A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Where are the spices?’ I asked him. ‘I can smell spices.’

  He beckoned me to follow him through the shop, through its heavy walls to an attached room that was little more than a wooden shed. It was also dark, but dry and musty. The spices were on slatted wooden shelves just above the floor. Sack after sack with their tops rolled back to show their contents. Dried peppers; sandalwood and willow; cumin and turmeric. Reds and browns and yellows. The very air in there was like snuff. I told him, ‘I was in Istanbul – three years ago. They have a spice market.’

  ‘My uncle Arslan. He also has a shop. Maybe you saw him there?’ I had said the right thing; the giant was beaming.

  ‘Maybe I did. But I cannot remember the names.’

  He nodded, and we walked back to where Steve was guarding his still-open cash drawer. He fixed me with an eye lock, and I knew exactly what he wasn’t saying: I trust this woman with my money. Look after her. I nodded: there are some things you don’t need words for.

  In the street outside the sun was momentarily dazzling. Steve was putting the food on the back seat of the car.

  Ekrem held me back. ‘She said your name is Charlie.’

  ‘That’s right?’

  ‘The same Comrade Charlie who was locked up in the English stockade the first night he was in Cyprus? Failing to salute an officer, isn’t that right?’ OK; so he had the story more or less right.

  ‘I rather think that’s me, Ekrem. Is it a problem?’

  He shook his head and smiled.

  ‘No. I am a comrade too. We are strong in Northern Cyprus – we have to be. EOKA is a gang of fascists, you see. Someone will have to stop them if you British leave, or Belsen will happen again.’ He shook my hand a second time. It was a comradely shake this time.

  ‘Will we leave?’

  ‘You’ve left everywhere else, comrade.’ He smiled again to soften it. ‘But remember to come to me if you are in trouble again. OK?’

  ‘OK, Ekrem, and thank you. I appreciate that.’ They were the words that Warboys had used to me. I’ve said it before; what goes around comes around. The last thing I asked him was, ‘You called her something else when we met.’

  ‘Perihan, yes.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Fairy queen. You will see. When you walk with her it is as if she glides above the ground. Just like a fairy. Perihan is what my children call her.’

  In the car again Steve asked me, ‘And what was that all about?’ as she slipped it into gear, and revved the engine for take-off.

  ‘Nothing. We found we had something in common, that’s all.’ I looked out of the window away from her.

  ‘Both Freemasons?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  It was something I wasn’t prepared to explain yet. I joined the CP by accident in 1947. I had been squatting in a large North London house with a number of war homeless families, and gave the organizer some cash to contribute towards what I was eating and drinking: it had only seemed fair. A few days later he handed me a Communist Party membership card in the name I was using at the time, told me I’d joined an international brotherhood, and that he was very proud of me. It was too late to back out by then; besides, he was far bigger than me.

  Steve didn’t push it. That was nice.

  Famagusta didn’t end. It thinned out. The houses – some quite substantial, some not much bigger than sheds – began to have more and more ground between them. Large gardens with vegetables and unfamiliar flowers . . . and eventually a sea of thick, high scrub, with the Mediterranean looking over its shoulder. A million sparkling lights on the surface of the sea.

  When she stopped the car under a stunted tree at a crossing of two dusty tracks the first thing I heard was . . . nothing. Silence. Like an English country churchyard early on a Sunday morning. Then I began to hear birds; dozens of different kinds of birdsong. Call and counter-call.

  I don’t know what I’d expected, but I asked Steve, ‘When do we get to Salamis?’

  She replied, ‘It’s all around you. You’re inside an old Roman city right now, swallowed up like the castle in Sleeping Beauty.’

  A couple of hours later we sat alone in an ancient, stone-tiered theatre, ate cheese and apples and washed them down with that thin Cypriot white wine drunk from the bottle. We hadn’t seen another soul all morning. I took her back to an earlier conversation, and asked, ‘Do you remember the men you go with?’

  Steve took a bite of a sweet, green apple, and thought before replying.

  ‘Does a jockey remember every horse he rides?’

  It may have sounded abrupt, but was an oddly reassuring answer. I leaned back and watched gulls thermalling in the blue sky. A necklace of cumulous clouds stretched low along the northern horizon.

  I asked, ‘Where do we start, Steve?’ I knew what I meant, but also that the words I’d used hadn’t expressed it all that well. She took her time anyway. Waited until we were looking at each other. She was smiling, and I wondered if my smile was as wary as hers. She leaned forward, and kissed me quickly full on the lips.

  ‘We start by telling each other the worst thing that we’ve ever done in our lives – the very worst. Then there’s no turning back. We start with the bad and work our way forwards towards the good.’

  It made me uncomfortable, but I’d asked for it.

  ‘OK. You first. It was your idea.’

  She leaned over, and kissed me briefly again. There was a lightness about her that caught you up with her somehow.

  ‘Not here, Charlie. Even after two thousand years the acoustics are so good that if I whispered my secrets to you, someone could hear them up in the gods. Let’s walk over to the gymnasium – it still has columns and walls. I’ll tell you there.’

  ‘You think I’m an American, don’t you? Most men do.’

  I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m from South Africa. We have a family farm about fifty miles from Durban.’

  ‘Then why—?’

  ‘Hush . . . I’m going to tell you . . .’

  We had counted the columns down one side of the gymnasium, and Steve was leaning against one of the stunted walls, one foot raised and braced against the stonework behind her. The area inside the square of columns was mown rough grass, the sun was almost directly overhead and the shadows were short. She had looped the basket containing the remains of our food over one shoulder, but put it down now while we talked. She said, ‘The worst thing I did was seduce a native houseboy named Saul when I was about twelve. He and I had been brought up together – I’d known him all my life. I was always a precocious child – I had tits soon after I was ten, and boredom was the enemy all my childhood. By the time I decided it wasn’t what I wanted, it was too late – we were doing it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You guessed it. I ran to my father, and told him Saul had raped me. So my father beat him with a bull whip, and nearly killed him. He crippled him before turning him off the farm. The whip cut so deep you could see the white of his ribs.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I have no idea. He didn’t come back. What happens to a cripple with no money and no prospects? In SA most of them die.’ I thought it best to say nothing, but she hadn’t finished anyway. ‘That wasn’t the end of it. I did it again with a neighbour – early access to booze and the boredom again, I suppose. But my father saw through me. He watched me go to work on the guy at a family party, and walked into my bedroom while we were at it. I think he must have realized immediately that what had happened the first time was my fault. After that I think he never stopped hating himself for what he’d done to Saul.’

  I used almost the same formula I’d spoken before.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A few weeks later they sent me away to a church school in the States – fresh start. I was thirteen. I never went home again. I could never forgive them for sending me away. It was like banishment.’

  I took her hand, and we w
alked. We walked around the columns of the gymnasium again. When the silence between us was easier again she said, ‘Your turn. What was the worst thing you did?’

  I did some Duke Ellington in my head for a couple of minutes, because I didn’t want to hear the words aloud.

  ‘I shot the woman I loved,’ I told her. ‘I think I killed her.’

  Steve stopped walking immediately. I felt her fingers tighten around mine.

  ‘Christ, Charlie!’ That was the second time she’d said that. We took a couple more paces. Then, ‘Any mitigating circumstances?’

  I could have said that she’d shot at me first, and hit me, but I didn’t. I shook my head. I still had Steve’s hand. We started walking again. I felt the sun on my neck.

  What had she said? Explore the ruins, paddle in the sea and make love in the undergrowth? We walked for a couple of hours in the ruins, paddled when our feet were hot, and finished the food and the wine. We didn’t get round to the other thing: instead we sat on a tumbled column for an hour, and didn’t say much. She sat with her back to me, and I sat with my arms wrapped around her. I supposed that it was all up to her now. When we stood up by unspoken consent we began to walk back towards the car.

  A couple of teenage boys came out of the bushes a hundred yards away, and began to move towards us. Their eyes swung this way and that; the height of innocence. It was as if they were trying to reassure us that they weren’t really closing on us at all. They looked as if they had just left their classrooms. I turned half away, so that they could clearly see my pistol. When I turned my face back to them my hand was near it, and I made eye contact. Both pulled up sharp, and turned away from us – almost hurried along a path towards the sea. Good decision. One, I noticed, wore a gutting knife tucked into his belt in the small of his back.

  When we got back to the car one of the tyres had been slashed. Steve kept cavey while I sweated over changing the wheel: it took me half an hour. After we were rolling again she sighed, and said, ‘This used to be a nice little island, you know that?’

  I tried to see it through her eyes, and those of others who had lived here before Makarios and Grivas began to stir the pot. Suddenly their little slice of heaven must have seemed full of snakes.

  Talking of snakes, before we got back on to the metalled road a large one crossed the track in front of the car. Steve slowed to let it go. She was right; we had nothing against each other. I was surprised at its size though – maybe three feet long and as thick as my arm.

  ‘Blunt-nosed viper,’ she told me. ‘That was an old one, wasn’t it?’

  Silence.

  Later she said, ‘I’ll need to think about you, Charlie. OK? I didn’t expect you to be a killer.’

  ‘I didn’t expect to be one . . . but I understand. Can we still see each other while you’re thinking?’

  Another long pause.

  Then, ‘No, probably not.’

  It took another half-hour to get back to the hotel. We didn’t say much. Neither of us had much left. As she was nosing the Renault up the narrow lane to Yassine’s place she suddenly asked me, ‘What are you thinking, Charlie? I’m uneasy when I don’t know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I was thinking that the next time a woman asks me to tell her the worst thing I’ve ever done, I’m going to lie.’ At least that raised a wan smile. We got out of the car in the small courtyard in front of the hotel, and faced each other across its blue roof. The sunlight on her pulled-back hair made it look glossy, like a helmet. She was going to say something else; I was sure of it.

  ‘You’re a murderer, right? That is what you said?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She looked at my face for maybe a thousand years. Then she said, ‘I’ll call you,’ and ran up the steps. Somehow I didn’t think she would.

  I had a beer with Yassine, and then another with Pat when he came in. I saw Pete sitting in the garden with a woman but didn’t go out to speak to him.

  Yassine asked me, ‘Staying tonight?’

  ‘No. Early start tomorrow. They want me to go flying again.’ We had all been together in the Canal Zone; it wasn’t worth the effort of hiding things from them.

  Pat asked, ‘Have you told your bird?’

  ‘No. Didn’t you once warn me about that anyway?’

  He looked uncomfortable.

  ‘The way I said it was way out of line. I didn’t know things were serious between you two.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Pat. I think I just found out they aren’t. Let’s have another beer all round.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Returned to Sender

  Kermia used to be a small airstrip north of Nicosia. Flights 1910 and 1915 of the Brown Jobs’ private air force, if my memory serves me right. The Turkish Air Force has Kermia now, and probably calls it something else. In my time it had a hard tarmac runway, crossed by a packed earth one for days when the wind was playing silly buggers. One of the problems with flying out of Cyprus is that the prevailing winds change direction in the middle of the year, so if you leave yourself with only one runway you’re bound to be disappointed for six months. The first time I saw it the tarmac runway was new, and they were gearing up to make the cross runway metalled as well. Flying control was a large tent, which set the tone of the whole place really – because everyone lived in them as well. You might be forgiven for wondering if you had wandered into a tented encampment from the Boer War.

  Watson had played a wicked joke on me – he had his ADC drive me up to Kermia. She was the only person I ever met who made an Austin Champ look small. We had about sixty miles to cover together in the dawn. She had a flying jacket like mine, but about ten sizes larger. And we needed them. Anyone who tells you that Cyprus is forever a land of swimming shorts and cold beers is having you on. Before sun-up, and high in the mountains at the unfashionable times of year, the tight little island can be quite nippy. At least she raised the canvas hood, but there were no side screens. I had my small pack containing a blank pad of signal flimsies, several pencils, and a flask of coffee – I threw it in the back behind the front seats. I thanked her for getting up to drive me.

  ‘Don’t mention it – our master’s voice. I don’t think he trusts you not to get lost on your own.’ Over the years I had developed this reputation with Watson – of being unable to find my way about. It was totally unjustified. ‘My name’s Fiona, by the way.’

  ‘Charlie – but you already know that.’

  Fiona had a bit of a lisp, but I suppose that God had to handicap her after all the height advantage he’d given her.

  ‘How did you get tied up with this unit?’

  ‘I was at Cardington, and Mr Watson saw me. He asked my boss to transfer me – I think she was rather keen on him at the time.’

  I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine anyone being keen on Watson.

  ‘You didn’t get a say in it?’

  ‘Do we ever?’

  ‘Do you get on with him?’

  ‘He tried it on early on, but I thumped him for it, and knocked him over. I thought he’d get rid of me after that, but he didn’t.’

  I think I chuckled.

  ‘You and I are going to be friends, Fiona.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  I wasn’t so sure I liked the sound of that. About half an hour into the journey and the sun beginning to show behind us, Fiona said, ‘Your pal Pat can be a bit fast, can’t he?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Come out for a drink, and take your clothes off while I’m up at the bar – that sort of way.’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s never asked me. I think he goes for blondes like you.’ She had short-cut blonde hair. I thought that was her best point.

  We slowed for a small flock of goats. The sheepskin-clad thing driving them raised his hand in greeting as we passed.

  She grunted and said, ‘Probably one of the friendlies, not a churchgoer.’

  ‘What d’ye mean?’

  ‘The churchgoers are the real ba
stards. The Orthodox priests encourage them to discourage us. It’s not unusual for an EOKA man to get a blessing from a priest before he stabs a civilian in the market, or tosses a grenade into a bus.’

  ‘How’s this all going to end?’ I asked her.

  ‘With us leaving. That’s how it always ends. We don’t have the stomach for wars any more. Eventually all the colonial Brits will be forced back to our crowded little island and the colonies will take their revenge.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They’ll all come and live with us. Probably until we’ve nothing left to eat, no room to move, nowhere to live and no jobs.’

  ‘In the 1940s we bombed the hell out of the Germans for thinking like that,’ I told her. ‘They said they needed Lebens-raum.’ If I thought that would shut her up I was wrong.

  After a thinking break she said, ‘I wonder who’ll bomb the hell out of us?’ Then she started whistling the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ just to make sure I got the point.

  She skirted north of Nicosia onto the roads across the plain which led up to Kyrenia, and we could see the tented airfield long before we reached it. The trip had taken nearly two hours, and the sun was full up. Fiona knew the form – waved through by the RAF regiment guys in charge of security, and driving me right on to the flight line.

  I asked her, ‘Do you go back, now?’

  ‘No, I’ll drive down to Wayne’s Keep. I didn’t mind driving you, to get a few hours with my boyfriend. He’s a medical orderly at the stockade.’ I thought that for an overlarge, unfriendly-looking woman she had a very successful social life. I guess that my face must be easy to read, because people have done it all my life.

  Before I had a chance to get out, she said, ‘Give us a kiss,’ and grabbed me.

  It was like being seized by a python. It took me minutes to break free, though to be honest by the end I wasn’t trying all that hard. She actually pushed me out, saying, ‘Good luck, Charlie. Get you later.’