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cat watched him go by with a solemn gaze. Patrick smiled rather self-consciously and said, ‘kalispera.’ The child stared back at him, silent. A youth in jeans and a striped singlet came out of a doorway ahead of him, sandals flapping on the dusty path. A long-haired couple, dressed alike in frayed cotton shirts and trousers, the man carrying a sleeping baby, went past arguing in English about where to eat.
    Some embroidered carpets hanging outside a small shop caught his eye. The colours were soft and glowed in the lamplight. Jane would like one, but it would be bulky to take home. If only he’d got his own car.
    He went into the shop, which bore the name Aphrodite, spelled out in Greek characters, over its doorway. Displayed within, besides more carpets, were jewellery and crochet- work. A girl of about seventeen sat by the counter crocheting some garment. Patrick’s kalispera achieved better results here, and she answered with a warm smile. Her eyes were huge in her sallow face, and she had short, curly dark hair.
    ‘You speak English?’ Patrick asked.
    ‘Yes. A little,’ answered the girl. Her crochet-hook never stopped moving.
    Patrick saw a row of dresses, waistcoats and hand-knitted sweaters hanging at one side of the shop.
    ‘Do you make all these yourself?’ he asked, incredulously.
    ‘Yes. And my mother.’
    In the back of the shop, Patrick now saw a grey-haired woman, knitting busily but watching him closely. He smiled at her and repeated his greeting. The woman smiled back and murmured some phrase Patrick did not understand; she bowed with a regal grace. Her face was lined and her body, in the usual black, was shapeless as she sat there, ceaselessly working. She might well be not much over forty, Patrick thought, but she looked about sixty. All winter she and the girl must knit and sew to stock their shop, he supposed. He would have to buy something.
    He told the girl he wanted a present for his sister. She put her work down and came to help him. They looked through the crocheted garments. The waistcoats were rather nice. Patrick asked the girl to put one on so that he could see how it looked. She obeyed, and stood before him quite without coquetry, for her work to be appraised.
    ‘My sister is bigger than you,’ said Patrick.
    The girl showed him one of a different pattern in a larger size. It looked all right to Patrick, and if Jane didn’t like it, she could give it away. He bought it; it was surprisingly cheap. Before wrapping it up the girl and her mother conferred together, measuring it and noting down details of the pattern. At Patrick’s interested query, the girl explained, ‘Now I make another the same.’
    ‘How long will it take?’
    ‘Four days.’
    As she tied up the parcel he enquired if her name was Aphrodite, like the shop, and she said no, she was called Sophia. He wished he could talk to her mother. Her face was calm as she knitted placidly on. He must tell Ursula Norris about this shop; she would like it. It lacked the sophistication of the more expensive establishments nearer the harbour.
    Yannis’s mother, Ilena, must be like this woman, so patiently sitting here all day. But she would be older; Yannis was over thirty now.
    He felt cheered by this encounter and walked back to the centre of the town with a lighter step. Many of the tables outside the tavemas and the kafenia were occupied now. The babble of voices was muted by the open air. The breeze had dropped and the sea was still. Patrick reached a taverna on the quay which he had noticed earlier, and found a table by the water’s edge where he could look at the boats moored below. He asked for mullet.
    There was none. The boats had brought no mullet in today.
    The waiter, apologetic, offered sardines and said they were very good.
    Patrick kept calm. Greek sardines could hardly be identical with those at home found in tins. He agreed to try them, with avrolemono soup first, salad, and a bottle of Demestica.
    ‘You are