Small Wars (20 page)
Nicosia, September
The hotel in Nicosia was a big 1920s building of yellow stone, almost a whole block, close to Government House and not far from the old city wall. It had pointed arches on the windows, balconies and decorative cut-outs in concrete that looked Moorish to Clara. Nicosia was an interior capital; the drive from Limassol, across the plains, had been dusty and long. Climbing the wide stairs of the hotel, with the girls stop-starting, tripping behind her and under her feet, Clara felt nothing but exhaustion.
She opened the tall door to her room. It was a big, square, light room, quite plain, with twin beds and a door to a narrow bathroom that stood open. She glimpsed a much smaller room through it, with camp beds set up. There were salmon-coloured candlewick bedspreads and a chandelier with small orange-pink shades, not quite matching. Clara took off her gloves, which were dirty and damp. The sun came through the big windows pitilessly.
‘Here Lottie. No, Meg, come here, darling.’
She showed the porter where to put the cases and he went down to fetch the rest. She walked across to the window. She was two floors above a wide street where British soldiers patrolled. The few cars went very quickly, it seemed, past the modern buildings. There was a zebra crossing under the window and Union flags flying from the rooftops. She needed to organise the girls’ supper. Her legs felt thick and heavy. She sat down on the edge of the bed and the girls bumbled about, came near her, peering at her and tugging her skirt. The porter came in again, and behind him, a woman – an Englishwoman.
‘You must be Clara Treherne,’ she said, stepping around the porter. ‘I’m Gracie Bundle.’
Gracie was bright blonde, with neatly painted lips and a light grey suit hugging her small and curvy body. ‘Have they sorted a maid out for you yet?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Clara, standing up.
She felt dizzy. She sat down again.
‘You look fairly done in,’ said Gracie. The girls were staring at her. ‘Aren’t they little poppets!’ she said. ‘Hang on a mo, I’ll send down for some sustenance. Don’t move.’
Clara hung on, and soon there was room service – bread and tea – a maid for the next day, and net curtains keeping the sun out of the room.
‘I’ll get my Miss Sila to come, shall I? Take your two off your hands for an hour or so,’ said Gracie, and darted out of the room. She returned some minutes later with her Greek maid, a woman in her fifties, who was carrying a small boy and leading another by the hand.
‘Say hello, Tommy, say hello, Larry.’
They didn’t.
‘Jolly good. Off you go, children,’ said Gracie, and the four children and the maid, swept along by her energy, left the room.
‘I should think you could do with a rest. Don’t worry about the children – I’ll keep a beady eye. Shall we have supper together?’
‘Yes,’ said Clara, gratefully, and Gracie backed out of the room, gave a wink, and shut the door.
Clara looked around her. She ought to let Hal know she had arrived.
She picked up the telephone. There was a purring sound, then the desk answered, a high, scratchy Greek voice. Clara said, ‘This is room two one five. Would you connect me with the operator, please? Thank you.’
The sound of several rings and vibrations, as the lines were crossed and cleared. Then another female voice, efficient, greeted her in Greek. Clara said clearly, ‘Hello? Yes, it’s a Limassol number, the Episkopi Garrison. The garrison at Episkopi.’
Another wait. Silence. Violent whirrings. Distant voices, as though she were eavesdropping on nations. Then she was connected. She heard a soldier’s voice, with a London accent, asking for the name and extension number. ‘Major Treherne, company lines, extension forty-three, please.’
A long pause. Clicks on the line. Ringing. The sound of it was almost contact. Ringing. Ringing. The distant rasping went on. The telephone wasn’t picked up. She listened, each second falling from the last, each ring emptier, but she waited until the soldier’s voice came back and said, ‘There’s no reply from Major Treherne, madam,’ before she replaced the heavy receiver gently, and with relief, onto its black cradle.
Clara and Gracie had supper in the hotel dining room and Gracie told Clara all about Nicosia. The dining room was big and shabby, with a box-panelled ceiling and a dance floor at one end. They ate grilled chicken and drank boiled water from a decanter beaded with droplets. Clara felt unlike herself in this new place; she listened closely to Gracie, clinging to her words like a life raft.
‘You’re much better off here. It’s practically Paris compared to Limassol,’ said Gracie, who was the wife of Major David Bundle, in the K—R—. He had been stationed up in the Troodos for a year. Her two boys were at the English nursery. She took a photograph – black-and-white, with a white scalloped edge – from her small crocodile handbag and showed it to Clara. In the photograph David Bundle, roundly filling his uniform, was grinning. ‘He’s a shadow of his former self now, I should think,’ said Gracie, laughing, and then, ‘You look rather white. I’m a terrible talker. Are you shattered?’
They finished supper, signed for it, and Clara went up the wide stairs to the second floor alone.
Gracie’s maid was on a gilt-framed chair in the long corridor, a tiny middle-aged woman in a black dress. Her empty shoes were placed neatly beside her, the thin laces stiff and curled. The corridor glowed with unnatural light, too bright for late night.
Clara took off her own shoes, and softly opened her door, stepping inside quietly so as not to disturb the girls.
She lay between the sheets, with the corridor light showing under her door.
She was alone. She moved on the unfamiliar bed, tentatively. The long journey lay between her and the last violent conversation with Hal. Contained and invisible, her anger had grown, but now she was empty, like a cool metal shell when the bullet is at last discharged – clean. She didn’t miss Hal. She wouldn’t think of him.
After Clara had left, Hal went to the café at Evdimou beach. He spent the afternoon there and, after changing at home, had dinner in the mess. He would have slept there if he could.
It was easier without Clara and his daughters. Once a week, he wrote her short cheerful letters. He wrote: ‘Epi’s the same as usual, poor old Mark still hounded by Deirdre and the food ghastly as ever’, or ‘Saw Evelyn Burroughs today and she asked me to give you Harold and Eileen Empson’s number. Remember we met them at Krefeld that Christmas? ’53, was it?’ and always, after signing his name, he would fold the letter very precisely and fast, then put it inside the envelope, out of sight.
But she didn’t write to him. The days went by, then weeks, and he never heard from her. He telephoned the hotel, to make sure she’d arrived safely, and although he was shocked that she didn’t write to him, her silence was easier to manage.
In Clara’s absence, Evelyn Burroughs invited him for supper at least once a week. ‘How is dear Clara?’ she would say, leaning across the table at him. ‘Of course you miss her, but I honestly think it’s the best thing all round, don’t you?’
The colonel began to ask after his father again, and one night, finishing his soup and blotting his lips, he said, ‘You certainly had a baptism of fire coming here, didn’t you? All settled down, now, has it?’
Hal looked into his pale blue eyes and answered, ‘Yes, Colonel, pretty much quiet now.’
‘Good to get rid of those rogue elements, I think. Bit of spring-cleaning, eh? No more trouble from Lieutenant Davis?’
‘No, no more trouble there. He hasn’t come to me again.’
But then there was the undressing for bed.
He peeled away the layers each night, stripping his uniform to the bare skin that wasn’t nakedness for sleeping, or for his wife, or any other version of himself that he could stand. He began to spend the nights dressed, or half dressed, sometimes leaning up against the bedstead, sometimes in a chair, and then, in the morning, get up and wash and change his shirt. He found he could rest better that way, a half sleep for a half soldier, half clothed and better protected.
Lawrence Davis didn’t know that Clara was gone until a few days after her departure. There was no reason why he would have known, but even not seeing her, he’d had a comforting mental picture of her there, in the barracks, and now she had been taken away from him. In his mind, she had become his confessor, and his fantasies about her were more romantic than sexual. They had been sexual too, of course, but Lawrence Davis was a virgin, and telling secrets to his mother was where he’d had much more experience.
It was Deirdre Innes who told him Clara had left Episkopi. He was in Limassol buying some shoelaces and razor blades and had seen her on the street. She was carrying a basket and had big sunglasses on; she had said his name first. ‘Lieutenant Davis!’
‘Good morning.’ He had stepped off the narrow pavement to let her by.
‘Thank you. What are you up to?’
‘Oh, you know.’ He had held up the brown paper bag with his purchases inside.
‘Finding your fun in town now?’ she had said and, seeing his confusion, enlightened him about Clara’s departure.
‘Nicosia? Oh.’ He had felt quite lost suddenly, one of his anchors tearing free and leaving him to drift.
‘Bit of a contretemps with her husband, as I understood it. I would have thought she’d have told you.’
‘Why would she tell me?’
‘Weren’t you friendly?’
‘Well…’
‘You’re blushing! You are!’
‘I’m not sure what you mean –’
‘Men are so prissy. You were friends, weren’t you?’
‘I suppose.’
Then she had looked around her and said, ‘Listen, shall we go somewhere?’
He had been taken aback enough not to absorb her suggestion immediately. ‘I have a car if you need –’
‘No, not home. And I don’t mean the club either. Come on, it’ll be fun.’
He had taken her – or she had taken him – to a bar near the cinema. He had been in a state of sweating anxiety throughout. She had ordered three large gin-and-tonics and then they had gone into the hot, pitch-black cinema and stared blindly at
The King and I
while she put her hand on his leg and began to rub him there.
There was a thrill in doing what he then began to do with the wife of Hal Treherne’s 2 i/c, and she certainly took his mind off his work. To meet Deirdre Innes, in one of the more deserted coves after dark, or the vehicle park amongst the three-tonners and the Fords, was intoxicating. Having her – the secrecy, the hard obliterating feel of it, knowing she didn’t even like him – was in keeping with his new idea of himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d say to a nice girl now; he wouldn’t know how to act.
When he thought of Clara, it was with regret and shame. She and the goddess Iris he’d left her with were like figures in a story-book that once he’d dreamed of but now had left behind, along with any fantasies about conscientious objection. Now, like Grieves, he was simply counting the days until demob.
As for Clara, she had lost the little cameo when she moved away from Episkopi. It must have fallen into the sandy folds of a suitcase, or dropped carelessly from a dress pocket on folding. It had never really comforted her; she hadn’t known Lawrence Davis well, and the hiding it from Hal had taken any use it might have had away from her.
Clara didn’t tell Gracie she was pregnant. In late September, at four and a half months, if she wore her belts high and loosened them, she could just about get away with it – or convince herself that she could. For such a breezy person, Gracie was very tactful. Instead of prying, she told Clara all about her husband, David. ‘He has leave in two weeks. We shan’t have time to go anywhere – it’s only a few days. Just long enough to try and feed him up a bit. David likes his grub, and he gets awfully low up there eating out of mess tins.’
Gracie’s boys were three and five. She had two others at prep school in England. It was miraculous that her tiny body could have produced four boys and still fit so effortlessly into a girdle. Even her ankles were tiny. The five-year-old, Tommy, was learning to read and do his letters; Larry, the little one, had a scooter, which he guarded jealously and wouldn’t let the twins play with. Gracie was forever saying, ‘Now, Larry, I shall take it away from you if you’re going to be selfish,’ but not taking it away, while the twins ran after him across hot terraces and up and down the pavements of Nicosia.
They spent most of their days at the officers’ club, avoiding the streets, which were crowded with Greeks and soldiers. The club was bigger than the one in Limassol, with a swimming pool, and they would take it in turns to go in the water with the children, or walk in the gardens and sit near the fountain in the shade of palm trees. The club had delusions of grandeur; it didn’t know what a shabby lesser outpost it was in. There were always soldiers, carrying Stens or .303s, posted at the hotel doors, and at the club, but Clara, used to living in a barracks, barely noticed them, feeling the freedom of being in a city.
Gracie and Clara walked slowly around the garden, with the children. They stopped at one of the shaded dark green benches and sat. The traffic noise out in the city, beyond the walls, reached them, and the sounds of waiters laying tables for lunch on the terrace.
‘Heard from Hal?’ asked Gracie, pretending to dust small particles from her calves.
‘I had a letter this morning.’
Clara had read the letter to the girls dutifully, then put it away, with all the others. There was nothing in it but trivia.
‘He must miss you.’
Clara nodded.
‘Larry! Larry! Stop that!’ cried Gracie, as Larry vented his rage on Tommy, rushing him head first and pushing him over. The twins, pausing in their business, looked on with meek expressions.
‘Look at your lovely girls,’ said Gracie, getting up. ‘Why don’t I have girls?’ She ran towards Larry, her very narrow skirt making her skitter.
Clara, in solitude for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
She looked around her at the white-painted palm trees. Women in summer dresses with their men, mostly in uniform, went in and out of the club building, greeting one another at the pool. The sounds of their voices reached her, and the playing children. She heard a song start up inside, faintly, a wireless or gramophone in one of the rooms, upstairs. ‘
Hey mambo, mambo Italiano! Hey mambo, mambo Italiano
…’
A woman at a table by the pool got up from her chair. She was wearing a yellow two-piece and she danced a little as she shook out her towel.
What a silly song, thought Clara, and the careless beauty of the world, and herself in it, came back to her, like a mist thinning in the morning. She felt herself tremble. Small shivers touched her. She felt life. And then, again, the little tap inside her, the soft shifting of her baby. She closed her eyes.
She could hear Gracie, quite clearly but as if at some distance, scolding her child.
The thing about dancing with Hal, she thought, was that he looked at her all the time and made her feel beautiful.
Clara laid her hand on her stomach and little tapping bubbles seemed to answer her. She admired the tiny thing, spinning away inside her. It had stuck with her, hadn’t been deterred by her weakness. She hadn’t even been there, she thought, just a vessel for the carrying of it. She was rewarded by another little movement, nothing like a kick. Don’t worry, she thought. I’ll make sure you’re all right. I promise.
She found herself smiling. She wanted to speak to it. She wanted to say, ‘Look! We’re in a nice garden, and soon we’ll go and have lunch.’
She heard Gracie coming back towards her and opened her eyes. Gracie had Larry firmly by the hand, but he still held the scooter.
‘What are you smiling about?’ said Gracie.
‘I’m pregnant,’ said Clara.
‘Oh, thank goodness. I knew you were, but I didn’t want to make a gaffe,’ said Gracie, and plumped neatly down on the bench, heaving Larry onto her knee. ‘How far gone are you?’
‘Just five months.’
‘Gosh, you carry it awfully well. You must miss poor old Hal. It’s been weeks.’
‘We argued very badly before I left.’
‘Oh…that’s rough.’
‘He was the one who wanted me to come here. I didn’t want to.’
‘It has worked out for the best though, hasn’t it?’
‘I suppose it has.’
‘Who’d be an army wife, eh?’
‘Quite.’
‘Rather stoical sort of person, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m a terrible coward.’
‘Well, I think you’re marvellous,’ said Gracie, firmly. Clara had to look the other way to stop herself crying. Gracie patted her hand. ‘I blubbed every single day when I was preggers with Larry,’ she said, then, ‘that’s probably why he’s so ghastly.’
Larry gripped his scooter harder and sulked.
When Clara had put the girls down for their nap, she sat in the dim bedroom and took out Hal’s letters.
There were ten. The paper was white, quite thick, from a box her mother had sent out at Christmas the year before. Hal’s writing was neat and accurate, with almost no crossings-out. He had signed each one ‘With love, Hal’. Just that, and nothing else. He talked about the weather, ‘Hellishly hot, had to put three men on a charge for sunburn’ about EOKA, ‘Been a bit busy lately. Casualties.’
She held the letters in her hand. She remembered his letters from Sandhurst (‘Food hell. See you on the 16th’) and from Germany (‘Can’t stand this paperwork, rained all week’).
One of the girls moved behind her, murmuring in her sleep.
She had always had to read between the lines with Hal.
She opened the drawer in the desk, and took out a sheet of blue writing paper that said ‘Ledra Palace Hotel’ at the top, in slightly uneven print.
She unscrewed the top of the pen. ‘Hal,’ she wrote, hesitating between sentences. ‘I’m sorry for the extended silence.’ The ink didn’t flow at first, and the letters had gaps. ‘I hope you are well. The girls are very well, and so am I.’
She crossed that out, and started again.
Do you remember all the letters we used to write? I wrote many more than you. Yours are what is known as ‘opaque’, I think. But I’m out of practice now, too, and can’t seem to say what I’d like to. I feel so very badly about so many things. I did feel ‘the wronged wife’. Hal – I even hated you. I’ve had a chance to think, and I’ve cheered up rather. Ought we to talk about my coming back? You have leave in November, but it seems a long way away. Shall we speak soon? Darling.
She stopped. Then, on a new line, she wrote again, ‘Darling,’ very deliberately, and ‘Today I went to the club, with my friend Gracie…’
And she told him about the white-painted palms, David, whom she’d never met, Gracie and the little boys, the hotel dining room, that the girls missed the beach and that they had many more words. They could say ‘bath-time’ and ‘Look at the water’. She told him about feeling the baby moving: ‘Forget what I said about it before, please. It was wicked and not meant at
all
.’
She took the letter downstairs, tiptoeing from the room, and gave it to the concierge. Then she stood, with her arms around herself, just standing still. She seemed to see Hal in front of her, in his uniform, a little dusty and hot from the day, and out of place in the hotel lobby.