Read Online Aftershock by Bernard Ashley - Free Book Online

to stare at.
    â€˜I wear it for the Greeks!’ Mr Laliotis said, waving at the designs. ‘Isosceles, Euclid, Pythagoras!’
    â€˜Mathematicians,’ Sofia said.
    â€˜I wondered if Makis might help me,’ the musician went on.
    But how could Makis help Mr Laliotis? It wouldn’t be fish boxes he’d want scrubbing out, the way Makis had helped his father; and he wouldn’t be hauling in a full net.
    â€˜Mrs Laliotis is organising a musical evening at the Acropolis restaurant. She’s going to play piano. Together we shall play a violin and piano duet. The men will sing, and I shall play balalaika. But…’
    But, what?
    â€˜I remember a song from Kefalonia that speaks to all Greeks of their homeland.’ He looked hard at Makis. ‘I wondered if you knew it from your father?’
    He could ask my mother, Makis thought, but for some reason he’s asking me. ‘What song is that, Mr Laliotis?’
    â€˜Do you know, “To Taste the Assos Honey”?’
    â€˜Oh!’ Sofia gasped, and made a small sound in her throat. She looked as if sadness had come in through the door like a winter wind. ‘Spiros…’
    Makis jumped in quickly. ‘Yes, I know it.’ People kept bees all over Kefalonia, but the bees from Assos produced the best on the island.
    â€˜Then please will you come upstairs with your mandolin and help me?’ Seeing Sofia’s sudden look of sadness Mr Laliotis seemed embarrassed, but with a jut of his chin he went on. ‘Please?’
    Makis looked at his mother.
    â€˜Of course you must go,’ she said.
    Makis went upstairs feeling that he was on two missions at once: for Mr Laliotis, and for his absent father.
    Mrs Laliotis was there today; but instead of being third musician, the tiny woman stayed mainly in the kitchen where she was cooking. From time to time Makis could hear her humming along quietly.
    After tuning their instruments and a short practice with ‘The Cuckoo Sleeps’, Makis found the pitch and a starting chord for ‘To Taste the Assos Honey’, and slowly he picked out the notes of the chorus – making mistakes, going back, correcting – but finally, putting confident words to the island song.
    I cross the blue Ionian Sea,
    the blue stripes flying at our stern,
    but when my sands are running out
    to Kefalonia I’ll return
    to taste the Assos honey.
    â€˜Bravo!’ Mr Laliotis had joined in as Makis went on. ‘Again.’ And together they played the chorus once more, bringing it up to something like its proper tempo.
    â€˜Well done!’ came from the kitchen.
    They worked on the first and then the second verse; and after Mrs Laliotis had come in to play the notes on her piano keyboard, Makis wrote the words of the verses and the chorus on a sheet of music paper.
    â€˜Sweet and simple!’ Mrs Laliotis said. ‘The Acropolis is going to be delighted when Yiannos performs this beautiful song.’
    â€˜Yes.’ And thinking of his father, who had never performed but simply played and sung, Makis was suddenly overwhelmed by sadness, the way his mother had been when he’d found her cuddling the Gibson mandolin.
    But in his moment of sadness, he realised how well she was doing, slowly pulling herself up from that deep unhappiness.

    It was Makis’s week of weeks. In the classroom it was easy to ask to be a book monitor and to hide the next few Colour Spot readers in his desk. School books never went home. They were stamped with the London County Council stamp, counted often, and called ‘stock’. History and Geography and Nature Study books were given out for each lesson and checked back into the cupboard by monitors, but readers and arithmetic books were always being changed in the different divisions of the class. So in his desk, ready for his mother, Makis had hidden the Orange Spot and the first of two Colour Spot Story Readers –
Robin