Read Aphrodite's Island Online
Authors: Hilary Green
He takes my hand and says softly, ‘Who can say? It might just be something you overheard as a child and misunderstood.’
Suddenly I feel tears pricking my eyelids and I find myself
voicing the thought that has been torturing me since that day. ‘Did he leave home because of me, Karim? Was it all my fault?’
He puts his arm round me and draws me against his shoulder. ‘Of course not. You mustn’t think that. A man doesn’t leave home because his child cries. He may get irritated and say things he doesn’t mean, but he doesn’t leave. There have to be other, much deeper reasons.’
I gulp and draw a deep breath. ‘Yes, there must be, mustn’t there? It’s stupid, but I’ve just realized that all my life, at the back of mind, I’ve been blaming myself. So you see, I really need to find out the true reason. If he went because he was in love with someone else, then it’s nothing to do with me, is it?’
‘No, of course it isn’t.’ He releases me and looks into my face. ‘I didn’t know it was so important to you. If there’s anything I can do …’
I am shaken by the ideas that have just crystallized in my brain, but I manage a smile. ‘I don’t suppose there is.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he answers. ‘I could ask around. Someone may remember your parents and be able to throw some light on the matter.’
‘That’s very good of you.’ I don’t believe there is any likelihood of that, but I am touched by the offer.
He gets up and draws me to my feet. ‘Now, I’m going to drive you home. You’ve had quite enough for one evening.’
‘I’m sorry to be such a wet blanket,’ I say. ‘Usually I can dance all night.’
‘It was my fault,’ he says, leading me towards the car. ‘The disco was a stupid idea. I should have seen you were tired.’
We say little on the way back to my hotel but as we draw up outside he says, ‘Can we have dinner again tomorrow, if I promise to take you to a Turkish restaurant?’
I feel a flush of happiness. ‘That would be great. I’d love to. And thank you for a wonderful evening – and for being so patient and understanding.’
On an impulse I lean across and kiss him quickly on the cheek.
For a moment he sits quite still and when he speaks the old formality is back.
‘No, I should thank you. It’s been a great pleasure.’ He gets out and comes round to open the passenger door for me. ‘Tomorrow then? About the same time?’
‘I’ll be ready,’ I tell him. ‘Good night, Karim.’
‘Good night.’
I wait a moment, giving him one last chance, but he simply bends his head in a stiff little bow and waits until I turn away and go into the hotel.
Next morning there is no sign of Karim, so I wander into town and buy a few souvenirs as presents for friends at work. As I come back into the hotel, the receptionist hands me an envelope.
‘A Mr Wentworth left this for you.’
I take it out onto the terrace, order a fresh lemon juice, and open it. Inside is one of my father’s letters, together with several sheets covered in small, neat writing and a note from Os Wentworth.
Dear Cressida,
This is as far as I’ve got at the moment, but I thought you might like to see the results. They certainly make interesting reading! I’m getting in touch with some ex-colleagues who may have been more closely involved with the matter of your father’s disappearance in ’74 than I was. They may be able to shed some light on the mystery. Of course, his later letters may make everything clearer. We shall have to wait and see.
With a tremor of excitement, I put the note aside and pick up the first sheet of Os’s translation.
My only beloved,
At last it seems there may be a chance of getting a letter to you, to tell you that I am still alive and have never for one moment stopped loving you and missing you. Though whether I shall still be alive when this letter reaches you is rather more questionable. Iannis is holding me prisoner and I have no idea what his intentions are, but at least now I have
news of you and a chance to send this letter. Evangelos will bring it to you. Of course, he has no idea who I am and I will say nothing unless it becomes unavoidable. I only realized the truth myself yesterday, when he told me Iannis was his uncle. He is confused and frightened enough, without me adding to it. Iannis has convinced him that this is his patriotic duty and he does not dare to disobey. Remembering what EOKA used to do to anyone they regarded as a traitor back in the fifties I’m not surprised! But he is a good boy and we have become friends, so I think I can trust him to deliver this when the time comes. He has supplied the paper and pen, at great risk of his uncle’s anger, but so far he thinks I am writing to my wife.
Yes, I have a wife – and a little girl just four years old. Don’t think me faithless. In the end I just couldn’t go on alone and I thought it might help me to forget. The years have shown me what a fool I was to imagine that was possible. You know, you
must
know, that I did not leave the island of my own free will. Somehow my commanding officer found out about us, and I was immediately confined to barracks and then shipped back to England almost before I knew what was happening. I wrote you letter after letter, but each one was returned unopened. Did you ever know they had been sent? I am sure that it was your father and your brother who prevented you from reading them. I still had almost a year to serve in the army so all I could do was write. As soon as I was free I came back to Cyprus and went to your house, but your mother refused to open the door to me. I was still pleading with her when Ferhan came running up and almost dragged me away to her house. She told me that your father and Iannis might return at any moment and that if they found me there they would kill me. That would not have been enough on its own to make me give up, but then she told me that you had gone away; that you were in Athens and married.
My darling, I know the marriage cannot have been of your choice. Please believe me when I say that I hope it has been a
happy one, or at least not too unhappy. I cannot bear to think of you suffering all these years through my fault.
What an extraordinary chain of events it is that has given me the chance to write this letter. I followed you to Athens, of course, but I could never find out where you were. I didn’t even know your married name! Eventually my money ran out and I had to go back to England to find work but I had persuaded Ferhan to keep in touch with me and let me have any news of you that came to her. For years she wrote to me every six months or so, so that I learned of the birth of your children and that you seemed to be well and not in any kind of distress. So the years passed and I tried to forget Cyprus and all that had happened here but the island wouldn’t let me go.
I’ve been to Ayios Epiktetos. Strangers live in your old house but by chance I met an old man who told me you had returned to the island. He said he had seen you, but he didn’t know where you were living. I went to Ferhan, but she refused to give me your address. She thinks it would only cause trouble if I suddenly reappeared in your life. Perhaps she is right. Then, two days ago, Evangelos said that there was someone who wanted to meet me secretly. I thought for a wonderful, crazy minute that it might be you. To say it was a shock to find myself face to face with Iannis would be an understatement! At first I thought he was going to carry out his old threat and kill me on the spot, but it seems he has other plans for me. I don’t know what is going on, but he is clearly still involved up to his neck in EOKA and I get the impression that they are planning something big. Perhaps they have some idea of holding me to ransom. If so, my chances are pretty slim as we have no money to speak of.
Of course, it is a deliberate, cruel irony that he has chosen this cave as my prison, but I am kept in the rear chamber, far from the warmth of the sun. Iannis comes occasionally but he is obviously too important now to waste his time on guard duty. That is left to an old man and a couple of almost
inarticulate shepherd boys with Kalashnikovs. Evangelos comes every day with supplies. It’s hard to believe that here we are, twenty years on, and
(The letter comes to an abrupt end here. I think we can assume he was interrupted. O.W.)
I put the paper down and gaze unseeingly across the pool. There is too much information here to take in. Who was this Iannis, the brother who was mentioned as wanting to kill my father? I re-read the letter, more slowly, trying to piece together a consistent narrative from the disjointed fragments. Some of it is hinted at in Mother’s journal. Why had Evangelos come to the bar looking for work? Was it pure coincidence, or had he been sent by his uncle? And why had my father been kidnapped? My first impulse is to drive out to Lapta after lunch to see if Os has translated any more of the letters. Then I remind myself that I have no right to expect him to devote his life to the task.
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.