Aphrodite's Island

by Hilary Green

  Instead, I fetch my mother’s journal, and flip the pages in search of some mention of my father’s disappearance. The acronym EOKA jumps out at me.

  2 July

  More political upheavals! Makarios has released a letter to the press in which he more or less accuses the junta in Athens of backing EOKA B and of trying to assassinate him. He has also demanded that all the Greek officers commanding the National Guard should be recalled. Stephen reckons the Athens regime can’t afford to be seen to climb down so it will be a stalemate. He doesn’t think it will come to a civil war, because the forces are so unbalanced but, of course, the big danger that everyone is afraid of is that Turkey will get involved on the pretext of protecting the Turkish Cypriot minority. There are very few Turkish Cypriots around here, but there is a big TC enclave in the Kyrenia area and several others to the west, so if that happened we should be in the thick of it. I have been trying to persuade Stephen to sell up and let us get out while we still can, but he points out, quite rightly, I suppose, that no one is going to buy property out here in the present state of things and all our capital is tied up in this place. He would be quite prepared to let me go back to England with Cressida, but I can’t leave him here to cope on his own. If things get really bad we’ll just have to pack up and run and hope we can come back when the trouble has blown over.

  7 July

  I don’t know what has happened to Stephen. I am writing this at midnight, after closing the bar, hoping to hear the car coming up the hill at any minute. He went off this morning, saying he had to meet someone in connection with his research. I saw him talking to Evangelos just before that and I assumed Angel was coming for his usual English lesson, but instead he went off with Stephen. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t come back at lunchtime because Stephen often disappears for most of the day, but until now he has always come back to help out during the evening, when we get busy. He has never been this late before. I find myself oscillating between two horrible suspicions and I am ashamed to say I don’t know which is worst. Either he has finally found the woman he has been looking for and is with her or … or what? Everything is unsettled here, and we know EOKA is active in the area. God forbid he has been caught in some terrorist bomb attack or something. I keep telling myself he’s met an old friend and they are drinking in a bar somewhere – or maybe the car has broken down. Oh God, I wish he would come home!

  8 July – 10 a.m.

  Still no sign of Stephen. Angel hasn’t put in an appearance either, though he usually comes about this time. Does this mean they are together somewhere? If it does, there must have been some sort of accident. I’ve tried telephoning the police but they say there have not been any reports of road accidents or terrorist activities. I don’t know what to do next. I’m sick with worry, and Cressida keeps asking where Daddy is. She misses Angel, too. He is always so good with her and amuses her for hours.

  The worst part is the awful suspicion that this may have something to do with that dreadful row we had the other day. Stephen walked out in a huff then, but he came back later that same evening. He gets these moods but normally they don’t last long. I can’t believe he’s been brooding over it ever since and finally decided to leave. Perhaps he thinks he is teaching me a lesson, getting his own back for some of the things I said. Well, he’s certainly succeeded there. I sat up waiting for him till God knows what time last night – this morning – and of course I got through a couple of bottles of the local vino, so I feel doubly awful now.

  Perhaps I’m being unjust. Stephen has never been the vindictive type and I don’t think he would really intend to make me suffer. But he has always been a loner and sometimes I think he just has to get away until he gets his head together. I put it down to having a lonely childhood. I know he hated boarding school and never forgave his adoptive parents for sending him there. He says he can’t understand why they wanted to adopt him in the first place if they were just going to send him away. I’m sure they really only wanted to do what was best for him, according to their lights, but he can’t see that. I’ve never met them, of course. Stephen hasn’t seen them or spoken to them since he left Oxford and went into the army. I feel very sorry for them.

  I’m rambling, I know, but at least writing keeps my mind off the real anxiety and helps me to put off making a decision. I don’t know if I should report his absence officially to the police, or perhaps contact the British Consul. The trouble is, he’s a responsible adult and he’s only been missing for 24 hours, so I don’t think they will do anything. After all, if he has just ‘gone walkabout’ to think things through and turns up again tonight or tomorrow, I’ll look a real idiot. And it will be even worse if it turns out that he’s tucked up in some cosy little love nest with his girlfriend.

  So, all I can do is try to behave normally and wait.

  15 July – 11.15 a.m.

  I’ve just heard some extraordinary news on the radio. It seems the National Guard have attacked the Presidential Palace and killed Archbishop Makarios! Now what will happen? Civil war? Will the Turks intervene? I’m terrified. And there’s still no sign of Stephen. Something terrible must have happened to him. If he was still alive and free I know he would have come home by now. He wouldn’t leave me to cope alone in this situation. What should I do? One minute I think I should pack up and get on the next plane back to England, while I still have a chance. I can’t risk staying here with Cressida if there’s going to be a war. But how can I go away, not knowing if Stephen’s dead or alive? I’ve spoken to the police, and the British Consul, but they’re no help. I can see them thinking I’m just another sozzled ex-pat whose husband has run off with a younger woman – and who can blame him? Oh God, I wish we’d never come here!

  5 p.m.

  The Greeks have appointed a man named Nicos Samson as president. All afternoon the local Brits have been congregating in the bar to discuss the situation. According to some of the old hands Samson was once sentenced to death for terrorism when the island was under British rule. How can a man like that be president?

  Later.

  Makarios is not dead after all. He has just broadcast from Paphos and appealed to the United Nations to step in. Most people here think that that means we are definitely in for a civil war, unless the UN acts very fast. It’s too late to get out now. The airport is closed. All we can do is sit tight and hope.

  I close the book and try to imagine my mother’s panic and despair. I am amazed yet again that I remember nothing. Could I have wiped it out so completely? Or did my mother succeed, in spite of everything, in hiding her fears from me?

  In the evening, Karim picks me up and drives me to a village on the coast, where he leads me into what looks like the front room of a small private house. There are four tables and a tiny bar and a glass-fronted refrigerated cabinet full of sticky cakes. I suppose my surprise shows in my face and Karim laughs.

  ‘I’m sorry if this isn’t what you were expecting, but I promise you, Mehmet produces some of the best Turkish Cypriot food on the island.’

  A dark-faced woman in a white headscarf comes out of a back room and greets Karim with evident pleasure mingled with respect. There is no menu, but Karim and the woman exchange a few words in Turkish and she disappears into the kitchen, to return with a bottle of wine and another of mineral water. These are followed by a series of tiny appetizers – little cigar-shaped rolls of filo pastry stuffed with cheese, tiny spicy meat balls, a dish of roasted aubergines and tomatoes, cucumber in a garlicky yoghurt dressing. We follow these with veal cutlets and finish with a sticky almond pastry which I recognize as baklava.

  As we eat, we talk, casually, about nothing in particular. Then, over the dessert, he says, ‘So, what have you been doing today?’

  I have been waiting for an opportunity to bring this up. I put down my fork and take the papers out of my handbag. ‘Reading this.’

  He glances down at the sheets, then raises his eyes to mine with a slight frown.

  ‘Your fat
her’s letters?’

  ‘Well, the first one. Os hasn’t got any further at the moment.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me to read this?’

  ‘If it wouldn’t bore you too much.’

  ‘It wouldn’t bore me at all, but it is rather personal.’

  ‘I’d like you to read it. I’d really like to be able to talk it over with someone.’

  ‘Very well.’ He lowers his eyes again and does not speak until he has read the whole letter. Then he looks up, his gaze inscrutable. ‘So, how much of a shock has all this been to you?’

  ‘Well, considerable,’ I reply. ‘I’d never suspected any of it until the other day.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I wish I knew who she was – the woman my father loved. He doesn’t even mention her name. Do you think there is any chance of tracing her?’

  ‘Not without a lot more information,’ he says. ‘And even then it would be difficult.’

  ‘We know she lived in Ayios Epiktetos.’

  ‘Which is now Catalkoy. But all the Greeks from there left years ago. Anyway, she had moved to Athens.’

  ‘Yes, but she came back – and she had a mother and father, and a brother.’

  ‘A terrorist, it seems.’

  ‘Who kidnapped my father, apparently. Why would he do that?’

  ‘To avenge the family honour? To have had an affair with his sister would be an insult only death could avenge.’

  ‘But he didn’t kill him. I know he survived, because he came back to England with us.’

  ‘You’re quite sure about that? You couldn’t be mixing up the time?’

  ‘No, because he used to take me to school and I didn’t start school till after we came back.’

  ‘Right. But I don’t see that it gets us any farther. Why do you want to find this woman, anyway?’

  I hesitate and shrug my shoulders. ‘I don’t know, Karim, to be perfectly honest. Curiosity? What was it about her that made her so special? My father spent the rest of his life regretting that he lost her, so it must have been a very intense affair.’

  ‘But suppose you did find her. Suppose you gave her the letters. Don’t you think it might just cause her pain? She will have made a life for herself. She has a husband, children. How are they going to react?’

  ‘What about us – my family? My mother drank herself to death because my father could never really love her as she loved him, and I’ve grown up feeling that in some way it was all my fault. I want to see this other woman face to face and tell her that she ruined three people’s lives.’

  Karim reaches across the table and lays his hand on mine. ‘I understand that. But it isn’t going to be easy.’

  ‘Perhaps the other letters will help.’

  He turns his attention to the letter again. ‘There’s a name here – Ferhan. That’s a Turkish name. Catalkoy … Ayios Epiktetos … used to be a mixed village in those days. Greek and Turkish Cypriot children would have grown up side by side, so it’s quite possible that your father’s mistress had Turkish friends. Ferhan might still be there, or someone may know where she is now.’

  ‘Could we go there and ask around?’

  He shakes his head. ‘People are inclined to be suspicious of anyone who asks too many questions, particularly a foreigner. Leave it with me. I have friends in Catalkoy. I’ll make a few discreet enquiries. If I find anything helpful I’ll let you know.’

  I feel warm with gratitude, and relief. This makes us more than casual acquaintances. ‘That’s really good of you, Karim. Thanks.’

  He returns my smile. ‘Listen. Tomorrow I have a day off. I’d like to show you my island. Can I?’

  ‘I’d love that.’

  ‘Good. I’ll pick you up at ten. OK?’

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘Up there? What do you think I am, a mountain goat?’

  ‘Come on! It’s not so far.’

  I stare up at the sheer-sided crag above us. This morning Karim collected me, not in the usual Mercedes but in a Range Rover, and we headed up into the mountains east of Kyrenia. At the top of a pass we swung off the road and onto a narrow, stony track which clings to the top of the saw-toothed ridge I had seen from the coast. For several miles we wound our way around the sides of the precipitous gorges that carve themselves into the flank of the mountain, bouncing and jolting over the potholes, with Karim chuckling at my gasps of alarm. Now we are standing in an empty, level square of dusty ground, which seems to be as far as we can go.

  ‘But there’s nothing up there,’ I protest.

  ‘Look again!’ he says, laughing.

  I screw up my eyes against the intense blue of the sky and slowly begin to make out shapes that are not the work of nature, but which yet seem to grow out of the honey-coloured rock as if an organic part of it. Little by little, as I concentrate, what had appeared to be a jumble of boulders, cracked and fissured by wind and weather, resolves itself into walls and towers.

  ‘There’s a castle up there?’

  ‘Buffavento. Come on.’

  He takes my hand and leads me up a steep, rocky path. By the time we reach a paved road and a solid, imposing gate tower I am already gasping for breath.

  ‘How on earth did they ever get the supplies they needed up here to build a place like this?’

  ‘Who knows? How did the builders of Salisbury or Lincoln Cathedral manage?’

  ‘At least they started at ground level. Why would anyone want to build up here?’

  ‘A watchtower to warn of invasion, originally. The Byzantine rulers built it as a defence against Arab invasion in the twelfth century. Later it became a handy place to stick your political opponents.’

  We pass under the archway, following a cobbled street that climbs still higher and higher, past the ruins of buildings whose purpose I can only guess at. Eventually, we emerge onto a level platform that gives us for the first time a view to the seaward side of the mountains. I gasp. On all sides the rock drops away sheer for hundreds of feet, so that we look out over the tops of the pines that clothe the steep ravines. A raven, disturbed by our approach, rides a current of air on a level with our faces and caws a sinister warning. Far below to the north lies the sea and the clustered villages of the coastal plain and beyond, where the distance dissolves in an amethyst haze, there is a faint suggestion of snow-capped peaks.

  Karim touches my arm. ‘Turkey. Those are the Taurus Mountains. Now you see how close we are.’

  He turns to point in the opposite direction, where the slope flattens out into a dun-coloured plain.

  ‘That’s the Mesaoria, the bread-basket of the island. It doesn’t look like it now, because the harvest is over, but in spring it is covered in wheat. And there, in the far distance – can you see? – that is Lefkosa.’

  ‘Nicosia?’

  ‘If you insist.’

  I put up my hand to my hair. On the climb the sun beat down fiercely but now, without the shelter of the mountainside, we are catching the full force of the west wind which, even at sea level, constantly sets the waves dancing and the flags outside the hotels rippling and cracking. Up here it makes my ears sing and, looking down at the vertiginous view, I feel suddenly dizzy.

  I feel Karim’s arm round my waist. ‘What is it? Are you feeling faint again?’

  For a moment I cannot answer. Then I say, as calmly as I can, ‘No, I’m all right. Just a bit giddy for a minute. I’m not very good at heights – and I think I must be out of condition. That climb … the heat, you know …’

  His voice is contrite. ‘I’m sorry, I should have thought. It was silly of me to bring you up here when I know you’re not well.’

  I pull free of his supporting arm. ‘I’m all right! Honestly. I was just out of breath. Look, I’m fine now.’

  He studies my face for a moment, then turns and leads me into a huge vaulted chamber.

  ‘Take care, there’s a hole in the middle of the floor!’

  I peer down into an a
pparently bottomless shaft. ‘What is it? A well?’

  ‘An oubliette. Somewhere to throw things you wanted to get rid of – rubbish, or an inconvenient prisoner.’ He moves to an arched window in the opposite wall. ‘Look, there’s our car, right down there. See?’

  ‘Oh yes! God, I knew it was a long climb, but I didn’t realize we’d come that far.’ I squint at the winding thread of track. ‘The road seems to go on. Why is it blocked off down there?’

  ‘It leads to a military base. We’re not allowed to go any further.’

  ‘Another one! Everywhere I go I seem to pass army camps.’

  I see his face harden in a way I am beginning to recognize. ‘It’s necessary. Without the Turkish army we should all be pushed into the sea.’

  I say sadly, ‘This is such a beautiful island, yet it seems to be full of the relics of wars.’

  Suddenly his face relaxes into a smile. ‘Not everywhere. Come on, I’ll show you somewhere that was built as a place of peace.’

  ‘Bellapais. The Abbaye de la Paix. Built in the aftermath of the Crusades as a place of peaceful contemplation. Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  I gaze up at the soaring Gothic arches framed by the dark spires of three tall cypresses. ‘Yes, it is. It must have been wonderful to come back here, away from the desert and the fighting. Why did the monks leave?’

  We stroll along the cloister, the air heavy with the scent of thyme and the endless whirr of cicadas. Karim says, ‘The monastery was closed down by the church authorities. The last few monks were found to be living a life of luxury and each in possession of several wives.’

  I laugh. ‘Oh dear! I wonder how they squared that with their vows.’

  Karim grins in return. ‘I imagine they didn’t try. I’m afraid the atmosphere here didn’t lend itself to austere contemplation. Too easy, too warm. Or perhaps the goddess Aphrodite resented the intrusion of our celibate, male deity and set out to subvert them.’