Swimming to Ithaca (25 page)

‘She thinks you’re both dolls,’ Geoffrey explained. ‘It’s intended as a compliment.’ A cool breeze rattled the cane chicks that sheltered the tables, but it was warm in the sunshine. Paula hurried through her food and ran down to the water. She hitched up her skirt, kicked her shoes off and paddled in the
shallows, while the adults watched from their table. ‘Thank you for being such a good guide,’ Dee said.

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Umm Haram? Beautiful. Very strange.’

He lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

Paula was coming out of the water, holding something in her hand. ‘Look Mummy! Look!’

‘What is it? What have you found?’

She came up the steps to their table, her feet leaving wet prints. She had found an oval shell, with a lucid brown pattern on the convex side, but as white and hard and polished as porcelain on the underside. A cowrie shell.

‘Is it beautiful, Mummy?’

‘It’s very beautiful.’

The adults turned the shell over in their hands, looked at it with knowing eyes. The underside clearly resembled the female vulva.

‘Can I keep it?’

‘Of course you can. Go and see if there’s another one.’

The little girl scampered away. Dee put the shell down on the table and looked up at Geoffrey. What, she wondered, was coming? Some personal confession? Was she about to be embarrassed? ‘Go on.’

‘It’s about that taxi firm you use.’

‘Taxi firm? What about it?’

‘Phaedon Taxis, isn’t it?’

It struck her how he pronounced the name, the d given the sound of th – ‘phaethon’. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Geoffrey?’

‘What do you think of them?’

‘They’re all right. They seem safer than most of the others. Fewer dents. Why on earth do you ask?’

‘What if I told you that the owner is an EOKA suspect?’

‘Stavros? How on earth do you know that?’

‘Things one hears.’

She didn’t know whether to laugh. There was something absurd about Geoffrey, deliberately absurd, as though anything that might happen was, to him, some kind of joke. She had expected Guppy and marital crisis, maybe even some kind of confession, and she got Stavros and EOKA. ‘I can’t believe it. He’s a rather unctuous little man, but quite harmless I’m sure.’

‘Unctuous.’ Geoffrey repeated the word with glee. ‘Well, the story is that he is part of the oil that lubricates EOKA. So people tell me.’

‘Who tells you?’

‘Certain people.’

‘How mysterious you’re being, Geoffrey.’

‘I’m being serious. That’s a different thing. Could you keep what I’m going to say to yourself? I’d rather you didn’t even tell Edward.’

‘I can’t keep secrets from my husband.’

He smiled. ‘Oh yes you can. All wives can keep secrets, even if it’s only the contents of their handbags.’

She blushed and reached for a cigarette as some kind of distraction. Paula was still splashing around in the water, trying to find another of her shells. The breeze had died away. ‘Go on then,’ she said quietly.

‘Promise me?’

‘I promise.’

He drew on his cigarette and stared out to sea.

‘The year before last the Army more or less wrapped EOKA up in the mountains. You’ve heard all about that, haven’t you? Operation Lucky Alphonse, and the forest fire.’

‘People say it was started by the terrorists. It was a bit of a
disaster, wasn’t it? Nineteen British soldiers killed, half the Paphos Forest burned down.’

‘That was a bit of a setback. In almost every other respect it was a victory – because it virtually destroyed the EOKA presence in Troödos. The only thing that took away from total victory was that old Grievous escaped. Somehow he was smuggled through the army lines—’

‘Dressed as a woman, that’s the story. Jennifer Powell told me.’

‘Jennifer Powell doesn’t know her arse from her elbow. What is more likely is that he was hidden in a car. We have information that unctuous Stavros Kyprianou did the driving.’

‘Stavros?’ She thought of the fat man and his little, twinkling feet. Somehow she’d always imagined him as a ballroom dancer, twirling his partner round, executing complex steps, his smile as fixed and smarmy as his Brylcreemed hair. ‘That seems fantastic.’

Geoffrey turned towards her. ‘If Kyprianou did do the driving, it means that he is trusted within the organization.’

‘Even if it’s true, what has it got to do with me?’

‘You seem to know the family.’

She laughed. He
was
absurd. He was playing a joke, leading up to one of his punchlines. ‘Hardly. I’ve only spoken to Stavros a few times. Once I was invited in for a coffee. You know the kind of thing. Glasses of water and lots of smiling and no real communication. They offered me those candied fruit …’

‘
Glyká
.’

‘His nephew Nicos translated for me, and that was that. You know I don’t speak Greek, Geoffrey. I know less about them than you could get from chatting to Stavros in a bar. Oh yes, Nicos went to school in north London and he likes that rock and roll stuff. There you are, that’s a useful bit of information.’

Geoffrey seemed indifferent to her sarcasm. He sipped his
coffee. ‘Nicos. Yes, that’s the lad’s name. Nikolaos. “Victorious people”, that’s what it means, more or less. Nike was the goddess of victory.’

‘You can’t blame him for his name.’

‘I’m not blaming him for anything, yet. Except for the fact that he seems to have taken quite a shine to you.’

‘He reminds me vaguely of someone I once knew. An old boyfriend.’ And then comprehension dawned. ‘How do you know he’s taken a shine to me, as you put it?’

‘Isn’t it true?’

‘Maybe it is, but how do you know?’

He smiled. ‘We have our ways.’

‘We, Geoffrey? Who’s “
we
”? Have people been watching me, Geoffrey? Is that it?’

‘For your own sake,’ he said. ‘Lest you break your pellucid neck.’

The shock was palpable, like a blow in the abdomen. She imagined men in fawn raincoats, with cheap cigarettes and battered trilby hats. Something out of Graham Greene or Eric Ambler. And then she thought of Marjorie, plump, motherly Marjorie, and wondered whether she was the secret watcher, the whisperer of secrets. ‘And now what are you suggesting?’ she demanded.

He took a last drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘We thought you might get to know him better. Get him into your confidence. Win him over. You know the kind of thing?’

‘
We
thought, Geoffrey? Who is this “we”?’

‘People I work with occasionally. You could help us, if you were willing to play a part.’

She should be angry. She should be telling him to get lost. But there was something ridiculous about the whole conversation, something implausible that just made her want to laugh. ‘Who do you think I am? Mata Hari?’

‘I think you are a tough and loyal Yorkshirewoman, actually. Someone who did her bit in the war and will do her bit now.’

Paula called, ‘Mummy, I can’t find any more. I’ve looked, but there aren’t any.’

‘You must come in now, darling. It’s time to go.’

Her daughter hesitated, standing in the shallows with the water creaming around her ankles.

‘If you don’t come in now, you’ll get cold.’

‘Think about it,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Just mull it over.’

They were silent on the drive back. Dee was entirely bewildered by this conversation. She had thought of Geoffrey as a poet, a world-weary bank official, a
bon viveur
, a philhellene and classical scholar, and now he was presented to her in a startling new light. Spy? Secret agent? The very idea seemed nonsensical, the kind of idiocy that Geoffrey himself would have invented as a joke. Cloak and dagger. He had even – she recalled this with a small start of amusement – gone to the New Year’s Eve fancy-dress party in the mess at Episkopi wearing a cloak and brandishing a dagger. Everyone had laughed at his antics. Good old Geoffrey, they’d said. Not like a civilian at all. Quite one of us.

‘He’s just a young boy, Geoffrey,’ she said when they stopped outside the house. ‘He’s an innocent, an outsider dumped in this place just because he happens to have relatives here. I can’t believe he’ll have any knowledge that’ll be useful.’

‘Who’s a young boy?’ Paula asked.

‘Nobody you know,’ Dee told her. They waited while her daughter ran ahead of them up the path.

‘You’d be surprised what’s useful to us,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Often it’s the innocent ones who are the best sources.’ There was no pretence now. It was ‘we’ and ‘us’, not ‘they’ and ‘them’. Who
was
Geoffrey Crozier? For whom did he work? ‘Anyway, think
it over. Give it some time and let me know. But please’ – he smiled, his old beaming smile – ‘please don’t say anything to anyone. Let’s keep everything secret, shall we? A covenant of salt.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I really must be going.’ He touched her on the arm. ‘You’d only have to listen, Dee. Make him want to talk to you. Give him a shoulder to cry on.’

‘How do you know he needs to cry on anyone’s shoulder?’

‘Don’t all men?’

She hesitated. ‘Do you, Geoffrey?’

He seemed to think for a moment, as though he were lost for words. Geoffrey was never lost for words. Then he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘More than most,’ he said, and turned back to the car.

Dee watched him drive away. She watched the empty street long after his car had clattered out of sight. She sensed the whole island around her, Aphrodite’s island, Saint Paul’s and Saint Barnabas’ island, Umm Haram’s island, the island of hate and love, a fabric that could hold together for a while but would come apart sooner or later. She thought of EOKA fighters holed up in the mountains and hidden in the villages and towns; and British soldiers stalking them through the forests and the alleyways. She thought of Damien, and she thought of Nicos, each of them woven into this fabric for no particular reason other than the workings of spiteful chance. The noise of thought sounded in her head like a dozen voices all talking to her at once: Edward, Paula with her trusting innocence, and strange, remote Tom, who came into the family during the holidays with his pedantic manner and thoughtful way of looking at adults, as though he were storing things away in his mind like a miser with a cache of coins. Children had been all she had ever wanted, motherhood all she had ever aspired to; and now there were other things.

T
he taxi threaded its way through the traffic by the bus station, behind donkey carts and ramshackle buses and battered cars. Nowadays taking a taxi wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity – you were advised against taking public transport and going out alone. A taxi was the only solution.

She watched the back of Nicos’ head as he drove – the oiled hair, the careful sculpting. ‘Duck’s tail’ was what they called the style; ‘duck’s arse’, the soldiers said. Sometimes his eyes would catch hers in the rear-view mirror and hold her gaze, for a fraction longer than one might expect. What was he thinking? Marjorie had said that he was soft on her, and warned her off; Geoffrey wanted her to exploit that very weakness and draw him closer to her, give him a shoulder to cry on, or a lap to lie in, or whatever it might be. What, she wondered, did
he
want?

The vehicle came to a halt. ‘Something up ahead,’ Nicos said. There were cars and trucks and people milling around. An army Land-Rover drove past and then a ten-tonner, loaded with soldiers. With the windows down you could hear a distant noise, like an insensate sea sound, roaring and crashing. Along the street shopkeepers were slamming down their shutters.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Demonstration.’ Nicos looked round to see if he could turn the car, but they were pinned in the traffic. There was a bus directly behind them, its driver craning to see. ‘We’ll just have to sit it out,’ he said. ‘Best stay in the car.’

Youths ran past, like kids running out of school, darting and jumping, laughing and shouting. Some carried banners, crudely painted. There were English words:
FOOT NO, HARDING YES!
and the single word
TAXIM
. People pressed around them. There was the sudden smash of breaking glass from the bus. One of the youths was throwing stones.

‘Who is it? What sort of demonstration?’

‘Turks,’ Nicos said. The very name ‘Turk’ carried with it a threat. It went with ‘Hun’ and ‘Vandal’ and bore in its sound the sharp plosives of violence. Dee felt panic welling up.
Turks
. Someone hammered on the roof, a great concussion battering on her head, like thunder discharged from a dark cloud.

‘Hey!’

Was it Nicos who shouted? The car rocked like a boat in a storm. He twisted round and leaned over the seat and grabbed her hand. ‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after you.’ People were all around the car now, a great scrum of people, dark faces staring in at the windows. A woman screamed, and then an amplified voice called over the hubbub in words that were Greek or Turkish, Dee couldn’t tell which. Then the crowd had gone, like a squall passing by, and there was a kind of stillness.

‘You all right, Mrs D?’ Nicos released her hand. It was sore where he had grabbed it, but his grasp had been a comfort, as though just by holding her he might have protected her in some way. It was difficult to read his look – his expression was pinched and pale, perhaps with fear, perhaps with anger. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

‘More or less. Where are the police?’

His laugh was laden with sarcasm. ‘The Turks
are
the police, Mrs D.’

‘Can’t we get moving? Can’t we get out of here?’

‘It’s all blocked.’

Now there were soldiers coming past, wearing helmets and carrying shields made of chicken wire. They had pickaxe handles in their hands. A group of them wore gas masks. These looked inhuman, like amphibians of some kind, frogs thrown down from the sky by the passing storm. But they were only the lads
who visited Marjorie’s canteen, the youths from Birmingham or Manchester or Liverpool, National Servicemen measuring out their time in the colonies.

Then she saw Damien. He was walking along beside an army Land-Rover following the soldiers. There was a sergeant in the vehicle and a corporal driver at the wheel, but Damien was walking. He was in uniform and wearing a beret. At his waist was a webbing pistol holster and tucked beneath his right arm was an officer’s cane – what they called a swagger stick. But he was not swaggering. He was walking briskly, as though to an appointment, looking around him with interest, talking to the sergeant occasionally. In the back of the Land-Rover was a signaller with a radio. The whip aerial swayed above the vehicle like the antenna of a cockroach.