Read The Island for Free Online Page B

a toothbrush. Fotini, however, had been quick to come to her rescue, lending her everything she needed - one of Stephanos’s shirts to sleep in, and a clean if rather threadbare towel. This morning, at the end of her bed, she found a floral shirt - not at all her style, but after the heat and dust of the previous day she was glad for the change of clothing. It was a gesture of such maternal kindness that she could hardly ignore it - even if the pale pinks and blues of the blouse looked rather incongruous with her khaki shorts, what did it really matter? Alexis splashed her face with cold water at the tiny sink in the corner and then scrutinised her tanned face in the mirror. She was as excited as a child who was about to be read the crucial chapter of a story. Today Fotini was going to be her Scheherazade.
     
    Dressed in the unfamiliar feel of crisp, ironed cotton, she wandered down the dark back stairway and found herself in the restaurant kitchen, drawn there by the powerful aroma of strong, freshly brewed coffee. Fotini sat at a huge, gnarled table in the middle of the room. Though thoroughly scrubbed, it still seemed to bear the stains from every piece of meat that had been pulverised there and every herb that had been crushed on its surface. It must have also witnessed a thousand moments of frayed temper which had simmered and boiled over in the intense heat of the kitchen. Fotini rose to greet her.
     
    ‘ Kalimera , Alexis!’ she said warmly.
     
    She was wearing a blouse similar to the one she had lent Alexis, though Fotini’s was in shades of ochre that matched the full skirt that billowed out from her slender waist and nearly reached her ankles. The first impression of her beauty that had struck Alexis so forcibly the night before in the kindly dusk light had not been wrong. The Cretan woman’s statuesque physique and large eyes reminded her of the images on the great Minoan fresco at Knossos, those vivid portraits which had survived several thousand years of time’s ravages and yet had a remarkable simplicity that made them seem so contemporary.
     
    ‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Fotini.
     
    Alexis stifled a yawn, nodded and then smiled at Fotini, who was now busily loading a tray with a coffee pot, some generously proportioned cups and saucers and a loaf that she had just removed from the oven.
     
    ‘I’m sorry - it’s reheated. That’s the only bad thing about Sundays here - the baker doesn’t get out of bed. So it’s dry crusts or fresh air,’ Fotini said laughingly.
     
    ‘I’d be more than happy with fresh air, as long as it was washed down with fresh coffee,’ responded Alexis, following Fotini out through a set of the ubiquitous plastic strips and on to the terrace, where all last night’s tables had been stripped of their paper cloths and now looked strangely bare with their red Formica tops.
     
    The two women sat overlooking the sea which lapped the rocks below. Fotini poured and the dense black liquid gushed in a dark stream into the white china. After the endless disappointing cups of Nescafé, served as though the tasteless dissolving granules of instant coffee were a delicacy, Alexis felt no cup of coffee had ever tasted as powerful and delicious as this. It seemed that nobody had the heart to tell the Greeks that Nescafé was no longer a novelty - it was this old-fashioned thick and treacly fluid that everyone, including her, craved. The September sunshine had a clear brilliance and a kindly warmth that, after the intensity of the August heat, made it one of the most welcome months in Crete. The furnace-strong temperatures of midsummer had dropped and the hot, angry winds had gone too. The two women sat opposite each other beneath the shade of the awning and Fotini put her dark, lined hand on Alexis’s.
     
    ‘I’m so pleased you have come,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine how pleased. I was very hurt when your mother stopped writing - I understood perfectly, but it broke