Snowdrop Season

In England the month of February would be Snowdrop season.

February in Athens usually means something different; only a few weeks ago Grace and Alex were lounging in the sunshine outside a café in Kolonaki Square, teasing, touching, laughing together. They touched each other all the time as if they each wanted to be assured of the other’s presence. At night after they made love, they showered together and he lay across the end of her bed, holding her talcumed foot in his hand. His hands were square-fingered and palmed with pink wide nails. He told her stories of greek Gods and heroes, she smoothed his floppy black hair out of his surprisingly blue eyes, the colour of a wild Hampshire sea. They were uniquely comfortable together.

It’s hard to imagine now. The ease with which they loved each other. Just a few weeks later, the yellow snow-clouds that bubbled up over the ridge of mountains that surround the city swept in overnight, plunging it into a wintry chaos.

She can’t even remember how long it is since the positive pregnancy test? Well, actually, two, on different days just to be sure – although Alex was always sure to be fair – the first at home in the bathroom first thing in the morning, the second in the office, hidden under a plastic cup.

And here they are, less than a month later. The Greek flag outside the hospital whips back and forth buffeted by the wind. Great flurries of snow lash their faces and the access roads leading up to Marousi are reduced to a quagmire of slush and mud. As they approach the hospital Grace glances up at the sign above the main entrance; Mitera, picked out in greek in neat blue letters. Mother In english. The irony of the name hits her afresh and makes her shiver. Alex squeezes her hand but neither seem to be able to get a comfortable grip so he puts his arm around her instead. The hospital is enormous with a vast marbled circular reception area with deep, squashy cream chairs arranged around the edge. It’s a private hospital and appears to be almost deserted. A few people arrive and leave, shaking the snow out of their umbrellas and coats, stamping their feet energetically as they emerge through the sliding doors.

A nurse appears through a door on the far side of reception with a bunch of keys, locking and unlocking the door. Sometimes she calls out someone’s name and they stand up from one of the chairs around the edge and she beckons them over and takes them through it. Other times, the door opens and she appears, ushering people out in ones and twos. Grace and Alex wait for their name to be called. His name. Her body. After a bit, Alex goes up to the desk and has a low, muttered conversation in greek with the only receptionist. When he comes back he says their doctor has been delayed.

Alex and the doctor, a well-known obstetrician, as it turns out come from the same island. It’s like this in Greece. If you are compatriots you do each other favours. Who knows, one day in some unknown future when Alex is a qualified architect maybe he’ll return the favour, design the doctor an elegant summer residence on the island for a reduced fee? By that time she and Alex would have ‘seen reason’ (as her mother might have tactlessly put it had she known anything about the pregnancy), they would have split up and Grace would have long returned to England to a ‘proper’ life and Alex would have married a girl from the island – possibly even the doctor’s very attractive daughter or niece. Today and all its snowy misery would be compartmentalised in their individual memory boxes, taken out occasionally and examined with more than a hint of relief, tinged perhaps with fading regret.

When she met Doctor Papadatos last week at his Kolonaki practice with a spectacular view of the Acropolis – all marble and polished wood and bright splashes of colour – he greeted Alex like an old family friend. Then he led her into a very tastefully-decorated examining room, and hummed along to Maria Callas singing Ave Maria as he eased her legs into bright red stirrups. Afterwards he agreed she was indeed pregnant.

And you want a termination? he said, squeezing her hand in a caring, avuncular fashion.

I don't want one. I have to have one.

Ah! He nodded. You want one, then. Same thing.

No, it's not the same thing. Grace thrust her chin out, determined to make her point. She was aware she was acting like a stubborn child but she couldn't help herself.

The doctor smiled. No problem. I will arrange everything he assured her. I’m glad you came to me.

But today, Doctor Papadatos is stuck in Halandri in the snow so they have to wait. Grace and Alex sit close together. She feels his leg against hers, the heat rising off his body, joining them like a seam. She takes a sidelong look at him. He looks out of place here; like the student he is. His right leg starts to jump with nerves and he rubs his palm across the stubble on his chin. There are dark shadows under his eyes. They don’t speak. Haven’t they said everything already? She goes over it again in her head.

Don’t you want to know anything about what’s happening to me?

How will it help?

It might help me.

Knowing just makes it harder.

So that’s it then? You don’t want the discomfort of facing up to things so it’s not even up for discussion. We just ignore the problem?

But how would we manage?

I don’t know.

I’m halfway through my university course.

I know.

I can’t support you or a baby. I can’t even support myself.

I know. But maybe we could find a way.

I don’t want to be like my father.

I know.

I can’t make empty promises.

That’s partly why I love you.

I don’t know…

About love?

No. I just don’t think… I can be the man you want me to be.

You could be. You just have to choose to be.

Grace sighs. What he meant was that love is not enough. And he’s probably right. And now they’ve run out of time.

Alex looks at his watch and then out through the plate glass window of the hospital. Great fat snowflakes swirl ceaselessly from a leaden sky. They’ve been here nearly two hours already and still no sign of Doctor Papadatos.

This morning his mother took the briki off the stove.

When are you leaving for the island? he'd asked, staring out of the window.

I’m not, she said as she poured coffee from the briki and slid it in front of him. Every single ferry is cancelled. Flights too. I can’t remember when we had such snow as this in Athens. Not for years. But it gives me the opportunity to stay and make sure you study for your exams.

I don’t need you to make sure I study for my exams, he retorted, gulping down his coffee.

She smiled then and pinched his cheek. You’re a good boy, Alexandros.

I’m a man, not a boy.

Yes I know. And you’re going to make me so proud. Your father doesn’t know what he’s missing.

He grabbed his coat and gloves avoiding her questioning gaze. I’ve got to go.

So where are you off to that’s so important? Not college - your tutor rang to say all the seminars are cancelled.

Nowhere, he said. He’s never told her about his relationship with Grace. I have to meet someone, that’s all.

His mother frowned. Maybe you should stop by on your way out and check on that English girl on the second floor. I saw her in the lift a few days ago and she was looking very peaky.

Last night his mother was out seeing a friend so he stayed downstairs with Grace and warmed up his mother's chicken soup for her. Then he held her in his arms until she slept. She looked very vulnerable with her arm flung out. She wept in her sleep.

Alex thinks – no he knows – that Grace believes he doesn’t love her enough. Maybe they should have talked about it more. He turns to ask her whether she thinks he could be the man she wants him to be after all, but she’s sunk back into the deep cushions of the armchair with her eyes shut. She looks exhausted. And in any case he can’t think of anything to say. In that sense she’s right, he is scared. It’s not that he can’t imagine there is actually a baby. He may not have the physical cues that she does but he can’t seem to put it – whatever this tiny nut-like kernel is at this moment – out of his mind. And last night as Grace slept in his arms, after weeks of a resolute determination to be selfish and single-minded, he felt something shift; he couldn’t help himself. He leaned across, grabbed his phone from the side table and googled the stages of pregnancy.

A nurse arrives in front of them jangling her bunch of keys. She repeats his name a little impatiently as if she’s been searching for them. He nudges Grace awake. They walk over to the frosted glass door and the nurse unlocks it and stands aside for Grace to go through it.

Grace turns to face to him and her eyes search his. Is this really what you want? she seems to be asking.

But before he can say anything, Grace turns away and is gone. He hears the nurse turn the key in the lock. He peers through the frosted glass trying to make out her shape but it all looks the same.

In the cafeteria, Alex sits down with his coffee and pastry and scrolls through his phone. At five weeks, he discovers, an embryo is two millimetres long and has the beginnings of a backbone. Suddenly he is frozen with fear. He’s twenty-two years old and there are so many things he had planned to do with his life – but he doesn’t want to do any of them without Grace.

He should have said something to his mother this morning. He should have admitted that he’s been in a relationship with the English girl on the second floor since she moved in over a year ago. He should have said that he’s in love with this English girl and that she’s pregnant with his baby and he can’t imagine life without her. Or the baby. He should have said that today is the moment when he must choose to grow up – just as Grace must – just as his mother needed to all those years ago when she discovered she was pregnant with him. He should have said all this to Grace in the days leading up to this moment when she wanted to talk things through. He should have woken her up before the nurse unlocked the frosted glass door and took her through it. And now it’s too late. Too late. He feels like crying and buries his face in his hands.

A tap on his shoulder and he glances up. It’s Grace. She looks worn out. He leaps up and enfolds her in his arms. She leans against him and he has the strangest sense of the past two weeks melting away. It was a mistake, she tells him. They thought I was someone else. Our doctor is still stuck in Halandri in the snow. We have to come back tomorrow.

For a moment Alex is tempted to share everything with Grace straight away. However, for all the desperation and grief that flooded through him when they were separated by the frosted glass and he visualised Grace frail and anaesthetised on an operating table and the years of grief and regret that they both narrowly escaped, for all that, he realises that his epiphany – if that’s what it was – can wait. The important thing is to get Grace home. He will call a taxi. He feels love course through him and with it the strength of a true hero beat in his veins. Take my arm, he says, lean on me. He imagines the two of them arriving outside their building; helping her out of the taxi, taking her upstairs, tenderly leading her up to his flat on the fourth floor where he will explain everything to his mother. Confess their love for each other, perhaps even ask for her help. After all, she knows better than anyone what it is to be a single mother. She can only be proud of such a son.

In the taxi, Grace leans back and closes her eyes. The snowstorm is over and the air is already a few degrees warmer. The taxi splashes through the slush. Alex laces his fingers in hers. She knows him well enough to sense that something momentous happened to him in the short time she was on the other side of the frosted glass door. But something momentous happened to her as well. When they came to tell her she had to go home and she’d realised she had a reprieve, she realised she didn’t want one. She wonders how she’s going to tell him that she has every intention of returning to the hospital tomorrow and going through with it. She’ll need to choose her words carefully and she must be kind, she decides. She squeezes his hand and turns to him and smiles.