Elena told Lorena that she’d be there as soon as she could, twenty minutes or half an hour. ‘But if I’m late, stay right there at the doctor’s. Don’t go anywhere.’
In the four-minute wait for Dimitrios, Sotiris explained that his brother had been crippled by the accident. He wasn’t a permanent wheelchair case, otherwise he might have got permanent help — only one leg was affected. So he was allocated a home help two half days a week to take care of washing and chores, but the rest of the time he was on his own. He tried to cope, but what got him in the end was self-pity because with half a leg lost he felt that both his job prospects and his chances of finding another woman were slight. He felt that Georgiou needed a woman’s touch and love. And so he hit the bottle, decided to drown out what he’d lost and what he felt he could no longer provide for the boy. ‘…Within two months he was a hopeless case, and the orphanage became practically the only option.’
Sotiris waved one hand towards the photos on the side cabinet as they sat back down inside. ‘We would have gladly had him ourselves — but we already had three of our own, and money was tight. Very tight. I’m sorry.’
‘No, I understand. I… I suppose I’m just looking for others to point the finger because of my own guilt.’ She hadn’t told Sotiris that her baby had been practically ripped from her arms. She just said that she’d been under- age, there’d been a bit of family pressure and it had all very awkward at the time. Finally she made the decision to let him go. The wrong decision she felt years later with the benefit of hindsight — but she’d mainly blanked it from her mind and hadn’t troubled to look for him until now.
Her eyes stayed on the cabinet for a second: it was stuffed with silver and silver framed photos, with decorative plates dotted in-between, mainly from Cyprus and Greece. She saw only one from Canada: Niagara Falls. The cabinet marked the main separation from the dining-room beyond: dark wood furniture and still more decorative plates, an oil painting of a terraced olive grove and a dark velvet and silver-thread embroidery of the Acropolis. In contrast the lounge where they sat was modern: beige leather sofa, glass coffee table, and an abstract and a David Hockney print duelling from opposite walls. It was as if the dining area represented their old life in Cyprus and the lounge their new life in Canada; or perhaps Sotiris and Nana had already filled the dining room with family heirlooms, so the children took charge of the lounge’s decoration.
And she suddenly realized why she was so interested, sucking in every small detail: Sotiris had mentioned that his brother hadn’t lived that far away then, only eight blocks: she was trying to get some measure of what Georgiou’s environment might have been like those few years. She stopped the chain of thought abruptly, chiding herself. Only eight blocks, but a million miles in heart and spirit: stepmother dead and a stepfather intent on blotting out what little life he felt was left with drink. The only hope was that Georgiou had been too young to remember it all, that the scars wouldn’t have been too long-lasting.
‘We wondered at the time, didn’t we?’ Sotiris aired this more towards his wife than Elena.
Nana just nodded as she nibbled at some halva.
‘…There was all this talk about some problem with them having children and getting fertility treatment from some doctor in London…’
‘Dr Maniatis?’ Elena prompted.
‘I… I don’t remember. I’m not even sure they mentioned a name at the time.’
Maniatis was the only likely middle-man Elena could put between her father and the childless Stephanous. She nodded and Sotiris continued.
‘Well, anyway… suddenly there was a child. But the gap seemed to short, and we thought we would have heard something as soon as she was pregnant.’ Sotiris ran one hand through his thinning hair. ‘We guessed that they’d probably adopted, but we never stuck our noses in and pushed them on it. We thought maybe Nick had heard the problem was down to him and they were embarrassed to talk about it. You know, male pride and all that. Especially Greek male pride.’ Sotiris forced a weak smile.
‘And the new name, Stevens — my God we argued over that.’ The smile quickly died. ‘I told him he should be proud of the name Stephanou like I was, not try and bury his roots and his heritage. But he said that he wanted to make a fresh start, didn’t want to be seen as ethnic and have any possible discrimination that might hold him back — or his new son for that matter. We didn’t see eye to eye on that one, I can tell you: things were strained between us for quite a while.’
They were silent for a second.
‘What happened to your brother?’ Elena asked.
‘He met someone else eventually — about five years later. And a few years after that they ended up going to Cyprus to settle there. Too many bad memories here, I suppose.’ Sotiris’ eyes drifted slightly: melancholy at the lost years or something that would have been best left not recalled. ‘I think he felt a lot of guilt later about giving up Georgiou, but by then it was too late.’
‘Why — what happened?’ Elena’s interest was piqued, though the last thing she wanted was to empathise with Nicholas Stephanou, especially not on the guilt front. She surely had the market cornered there.
‘Well, not long after meeting this woman and finally getting his act together, clean of the drink once and for all — he went to the orphanage hoping to see Georgiou. But he was too late: he’d already left and been placed with a family.’
‘How long before?’ Elena’s spirits raised a fraction: maybe he’d had a more settled and happy family life the second time around.
‘Fifteen, eighteen months, I think.’ Sotiris shrugged. ‘I’m not totally sure.’
Elena calculated: three and a half years in the orphanage, almost eight years old before he was finally picked off the shelf again. She reminded herself that it would have been a far cry from the orphanages she was used to in Romania. If it wasn’t too austere or cool an environment, hopefully the experience wouldn’t have been… then quickly stopped herself again, realized she was just rationalising to ease the weight of guilt she’d felt settling heavier as Sotiris talked.
She checked her watch again: she’d covered practically everything, and Lorena would already be over halfway through her session by the time she got there. ‘Do you remember the name of this orphanage?’
‘I don’t remember exactly, but it’s in a small town about seventy miles up-Province… Baie de something.’ Sotiris pulled at the air with his fingers for the exact memory.
‘Baie du Febvre,’ Nana prompted.
‘Yes, that’s it… du Febvre. And it’s the only orphanage there run by nuns I would think — so it shouldn’t be difficult to find.’
Elena thanked them for the help and the coffee and cake, said that she’d better go. ‘Catch up with my daughter.’
As they were walking along the hallway, Sotiris commented, ‘You know, it’s funny, we had a man phone a while back asking exactly the same thing about where young Georgiou had gone?’
‘When was this? Did he give a name?’ Elena turned by the door.
‘Five, six years ago. He didn’t give a full name — just said he was Tony, an old friend of Nick’s from when he had young Georgiou. Said he was curious what might have happened to the boy, that’s all.’
Tony.
Lorena was forty minutes into her session when Elena arrived and the receptionist informed her that Dr Lowndes thought it best that she not interrupt, he’d talk to her afterwards and she’d be able to listen to the tape. So she decided to use the wait with the receptionist to find out the name of the orphanage in Baie du Febvre. Eight minutes of leafing through Quebec telephone directors and two calls later and she had the name:
Hanging-up, she tapped the details she’d scrawled on a piece of paper thoughtfully with one finger. With the nightmare saga from Sotiris, she was already regretting coming on this odyssey: her son’s real life was so opposed to the gloss image she’d fixed in her mind to help ease her guilt. She wasn’t sure she could face any more nightmare tales.
Michel Chenouda sat quietly as the three men the other side of the conference table leafed through the thick file before them, the exact same copy for each of them. He let out a quiet cough muffled with one hand at one point, then the heavy silence again: only the sound of flicking pages and the faint air-rush of the heating vents
