Page 62 of The Silent Sister
Eléni now knew the woman as Margaret Harris.Mrs, from reading her name badge.
‘Thank you, Mrs Harris. You’ve been very helpful. As it happens, I do know the exact date. It’s the twelfth of August 1953 and maybe a few from the days following.’
The librarian retrieved theCeltic Chroniclefrom that date and some from the days after. She placed them on a large table and invited Eléni to sit down. ‘I’ll give you these to start and maybe a couple of nationals as well.The Timesand maybe this tabloid. Just be careful as you handle them, please.’
‘Thank you. That’s great.’ Eléni looked at each front page and it was theCeltic Chroniclealone that ran the story as a lead. It was dated 13 August, the day after the earthquake had happened. The name of the reporter was Rhodri Jones. She’d heard that name before. Yes, it was the reporter’s name that had accompanied the missing-child advert, with what she believed was a photo of her. The same reporter who’d written the articledated 15 August that she’d found in her mother’s journal, with the photo of a woman she believed to be her mother. She read the article carefully.
A day after the devastating earthquake razed most of this beautiful island to the ground, help is at last getting through. The British Royal Navy vessel HMSDaringarrived this morning from Malta and already essential food and medical supplies are reaching the homeless and injured. Across the bay, the town of Lixouri is now being referred to as ‘The Death Town’. I spoke to one woman waiting outside a pile of rubble that had once been her home. She told me, ‘I won’t leave him. Until he comes out. Dead or alive. I wait.’ She couldn’t say any more. Her sobs took away her heartfelt words. I didn’t ask who ‘he’ was. Husband, father, son, grandson. There is so much heartache and so much grief here on these hot streets.
A Greek Earthquake Appeal has been set up. Please give what you can, no matter how small. You may donate via your local branch of the Midland Bank.
Eléni sat back in her chair.I lived through that!The emotion was overwhelming when she realised how close she had been to dying along with her birth parents and grandparents. If it hadn’t been for her father and his fellow sailors, she wouldn’t be alive.
It wasn’t a long article but it was accompanied by several photographs, including mounds of rubble in the streets, damaged buildings and lines of people handing along boxes of supplies. At the end of the line nearest to the camera wasa lone woman. This photograph was clearer than the one in the newspaper cutting from her mother’s journal. Eléni knew then that she’d been right. The woman was her mamá. Seeing the images as evidence of the disaster was far more powerful than a full page of text. Eléni was drained. She’d known some things about what had happened from what her parents had felt obliged to tell her after she’d confronted them, but seeing the evidence for herself in picture form made her sick to her stomach. Her mother had also experienced the terror of it and her father had been the one to rescue her. No wonder they wanted to forget and protect her from the horror of what had happened. In her head, she heard her angry words again and saw the hurt look on her mother’s face. She felt ashamed.
She took out a small writing pad from her bag and rifled through the rest of the contents to find her pen. She made a note of what she could see in the photos. She would return with her sketchbook and record what she saw in pen and ink. The other national papers had shorter reports on their inside pages, but it was Rhodri Jones’s report that had made headline news. She was still going to travel to Kefalonia. She had to. But now she would talk to her parents and try to make them realise why — she needed to find out her true identity. She would not be betraying or rejecting them.I know Baba will understand. I just hope I can go with my mother’s blessing, too.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Two months later, May 1973
It was the day Eléni had been waiting for. Her mother was taking her to Porth Gwyn Hospital to have the cast taken off her arm. She’d managed to return to work as planned and, as Mr Williams had promised, she’d been working on the till where she’d become proficient at using just her right arm while the other was supported in a sling. Her plans to get a waitressing job would have to wait.
‘Ready? I bet you can’t wait to get that old thing off.’
‘I can’t wait. It’s so heavy as well as itchy.’ Eléni remembered being told by the nurse on the first check-up that on no account was she to poke anything down inside the plaster cast to relieve the itching. She didn’t dare admit she had been doing just that with a knitting needle!
Cassia parked her car in the spaces along the front of the hospital. Once inside, they were led to a waiting room and it wasn’t long before Eléni was called in to have the cast removed.
She looked down at her arm and wriggled her fingers as if to prove to herself everything was working. The skin was wrinkled and shiny where it had been covered in plaster for the last eight weeks. Had it really been that long since the accident?
The nurse smiled at her. ‘Yes, it all works. Just make sure you treat it with a bit of care to begin with. Here’s a sheet with some exercises to help build up your strength again.’
After thanking her, Eléni joined her mother outside in the waiting room.
‘All done?’ said her mother. ‘Why don’t we go and have an ice cream up at the lake? It’s a nice day and it’s not often it’s just the two of us, is it?’
Eléni smiled. The row hadn’t been mentioned again and Eléni had been putting off mentioning a trip to Kefalonia. Instead, she’d enjoyed feeling close to her mother again. The visit to the library had brought home to her how terrible it must have been for Cassia living through the trauma of the earthquake. Eléni had been back to the archives several times and Margaret Harris had gone out of her way to be helpful. She’d found books about Kefalonia’s varied history and its geological past. Eléni had learned that because of its position, major earthquakes were commonplace. She’d also borrowed more modern books that told her how tourism had been picking back up after the restoration of the towns around Argostoli and the photographs had showed her what to expect when she visited the island. What would her mother’s reaction be if she could persuade her to return, she wondered. How would the new town appear to her mamá, who had lived there before the earthquake had ruined everything?
Ice creams in hand, they found a bench overlooking the lake. Several swans, their white feathers gleaming in the sunlight, swam past them. Their long necks gave them an air of importance as they were followed by the smaller ducks.
‘You used to love to bring bread for the ducks when we first arrived in Porth Gwyn.’ Cassia smiled.
‘Why did we have to move to Cardiff?’ Eléni watched her mother’s eyes darken.
‘Oh, it seemed better to be nearer to the docks when your father came home on leave.’ Cassia paused and then added, ‘Uncle Glyn was worried about Auntie Gwladys being on her own. She’d had a fall, see. It worked out well, didn’t it? And of course, Bronwen arrived soon after.’
Nothing to do with a reporter turning up, then. Could the reporter have been Rhodri Jones?‘You must have missed Porth Gwyn, though. It’s so much better than a big city.’
Her mother nodded. ‘Yes, but I’m happy here now. I wasn’t back then but I knew when your baba left the Navy, we’d always come back. I want you and Bronwen to be happy here too. Shall we have a walk around the lake before going home? It’s exactly a mile, so your father says.’
* * *
Her next day off from the craft shop was her birthday and Eléni called in the Metropole to see if there was any work going. She’d waited tables in a café in Cardiff and at Smoky Joe’s coffee bar since she’d returned to Porth Gwyn, only leaving to work in the craft shop. The waitressing job was going to be in addition to the hours she worked for Mr Williams. She had to start earning more money.
The young woman behind reception took down Eléni’s details.
‘I’ll pass this on to the manager and he’ll be in touch. I’m afraid I don’t think they need any more waitresses at the moment, but I may be wrong. Of course, with summer coming up, it’s always a busier time of the year for visitors then, isn’t it?’
