Now I understood why he gave her permission to drive the hire car.
Someone was hovering by our table. Matthew, who was now clean-shaven, was standing behind my mother. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to Rose, as he leaned over her to pass me the car keys and a purple plastic wallet. ‘You’ll find all the paperwork in there.’
‘Who are you?’ Rose looked mystified.
‘I am the partner of Ingrid, a friend of your daughter. She told me you were a bit strapped for wheels so I picked up the hire car for you this morning. It drives pretty smoothly.’ He glanced at a cat chewing a polpo tentacle and grimaced. ‘These street cats have diseases, you know.’
Rose blew out her cheeks and nodded slyly in agreement. ‘How do you know this man, Sofia?’
I had been forbidden to speak so I was silent.
How did I know Matthew?
I’m on the beach, Matty. Can you hear the sea?
I’m on the beach, Matty. Can you hear the sea?
I need not have worried because Gómez took over.
He formally thanked Matthew for delivering the car to us and hoped that Nurse Sunshine had made sure the insurance was in order. Matthew confirmed that all was well and that it had been a pleasure to walk through the ‘insane’ gardens of the clinic with the colleague who had been kind enough to give him a lift. He had more to say but was interrupted by my mother who was tapping his arm.
‘Matthew, I need some help. Please escort me home. I need to rest.’
‘Ah,’ said Gómez. ‘You could be lying in bed, resting! But why? It is not as if you have been breaking cobblestones with a pickaxe from dawn to dusk.’
Rose tapped Matthew’s arm again. ‘I can barely walk, you see, and I have just been attacked by a cat. Your arm would be appreciated.’
‘Certainly.’ Matthew grinned. ‘But first I’m going to see off these scabby moggies.’
He stamped his brown two-tone brogues on the cement. With his pageboy haircut, he looked like a short European prince having a tantrum. All the cats ran off except one fearless tomcat, which Matthew started to chase in zigzags across the plaza. When he had seen it off he beckoned to my mother, who had already slipped on her shoes.
Matthew was standing four yards away from our table but he did not understand how long it would take Rose to walk to his arm. He glanced twice at the watch on his wrist while she hobbled in his direction. It was painful to witness the effort it took her to walk towards a man who did not particularly want her to arrive in the first place. At last she attached her arm to his arm.
‘Have a good rest, Mrs Papastergiadis.’ Gómez lifted his hand and waved two fingers in her direction.
When Rose turned round to take one last look at Gómez, she was appalled to see he was finishing off her soup.
After a while he congratulated me on my silence. ‘You did not speak on your mother’s behalf. That is an achievement.’
I was silent.
‘You will notice how in anger, or perhaps with a sense of grievance, she is walking.’
‘Yes, she does walk sometimes.’
‘My staff will be conducting various investigations to test her bone health, in particular the spine, hips and forearms. But I observed that on the way to the restaurant, when she tripped, she did not strain or sprain or fracture anything at all. Osteoporosis can be ruled out on this observation alone. It is the vitality she puts into not walking that concerns me. I’m not sure I can help her.’
I was about to beg him not to give up on her but I hadn’t got my voice back.
‘Let me ask you, Sofia Irina, where is your father?’
‘In Athens,’ I croaked.
‘Ah. Do you have a photograph of him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
My voice had been seen off like the cat.
Gómez filled a glass with the water that was bottled in Milan but had something to do with Singapore and passed it to me. I took a sip and cleared my throat.
‘My father has married his girlfriend. They have had a baby girl.’
‘So you have a sister in Athens you have never met?’
I told him I have not seen my father for eleven years.
He seemed keen to reassure me that should I wish to visit my father, a rota of staff would be assigned to care for Rose every day.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, Sofia Irina, you are a little weak for a young healthy woman. Sometimes you limp, as if you have picked up on your mother’s emotional weather. You could do with more physical strength. This is not a substantial table to lift, yet for you it was an effort. I do not believe you need to do more exercise. It is a matter of having purpose, less apathy. Why not steal a fish from the market to make you bolder? It need not be the biggest fish, but it must not be the smallest either.’
‘Why do I need to be bolder?’
‘That is for you to answer.’ His tone was reassuring, calm and serious, considering he was probably mad. ‘Now, there is something else I must talk to you about.’ Gómez seemed genuinely upset.
He told me that someone had graffitied a wall of his clinic with blue paint. It had happened this morning. The word painted on the wall was ‘QUACK’. Meaning that he was a charlatan, a con man, not a reputable doctor. He thought it might have involved the friend of mine who came to collect the car. This man Matthew. Nurse Sunshine had given him the documents and keys and not long after he had left they had found the right side of the marble dome defaced with this word.
‘Why would he do that?’
Gómez looked for the handkerchief in his jacket pocket and discovered it was not there. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and then wiped his hand with a napkin. ‘I am aware he plays golf with an executive for a pharmaceutical company which has been bothering me for some years. They have offered to fund research at my clinic. In return, they would be pleased if I were to buy their medication and prescribe it to my patients.’
Gómez was clearly distressed. He shut his agitated, bright eyes and rested his hands on his knees. ‘My staff will clean the paint off the marble exterior, but I can only think that someone wants to discredit my practice.’
The Mohican boy and his little sister were now dragging the inflated blue boat across the square and down to the beach. Their brother followed them holding the oars.
Was Gómez a quack? Rose had already voiced this thought.
I no longer care about the twenty-five thousand euro we struggled to pay him. He can have my house. If he slaughters a deer and divines a walking cure from its entrails I would be grateful. My mother thinks her body is prey to malevolent forces, so I am not paying him to be complicit with her command on reality.
That evening when I was wandering around the village, I picked two sprigs of jasmine growing on a bush outside the house built halfway up the hill. A blue rowing boat was moored in the yard with the name ‘Angelita’ painted on its side. I crushed the fragile white petals in my fingers. The scent was like oblivion, a trance. The arch of desert jasmine was a coma zone. I shut my eyes and when I opened them again, Matthew and Ingrid were walking up the hill towards the vintage shop. Ingrid ran towards me and kissed my cheek.
‘We’re here to collect my sewing from the shop,’ she said.
She was wearing an orange dress with feathers sewn around the neckline and matching peep-toe shoes.
Matthew caught up with her. ‘Inge sewed her dress. I don’t think she gets paid enough. I’m going to negotiate a raise for her.’ He tucked his hair behind his ears and laughed when she punched him in the arm. ‘You wouldn’t want to be cursed by Inge. She’s insane when she’s angry. In Berlin she goes three times a week to her kick-boxing class, so don’t mess with her.’