by Desmond Cory
‘Well,’ Dobie said, regretfully lowering his once again empty tumbler. ‘I don’t intend to explore them, I can assure you. I’m hoping to have a quiet time here and avoid all excitement. On my doctor’s recommendation.’ Since it was in fact his doctor, i.e. Kate, who had in recent weeks been providing most of the excitement of that nature to have come his way, Dobie was being more than a little disingenuous. But it hardly mattered.
‘Oh, you’ll find things are quiet enough here. Extremely quiet. Abysmally quiet. There’s very little in the way of entertainment, even in Nicosia. No cinemas, you know, no theatres or concerts, nothing like that. So we’ve all rather got into the habit of providing our own entertainment. We’re always dropping in on one another for a chat. It’s quite the done thing. That’s one of the reasons why Seymour—’
‘Even so,’ Dobie said, ‘I think I should maybe be toddling back now. Having some, ah … unpacking to do. And letters to write.’
‘Well, look. Most days a few of us get together for lunch in the little lokanta place by the main entrance. On the left as you come in – you’ve noticed it? Good. Do feel free to join us tomorrow if you wish.’
‘Fine,’ Dobie said. ‘I’d like that. Thank you.’
Hillyer’s hospitality had been rather more extensive than he’d at first realised. Powerful stuff, these lawn mowers or Mao Thai Tongs or whatchamaycallums. His head swam a little as he levered himself up from his chair.
He’d unload his suitcase, he decided, and then head for bed.
But it wasn’t just the drink, of course. He knew perfectly well what the trouble really was. Over-excitement. A natural consequence of all that flurry of movement, of packing and unpacking and being intemperately whizzed from place to place. His was a sedentary mode of existence and he wasn’t used to this sort of thing. It’s one thing to head for bed and another to get to sleep – but at least as an academic mathematician he was no stranger to insomnia. It worried him not at all. He took it only to mean that his mind was active – which is the way a mathematician’s mind ought to be – and needed the equivalent of another hour’s solid workout on the parallel bars. A few vigorous press-ups against some problem or other. There were plenty to choose from. No shortage of foxes to hunt, in mathematics. Evasive little creatures who might lead you a rare old chase through the undergrowth of Dirac equations before disappearing down a hole, by which time however they would have served their purpose and have exhausted you completely. Dobie was an old hand at the game.
So old that sometimes his brain seemed to be taking up the hunt on its own, so to speak, to be coursing up and down with its nose to the ground but more like some electrical device than a foxhound … like a computerised tuner, maybe, searching for some distant station that it hadn’t been programmed to identify and therefore wouldn’t recognise even if it managed to catch up on it. On the face of it, a thoroughly pointless procedure. But Dobie wasn’t really using a computerised tuner, he was using a human brain and human brains have their quirks and oddities and Dobie’s, as any of his friends would have told you, was quirkier and rather odder than most. This was because it was his frequent practice to let it off the leash and see where it ended up. Doing so now, it instructed him to get his butt end off the bed and to provide needed stimulants, such as a cup of black coffee. Dobie sighed, and rolled off the bed, and headed for the kitchen.
While waiting for the electric kettle to boil he switched on the radio that stood on one of the shelves and nodded his head more or less in time to the music that obediently emerged. One of the BBC World Service’s late-night jazz programmes, as was evident, with the incomparable Kid Ory snorting away and Johnny Dodds weaving clarinet magic in the background. Dobie would have preferred something rather more soothing, or even somnolent, but once the mind is off the leash you have to let it work with whatever comes along and what was coming along of course was Satchmo’s trumpet in one of its growlier gutbucket moods and a misty visualisation of someone’s undergraduate digs and one of the old blue-labelled Parlophone 78s spinning on a turntable. Oxford, 1960, and Dobie’s own student days with the LP revolution well under way and Humphrey Lyttelton still playing at the Eights Weekballs and Dobie himself cutting a notably inelegant rug with, with … what was her name? Fiona something; they’d all been bloody Fionas in the Sixties and the face was there in his memory but ill-defined, the faces of so many other students having in the interim been interposed.
Photographs of Derya, yes. Four or five of them, neatly framed and placed on the walls. But none of the husband. Seymour. Not even in a wedding photograph or as a member of a group. Strange, that, though there was probably some simple explanation. In fact Dobie remembered his face quite distinctly. Sharp, triangular, with a heavy forelock of reddish hair falling across the forehead; not unlike a little fox, when you thought about it. But with blue eyes transparently lacking in guile; not innocent, exactly; unrevealing, rather. They observed without reflecting any reaction. But that, of course, had been four or five years ago and in another country. Seymour might have changed. People do.
Dobie very arguably had, and in the space of three or four months. The way you look at things can very quickly change when your wife gets murdered. It can change even more quickly and completely when you’re suspected of having done it. In point of fact, Dobie hadn’t done it, and it looked very much as if Seymour had. All the same, one of the things that changes when something like that happens is the way you look at little foxes. And how they run. The hounds will go after them anyway, whether they’ve eaten the farmer’s chickens or not. Dobie hadn’t, but the hounds had been after him ever since. That was the real reason why he’d come to Cyprus, after all. To get away from them.
Run, Dobie, run …
But that couldn’t have been the reason why he’d been invited. He was wondering about that. Maybe he should have wondered a little earlier but there again, there wasn’t any reason why he should have. It wasn’t the first invitation to a Visiting Professorship he’d ever received and it wasn’t the first one he’d ever accepted. He’d been to MIT. He’d been to the Max Planck Institute. He’d been to Vienna. But in all those places the circumstances had been different … and so had the climate, of course. He hadn’t been anywhere where you could placate a bout of insomnia by taking your coffee out on to the terrace at half past midnight and sit there in your cotton pyjamas savouring the immensity of the southern night with Louis playing W.C. Handy fifteen feet away in the kitchen. The terrace faced downslope, away from the other houses. That trumpet wasn’t disturbing anybody. Those rows of which Arkia had spoken must have been really loud-voiced affairs but then Derya’s vocal cords would probably have been in splendid nick, being an actress as well as a lecturer and hence well accustomed to turning up the volume. Not an unpleasant voice, as Dobie remembered it, and clear as a bell. But Seymour must have found it so in the end.
Nothing anyone does can irritate you more than their voices can, even when they’re doing no more than hum Cole Porter tunes slightly off-key (which had been one of Dobie’s wife’s failings). Dobie drank his coffee slowly, thoughtfully, gazing the while at the distant stars and at the pale moonglow reflected from the long flat mirror of the sea. There seemed to be clouds to the south but not very many and not very much of a wind to move them. When he had finished the coffee he went indoors and sat down at the desk to finish his letter. There didn’t seem to be very much to add so he wrote a few more lines and then signed off.
Afterwards, he thought for a minute or two and then added a short postscript. A very short postscript. Two words only. Miss you …
And why not? he thought. It was true.
3
The car they had placed at his disposal was a clapped-out navy blue Cortina which, however, usually seemed to start at the first turn of the switch and which, having been started, seemed to keep going. Dobie had been assured that the road from the professorial compound led directly to the university but he drove with some caution none the less, the
road in question being narrow and bumpy. Very shortly, however, the university complex came into view, a sprawling conglomeration of sparklingly modern buildings backed by the blue flatness of the bay and by a proliferation of pine trees running the length of the beach. As Dobie drove onwards he detected occasional bright slivers of light gleaming disconcertingly amongst the trees and was soon able to relate this phenomenon to the presence of what appeared to be a very large number of polished white marble columns uprearing from the sandy soil and pushing their convoluted capitals above the level of the pine boughs. This was Dobie’s first view of Salamis. But he didn’t realise this at once because it wasn’t what he’d expected.
He continued unperturbed on his way, clutching the unfamiliar steering wheel tightly and blinking anxiously in the sharp sunlight. The air entering by the side window seemed to be very warm – it wasn’t yet quite eight o’clock in the morning – and to be impregnated with a very fine white dust, a dust that was already coating the outer surface of the car with a filmy layer. Welcome to the Mediterranean, Dobie thought. Mucky old Cardiff had gone a long way away, in time as much as in space, though he’d only been on the island some thirty hours. He found it difficult to dispel from his mind the intangible sensation that he was going on holiday rather than driving to work. Not that he’d be starting work just yet. That had been made quite clear to him. The so-called Protestant work ethic hadn’t yet penetrated to these backward parts. But then these people weren’t Protestants, were they? No. They were Muslims. Of a sort. Or most of them, anyway.
All the same there were formalities he had to observe. Check in at his office. Call on the Rector. Shake a few hands here and there. Noblesse oblige, as Kate would have said. Meaning, politeness pays. Rarely more than .005 per cent, but every little counts, or does if you’re a mathematician anyway. By the same token, Dobie was pleased to find the Mathematics Department located on the ground floor. An upstairs step saved is an upstairs step earned, the way he saw it, and especially in this fast-increasing heat. His office, once he’d found it, seemed to be pleasant and cool enough. The plaque on the door said:
Assistant Prof DERYA SEYMOUR
and the bookshelves inside were laden with tomes of a mathematical nature mostly, formerly the property of
Assistant Prof DERYA SEYMOUR
and the computer set-up on the side table bore a red stick-on label saying:
Assistant Prof DERYA SEYMOUR
so one way or another Dobie was able to form a clear and rationally based opinion as to whom the previous occupant of the office had been.
He assumed that at least for the time being no one would be likely to object if he made use of the books and the computer; other items in the desk drawer, such as a half-used lipstick and a bottle of blush-pink nail varnish, would doubtless be rather more subject to adverse comment were he to put them to employment and after a few moments’ consideration he relegated them and a few other less readily identifiable but obviously feminine oddments to the wastepaper-basket. He then tucked up his Julio Iglesias-length trouser-cuffs, sat down in the revolving chair and spun it round once or twice, surveying through this means his new kingdom. On the whole he approved of it, though sooner or later the resident ghost would surely demand rather more drastic forms of exorcism. Dobie didn’t feel that he was conspicuously lacking in respect for the dead, but he didn’t propose to allow himself to be haunted by the bloody girl.
Or her husband, either.
And anyway he still had those formal calls to make. Starting off, as was customary, with his Head of Department.
‘You won’t have seen the Salamis tombs yet,’ Berry Berry said. ‘Only just got here. Quite. Well worth taking a look at, all the same. Hundreds of them, hundreds. Only a mile or so down the road. Amazing what they buried along with the corpses. Horses, even chariots, believe it or not. And all kinds of armour and pottery and personal belongings. Weird. For use in the after-life, as I understand it. I’d ask Kaya about it if I were you. Not too clear on the point myself. Well worth seeing, anyway. Gives you a real insight into something or other, I mean the way those people … And things aren’t so different now, after all.’
‘There’s a song about it.’
‘What?’
‘A negro spiritual, don’t they call ’em? Swing low,’ Dobie carolled unmusically, ‘sweeee-eeet chariot, Coming for to carry me hooooome …’
Berry Berry listened, obviously deeply impressed, marking time on the surface of his desk with his fingertips. Not the same tempo, of course. That could hardly have been expected of two mathematicians. ‘… I say! Yes! You’re absolutely right! Interesting survival, that. But then these primitive forms of belief—’
‘And then it goes, Swing low, sweeee-eeet—’
‘Yes indeed. Quite right. Well, there it is. And it’s a bit like that here, you see. For all our veneer of what d’you call it … civilisation. Of course we don’t bury the things any more but nobody wants to touch them. Or do anything with them. That’s why all that stuff of Derya’s is still in her office, which is your office now. Do just what you want with them, arrange everything to your convenience. But don’t ask any of the cleaning ladies to tidy up anything of Derya’s, because they won’t. I know it seems damned silly but that’s how it is.’
Professor Berry was small and easily agitated, as heads of university departments often are. He had a short, white and extremely bristly moustache which also seemed to be easily agitated and which projected across the walnut brown of his face as though signposting the general direction of his ears. His office was the same size as Dobie’s but had a better view. As he sat with his back to the window, however, he gained no particular advantage from this.
‘What I’m saying is that I don’t want you to feel too miffed because things haven’t been properly prepared for you in there. Or in the house either. It’s just that the circumstances are a bit unusual and we have to make allowances for local feeling in these matters. Or superstitions, if you like. Zeynep used to clean for the Seymours and I’m sure she’d be willing to do the same for you. A very nice woman. She’s the wife of the chap who runs that little restaurant round the corner, Ali his name is, and she does the cleaning for Cem Arkin and Bob Hillyer as well. And for Ozzie, now that his wife’s no longer here. She’ll keep the house spotless for you but she won’t touch anything that belonged to the Seymours. You’ll have to tidy their stuff up yourself, I’m afraid. Just pack it away anywhere you like.’
‘Is that a Moslem tradition or something?’
‘Nothing to do with Islam whatsoever. It’s like I’m telling you – Islam’s only been here about four centuries. Skin deep. And mixed in with Greek Orthodoxy at that. The fact is that all the locals are pagans at heart, if you want to know the truth. That’s why they take so easily to the secular way of life. Religion here – it’s just passed them by. But then … you’re only going to be here for three months or so. No reason why you should take much interest.’
‘Oh, I’m interested,’ Dobie said. ‘But as you say, I don’t suppose I’ll have much time to find out very much about these things.’
‘Quite right. Quite right. Of course, if we can persuade you to stay a bit longer, everyone’ll be delighted. The crying need here is for long-term staff; visiting professors are all very well but … That’s where old Arkin’s proved to be such a shot in the arm. But for him, the Faculty of Science’d be creeping about in the Stone Age, no question of it. You’ve met him, I suppose?’
‘Well, no. Not yet.’
‘You’ll meet him this week in any case. He makes a point of it with new arrivals. An energetic sort of fellow altogether. He’s really taken things by the scruff of the neck since he took over the Min of Ed, and between you and me, this crowd needed a good shaking up. Wonderful people, the Cypriots, but a little lethargic. Lacking in initiative. Stuck in the mud of all those old ideas of theirs, as I was explaining.’
Half past nine, according to the clock on the wall of the office,
and the heat was building up. Dobie found that his attention was drifting. It tended to do that at the best of times.
‘You’ll have to make allowances when you start teaching the students here. But don’t confuse lethargy with laziness. They’ve been cut off, you see, for so long from the so-called international community … but then that’s just what Tolga Arkin’s doing. Bringing them back again. It can’t be done at once, of course. After sixteen years of being a backwater and maybe something rather worse than that, academically speaking it’s bound to be a bit of a struggle. But we’re starting to get the kind of staff we need now, as your own arrival indicates. And the rest will follow.’
Dobie, who had always found academic work of any kind to be a struggle, couldn’t think of anything to say so he nodded sagely. Berry’s remarks were probably very pertinent but also seemed to be a little too well rehearsed. And a quiet backwater was in any case exactly what Dobie felt he needed, somewhere sedately remote from the depredations of investigative journalists and television interviewers and … Yes. ‘No. It’s quite all right. Just something I thought I’d forgotten but in fact I hadn’t.’
In fact he’d been within an ace of nodding off.
‘Ah. Happens to us all, on occasion. Where was I now?’
‘You were commenting on the lethargy of the locals.’
‘Was I? Perhaps I was emphasising the point unduly. Because of course there’s the after-effects of ’74 to be borne in mind. They actually speak of a war, you know, that’s how they think of it, but it’s best not to talk about it at all if the subject can be avoided. To Arkin, for example. Young Arkin, that is. He lost his mother, you see, and his uncle, of course, and several other members of his family were … And quite a few others here would tell you the same story if they talked about it much. Which they don’t.’
