“Goodness,” Melanie said, “I shouldn’t have thought there were so many cars in Cyprus. I suppose they’ve got held up by those jeeps going so slowly for some reason.”
“I’d say it looks like a convoy,” Leo replied.
Another jeep appeared, also filled with blonde men in blue berets, and after it the road was suddenly empty again.
“But what would people like that be doing in a convoy?” Melanie asked. “Most of them look just as if they’re going home from a day by the sea. Oh, here come some more....”
Another pair of jeeps with headlights on was coming towards them. But this time the jeeps were followed only by lorries, the stream ending, as before, with a third jeep.
“Quaint local custom, that’s all,” Leo said.
He glanced at his watch. It was about twenty minutes since they had left the hotel. But if they had not got lost first in the old town, they would not have taken as long. It might be important to remember that. He had better notice precisely how long the drive took between Nicosia and Kyrenia.
For the last few miles the road twisted snakily downwards between bare rocky hills. They passed a military post of some sort, manned by armed, dark men in uniform. Then ahead was the sea.
They drove slowly into the little town, finding themselves on a road curving round the harbour, with tables under bright umbrellas on the esplanade between the road and the water. Ahead of them was the high, blank wall of the old Crusader castle. As they crept along a telephone booth caught Leo’s eye. Bright red and exactly the same as any telephone booth in London. Last, irrelevant remnant of an empire.
“We’ll have to ask the way,” Melanie said. “I’ve a feeling we’ve got lost again.”
Leo pulled up, called out to a passer-by and asked for directions.
It turned out that what Leo and Melanie had been told about everyone in Cyprus speaking English was largely a legend. The man whom Leo addressed could manage about half a dozen words. But he made up for it with a lot of pointing and arm-waving. Leo turned the car, as this seemed to be indicated, then soon asked the way again. It was another ten minutes before he found the way to the villa on the edge of the town, where Uncle Ben lived.
But if you knew the way, Leo thought, half an hour from door to door would be enough. Half an hour was what he must allow for.
They found Uncle Ben lying in a cane chair on the terrace overlooking his garden. He looked tanned and healthy and he got to his feet quite nimbly when they appeared. Yet he did not look particularly glad to see them. As usual, he looked ready to find fault, to charge them with deliberately upsetting him.
“I thought you were coming this morning,” he said. “Mrs. Nicolaou got together all the doings for lunch. She’s the woman who looks after me. But I suppose you wanted a slap-up meal in your hotel.”
Melanie kissed him.
“Leo had one of his headaches,” she said. “He isn’t used to the heat yet. You ought to have a telephone, then we could have let you know.”
“Who’d use it, if I had one?” Uncle Ben said in his self-pitying whine. “Useless expense.”
“Haven’t you made any friends here, then?” she asked.
“I’m too old to make new friends,” he replied. “I can’t be bothered with strangers.”
“You must be lonely.”
“Oh, I’m all right. The climate helps my arthritis, there’s no question of that. I don’t complain.” His tone complained bitterly.
“You’ve a lovely place here,” Leo said. “I envy you, Uncle Ben.”
It was not true. The villa was very small, a mere suburban bungalow, standing cheek by jowl with its identical neighbours. Its cream-coloured walls were blotchy. In its garden the canna lilies, geraniums and marigolds sprouted among dense, vigorous weeds.
Yet Uncle Ben had money and could easily have had the place spruced up if he had not been too mean. He had had thirty thousand pounds left to him by his sister Gertrude. For Melanie there had been only some hideous silver and one thousand pounds, but for Ben, who had never bothered about Gertrude, or anyone else, for that matter, there had been a small fortune. And instead of repaying Melanie and Leo for having looked after him ever since the death of his wife, three years before, he had merely said that at least he could now afford to take himself off their hands and stop being a burden to them, and that he had heard the climate of Cyprus was recommended for arthritis.
Six months later Leo had found the gun in the attic....
“But how do you manage?” Melanie asked. “I mean about the cooking and cleaning and so on? This Mrs. Nicholas, does she live in?”
“Nicolaou,” Uncle Ben corrected her. “She comes in the morning, keeps the place like a new pin, gets my lunch and washes up and leaves my supper ready. She’s a widow, no children, glad to have the occupation, I expect. She’s very obliging, very good-natured, as so many of them are here, you know. Wonderfully warm-hearted people. She’s fine-looking too.”
He smirked a little as he said it and Leo noticed suddenly that Melanie was trying to catch his eye and was raising her eyebrows.
On the way back to Nicosia she said, “You don’t think there’s any risk he’s fallen for that woman, do you?”
“Good Lord, it never occurred to me,” Leo said. “Good luck to him if he has.”
“But the way he looked when he talked about her.... And living here, cut off from us all, and without any friends, he just might go and do something silly.”
“Well, perhaps it was a good idea of yours to come and visit him – remind him we’re alive, so to speak.”
“I thought it was your idea,” Melanie said.
“Oh no, it was yours,” Leo said quickly. He wanted her to be sure that it had been. “Now where shall we eat tonight? And what shall we do tomorrow? Go swimming?”
They had found out from Uncle Ben that there was a good beach, a long, unblemished strip of white sand, not far from Kyrenia.
“Or shall we go sight-seeing?” Leo asked. “We could go to Famagusta, where Othello hung out, the guide-book says, or there’s that Greek place, Salamis, with baths and a gymnasium, and all that sort of thing.”
“Let’s see how we feel tomorrow,” Melanie answered.
Leo knew how he was going to feel tomorrow. He was going to have another headache. But there was no need to tell her so now.
He woke her in the morning by blundering around the room, looking for the codeine tablets. She got up quickly and fetched them from the bathroom cabinet, together with a glass of water. Leo went back to bed, burrowed his face into the pillow and shut his eyes.
“But look,” he mumbled, “there’s no need for you to stay around just because I’m stuck here. Why don’t you get yourself a picnic lunch and take the car and go to that beach Uncle Ben told us about? Swim and enjoy yourself. Then perhaps you could drop in again on the old boy in the afternoon and see if you think he’s really getting into the toils of that female he talked about.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind being left....”
“Of course not. No need to waste your time here just because my damned head’s playing up.”
“Then if you’re really sure....”
He said that he was sure and soon after breakfast Melanie left, with her swimming things and a packed lunch provided by the hotel.
As soon as she had gone, Leo got up and dressed. He went down in the lift and out into the street. He was wearing his sunglasses and a straw hat. But the first thing he did was to buy another pair of sunglasses, bigger than the ones that he had on, more in the fashion of the moment, more face-concealing. Then he bought a little hat of stitched red cotton with a brim that could be turned down all round. With these purchases he returned to his room, put the packages on the top shelf of the cupboard, where the gun was hidden, then lay down on the bed again, gazed up at the ceiling and began to work out the details of his plan. For of course he had not been able to do that until he got here.
Keep it simple, he thought.
At all costs, keep it simple. And the main things to remember are that that Cypriot woman stays in the house until she’s washed up the lunch things, which probably means two o’clock, and that the drive between Kyrenia and Nicosia takes about half an hour. And of course that no one on earth knows that you’ve got a gun. Always remember that.
When Melanie returned to the hotel in the late afternoon, she was looking sombre. She asked how Leo’s headache was, but when he told her that it had quite gone by lunch-time and that he had gone prowling around the Cathedral of Saint Sophia she did not look as if she were listening. She hung up her damp swimsuit in the bathroom, and slowly, frowningly, changed her dress for the evening. The sun had already scorched her fair skin, turning it brick red where it had not been covered by the swimsuit. She hardly spoke until she was seated at the dressing-table, trying to brush the sand and salt out of her hair.
Abruptly then she said, “You know, I really believe that silly old thing has fallen for that woman.”
Leo laughed.
She slapped her hand smartly with the hairbrush, as if she would have liked to slap Leo.
“I wish you wouldn’t take it as a joke,” she said. “I’m horribly afraid it’s serious.”
“Well, it’s his life, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it isn’t that I grudge him some happiness, poor old boy,” she said “He led a dog’s life with Aunt Tina, and then the arthritis hitting him when he was naturally so active was terrible bad luck. He’s always had terrible bad luck, hasn’t he, except for getting Aunt Gertrude’s money? And now I don’t want to see some scheming, half-educated sort of woman get that out of him. But the way he talked... Mrs. Nicolaou this and Mrs. Nicolaou that.... And then how lonely he was, and how life as it was wasn’t worth living. I suggested he should come back to us, if that was how he felt, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Honestly, I’m worried.”
“Depressed, was he?” Leo said.
“Well, sort of moody, up one moment, down the next.”
“He was always a bit like that, as far as I remember.”
“Yes, but I think it’s worse. He hasn’t made friends among the other English residents, there’s just this woman.”
“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do to take his mind off her for the next week or two,” Leo said, “only we’d better not overdo it, or he’ll think we’re after his money ourselves.”
Melanie sighed. “I wouldn’t mind some of it, that’s the honest truth. But mainly I just don’t want him to make a fool of himself. And for all I know, this Mrs. Nicolaou is as nice as he says. But still.... Oh dear, no, I’m being a hypocrite, aren’t I? Of course it’s the money I’m worried about. I’ve been so sure he’d no one to leave it to but us. Wouldn’t it be awful if he just gave it away to a stranger?”
Leo had an extraordinary impulse at that moment to put his arms round her, caress her, cheer her, tell her that she had nothing to worry about, and tell her his plan. His beautifully simple, completed plan. He had always been deeply attached to Melanie and during all their years together had had very few secrets from her. The gun had been almost the first. So now, for him, it would have been a wonderful relief from tension to tell her what he had in his mind and to feel, since they both wanted the same thing, that they could work together.
But of course it would not do. It would not be fair on Melanie. Besides, she was a very clumsy liar, so it was important that when the time came, she should have to tell only what she believed was the truth. Instead of reaching for her, Leo thrust one hand out before him and opened and closed the fingers, as if he were grasping at something. In a detached sort of way, it impressed him that his hand was completely steady.
Next day they drove to Paphos on the south coast and looked at the mosaic flooring of the House of Dionysos, and photographed one another among the Tombs of the Kings. On the day after that they drove up into the Troodos mountains, the wild range where the terrorists had sheltered during the time of the troubles. Suddenly the car was enveloped in a shower of sleet. Leo and Melanie found themselves shivering in their light summer clothing. The next day they did nothing in particular, except idle round the shops, where Melanie wanted to buy some of the lace of the island, look for a place for lunch that promised to be interesting and then spend a drowsy afternoon sleeping off the excellent but immense meal that they had unwarily let themselves in for. It was on the day after that that Leo suggested that they might call in again on Uncle Ben.
They did not lose their way this time, but stuck to the road outside the walls of the old city, found the roundabout and the turning off it to Kyrenia, passed through the barricade of oil drums, drove on along the road through the Turkish village beyond, then on across the desolate plain, passing the military post where the armed men in charge of it impassively watched them go by, then dipping down between the jagged hills towards the sea. As the car entered the outskirts of Kyrenia Leo looked at his watch. Yes, half an hour, as near as made no difference.
They did not go straight to Uncle Ben’s house but went first to the beach to which Melanie had gone before and spent what was left of the morning swimming and lying in the sun. They ate their lunch of sandwiches and fruit in the shade of some bamboos and drank the bottle of wine that they had bought before setting out. An unusual sense of peace and well-being filled Leo. His body felt relaxed, his mind calm and clear. His nerves were untroubled. He felt a kind of omniscience too, the certitude that nothing could go wrong with his plan. Pulling Melanie towards him, he kissed her with a sudden warmth that seemed to leave her a little surprised at him.
They found Uncle Ben in the cane chair on the terrace of his little house.
“So you’ve come again,” the old man said. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“We don’t want to be a bother,” Melanie said. “We don’t want to be a pest.”
“You don’t want to be bothered, that’s the truth of it,” Uncle Ben answered. “You had more than enough of that in the old days. But now you’re actually here in Cyprus for a couple of weeks, you might give me an occasional thought. I don’t have many visitors. I just sit here day after day and wonder how I’m going to get through it.”
“Well, I said, didn’t I,” Melanie said, “you can always come back to us?”
“It’s too late,” he answered. “I’m too old for another upheaval. Besides, the climate is good for the arthritis. And I dare say I’ll settle down sooner or later. I’ve started learning Greek. It helps to pass the time. I’m taking lessons in the evenings from a very good chap who lives up the road and I practice on Mrs. Nicolaou. She laughs at me but she’s very patient, very good-natured. A dear soul, a treasure. I don’t know where I’d be without her.”
He’s doing it on purpose, Leo thought. He wants us to worry about how far he means to go with her.
They left at about four o’clock. Melanie was preoccupied. Leo had his own reasons for remaining silent. They soon caught up with a United Nations jeep, filled with blonde young men in pale blue berets. Leo tried to pass it, but was waved imperiously back, which irritated him and made him mutter, “Who the hell do they think they are?” But passing the jeep would not have been much use, for ahead of it was a long string of lorries. Leo had to accept the fact that he must fall in behind the jeep and crawl slowly along all the way to Nicosia.
The next day Leo and Melanie went to Famagusta and roamed round the old Turkish town, photographing mosques and churches and the lion of Venice on the gateway of the building called Othello’s Tower. They wanted to climb the steps up the tower, but these were blocked all the way up by a solid mass of other tourists who had come off a ship in the harbour. Melanie sat down on a slab of stone in the courtyard before the tower and prepared to wait until the party had gone. She was hot, she said, and her feet were tired, so it was quite nice to sit down. But Leo was in an impatient mood today, restless and nervous because the time for action was coming close, and after a few minutes of listening to the astonishingly penetrating voice
of the guide, explaining that Othello had not really been a black man at all, he insisted on moving on.
On the drive back to Nicosia, across the great flat plain that spread over the central part of the island, Leo said, “I suppose we may as well go to Kyrenia again tomorrow, if the old boy really wants us. We could do what we did yesterday, swim, have lunch and drop in on him in the afternoon. Shall we do that?”
“If you like,” Melanie answered.
“He seemed so depressed yesterday,” Leo said. “I was quite worried.”
“Oh, he was always given to being sorry for himself.” Melanie was looking to left and right. “Have you noticed how few people you see working in the fields? Just a few old women. I suppose all the young men are in those frightful armies, just waiting for a chance to start shooting at one another.”
Leo did not want to change the subject yet. “I thought he was a good deal more depressed than usual. More than he used to be, even if his arthritis is better.”
“I dare say,” Melanie agreed. “All right, let’s go and see him tomorrow. Funny, though, I thought he bored you terribly.”
“Somehow I can’t help feeling sorry for him,” Leo said. “And I expect we’ll both be pretty boring ourselves when we’re his age and have his arthritis or whatever else afflicts us then.”
“You used not to be so tolerant. If you had been, perhaps he wouldn’t have felt he’d got to go away.”
Annoyed, Leo said, “I don’t think that had anything to do with it. He just didn’t want to let us have any of his money. So serves him right if he’s miserable.”
Melanie gave him a sidelong look. “You’re funny,” she said. “I don’t understand you.”
She had said the same thing frequently for the last twenty years. Leo had long ago given up trying to explain himself to her.
That night he could not sleep. Lying awake, staring tired-eyed at the darkness, he felt an enormous weariness at the mere thought of finally taking decisive action. How much easier, how much pleasanter it would be to forget that he had ever had a plan and just enjoy the rest of the holiday, like any ordinary person. The old man could not live so very much longer anyhow. Nature would take its course. The money then would come to Melanie. But suppose, just suppose, the old fool went and married that woman...
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 11
