No, I don't really like the mocking tone of this post title either. I know the views I am expressing are one-sided and verging on mean. But does my life feel a bit like a Punch and Judy show at the moment? Oh, yes it does!
'They're behind you!'
'Arghhh! What? Where? Oh, very funny.'
I have been wondering how many modern-day versions of traditional fairy stories I could produce from this tale, to make some moral sense of it. Or produce some learnings at least. It is so clearly heading for disaster that I am verging on feeling too embarrassed to keep on writing. I don't know what I can do to avert us from the path of destruction. And without wanting to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy, I know I am going to come out of this as the bad guy, whatever happens. I nearly slipped into Goldilocks and the three bears yesterday, over the 'who was sleeping in my bed while I was away?' fiasco. Except that the few physical parallels between myself and Goldilocks are where the similarities end, as I seem to be playing the three bears, slipping all too carelessly between parent, adult and child mode.
Actually, 'carelessly' isn't really the right word. 'Uncontrollably' would be more accurate.
Ironically, as I was writing last night's post, OH came back round here with his brothers. We'd had some family time on Saturday, and he had spent some time with them as well. On Sunday he took the kids out so that I could do housework and they also had some time together then. I played games with the boys when they got back and he crashed on the sofa. By the time he came round, they were playing really nicely upstairs for once - Babe was pretending to put Babe2 to bed and closing the door saying 'Goodnight sweetheart, I love you!' and then minutes later stomping back in and saying 'Right! you go to sleep NOW or there will be TROUBLE' - so I went and sat down next to OH in the sitting room.
'I think they are going to go,' said OH. My heart skipped a beat. 'What do you mean?' I said.
'Well, OBrother, not DBrother,' he went on. My stress levels started to rise because I wanted clarity and for him to make sense. This was important!
'OBrother has had enough,' he said. 'He doesn't want to stay here if there isn't any work. It's a waste of money and he's missing his family.'
'Hum,' I replied. Knowing that to allow the conversation to run its course I had to sound gentle and concerned and that punching the air would not be an appropriate response. Not, of course, that that was the way I wanted to respond. I am not unmoved by their situation or by their desperation. I just know that until they can speak the language, which will take a significant amount of time, they won't be able to get work easily enough to move them out of the hand to mouth situation that they themselves are finding unbearable. (They have, incidentally, now bought themselves a slow cooker which they use in the bedroom, to avoid the kitchen downstairs.)
'It isn't really that there isn't any work,' I countered. 'It's that without the language they are going to find it hard to get and stay in work.'
'Yes,' he replied. I didn't list the number of occasions before they came that I cited this as a reason not to come.
'What about DBrother?' I asked, heart in mouth.
'He will probably go back to Athens for Christmas, and then come back here again,' he said.
Good grief. 'But he speaks no English whatsoever!' I responded. 'If OBrother doesn't think he can make it work here, what hope is there for DBrother?'
'He hasn't got any reason to stay in Greece,' replied OH. 'So he wants to stay here.'
If you asked my what worst case scenario here would be it is, I suppose, that things work out by hook or by crook for the brothers and that before I know it, we have more of OH's relatives living around the corner requiring long-term translation and assistance than I have friends in the vicinity (quite a lot). My second-worst scenario would be this: that one of them goes, leaving the other alone and in more need of our help than he would be if he had the other brother living here with him, and that the one who leaves decides to spend the winter in Greece and then gets fed up and decides to come back here for the Spring and then goes back there for the Summer and then and then and then... i.e. that our lives are placed in a position of constant flux, not knowing who is coming, with whom, or when. In fact that might be a worse scenario than at least knowing who is here on a permanent basis. I realise, as I write this, that that scenario isn't really an 'if' any more. Because as long as things are bad and getting worse in Greece, then we are going to be a ship in the storm that OH's family want to hang on to. Our only option to change that would be to call their bluff completely and go off and live in a camper van in Albania or something. Hum, that's food for thought! If nothing else it would probably settle any residual indecision about whether to divorce or not pretty quickly and might therefore kill two birds with one stone.
'They want to book flights to go home for Christmas,' OH continued.
'What kind of date?' I asked.
'Whenever is cheapest,' he said.
'Well that will be near the start of December,' I explained. I've been watching Easyjet prices gradually increase over the last few weeks, and nearly booked tickets for them some time ago, in anticipation and hope of them wanting to go home for the festive season.
'Perfect,' said OH. 'I don't think they're going to get any work here before then. It's always harder getting construction work in the winter.' Don't put it to them like that! I was thinking, or they'll definitely come back in the summer and we'll have to start this whole caper all over again.
'What about the room?' I said. They need to think really carefully about whether they want to keep it or not. Will they be coming back?'
'I don't know,' said OH.
'I don't want us to be landed with a room to pay for, full of their stuff, while they decide what they're doing,' I said. 'And I'm not sure that I can deal with a huge amount of ongoing uncertainty.'
'I know,' said OH.
'I think that the responsible thing to do,' I suggested, 'Is for you to help them understand what the costs and risks of this situation now are,' I said. 'I can't see any way that DBrother will survive here without OBrother and I really don't want us to be responsible for picking up the pieces. Why don't you go and see them, check when they want to go home, and then come back here with their passports and money so that I can buy the flights?'
'Ok,' said OH.
'And please bring my bike back with you,' I said. 'And the pump.'
So, back to why it was ironic that OH turned up here with his brothers after that conversation. Ironic, because I had just finished writing up one massive ding-dong, minutes ahead of starting another.
They went into the sitting room and this time they sat near the door and did not take their shoes off, so I knew that the temporary nature of the visit was being communicated. They were looking tired and somewhat dishevelled. Once I was sure the Babes were asleep, I went in with my laptop.
We started off looking for a flight for OBrother. He picked one for Saturday 1 December. 'It leaves at 8am,' I explained, 'So you'll have to check-in by six, which means getting a night coach to the airport. Is that ok?' He said that it was.
'Is that a one-way flight?' asked OH in English. 'Yes,' I said. 'We can book January flights in January. Is he coming back?'
'I don't know. He's going to see how things go between now and then, and when he's back there,' he answered.
I can't lie, this was making me irritated. Then DBrother asked me to look for flights for him.
'When do you want to go?' I asked.
'Around the end of December,' he replied.
'We are probably going to my mum's for two days, the 24th and the 25th,' I said.
'That's fine,' he responded. 'You do what you want to do.'
The flights for the end of the month were three times what OBrother would be paying for his ticket at the start of it.
'If they are not expecting to work between now and then, why doesn't he just leave at the same time?' I asked.
'Because he has no-where to go in Athens,' said OH.
'But he has a son and a daughter there, and all your siblings!' I said.
'But he wants to be in his own place. Here.' said OH.
This was all starting to feel a bit poorly thought through. As per usual. They wanted me to book the flights.
'I can't book them without money to pay for them,' I said.
'I've got the money here,' said OBrother.
'I'll pay you back when I've been working,' said DBrother.
'But what if you don't get any more work?' I asked. And if any of you reading this think I enjoy having to be this blunt, please be assured that I was cringing. But we have run up a massive overdraft and are running on empty at the moment.
'I believe I will,' he said.
I am going to stop reporting what was said as direct speech at this juncture. The tone of the dialogue plummeted as quickly as a jar of oregano thrown from a bedroom window. I tried again to make DBrother see that he had already cost us way more than was ever agreed and that we couldn't go on like this. He got angry and overwrought and asked if I was writing everything down in the form of a bill. I reminded him that I have been out of work for a year and a half and that for years, when I was earning and before we had kids, I took money out to his parents in Albania, as well as lots of gifts, and that if money wasn't an issue I wouldn't be making it an issue. I believe that I did not insult him personally but am once again experiencing some white-out. Obviously I was wounding his pride. But in my view he is being unrealistic about his prospects and choosing not to see the impact his needs are having on my family life.
In return, he told me that he is a lot more intelligent than I am. That I am a bad woman. That he is sorry that his brother married me and that he doesn't know what to do for him. That he has met a lovely English woman who lives down the road from here and who is married to an Albanian from north Albania and who has learnt Albanian and who said she would help him to find work. That I ought to love Albania. (All these guys ever do is tell me they're Greek, by the way, and I know for a fact that they can't stand north Albanians. DBrother himself told me the week he arrived that he never intends to go back there to live which is why he sold his house there and intends to sell his plot of land.) That I should be grateful for all the help they've given me every time I've been over to Albania on holiday. (This honestly baffles me because I have always paid for everything for everyone every time I go; have always been sensitive to their limitations; have never let anyone pay for so much as a bottle of Fanta Limon and have never eaten at the same table as DBrother in all the years I have known OH.) And etcetera.
I am sure I must have countered each one of these comments with parries of my own. But I was trying to keep things quiet-ish because I did not want the boys to wake. He was shouting and angry, his blood was up. It gave me a rather unpleasant insight into what I must be like sometimes. What I was being like myself, then. I asked him to calm down and I asked him not to insult me in my own house. (Which makes me sound East-European but I was trying to find a place of common understanding.) OH had been making some gestures to try and get him to stop and then gave up, we were in full flow. Stress, anger, resentment, an inability to understand one another, a lifetime of pain - when is an argument ever really about that moment in time? When is emotion ever really fresh and not simply remembered and carried over from some previous trauma? - and, for a fragment of a second, I felt some utterly unwelcome sexual frissance pass between us. I screamed and he left.
Dear Lord.
I didn't know what to do. I was mystified by what had been exchanged and how extreme it had been. OH was sitting on the sofa, looking for all the world as though DBrother had left the house having given me handful of coupons for discounted Tesco's cutlery or a flier about a fireworks party. There was a time when he might have stormed out of the house after them but he had stayed, so I knew he was on my side, if sides must be taken.
'I just don't know where you get the energy from, to argue like that,' he said.
'How come you just let your brother insult me like that?' I asked.
'There was no stopping either of you,' he said. 'It is good that you have argued. You will make peace and things will get better.'
'I will not make peace,' I said. Remembering that at one point in the argument I had told DBrother to be very careful about what he said because I am a Scorpio and I don't forget anything, ever. (This is not entirely true.) (Well, 1% not true.)
I felt I had to look wounded. OH felt he had to say something. Horrifically, we were both clearly trying to hide the fact that we wanted to laugh. What an awful and ridiculous exchange. And tickets hadn't been bought. And I still didn't have my bicycle. And DBrother must be feeling pretty wretched too. But a line had now been crossed that changes everything.
In the interests of fairness, in my next post I might try and present things from the brothers' perspective. I may need to have a few drinks before I try. In the meantime I am clear on one thing: they both stay or they both leave. I've had enough of this crap.
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