Aphrodite's Island

by Hilary Green

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t hard to see why he fell for her. She was beautiful – very beautiful – and clever. She had – how would you say it? – great spirit. I used to worry for her, even before she met your father. She was too independent, too much of a rebel. But then, she was very young. Not yet eighteen.’

  ‘So young! I’d imagined her as much older. I think my father really loved her, but somehow it all went wrong. What happened?’

  The other woman shrugs. ‘How could it have been different? The situation was very bad here, between the Greeks and the British. Many people were getting shot. Your father was confined to the camp. Then, suddenly, he was gone, without a word.’

  ‘I know he didn’t mean to abandon her. He says so in his letters.’

  ‘She never got any letters. She never heard from him again.’

  I look away. In spite of Ferhan’s courtesy I can sense an underlying hostility. ‘But he came back to look for her.’

  ‘A year later, after her father had sent her away to Athens.’

  ‘Her father sent her away?’

  ‘To marry a man twice her age. An old friend of the family.’

  ‘How terrible! Why?’

  ‘He found out about her affair with your father. Ariadne was lucky. It was not unusual for the bodies of girls who behaved as she had to be washed up on the beach – and for much less reason.’

  I stare at the inscrutable face. ‘That’s awful!’

  ‘That’s how it was, in those days. What she had done was a disgrace to the family.’

  I reach into my bag and take out Os’s translations of my father’s letters. ‘My father says here that you took him back to your house, because Ariadne’s father would have shot him if he had seen him. I suppose that’s why.’

  ‘He was desperate to find her but I could not help him. I did not know her address or even in what part of Athens she was living. I told your father to go home and forget her. There was nothing he could do that would not bring greater grief than she had suffered already. He accepted that but he begged me to write to him if I had any news.’

  ‘And you did. He mentions it here.’

  ‘Yes, it went against my conscience but he was very persuasive. I still heard about Ariadne from her mother, as long as the family remained in the village, and I used to pass on what I learned to your father.’

  ‘I don’t remember him getting letters from Cyprus.’

  ‘He gave me an address to write to – a Post Office box number. I think he travelled a good deal.’

  ‘Yes, he did. And I suppose after he married my mother and settled down he didn’t want your letters turning up at home. But that was years later. Were you still writing then?’

  ‘From time to time, when I had news. Then, one day, almost eighteen years after she left, Ariadne walked through that door. She told me that her husband, who was in poor health, had retired and sold his business in Athens and she had persuaded him to bring her and their children back to live in Cyprus. By that time, her father was dead and her mother had gone to live with a brother who kept a hotel in the Troodos Mountains. Iannis, her brother, had gone off somewhere with the EOKA people, so no one was left in the village who knew about the affair.’

  ‘Did you write to my father and tell him she was here?’

  ‘No, I did not! I could see that it would only cause trouble.’

  ‘Then that wasn’t the reason he brought my mother and me to live here.’ I am thinking aloud. ‘Or could he have learned that Ariadne was back?’

  ‘Not from me. But he found out somehow. He came to see me again and begged me to give him her address. I refused, of course, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept searching, asking anyone who might have known her where she was. He did not find her because they had settled in the Troodos, where no one knew her. Then the Turkish army arrived and everything was confusion. When the fighting was over I heard he had taken you and your mother back to England.’

  ‘And what happened to Ariadne?’

  Ferhan shrugs again. ‘I told you, she and her husband had settled in the south. Once the island was divided there was no way to contact them.’

  ‘So you don’t know where she is now?’

  ‘How should I?’

  I fold the papers covered in Os’s immaculate handwriting and put them back into my bag. I feel tired and depressed. It seems that I have struck another dead end in my search. Karim gives me a sympathetic look and turns to Ferhan.

  ‘Cressida is not very well. I think I should take her home now. But thank you for your help.’

  I add my thanks but I sense as we shake hands again that there is still something unspoken, a secret yet to be revealed.

  When we get back to his house, Karim insists that I must rest, but later on I persuade him to drive me to Lapta.

  ‘I promised the Wentworths that I would call and see them if I ever came back and I feel I ought to keep my promise. They were very kind to me.’

  As soon as Meg Wentworth opens the door I see the shock on her face that I have come to dread. But both she and Os are far too well bred to comment and when I explain the situation they are sympathetic but controlled, which I find much easier to cope with than overt displays of emotion. I explain why I have returned to Cyprus and give them the gist of my conversation with Ferhan.

  ‘So you are not really much wiser,’ Os comments.

  ‘Well, at least I have a name for her now,’ I reply. ‘Ariadne. Wasn’t she the one who was sacrificed to the minotaur?’

  ‘No, no.’ Os chuckles briefly. ‘You’re on the right track but it was Theseus who was supposed to be eaten by the minotaur. Ariadne was the king’s daughter. She fell in love with Theseus and saved him. The minotaur lived in the middle of a labyrinth, so that even after he had killed the beast Theseus might have perished because he couldn’t find his way out. Ariadne gave him a ball of thread to unwind as he went along, so he was able to retrace his steps.’ He pauses and sighed. ‘I’m afraid he treated her badly though. She ran away with him when he set off back to Athens but he abandoned her on a remote island on the way home.’

  I wince inwardly. ‘That sounds too much like history repeating itself.’

  ‘Oh good Lord!’ Os looks abashed. ‘My dear, how very tactless of me! I didn’t mean to imply a parallel between Theseus’s behaviour and your father’s.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Meg fills the momentary silence, ‘you still don’t have an address for her?’

  ‘No, I don’t. But perhaps it’s just as well. I don’t know what I’d do if I had.’

  ‘But don’t you want to meet her? Aren’t you curious?’

  ‘I did at one time. I wanted to confront her and tell her what she’d done to my family. But now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to see that she had a pretty bad time herself.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Karim says, ‘even if you had an address you couldn’t get there. Not if she’s still living in the south.’

  ‘Only by flying back to Ankara and then taking a plane to Athens and flying back from there to the other side of the border,’ Os agrees.

  The idea appals me. ‘I couldn’t possible manage that.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous!’ Karim exclaims. ‘I could drive you there myself in an hour or two. I know the Troodos well. We used to go there for holidays when I was a child. Banned from half of my own island!’

  ‘I sympathize,’ Os says. ‘The whole situation is ridiculous.’

  For a while Karim and the Wentworths discuss the political situation but I drift into the half-waking state that is becoming more and more familiar. I can imagine how that young girl must have felt as she faced the coming confrontation with her family.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘What would you like to do today?’ Karim asks at breakfast the next morning.

  I think for a minute. I slept better than I have done for weeks and woke feeling a little stronger.

  ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. I’d like to go to some of your favourite places again. I wa
nt to sit under the Tree of Idleness and wander round the abbey – but I can’t manage Buffavento this time.’

  ‘Very well,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you to another place I love – somewhere we didn’t find time for on your last visit.’

  An hour later he helps me down a short, steep track to a tiny church hidden in a fold of the mountainside. Built of a reddish brick that echoes the colours of the soil around it, its arched cloister and central dome seem to have grown organically out of the earth.

  ‘This may seem a strange place for a Muslim to treasure,’ Karim says, ‘but as an archaeologist I have to revere the artistry that went into decorating this church – even though the pictures go against everything I have been taught by my faith.’

  He pushes open the heavy door and leads me inside. For a while I can make out nothing but the outlines of pillars and the vault of the dome but, as my eyes become accustomed to the dimness, I begin to see that the ceiling and walls are frescoed with pictures of saints and angels, while from the dome itself the face of Christ gazes down upon us. Closer examination shows that many of the frescoes are damaged, the faces pock-marked by what look like bullet holes.

  ‘What happened? Was there a battle?’

  ‘I’m ashamed to say,’ Karim replies, ‘that immediately after the peace operation some fanatics came in here and tried to deface the images. You know that for us it is blasphemy to portray the face of God, or of men, who are made in his image. But now the authorities have come to their senses and realized that we have been entrusted with the guardianship of a great artistic heritage. Its preservation has been a large part of my work here and this glorious place is now protected.’

  I look at him. ‘Karim, you love everything about Cyprus, don’t you? I understand why you would never want to leave.’

  He reaches out and draws me to him. ‘I would go if I could take you with me.’

  When we return to the house the housekeeper hands Karim a note. He glances at it and exclaims, ‘A-ha! I thought so!’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I had a feeling yesterday that Ferhan was holding something back. This is a message from her. She wants to see you again, today if possible. Do you want to go?’

  ‘Yes, if there is something else she wants to say. I suppose it would be silly not to.’

  Ferhan greets us with the same reserve but I sense a softening in her manner. When we are seated at the wooden table in the back room with tiny cups of bitter coffee, she says, ‘You are ill, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply tersely. I want to tell her to mind her own business.

  Ferhan seems to understand. ‘I will not ask questions, but my conscience has troubled me since you left yesterday. You asked me if I knew where Ariadne is and I said no. It is true that I do not know for certain where she is now. But I did have an address.’ She gets up and takes a dog-eared envelope from a shelf. ‘One day, about two years after the fighting was over, this letter arrived from her. It had been smuggled across the Green Line. She told me that her husband had died and she had moved in with her mother and uncle in the hotel. She asked me if I had seen Stephen. She had met someone from her old village who had been evacuated to the south and this person had told her that Stephen had been on the island, looking for her. She told me she had never forgotten him and had always wondered why he had never tried to get in touch with her.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I had no means of getting a letter back to her. But I lay awake for many nights after that, wondering what would be the right thing. In the end I wrote to your father and gave him her address. But I never had a reply.’

  ‘What year would that have been?’ I am struggling to piece together a sequence of events.

  Ferhan frowns. ‘The fighting was in 1974, so that must have been ’76.’

  It begins to make sense. ‘I thought so. My father had left home by then. He went back to being a foreign correspondent. He died somewhere in the Far East that year. He probably never read your letter.’

  Ferhan lays her strong, brown hand over my wrist. ‘I am so sorry. What a tragedy, for you and your mother.’

  ‘It’s a tragic story all round, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘So neither of them ever knew that the other had gone on remembering and loving all those years.’

  Ferhan nods gravely. ‘Yes, I am afraid that is so.’

  I say nothing, overpowered by a deep sadness. Eventually I make an effort and look at the other woman. ‘Do you still have her address? Perhaps I should write to her.’

  ‘I have not heard from her for more than twenty years. She may not live at this address any longer. But you can try.’ She hands me the yellowing envelope. ‘This gives the address of her uncle’s hotel. You can write there. If she has left, someone may know where she has gone. I am sure she would like to hear from you.’

  When we return to the house I go to lie down and fall into a deep sleep. When I wake it is evening. I find Karim in the courtyard, standing by one of the archways that form the fourth side of the square. He beckons me to join him.

  ‘Look. The sunset is particularly fine tonight.’

  I stand beside him and look westward along the coast to where the distant violet mountains stand in silhouette against a sky of crimson fading through indigo to the palest duck-egg blue and streaked with amber and gold.

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ I say. ‘We don’t get skies like that in London. Or, if we do, you can’t see them for the tall buildings.’

  He puts his arms round me from behind and I lean back against him.

  ‘Then don’t go back to London.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stay here, in Cyprus, with me.’

  For a moment I keep very still. Then I pull away from his embrace and turn to face him. ‘Karim, you know that’s not possible. I have to go back.’ I am looking for an excuse. ‘I have to go back to the hospital, for a check-up.’

  He steps back, his face once more the polite, formal mask I know so well. ‘Of course. That was selfish of me. Of course you have to go back.’

  I reach out and touch his sleeve. ‘Don’t look like that, please! Don’t you know how much I want to stay?’ My resolution wavers. ‘Perhaps I could. After all, what’s the point …’

  ‘No!’ He takes me by the shoulders. ‘No, my darling! It’s too much of a risk. It was stupid of me even to suggest staying. While there is the slightest chance of a cure you must take it. Listen, sit down. There is something important I want to say to you.’

  He leads me to a chair and kneels in front of me, taking my hands in his. ‘I told you I realized when you left that being with you was more important than my family or my job. So, I took steps. I started looking for another job. And I found one. I’ve been offered a fellowship at an American university – Illinois, to be exact. Cressida, my darling, marry me! Marry me and come to America with me.’

  I stare down into his face, stripped now of its mask to reveal tenderness and urgent desire, the image blurred by the hot tears rising in my own eyes.

  ‘Karim, don’t. Oh, how I wish I could! There’s nothing in the world I want more than to say yes. But it wouldn’t be fair. I can’t let you marry a dying woman.’

  ‘You mustn’t say that! You don’t have to die. And there are doctors in America. Good ones. They may have some treatment you don’t know of …’

  ‘There is only one treatment that could cure me. A bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor. And the chances of finding one are so remote that it’s hardly worth thinking about.’

  ‘What about me? Let them test me.’

  ‘No, it isn’t even worth trying. Your genes must be so different from mine.’

  He rises and turns away. ‘There has to be some way! I can’t let you give up.’

  ‘There is one slight chance. There’s a register of volunteer donors. If they happen to come up with a match for me …’

  He swings back. ‘Then there is hope! You told me the remi
ssion could last a year. Before then, who knows what might happen? You must hold on to that.’ He catches my hands again. ‘Cressida, promise me you won’t give up.’

  I force a smile. ‘I promise. It’s only a small chance but I promise you I’ll try to hold on as long as I possibly can.’

  The sunset has faded and it is almost dark. In the fields below the house, the frogs have started their nightly chorus. The housekeeper materializes among the shadows that now fill the courtyard and murmurs something in Turkish to Karim.

  ‘Dinner is ready,’ he says, offering me his hand. ‘Come along. You must try to eat. We can talk more about this tomorrow.’

  Perhaps because of the rest, or perhaps just because I am with Karim, I feel better than I have done for weeks and over dinner I am almost my old self. He has ordered wine for me but I stop him from opening it.

  ‘I’m not supposed to drink – at least not more than one unit of alcohol a day – and red wine tastes horrible for some reason. I’ll be quite happy with water.’

  Instead he plies me with mouthfuls of delicious food and tells me stories about some of the tourists he has to escort that make me laugh. Nevertheless, by the time we are sitting over coffee in the cool, jasmine-scented evening air, my eyelids are beginning to droop again. He takes my hands and pulls me to my feet.

  ‘Come along. It’s time you were in bed.’

  I get up and, suddenly dizzy, sway against him. Immediately I am swept up into his arms and carried towards the house.

  I protest, half laughing. ‘Karim! Don’t be silly. Put me down. You’ll injure yourself.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he responds, his lips close to my ear. ‘You weigh no more than a bird.’

  ‘Yeah! A scruffy old London pigeon,’ I say.

  He carries me to my bedroom and lays me gently on the bed, then stands for a moment looking down at me in silence.

  ‘Can I stay with you?’

  How I long to say yes! I stretch out my hand to him. ‘Oh, darling! It would be wonderful. But I can’t. I just can’t!’