Swimming to Ithaca (27 page)

He grinned. ‘I said someone would drop by. Everything OK? You got home safely?’ Something must have shown in her expression. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’

He came forward. ‘Dee, are you all right?’

‘I’m quite all right.’

Nicos appeared in the hallway behind her. ‘I’d better be off,’ he said. He pushed past and headed down the path.

‘What’s up?’ Damien asked. ‘What’s been going on?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Really.’

‘Hey, you!’ he called out.

The sergeant moved. Nicos had reached the gate and the soldier had left the Land-Rover and was crossing the road towards him, his Sterling levelled at the youth’s stomach. Dee screamed, ‘No! Let him be.’

Nicos stopped and glanced back, his expression smudged with fear. There was a moment of stillness, the two men standing there in the road in the spring sunshine, military khaki against civilian white and grey. Dee noticed other things: a Morris van down at the corner shop; a bird, some brilliantly coloured species, scratching in one of the palm trees in the garden; a dog barking from a neighbour’s plot. ‘For God’s sake let him go,’ she said to Damien. ‘He’s done nothing.’

Damien hesitated. ‘It’s all right, Sarn’t,’ he called out. ‘You can let the lad go.’

Cautiously the sergeant lowered his weapon. Nicos said something, but they couldn’t catch the words. The sergeant’s reply was clear: ‘Just push off, lad, and don’t make any trouble.’

They watched Nicos get into his car and start the engine. He glanced round at Dee, directly at Dee, and then drove away, accelerating hard so that stones skittered out from under the tyres. Damien called, ‘Sergeant Borthwick, just give me a minute or two, will you?’ and took Dee’s elbow to steer her inside. ‘What’s going on? Tell me what happened.’

She stopped in the shadows of the hallway. She wanted to appear composed and collected, but somehow she was trembling. ‘Nothing.’

He turned her to face him, put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Nothing happened, my foot. Tell me what’s up. Do you want me to phone Edward?’

‘No, no don’t do that.’ She put her hand up to stop him,
placed it on his chest just as she had with Nicos. ‘I’ll be all right. It’s just … He’s mixed up, that’s all. We were talking.’

‘You want to be careful, talking to the natives. If it gets you upset.’

‘Why must you talk about them like that? Why must you always put them down? They’re people, just like us.’

‘It was meant to be a joke.’

‘The joke wears thin at times. Look, I’m sorry, Damien. I feel confused, that’s all. It’s been a bit of a morning, what with the riot and everything. Can I get you something, a cup of tea perhaps? Do you want to get your sergeant in?’

‘He can wait a few minutes.’ He followed her into the kitchen. ‘You know we pulled your friend in the other day?’

She turned, alarmed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your Teddy boy. A couple of my lads pulled him in for questioning.’

‘They did what?’

He was smiling. ‘Took him in on suspicion. Something that came through from our intelligence officer. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but it’s for your own good. They gave him a going over.’

‘What does that mean? What’s a “going over” for God’s sake? Did they hurt him? He never said a word to me—’

‘Oh, come on, Dee. We’re fighting terrorists here. People expect to be picked up and interrogated. They know the score—’

‘Score? So it’s a game, is it? Well it’s not to him. It’s his country and his people …’

He was still smiling, that placid, patronizing smile. ‘If I didn’t know you better, Dee, I’d be wondering about the two of you.’

The moment seemed suspended, like a breath held. She felt herself redden. ‘You don’t know me at all, Damien,’ she said.

His smile faded. ‘Maybe I don’t. Look, forget the tea, eh? I’d better be going. There’s a war out there to fight.’

‘A war?’

‘Another joke.’ He turned and made for the front door. ‘I’ll be in touch. Keep out of the town, if I were you. The next few days …’

She opened the door to let the light flood in.

Damien put his beret on and turned to her. ‘It’s you,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re the problem. It makes it difficult getting things right.’ Then he went out into the daylight and down the path towards the waiting Land-Rover.

She watched as the vehicle drove away, down past the corner shop owned by Stavros’ cousin and round on to the main road. The Morris van was still by the shop. It had Greek writing on the side.
AΦPOΔITH
, it said:
APHRODITE
. It was always Aphrodite on this bloody island. She watched for a while but no one appeared. Then she went inside and closed the door, and stood in the silence of the hall. The frightening thing was the muddle of emotion that she felt, the very plurality of it, the vivid, crowding sensation of paradox – desire and loathing, love and hate, attraction and repulsion, the first of each dyad directed at him, the second at herself.

‘Y
ou know I got caught up in that Turkish demonstration in town?’ She mentioned it casually, as though it didn’t matter.

Edward looked up from his plate. ‘You what?’

‘It was nothing. I’d been down to Marjorie’s and on the way back we drove into it. It soon dispersed. The troops were there.’

‘It’s bloody ridiculous, you going round on your own like that.’

‘I wasn’t on my own. I took a taxi. That lad Nicos – you know the one. Damien Braudel’s unit was there in the middle of the whole thing, poor fellow. It was all over in a moment and no harm done. But it was pretty scary at the time.’

‘Well, I really think you ought to be more sensible about going into town these days.’

‘But I was being sensible. I took a taxi, didn’t I? I always take a car. And what are the police and the Army for, if not to keep civilians safe? Do you know they arrested Nicos the other day? That’s what Damien told me. They took him in for questioning. Isn’t it incredible?’

‘Is it? Any Greek under the age of eighty seems a good enough suspect these days.’

‘But what about principles? I mean, just dragging someone off the street.’

‘How do you know what their reason was? You can’t just apply your half-baked socialist ideas to a situation like this.’ He turned back to his food. ‘We never did invite Braudel and his wife round to dinner. Didn’t you want to?’

‘I can’t believe he’d hurt anyone.’

‘Who, Braudel?’

‘No. Nicos. He goes out of his way to help.’

‘If I know taxi drivers, I’d guess he goes out of his way in order to earn a bigger fare.’

She got up from the table and began clearing the dishes. ‘Shall I give him a ring then?’

‘Who, your taxi driver?’

‘Don’t be daft. Damien Braudel. We haven’t had Binty and Douglas round for ages, and perhaps we could invite the Frindles. But we’d need another female. That’s the trouble here – there are so few single women you can invite.’

‘I thought he’d got a wife.’

‘She’ll be back in England by now.’

‘What about Marjorie?’

She laughed. ‘What a pair they’d make.’

The next day there was a coffee morning at Episkopi. She didn’t have to go, of course. She’d often turned such invitations down, but she didn’t want to gain a reputation of being standoffish. And Binty wasn’t going, which meant that she couldn’t get a lift from her. So she was left with no alternative.

She prepared breakfast for Edward and Paula and saw them off in the car, and then went inside to busy herself round the house. There were things to get ready for Tom’s return for the Easter holidays – his clothes to go through, his room to sort out. ‘
Paidi mou erchetai
,’ she explained to the maid. ‘
Se treis imeres
.’ Voula laughed, as though the idea of Tom’s imminent arrival was a mild but harmless delusion. And all the time there was this sensation in her chest, behind her breastbone, her state of mind rendered physical. Was it fear? Anxiety, yes; and embarrassment. But was there fear among the confusion? She couldn’t tell, that was the absurd thing – she couldn’t recognize her own feelings. But the physical manifestation was there surely enough: an unsteadiness in her chest, a sensation that seemed localized in the front of her neck where the collarbones came within an inch of one another and there was a smooth hollow like the imprint of a thumb: a fluttering of anticipation.

When finally she picked up the phone, it was something of a relief that Stavros’ voice answered. ‘I need a car,’ she told him. ‘As soon as possible, please. I’m sorry, I should have rung earlier, but—’

‘Of course, my lady. I send Nicos.’ The upward intonation in his voice seemed to make it a question. A small cloud of suspicion gathered.

‘Can’t you do it yourself?’

‘I’m sorry, my lady. There are businesses for me to do. But don’t worry. Five minutes, a car is there. Nicos, he won’t drive you through a demonstration this time. This time he go the safe way.’ It was a joke. They laughed at either end of the line, separated by more than mere distance. ‘The Turks,’ he added, ‘are great trouble.’

So, she thought, are the Greeks. She went back to Tom’s room. There was his little collection of archaeological relics to be dusted, things they had found at Curium when they had gone with Nicos the previous year. They’d dug with a trowel, illicitly, among the dust and stones to discover bits of votive objects – a bull’s head, a crude female torso – and pot handles and potsherds and an enigmatic fragment of painted plaster. Cleaning them was a task that she couldn’t entrust to the clumsy Voula.

A few minutes later she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside and Voula answering the door. She recognized Nicos’ voice, and the phrase ‘
Kyria
Denham’. ‘I’m coming,’ she called. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

She paused, then picked up the pride of Tom’s collection – a tear bottle. The glass was opalescent, tainted green and blue, shining like sunlight reflected from the surface of the sea. She dusted it carefully, as though it mattered, then returned it to its precise place and went out to get her things.

Nicos didn’t look her in the eye as she appeared. He was leaning against the wing of the taxi and as she came near he just opened the door for her, waited while she climbed in, then slid behind the wheel to start the engine.

‘Miss Marjorie’s, is it?’ he asked. His eyes avoided hers.

‘Episkopi. There’s a coffee morning.’ Why did she offer that information? What did it matter to him?

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Episkopi.’

*

The road traipsed westwards out of the city. Signs announced Coca-Cola and Keo beer and Hellas cigarettes. They passed through the pungent stench of a carob factory, and then the buildings gave way to the dense green of orange groves. The surprising, perfect cube of Kolossi Castle appeared above the trees, looking like some kind of geometrical puzzle that you might disassemble into a bewildering collection of irregular pieces and never find the way to put back together. They slowed behind a donkey cart as an army lorry passed by on the opposite side. For an instant Nicos’ eyes met hers in the reflection of the mirror.

‘I didn’t think you’d call me again,’ he said.

‘I didn’t, I just called for a car.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘About what happened yesterday.’

‘It’s all right. There’s nothing to apologize for.’

‘You’re angry.’

‘No, I’m not. Not angry.’

‘What, then?’

‘Upset,’ she said.

‘What d’you mean by upset?’

‘Many things. Unhappy, miserable, confused, disappointed. Many things.’

His eyes were there for a moment. ‘Which of those?’

‘Most of them.’

The citrus groves gave way to scrub and the road began to climb. He changed down through the gears as the car snaked upwards through cistus and carob and dry white limestone, a tortured landscape of twisted ravines and pillars. The story was that this had been caused by an earthquake, the same earthquake that destroyed the ancient city of Curium up ahead on the ridge. That’s what Geoffrey had told her. She sat in the oily interior of the car and watched the countryside pass. ‘Can you stop, please?’ she asked. ‘I’m not feeling well.’

‘I can’t stop here, Mrs D.’ He glanced round. ‘I’ll pull over when we get to the top, if that’s all right.’

‘Please.’

At the summit there was a rough turning to the left where a battered sign announced the authority of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities.
ANCIENT CITY OF CURIUM
, it said.
NO ENTRY. NO PARKING
. Someone had discharged a shotgun into the centre of the notice, creating a nebula of rust spots. They pulled off the road and Dee opened the door and climbed out. There was a warm, southerly breeze and she stood there breathing deeply for a while, with her face into the wind.

Nicos got out on the far side of the car and looked across the roof at her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Just a bit carsick.’

‘I’ve got some water.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I said things—’

‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you said. Really. Forgive and forget.’

He shook his head. ‘There are some things that I don’t want you to forget.’

‘Don’t you want me to forgive them either?’

‘They don’t need forgiving.’

She turned away. ‘I’m not sure about that.’

‘You
let
me,’ he said. His tone was almost indignant. ‘You
let
me, Dee.’

It wasn’t sickness, it was fear. She was afraid. She walked away from the car as though she might be able to walk away from her fear. ‘Where you going?’ he called after her, but she ignored him and went on, past the barrier and over the uneven ground of the excavation site. The wind buffeted her. The wreckage of Curium lay all around, a wasteland of stone and dust and rock with occasional pieces – columns, bits of mosaic,
fragments of frieze – poking up through the soil like shards of bone protruding from a complex compound fracture. Somewhere beneath, as yet unexplored, was the whole skeleton of the place.

His voice called after her, faint against the wind: ‘Hey!’

She ignored him and walked on. There were anemones and asphodel beside the rough path. Anemone was the wind flower:
anemos
, wind. Geoffrey had told her that, and it was there in the poem he had dedicated to her, the one called ‘Persephone’. ‘Anemone, the wind flower,/Is blown away by gales.’ That’s how it went. Maybe she’d be blown away by this gale. It flattened her dress against her body. She could feel it pressing between her thighs like a hand.