fun part of what they have inherited. That one time when they were allowed to take it on a remembrance sail, he steered the yacht and it felt fantastic. He wants to do that again, many times. He does not want to sell the boat at all.

  ‘Shall we go to Theo’s for coffee? This is undrinkable,’ Takis says.

  Chapter 2

  ‘You go.’ Spiros continues to stand by the door, reluctant to desert his post and leave his rubber boots exposed.

  ‘You’ve changed, you know that?’ Takis stands to leave. ‘Before all this inheritance stuff you and I were the best of buddies, and now you act as if we are no longer friends.’

  Spiros’s eye twitches and his mouth is suddenly dry.

  ‘Oh course we are friends, Taki,’ he replies, but he can sense the reservation in his own voice. The corners of his mouth twist down and his bottom lip starts to tremble. He sucks it in and bites to hold it still.

  ‘Yeah, but not the sort of friends we once were. Before all this I cannot imagine a time when I would have gone to the kafenio alone. Come to that, I cannot remember a day when you would have served me rubbish like this.’

  He gestures at the coffee cup on the kitchen table in a dismissive way and looks Spiros hard in the eyes as he steps towards the door.

  ‘Yes, you have changed, my friend.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘But then they say money changes people, don’t they?’

  Spiros watches him leave, hands in pockets, whistling a tune as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, out of the backyard and into the lane that leads to the centre of the village.

  Spiros blinks into the strong sunshine.

  ‘You can’t remember a time when I didn’t do your bidding, you mean,’ he mutters. ‘”Spiro, do this”, “Spiro, do that”’ – he moves his head from side to side as he parodies Takis’s gruff voice. ‘Did that make us good friends, or did that make me a good friend and you a bully?’

  He closes the door on the world and turns to look at the cash. He cannot leave it in his boots. Only last winter, when the first rains came and he came to put them on, he felt something in the toe and found it to be a dead mouse. The poor thing had no doubt fallen in and not been able to get out. Or maybe it was just old and had chosen that spot to die in. Yes, that will have been it. But it means he cannot risk leaving his cash there; it would not be long before it ended up like the shredded newspaper under the sin
k where the rats make their nests.

  A tin would be better. He has one on top of the wardrobe in his room, which he found on the beach. On the lid is a picture of a man in a red checked skirt and a tall furry hat, blowing into a pipe attached to a red checked bag tucked under his arm. The writing is in English, and Spiros wondered when he first found it what it was originally used for. Well, it is for his money now.

  The tin is covered with a layer of dust from the top of the wardrobe, and Spiros wipes this off with his sleeve, then stuffs the bundles of cash into it. He is about to put the lid on when he thinks of his mama and how long she has suffered in the heat. Each year she complains it is more than she can bear. The full heat of summer is not quite upon them; there is still time. He retrieves a handful of bills and stuffs them in his pocket.

  He hides the tin in the patari, in the space above the bathroom that holds the water tank. He shoves it as far behind the tank as he can reach. It feels safe to leave it there.

  With his pockets bulging with cash, he wanders down to the square. The kafenio is full of farmers waiting for the hottest part of the day to pass, their morning’s work done. Takis will be there somewhere, in the crowd, but Spiros walks straight past and on to Aleko’s house.

  The paved area in front of the house is littered with battered old cars and trucks, each waiting for the mechanic’s attention. There is a rusting yellow truck in the centre of the oil-stained yard and from under this a pair of legs stick out.

  ‘Aleko?’ Spiros calls, and the legs twist and the body wriggles out into the sunshine.

  ‘Hey, Spiro.’ Aleko looks behind him and then all around.

  ‘Takis isn’t here,’ Spiros says, and Aleko lifts his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you,’ Aleko says, and Spiros feels sure there is something more being said in the way Aleko puts the emphasis on ‘you’, but he does not quite understand. He puzzles for a moment and then tries to collect his thoughts, to concentrate on the reason for his visit.