A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  He’d parked his small lorry up in the UN compound, so all we had to do was walk down to the quay and find a boat. He rowed me out into the harbour to the large, odd-shaped sailing vessel which sat sedately at anchor. Big thing. Maybe sixty feet of greasy woodwork and two masts. We secured the skiff to a tired-looking Jacob’s ladder dangling from the well of the craft. Warboys went up first, with a pistol in his hand – he didn’t make a sound. The first thing he did was search the vessel. It didn’t take long; there wasn’t all that much to search. There was a small cabin above the stern and an even smaller engine bay beneath it. A single cargo space and a small forecastle. Another small skiff – aluminium this time – was lashed down in the well of the vessel.

  ‘They love my father in this town,’ he told me. ‘I don’t think they could bring themselves to blow up his son, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think?’

  I did; but it’s not one of the questions you answer. I slept under a few damp blankets on a wooden bunk in the cabin; Warboys slept out on deck under the open stars. I think that he’d been exposed to too many copies of Boy’s Own when he was a lad.

  When I awoke we were at sea. The pitching of the vessel had thrown me from the bunk.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aphrodite

  A caique does not cut the water like another ship. Neither does it ride it. Caiques attack the ocean as if they hate it: that should probably tell us something about the men who first built them. The design has been around in its current form for at least four hundred years, so for the deceptively turbulent waters of the Eastern Med it is probably a perfectly evolved design. My stomach didn’t think so. The only reason I didn’t vomit over the side was that I had nothing left to vomit, so I contented myself with dry retching for ten minutes before clawing my way back to the raised poop deck, where Warboys clung to the wheel. He was so wet that his clothes were stuck to him, and the grin on his face said it all. The pitch of the boat threatened to explode my head as it rode up the waves coming for us . . . then crashed down. The sky was a brilliant blue. Within a minute I was as wet as he was.

  ‘I didn’t know two of us could handle a thing this size,’ I shouted.

  ‘We can’t.’ He had had to shout back against the wind. It came back as ‘We ca . . . n . . . t!’ He took a deep breath and shouted once more, ‘We could never handle her under ca . . . nnn . . . vas!’

  I clung to the compass binnacle. It and the wheel were between us.

  ‘I’m no good as a sailor.’

  ‘Don’t worry, neither am I.’

  ‘I get seasick.’

  ‘Don’t worry, so do I. Isn’t it smashing though? You feel so alive.’

  You feel so alive, I thought, because we are shortly going to be dead. When the ship wasn’t trying to bury its head in the sea, it was trying to stand on its tail. He gestured violently to a box built onto the deck to my left. I staggered to it between the leaps of the deck, and threw back the lid. There were half a dozen filthy-looking USAF-style Mae Wests. I braced myself against the bulwark, and pulled one on. Then I lurched across to Warboys with another. He had me hang on to the great kicking wheel as he struggled into his. When he got back we shared the wheel between us. It wasn’t until I had my hands on it that I felt the trembling of the engine beneath us, and realized how powerful it was.

  ‘The Jerries converted her in the war and used her at Crete,’ he shouted at me. ‘Dad bought her as a wreck, and brought her back from the dead.’

  Why? I wanted to ask, but contented myself with, ‘Where are we going?’ instead.

  ‘Morphou Bay.’

  This time I did use the word.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to show you something. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of the wind once we’ve rounded Kormakiti Point. Plain sailing after that.’ Something told me that his definition of plain sailing might not be the same as mine. Still, after another ten minutes of assaulting the waves we did round a sort of point, and as soon as he turned south into a wide bay the water flattened into a long slow swell. My diaphragm muscles actually ached from the effort of holding myself upright. In the calmer water of the wide bay the thudding of the engine sounded as loud as Thor’s hammer. Wrong ocean, I thought – wrong period. The sky was still an eggshell blue, and the sea flashed like blue sapphires in the sun. Seabirds glided in our wake. Warboys, I decided, had gone over the top far too often, and needed a rest: he was as mad as a monkey.

  The deeper into the bay he took us, the smoother the swell became. He had me take the wheel, and follow his directions as he sighted on two landmarks using a makeshift triangle of three small pieces of wood, just as the Dam Busters’ bomb aimers did: a row of three high trees, skinny affairs with dense flat canopies, and a distant brick-built church tower. When he was satisfied that they aligned correctly he abruptly cut the engine, and dropped the stern anchor, and as we swung round it to face the making tide, scampered along the deck to drop the bow anchor as well. Then we had a cup of water each, as he told me he was going to turn me into a skin diver.

  We sat on the deck with our backs against the bulwark, our clothes drying on our bodies. As soon as I took a sip of water I realized how salty my lips tasted: it wasn’t altogether an unpleasant sensation.

  ‘Does it matter that I can’t swim?’

  ‘At all?’

  ‘About six feet in any one direction, but I’m better at down than any other. After about six feet I roll over on one side and begin to sink, usually head first. The woman who tried to teach me thought that unusual – she always sank feet first.’

  ‘Mm. You know what they say about women with big feet.’

  ‘We were talking of swimming – and I can’t.’

  ‘You won’t have to. I’ve done this with several people – that’s what the stones are for.’ I had noticed a couple of open boxes of large stones on either side of the well deck – each stone more or less the same size, a foot or so across, and weighing a good few pounds. ‘I’ve invented what I call unscientific plunge diving. Most people who try it, love it, and get better at it each time they dive.’

  ‘Tell me how you get better at it.’

  ‘You hold your breath, longer and longer each time. Look, it’s easy – you put on one of the Mae Wests, flippers and a face mask. Then you drop over the side holding one of the stones against your belly. The stone overcomes the buoyancy of the life jacket and pulls you slowly down to the bottom. When you run out of breath you let go of the stone, and the jacket bungs you back up to the surface – like a cork out of a champagne bottle. Smashing feeling. Then I fish you out.’

  ‘Don’t divers get the bends or something, if they surface too fast?’

  ‘Yes, but you’re only in twenty-five feet of water out here – safe as houses.’

  ‘Is your idea of as safe as houses the same as mine?’

  It was hard to resist Warboys when he grinned: he looked about sixteen years old and unsullied.

  ‘Probably not. But someone told me you make a habit of throwing yourself out of high-flying aircraft, and I’m buggered if I’d do that for fun – no head for heights. I only bring the people I like out here, and show them my private treasures – we’re moored halfway between two of them right now. One is about twenty-five yards in that direction.’ He pointed over the stern, at the shoreline: a narrow beach and scrub dunes. ‘The other one is the same distance to starboard.’ I glanced involuntarily to our right. Why is it that when someone says right or left you tend to glance immediately in that direction? ‘You’ll never forgive yourself if you turn this one down, Charlie. I’ll find you a mask. All you need to do is decide which one you’ll drop in on first.’

  He needed my help to manhandle the aluminium skiff over the side. It was very light, but awkward to manoeuvre. Then he found us each a threadbare pair of KD shorts. Mine were two sizes too big and stiff with salt. I climbed down into the rowing boat and he passed a few of the stones down to me – they were heavier than they loo
ked, some sort of marble, I think. He showed me how to place the face mask and adjust the strap to cinch it in tight to my face and under my nose. The old RN black rubber flippers fitted over my feet like gloves.

  I was curious about what was to happen next, and that’s always been one of my failings – and the idea of being beneath the sea didn’t worry me all that much, even though I couldn’t really swim. One of the effects of spending a lot of your life in aircraft is that you develop an excessive faith in the laws of physics – what goes up must come down. Now that Tony had explained it, why shouldn’t vice versa work just as well? As far as I was concerned a four- or five-million-year-old chunk of rock was going to get me to the floor of the ocean, and then the USAF could get me back up again. I’ve always liked the Americans.

  I hung on the side of the small metal boat alongside a small, moored, blue-glass fishing-net float that I guessed Warboys marked his spot with – you needed to be on top of it to spot it – took three deep breaths to oxygenate my blood, and then a final small one as Warboys handed me down a rock. I held it close to my belly, with one hand at first. It felt hard and cold. Then I let go of the boat, holding my head back the way Warboys had told me. Colder than I expected, but a vertical descent that was no faster than a parachute drop. My legs dangled below me. Treading water was a natural reflex movement: I didn’t even think about it. Looking back above me I could see explosions of light on the surface. No noise. Very peaceful. How long does it take to fall through twenty-five feet of water? Not very long. Far less than a minute, but it seemed longer. Then my feet were flat on top of something big and smooth . . . a fine layer of sand moved like dust. I was on a smooth honey-coloured rock, a couple of yards proud of the pale sand in a twilight of blue water. Suddenly my breath went, so I let go of the stone. Looking forward and down as I began to rise – slowly at first – I realized that I hadn’t landed on a natural rock at all. I had been standing on the belly of a colossal naked woman, who lay on her back. How large was she? Thirty feet high at least. An enormous statue. No arms: broken or unfinished stumps. Serene face. Cold and gentle eyes. These weren’t distinct views. They were like images flashed up fast in front of me: one after the other. I was rising quickly now, racing my own bubbles to the surface. And then I was in the sun, coughing out water and floating on my back. Temporarily blinded by the light. Warboys was across to me with a couple of strokes of the short oars. He bent over the gunwale, grabbed and steadied me. I was gasping.

  ‘OK? You saw her?’ he asked. All I could do was nod – I was filling my lungs with good air. ‘You saw the face of Aphrodite. More than two thousand years old – worth it?’ Again, all I could do was nod. I felt as if something truly momentous had happened inside my brain, but couldn’t begin to explain what. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it – she affects everyone, the first time you see her. The original It Girl.’ He got a grip on my Mae West, and pulled me close to the boat. I shook my head; responding properly at last.

  ‘Another stone,’ I finally gasped. ‘I’ve got to . . . go down again.’

  He let me dive on her twice more, but when I turned for the fourth time shouted, ‘Enough,’ and held me by the hair. I hung on to the stern of the tin boat, and gasped like a spent fish. He rowed me back to the caique, and got me on board. Like a beached fish I lay on my back on the bleached deck planks for twenty minutes before I spoke to him again. It didn’t matter anyway. I had made enough images in my mind by then to last a lifetime. In fact, they have: I can still see her now.

  He had some bun-like bread, with pieces of olives in it – like stuff you can get in the Italian delis today, but greasier. Swallowed with warm water it suddenly tasted like a feast. Whenever we weren’t talking my eyes were drawn to the horizon, as if I had a sudden urge to wander.

  I dived on his other find later, and discovered I’d mastered the trick of releasing my stale breath in small nibbles: it won me half a minute’s bottom time at least. This treasure hadn’t been there two thousand years; more like fifteen. I had the knack, now, of glancing quickly down as I descended, then looking up to balance myself – and I knew a Me-109 when I saw one. An Emil: a German fighter aircraft from my own war. It had lost part of one wing, and its tail had sheared off, but it was otherwise more or less intact – its engine cover was missing, and the prop blades had bent backwards as it hit the water. The guy had probably made a decent controlled ditching, and got away with it.

  Except that the canopy was still in place. On the first dive I landed alongside it and stumbled slightly. Fine sand swirled up immediately to waist height. I dropped my weight, and touched the wing briefly as I floated up. Now I knew where it was, and its dimensions, I moved out a few feet before my next drop, and landed on the wing root beside the cockpit. The thin layer of sand on the canopy moved with the current I had created, and for a few seconds I could see inside. The pilot was still hunched in his leathers. Jacket and helmet. Gloved hands resting peacefully on his lap. Those round lens goggles the Jerries used. Skull. I dropped my stone, and ascended with my arms outstretched on either side of me. Flying underwater. I didn’t go back. Dead fliers should always be left where they fall, in my opinion.

  ‘He must have been flying from Crete,’ I told Tony when we were back on the caique.

  ‘I sometimes wonder if she called to him and brought him here. Like one of the Sirens.’

  I knew what he meant: had the pilot seen the statue below him in those last few moments before he hit the sea?

  ‘I know that Emil’s not been here long,’ I asked him, ‘but why is it still so clean . . . and the statue as well . . . so little algae, no weed?’

  ‘We’re in fresh water – I don’t where from. An underground river, I suppose. You dropped much quicker than you would have done in salt water, and that’s why you felt it cold as well – you did notice that?’

  ‘Yes. What next? Back to Kyrenia.’

  ‘Not quite yet, old son. I have to move us along the bay a bit, and closer in for the cabaret. I might even come over the side for that myself.’

  I supposed he moved us about two miles, towing his small boat: it’s not that easy to judge in a curved bay. We had been there an hour when an open boat powered by a small putt-putt diesel put out from the shore. It looked like a converted ship’s lifeboat, and wasn’t going anywhere fast. We pulled our skiff up to the caique’s counter, climbed down into it, and, still tethered, allowed it to drift out towards the newcomers. A man and two women. They each waved. One of the women stood up, rocking the vessel, blowing extravagant kisses.

  ‘I take it you know them?’ I asked Warboys.

  ‘For some time. We became friends when I decided not to report them to the authorities.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Looting antiquities. We’re parked right over an old wooden shipwreck, and as far as I know no one else realizes it’s here. The ship was full of amphorae – terracotta storage jars.’

  ‘I know what they are.’

  ‘Keep your hair on. Most of them contained wine or spiced sauces, but some contained coins. They broke – when it went down, or later, I don’t know – and the coins scattered. The girls dive for them with ropes around their waists, like Ama girls diving for sponges in the Pacific – then they sell them piecemeal to visitors and museums. Very against the law, but very profitable.’

  ‘Don’t Ama girls dive naked?’

  ‘The GCs learn very fast, I’ve found. That was my idea for them. You’ll enjoy this.’

  We watched them strip off and dive. The man stayed in their boat, and kept his clothes on. I was glad about that on the whole – he didn’t look in the best of condition. Tony showed me how, if I put the Mae West on back to front, I could float face down with my mask in the water, turning and lifting my head for breath. I only did it for ten minutes before I rolled over on to my back, and trudged my flippers until I collided gently with the skiff, then hung there. The girls had looked as graceful as seabirds – their arm and leg movements slow and st
rong. Their bodies changed colour and shape as their natural buoyancies overcame gravity. That must be what naked women look like in space. When Warboys got back to me we both clung on to the side of the metal boat. It angled up alarmingly but didn’t overturn on us.

  He asked me, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like girls?’

  ‘You know I do. It’s just that I feel as if I’m at a strip show – and I’ve always hated them for some reason. I’m amazed how long they can hold their breath though.’

  He reached over, and gently banged a fist on my forehead: a teacher driving home a lesson to a reluctant pupil.

  ‘That, if nothing else, Charlie, should give you cause for thought.’ Then he spluttered, because one of the girls suddenly surfaced giggling between us, her rope trailing behind her like a long tail. She lifted in the water, and quickly kissed me on the mouth, dropped back, turned to Warboys and did the same. Then she backed off with little hand movements, treading water and giggling.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her. She shook her head in incomprehension.

  ‘No English,’ Tony told me, and addressed her in Greek Cypo. She smiled at me, and rattled back three or four syllables, then turned away from us, rolled forward and dived. She cut down into the water cleanly. For a moment her white backside, brown calves and the white soles of her feet balanced high in clear air. Then the sea seemed to swallow her with hardly a ripple. My eyes followed her brown shape away from us, deeper and more shadowy. Gone.

  She had looked more at home in the water than many do on dry land. Were these the Sirens? Did women once have the power to turn men into swine? They probably never needed it; look around you in any bar on a Saturday night, and you’ll see men turning into pigs without help from anyone.

  ‘She said her name was—’ Warboys told me.