Holiday Fling by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies, Chick-Lit, Collections, Fiction, Love Stories, Romance, Short Stories, Women's Fiction
ISBN: 9781681466705
Google: LVTqCgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00LLLN1TE
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2014-07-05T23:00:00+00:00

Greek Gifts

Jan Jones

Only the Greeks could have built a road like this, thought Ellen affectionately. She rested her hand on the curving harbour wall and gazed at the road’s raw functionality slicing through the most lyrical landscape in the world – and laughed aloud for the sheer joy of being in Greece, on holiday, in an empty morning full of promise.

The truth was that Ellen at this moment loved everything. Even this brazen concrete road that obliterated the centuries-old path from the hilltop down to the Dryads’ Pool before sweeping on in an important modern rush towards the quay. She rotated slowly, drinking in the whole glorious panorama: the hills behind the town, the higgledy-piggledy roofs descending to the harbour, the lush turquoise expanse of sea. The sun was already warm and strange on her uncovered shoulders, the air was spicily Mediterranean, the early-morning haze dissipating before her eyes. She’d been here less than a day and she never wanted to leave. Greece had captured her from the first glimpse through the aeroplane windows, the first kiss of landing wheels on runway. She loved the bright colours of the shops, the vitality of the people, how the Greeks lived noisily and busily in the present, even though the past was a mere sliding breath away wherever you looked.

Talking of which … Ellen jumped off the concrete road, scrambled across a dusty, scrubby, insect-rich ribbon of tansy and thyme, and in half-a-dozen more strides was at the Dryads’ Pool.

She paused for a moment, feeling she had stepped into an Alma-Tadema painting. The pool was a shallow circular basin, wide enough for three or four people to lie full-length, tiled in ancient marble, and fed by a bubbling spring. It was set amongst irregular stone tiers worn smooth with time, and had a liquid sense of being at one with its surroundings.

In the UK, thought Ellen, it would no doubt come with an attached car-park, an information board, an ice-cream seller, and a cordon so you couldn’t wear the site away or slip and fall and sue the council. Here at the edge of this small harbour town, there was a metal plate in Greek and a translation in English – and that was all. The local youth congregated around it at night. Mothers sat on the steps in the afternoons to gossip, watching their children play on the shingle beach below. Children darted in and out of the sea, rushing up to rinse the salt off their skin. For all its great age, the Dryads’ Pool was simply part of the community.

Ellen sat on the slabs, splashed her face with the rock-cold water, and trailed her fingers along a rounded ledge. Gladness filled her at the thought of being on holiday for a whole week in a land where the last couple of thousand years were no more than a blink of the eye.

She still couldn’t believe that this time yesterday she’d been staring desperately around a packed airport terminal, heart hammering, terrified that she’d lost her group and would never find the right aeroplane.

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