A Blind Man's War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘I know. I heard her . . . Aphrodite. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes, she’s an old friend.’

  I climbed into the skiff. He put a hand under one of my feet, and helped me scramble up, but made no move to climb in himself. He asked me, ‘Can you make it back aboard on your own?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But what about you?’

  ‘Something to do – won’t be long.’ Then he pulled his mask back on, and dropped away. Before I lost sight of him I saw him turn in the water in the direction the woman had taken. Back on the caique I found my pipe, sat on the gunwale and fired up some smoke. The breeze and the sun dried me.

  I saw Warboys and the woman emerge from the water, and walk up the shallows to the beach. They held hands as they crossed the sand. She must have untied her rope, because as she walked the man in her boat pulled it back in; hand over hand, like a fisherman hauling in a fish. He looked over at me, and waved: that was all right then. The other girl stayed in the water, hanging on their boat’s side. I saw her reach up and stroke the man’s unshaven face. He smiled. That was a nice thing to do. Part of my mind told me that this was what the world could be like, if ever we got our act together.

  I was sleeping, sitting on the deck, propped up against the main mast when Tony came aboard. He must have swum from the shore. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep. He sat down alongside me, and held out his hand, saying, ‘She asked me to give you this.’

  A small bronze coin: Roman. I have it yet.

  Warboys made the long sweeping turn into Kyrenia harbour in the late afternoon. The sun was already low. When the tide turned, the wind over Kormakiti Point had died with it, and we had driven home in big long seas that failed to distract my stomach. We found the dinghy in which we had rowed out to the caique still at its buoy in the middle of the harbour, swapped the vessels over and rowed ashore. For the first time in my life I properly experienced that odd feeling of dry land pitching gently beneath my feet: it lasted for a couple of hours.

  There was a wiry, barefoot boy lounging at a table outside the restaurant we had eaten at the night before: three empty glasses stood on the table next to him. The wasps and flies around them said they had recently contained something sugary. He jumped up in front of us, and said, ‘Hello, Lion.’

  Warboys reached out and ruffled his hair; the way you would with any kid.

  ‘Demetrius. Have you been waiting long?’

  The owner had been hovering in the doorway. He grunted and said, ‘Long enough to drink the juice of nine lemons.’ That was the local lemonade. Cloudy and sweet – the bite of the lemons came at the back of your throat as you swallowed it.

  ‘One hour,’ the boy said. ‘One hour, and seven minutes.’ I glanced at his wrist. No watch. That was interesting. ‘I have a letter from the priest.’ He handed Warboys a grubby envelope. It was old, had been resealed with sealing wax, and contained a piece of lined writing paper folded twice. A short line of Greek letters.

  ‘I can’t read that,’ I told Warboys.

  ‘It says a woman, that’s all.’

  ‘She was an old crippled lady,’ the boy grinned.

  Warboys asked, ‘How do you know?’ and gave him a coin. The boy tossed the coin from one hand to another several times, and Warboys held out another.

  ‘I saw her when she left the colonel. She was very angry – like Clytemnestra.’

  Warboys said, ‘Thank you, Demetrius,’ and flipped him the second coin. It was all we were going to get. We moved into the cool of the restaurant, and again sat at its rear. The owner brought us a glass of ouzo each, a jug of cold water and a bowl of olives to share. I asked Tony about the boy. Was he EOKA too?

  ‘No, just a courier. He suits the GCs, and he suits me.’

  ‘Won’t he give you away one day?’

  ‘I pay him too well for that. With money from Adonis, and money from me, he probably takes home more than his father.’

  ‘And the message was about me.’

  ‘At the moment it doesn’t make sense in any other context. The person who asked for your head was a woman . . . an old crippled lady, if what the kid said is right. It’s like the story of John the Baptist, isn’t it?’

  ‘Does it mean anything else?’

  ‘If they are willing to tell you that much I’d say they’ve turned her down and taken your bait.’

  ‘You think they killed her?’

  ‘No. They don’t do anything face to face, but don’t worry, once they’ve agreed the deal they’ll see it through as a matter of honour. I hope you can come up with the money, or they’ll be very annoyed.’

  ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Good. Then you’d better leave the delivery of it to me.’

  ‘Only after the dirty deed is done.’ I smiled.

  After a pause he asked me, ‘Do you think this is just some kind of joke?’

  This time I wanted to tell him the truth: I wanted him to believe me, so I gave him the eye lock before I answered.

  ‘I think it’s all a joke, Tony – love, life and everything – and we’re the butt of it.’

  ‘If I believed that, Charlie, I’d put my pistol in my mouth.’

  ‘It’s because I do, that I don’t.’ The sentence looks a bit skew-whiff the way I’ve written it, but Warboys nodded slowly. He understood me. ‘And for your information I can’t think of any crippled old ladies I’ve offended recently.’

  But I can think of someone who, if she survived, I might have crippled. But I didn’t say that. What would Grace do to a man who crippled her?

  ‘Maybe she was only another courier, acting on behalf of someone else. We use so many cut-outs that I sometimes wonder who we’re working for,’ Warboys said wearily. He didn’t want to think about it any more.

  ‘That’s happened to me before, as well.’ The ouzo tasted good and clean in my mouth, but what I really wanted was a beer.

  We passed up on Kyrenia castle. Warboys said we’d been at sea too long, and walked us back up to the UN compound. He examined his truck; had a good poke around underneath, and below the bonnet before he let me anywhere near it. It looked as if my holiday was over.

  Bowling back across the plain I asked him, ‘Who was that Clytemnestra the boy mentioned?’

  ‘Wife of King Agamemnon. He sacrificed their daughter to get a favourable wind from the gods to blow the Greek fleet to Troy . . . then to add insult to injury as far as his wife was concerned, he came back from there with a new mistress, Cassandra the witch. Clytemnestra, being the good wife she was, greeted her king’s return by climbing into his bath with him for a spot of how’s-your-father, and whilst engaged in an act of loving congress, cut his throat. That’s how I like to think of it happening, anyway. Glorious woman.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Killed by Orestes – another Greek hero. They all feature in several Greek tragedies together. Funny bunch, the Greeks. Greek heroes killed a lot of women – their equivalent of Association Football, something to do on a slow Saturday afternoon. We’re completely wrong in thinking of Ancient Greece as a peaceful place full of philosophers, mathematicians, writers, musicians and artists – what these people were really interested in was war, incest, human sacrifice, rape and murder. Not much different to their modern descendants, if you asks me.’

  ‘Who should I read?’

  ‘I’d start with Aeschylus, if I was you. Try his Agamemnon. When I was sixteen I sat watching it one night with four thousand Greeks in an old open-air theatre – Epidaurus. The place was falling to bits, but from even the highest stone seat you could hear someone whisper on stage. The play opens with a watchman on the walls of Mycenae spotting a signal fire in the east which tells the people in the city that their king is back. That night there were forest fires burning out of control all around us. Smoke and sparks were in the air. It informed my earliest opinions of the Greeks.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘Probably the most literate race on earth, but
absolutely bloody useless at putting out fires.’

  We skirted Nicosia because it was deep in curfew by then anyway. The tarmac hummed beneath our wheels. Occasionally we passed a staff car or a lorry. I almost dozed off. Warboys didn’t say much else before dropping me off at my billet in the RAF compound. Then he drove off towards Watson’s pavilion. I guess he had to report back.

  Pete’s gear was still on his bed, and his change of clothes hung in his locker. Neither had been moved so I guessed that he hadn’t come back yet, although that didn’t mean the hut was untenanted.

  Steve sat cross-legged on my bed. She was wearing shorts and a shirt, and had pulled my blanket around her shoulders. I could see her brown knees. Her face was unreadable. No make-up.

  ‘How did you get in?’ I asked her.

  ‘The usual way – I asked someone nicely. That was yesterday. Where have you been?’

  ‘Sightseeing.’

  ‘With Tony?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  She sighed, and looked away from me before asking, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  The song in my head was Hoagy singing ‘How Little We Know’. I let it run for a verse and a full chorus, then said it.

  ‘Take your clothes off.’

  Our tenderness surprised even me.

  Sometime in the small hours I pulled the blanket around us again. I felt cold. When she stirred I kissed her brow, and said, ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘I made you an apple tart.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I made you an apple tart, yesterday. It’s on the table – a day old, but probably still OK.’

  I got up and brought it back to the bed. We ate a slice each. I brushed the crumbs and sugar from her chin with my hand. She brushed crumbs and sugar from me. When we slid down in the bed she was partly turned away. I wrapped my arms around her the way I had at Salamis. She rubbed a hand slowly up and down one of them, as if reassuring herself I was still there.

  I spoke very close to her ear. ‘Is this a particularly bad time to tell you I love you?’

  She froze for a fraction of a second, relaxed, and murmured, ‘Say it in the morning, after you’ve had me again. That way, if it doesn’t work out, I can always tell myself it was just in the heat of the moment.’

  I said, ‘OK,’ bent, and kissed that lovely hollow in a girl’s shoulder I’ve probably told you about before.

  I slept eventually. I’m not sure that Steve did. I remember her eyes were open, and her breaths were deep and easy. Just as I was drifting off I think she gave a short, low chuckle – it wasn’t a triumphal sound, it was as if she was pleased about something.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘You’re only saying that in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘No, I’m not, but I’ll say it in the heat of the next moment, and the one after that, and the one after that if you like.’

  She had propped us both up on her elbows.

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Agreed. I was dead meat the first time I woke up and saw you looking at me. My brain boiled, but I’m over that now. I just love you.’

  ‘What are you after, Charlie? A share of the profits?’

  ‘No, I’m after you. Everything else will work itself out, you’ll see.’

  She smiled like sunshine.

  ‘I think you’re nuts.’ Silence. Then she added, ‘But you can say it again, if you like.’

  ‘I’ll need another heat of the moment first.’

  ‘No, Charlie, you have to get up. You have to go to work.’ She pushed me out of my bed. We were still on the floor fighting the blankets, when Pat Tobin arrived to get me.

  She had left her small car parked behind my hut, which is why I hadn’t seen it the night before, and was going to follow Pat through the gate.

  Before we split she asked me, ‘That woman you told me about – did you mean to do it?’

  Pat walked on ahead, and gave us a minute. Steve and I stopped moving, and looked at each other.

  ‘No. It was the last thing in the world I would have wanted.’

  ‘I figured that.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Love for Sale

  ‘How long have you been here this time, Charlie?’

  ‘A month? Have I been here longer than a month already?’

  ‘Seven weeks, Fiona tells me. By the way, she’s been a bit sweet on you ever since that Kermia trip – I don’t know how you do it.’

  For the first time since I’d arrived in Cyprus Watson had dropped in to watch me at work. Not that there was any. It was a Saturday: the Saudis were having a day off.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since then.’

  The days had merged into one another it seemed . . . and then the weeks followed them. Eight-hour spells, mainly, of listening to people I’d never met, broken up by regular deliveries of Spam. I had eaten Spam in every form known to man, and a couple that were even less predictable. I reckoned that if the British Army had found a way of compressing Spam into suppositories to shove up your jacksie they would have been on my breakfast plate one morning.

  Every eight days I had a long weekend, during which I moved into Yassine’s place if Pat thought it was going to be safe. Only once, so far, it hadn’t been safe, and I kicked my heels around camp until the library found me a book of Sherlock Holmes stories, and Steve sent me in some fruit to break the monotony. The fruit box from Steve made me feel like a POW receiving his Red Cross parcel. She used less perfume than any woman I’d met, but even so I caught its muskiness from the wrapping of the parcel, and it made my head spin.

  On better days we had a decent gin rummy school going at the hotel – and one of the Danish UN guys had brought a UN Jerry who taught us spoof – a wicked betting game with matches. Every time I looked at him across the bar I would wonder if he and I had been trying to kill each other ten years before.

  On the bright side, no one had come to kill me in Cyprus yet. I scanned the English-language newspapers whenever I got my hands on them for news of the dastardly murder of a crippled English lady. Maybe the priest had done a deal with both of us after all, and either we’d both get it – or neither? No, that wouldn’t work – they wanted the money, didn’t they?

  Watson and I sat and sipped iced water in air-conditioned glory. I’d slipped one headphone back so that I could talk to him. From the other I heard the friendly hiss of static. If ever they ask me on to Desert Island Discs I shall ask for a recording of radio static. It reminds me of safe, lazy days with little to do. Thirdlow was working one of the sets in the chapel on my left. Occasionally I cast an eye over the partition which divided me from her, and looked at her legs. She had kicked off her shoes, and had worked her skirt back above her knees to expose them to the cool air. They weren’t particularly pretty knees, but I had had precious little else to think about for the last two hours. She had a frown of concentration on her face, and was scribbling down one sheet after another. I had been told that the bay she was in was used for monitoring our allies: that was interesting. Occasionally she shot me one of her tight little smiles. That was interesting as well.

  Watson asked me, ‘Isn’t that one of Collins’s women?’

  ‘Yes. Her name’s Thirdlow.’

  ‘Whose signal is she hooked into?’

  ‘I don’t know – you could always ask her.’ I knew he wouldn’t. ‘Are you still happy with my work, sir, or have you come along to have a good old moan?’

  ‘I hate it when you call me sir.’

  ‘Didn’t you lock me up for not doing precisely that when I got here?’

  ‘I was just making a point. I thought it would get us off on the right foot.’

  ‘I always kicked with the left foot when I was at school. I was a leftie.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  What the hell was the matter with the man? I told him, ‘I just gave a perfectly good opportunity to tell me what you wanted, and you muffed it, so now I’ll ask you directly. What’s
the problem?’

  He put his glass down.

  ‘The corporal is.’

  ‘Pat?’

  ‘The civvy cops are sniffing round him, and I don’t know why.’

  ‘Then ask them.’

  ‘I can’t. I made a point of not having anything to do with them. Their operation isn’t all that secure – it can’t be because they have to work with the island police. Now they won’t talk to me.’

  ‘Ask Pat.’

  ‘I can’t do that either.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Thirdlow glanced over at us, and he’d caught the movement. He dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘Because I don’t know where the hell he is. He had at least a week’s leave coming, and took it two days ago.’

  ‘Ask your assistant, Fiona.’

  ‘Why should she know if I don’t?’ Ah. His surprise seemed genuine.

  ‘Just a thought,’ I said. ‘So, what do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘When’s your next rest period?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Monday and Tuesday. Back in this dump on Wednesday.’

  ‘Everything seems to have quietened down again – I thought you could ask about a bit – you know people.’

  ‘Did you know that David Yassine was back in town?’

  Watson looked suddenly sheepish. ‘We had a row before I left the Canal Zone. We haven’t spoken since.’

  You didn’t need to, I thought. You got Pat Tobin to do it for you. Now he’s gone, you’re up the creek.

  ‘I’ll need a car . . .’

  ‘Thought of going down to Akrotiri for a spot of R & R myself. You can have my Humber . . . Ask Fiona.’

  ‘And some spending money.’

  He waved his hand as if flapping an imaginary fly away. ‘Ask Fiona.’

  Then it dawned on me. Watson’s well-honed corporate survival instincts were telling him that something decidedly dodgy was in the air, and he was making himself scarce. I’d been here before. He stood up on cue, and picked up his battered blue cap and nasty little swagger stick. When he glanced at Thirdlow she tugged her skirt over her knees. That was interesting.

  He said, ‘I’ll slope off then. Thanks for the help. Volunteer’s better than ten pressed men, and all that . . .’ Then he left. Just like that. De Whitt half rose from his chair as he passed, but Watson ignored him. Thirdlow leaned towards me, and lifting one earphone from her head said, ‘He gives me the creeps.’