by M. H. Baylis
She’d made a handful of other posts in the past eight months, not draped in flags, not sporting combat gear, not even, in fact, concentrating exclusively on Kurdish affairs, but taking on a number of environmental issues, too. In her assorted blogs and her video-sermons, Mina seemed strikingly like her fellow Union committee-types: self-grooming for some sober, political future.
He realised he had a vague memory of seeing a teenage Mina in the street at election time once, sporting someone’s rosette, though the colour escaped him now. Keko had, as he said, made her in his own image. Political, but not revolutionary – they were all gone. A committee member. Which made her apparent suicide even harder to understand.
His phone rang.
‘Where are you?’
Ellie. Somewhere loud. She and the rest of the newspaper staff were at the restaurant.
‘I thought Terry told you what time to be here.’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t see his message?’
‘I didn’t get one. Never mind, I’m coming.’
The Whittaker Twins came in to the office. They wore matching royal blue kaghouls, carried lunchboxes and thermoses under their arms. They never joined in. People, mostly, were glad. Rex hit ‘print’ on his long, pasted document of blogs and notes. Nothing happened. He looked back at the printer. It bleeped away underneath a sign Brenda had written. DO YOU REALLY NEED TO PRINT? Brenda, in her way, was political. And about as likely as Mina to set herself on fire.
Without bothering to unjam the printer, he put on his jacket and left.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Build an ark on water
And it will sail away
Build an ark on marshland
And everyone must pay.’
Lawrence passed the note across the table to Ellie. She sniffed it and grimaced. ‘Lavender-scented. Granny’s knicker-drawer.’
Brenda bristled at the phrase, but took the note and looked at it with Rex. Spidery, copper-plate handwriting. Ellie was right: the most probable author was an elderly lady.
‘And this is the second one of these notes you’ve had?’ Rex asked, putting the note on the table. Brenda picked it up and brushed the crumbs off.
The Famous Manti Shop had transmogrified into The Gözleme Shop. The switch to baked patties from boiled dumplings could have worked in its favour except that, for some reason, Green Lanes had recently gone gözleme crazy. Every fourth business on the main drag had got itself a gleaming new shop-front, complete with a team of headscarved, gözleme-fashioning ladies in the window. It wasn’t clear where all the money was coming from, but the whole area suddenly had a smarter, more confident sheen, and at the weekends, young, groovy types with beards and tight trousers were packing out the cafes in search of a new taste.
The Gözleme Shop had tuned into all this late, and done little more than swap its name and menu. The interior remained damp, its walls still festooned with the baleful eye-amulets and the frayed shepherd’s bags. If the newspaper staff hadn’t visited out of a semi-ironic sense of loyalty, it probably wouldn’t have hosted any diners that day. They’d filled a table up with patties and olives, though, and four bottles of chilly red Buzbag were just about taking the edge off the place.
‘That one about the ark and the marshes is obviously about the zoo,’ Lawrence said, through a mouthful of spinach and cheese. ‘But this one – I just can’t fathom it.’ He started to read as the proprietor collected a few plates:
‘An ‘A’ for a penny
A ‘B’ for ten.
A ‘Z’ will cost you so dear
You’ll have to sell the hen.’
‘Both addressed to you?’ asked Terry, examining the second note, written in identical script.
‘Both to me, care of the paper. Matching envelopes. N22 postmark. Second class.’ Lawrence removed spinach from his teeth with a fingernail. ‘And both arrived on a Monday.’
‘Posted Thursday, then,’ said Terry. ‘Pension day.’
‘How do you know that?’ Ellie asked him, as he topped up her glass.
‘I pick up me neighbour’s sometimes,’ Terry said. ‘Mrs Christodolou.’
‘Aw,’ said Ellie. ‘Isn’t Terry nice?’
Brenda tutted. Rex caught her eye.
‘Minx, isn’t she?’ Brenda said quietly, as Lawrence began a long analysis of what he thought ‘A for a penny’ might mean. Rex shrugged, reluctant to be drawn.
‘Surprised at you, making your peace so quickly,’ Brenda added.
‘Big difference between peace and ceasefire, Bren.’
‘Look at it, though,’ Brenda said, refusing a top-up. They looked across the table to see Ellie taking a picture of herself and Terry on her phone. ‘Selfies,’ she snorted. ‘Says it all. They’re only interested in themselves, these young ones, now.’
Rex filled his own glass, thinking. ‘I don’t think Mina was like that.’ He told Brenda about the web material he’d been viewing back at the office: her earnest blogging, the pieces-to-camera. The stark contrast with the posturing of the other girls.
‘It’s no different,’ Brenda said. ‘Not in my view. If it’s “look at me on a night out with my pals” or “look at me with my rocket launcher” or “listen to my opinion on Israel”. It’s all self-important, here-I-am. That’s how they all are, putting it on the internet. If no one’s looking, it’s not happening.’
Perhaps Brenda was right. Even if Mina’s obsession was with issues and causes, it could still be all self-serving, self-absorbed. Eve Reilly, with her ‘I thinks’ and her ‘my constituencies’ seemed proof of that. And if Mina was out there, on the campus, waving tins under people’s noses, clashing with fellow committee members, then she wasn’t at home, taking toilet paper to her father. As her clearly resentful brother had to.
‘So you don’t think it’s that weird? A girl who writes an earnest political blog setting herself on fire?’
Brenda shrugged, her necklace clacking. ‘I can see how one turns into the other. And with girls of nineteen, there’s usually one reason.’
‘What?’
She leant in. He could smell her face-cream. ‘I kept a diary, every day, from when I was thirteen to when I was nineteen. Then I stopped for six months. And after that, I wrote the odd bit, but I never really went back to it. Do you know why I stopped?’
‘No.’
‘I met Mike.’
She inclined her head at him meaningfully. He took this in. ‘They said there might have been a feller. Her uncle said it, anyway.’
He was about to say more when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Ellie. How long had she been there?
‘Nipping out for a smoke. Get another bottle in?’
He nodded, relaxed a little. Perhaps this was going to work out.
‘Just a bit of banter,’ a flushed Terry was saying to Lawrence. ‘But that one from before? With the curls and the big bazookas. I wouldn’t mind.’
The proprietor re-appeared, and Rex asked for more wine. A sullen man with hawk-like features, he merely nodded as he gathered empty plates. Then he licked his lips and said:
‘You like gözleme?’
Rex blinked. For this guy, it was practically an outpouring.
‘We do. How come all the Turkish restaurants are doing them?’
‘Not Turkish,’ said the man. ‘Kurdish. Gözleme are Kurdish.’
‘But all the Turkish restaurants are doing them.’
The man almost smiled. ‘Most of Turkish restaurants Green Lanes, boss… Kurdish.’
Rex stared at him.
‘He’s not joking,’ Lawrence said. ‘There are many, many more Kurds around this neck of the woods than Turks. Same in the supermarkets. You look for the colours. Red, green and yellow. Or those little tins, collecting for the Alevi Foundation or what-have-you. Dead giveaway. Kurdish.’
The proprietor, incredibly, winked at Lawrence and smiled. ‘Kurdish.’
‘Thought you’d have known that, Rex,’ said Terry. Rex did
n’t much care for the way he said it.
He took a deep draft of the wine. ‘Do you know Keko?’ he asked the owner. ‘The father of the girl who died?’
‘Küçüktürk. Sure. No magazines guy.’ The man shook his head, seemingly in admiration.
‘You remember that? The ‘no magazines’ sign. Why did he say that?’
‘He won’t pay.’
‘Pay for what?’
The man looked pained. ‘The magazine. Because…’ He frowned, trying to dredge up some words, but then shook his head. ‘Sajadi is here now? I saw his car. German car. Rostam. Very high.’
‘Very high?’
‘Yes. High man. Tawsi Melek. Important.’
‘What’s tawsi melek?’ Rex asked. He remembered he’d heard the phrase before, from Aran, though he’d misheard it as ‘that was Melek’.
‘Very high,’ was all the proprietor would repeat. Slightly sheepish after so much revelation, he vanished into the back with a couple of plates and showed no eagerness to return.
‘Tawsi Melek rings a bell-shaped object,’ Lawrence said. ‘I’ll look it up. In the meantime, if I can change my dentist’s, can I tag along to your Cypriot thing?’
‘What Cypriot thing?’
‘Oh – I…’ Lawrence looked at Terry, who coughed.
‘That doctor. Helena. She popped in this morning to tell us about something she’s doing up at Sky City this afternoon. Kind of gathering war stories from the Turkish pensioners. She’s invited us to take some photos. Maybe put a bit of video on the site, like. It’s three until five.’ He kept his eyes firmly on the glass in front of him.
‘No one considered it worth telling me?’ Not even Helena, came the private, sulky after-thought.
‘I’m telling you now,’ said Terry, finally looking at him. ‘It’s at the Sky City Community Centre. Three to five. With the Turkish Cypriot Pensioners’ Group.’
‘Play nicely, boys,’ said Brenda into the silence. Rex stood up.
‘Rex, man, don’t strop off.’
‘I’m just going to the khazi,’ Rex said.
The toilet, situated opposite the vents of an adjacent Turkish, or more probably Kurdish eatery, smelled nicer than anywhere else in the place. Amid waves of roasting peppers and warm fresh bread, Rex washed his hands roughly at the sink. The soap was old and split, like a piece of driftwood. He’d been washing his hands on it for years. Years of being down here, getting companionably smashed with Susan, and Brenda, and Lawrence. And Terry.
There was guilt as well as anger. Last year, Terry had completed his award-winning undercover photo-essay whilst in the grips of a multiple sclerosis flare-up and on bail on a murder charge. Along with everyone else, Rex had thought him guilty, of the murder and worse, and had even told D.S. Brenard of his suspicions. He’d never confessed this to Terry. But at the back of his mind, always, especially now there were these sprouting tensions between them, was the fear that Terry might find out. Or know already.
But he was over-reacting, he told himself. Guilt was making him see phantoms. Terry was a wind-up merchant, always had been. He put a hand, warm, over his face and took a breath in. The soap smell reminded him of his wife, her embrace, after a shit day; forgiving, after a fight. He would see her tonight.
He glimpsed the white hand towel behind him in the mirror. It suddenly made him think of the flash-image, burnt into his optic nerve, from the Friday before. A pale face, peering over the balcony, just after Mina fell. Just an impression, he’d thought. But then, this morning, on the board at the university, he’d seen Navitsky’s face. Whey coloured. Somehow lupine. And it had sparked something.
Where was Navitsky now? Gone. Suddenly. The same day Mina died.
His heart lurched as he headed out. He felt excited. But he might be over-excited. Sometimes, he knew, he saw connections between things, too many connections. It was a problem he’d had, ever since Sybille. He felt in his jacket pocket. Three left.
He was swallowing the last of the co-dydramol as he left the toilet. They were another problem he’d had since Sybille, since he’d torn apart his foot, and their life together, in the wreckage of their car. But the pills helped him to think clearly. If they made him see things as too significant, it was because they brought meaning to his life more generally. Ellie caught up with him by the stairs down. He stuffed the pill strip in his pocket.
‘You okay?’ she asked, as if he might not be.
‘The proprietor doesn’t seem keen to give us any more plonk, Rex said, waving her in front and heading down the stairs behind her. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’
At the bottom Ellie smiled and put an arm on his, staying his entrance into the room.
‘I just want to say thanks. You know – thanks for being a ledge… A legend, grand-dad,’ she clarified loudly. ‘It makes a big difference, having you on board.’ Rex nodded. She wrinkled up her nose and leant closer. ‘I saw you sent me the family piece. Great stuff. And don’t worry about Terry.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He’s got ambitions these days. It’s good that he’s got ambitions. He’s a great snapper. But he can’t write. He just can’t write. So there’s no need to get wound up about him. Oh, and he hasn’t got a hope with that doctor, believe me.’
She winked, then went ahead of him into the room, launching immediately into a funny story about a dog she’d seen outside. Rex hung back, watching her, and the reactions of everyone else around the table. How did Ellie know he was wound up about Terry? She had been out of the room for their most recent clash. Was she just guessing? And the doctor? Presumably Helena was the person whose ‘bazookas’ Terry had recently been slathering over.
They’d all shuffled, and the spare seat was next to Lawrence. He’d been reading the University newsletter that Rex had flipped through on the bus down.
‘Laudably high standards of journalism,’ Lawrence said. ‘We should give the editor a work placement.’
This was a joke. Lawrence’s tanned, manicured index finger was pointing to a ‘Corrections and Apologies’ column on page 7 of the publication. There were quite a few corrections. And one apology.
‘In our February issue, contributor “Hollow Wayne” referred to Student Union President Jan Navitsky as ‘our cheeky Czech Premier with the chequered past.’ We accept that Mr Navitsky is from Belarus, not the Czech Republic, and that the reference to a ‘chequered past’ could have caused offence…’
It obviously had. To one Jan Navitsky, by the looks of it. So what kind of past did they mean?
* * *
The old woman had a face lined and scissored like a school desk. She sat on the chair in the circle, relating her experiences in Cyprus in one low, unbroken murmur. She looked down at the floor, throughout, as if there was something shameful to her words.
‘Then we were with cousins of my husband, for several months, all of us, many cousins, in one house, in Famagusta. The wife of the house there, a woman called Emine, it’s hard to explain. She looked down on us, because she thought we looked down on her. So if you were sad thinking about the village and you said, ‘I wonder how our fruit trees are?’ her face would be angry, and she’d say, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have a big orchard for you to take care of here.’ You couldn’t talk to the people in Famagusta about your old life in the south. Even though they were your family, your own people, they didn’t want to know. It made them angry, and still you had to depend on them.’
Her daughter, a stout matron herself in a Marks and Spencer’s uniform, interpreted in a high, melodic voice that seemed unique to Turkish women. Around the room, others – wiry old men in their navy caps, the black-wrapped grannies like Russian dolls – clicked and tutted in agreement, sympathy, shared recognition of the stateless state.
An old man spoke up now. He had sunken eyes and a reedy voice. He started in English but soon lapsed into Turkish, and, at a nod from the doctor, the shop assistant interpreted for him as well.
‘He says you do everything loo
king back. Even now, in London, when he has coffee and bread in the morning, he can only think, what did the coffee and the bread taste like in Paphos? It’s like your life stops. Even something new… you…’ The woman pinched her nose, as if she could draw the words out. ‘You see it from the eyes of there. Not here.’ She shrugged.
Rex knew, and he found himself nodding in the silence that fell on the room. His was a life in the rear-view, too. Many things had happened in the past twelve years, but he felt sometimes as if he witnessed them all from a doorway.
Dr Georgiadis was looking right at him. He looked away, embarrassed, with the irrational idea that she’d read his thoughts. There was a school playground far below, and shrieks from the kids came through the one open window in the community centre. Nodding to the last two speakers, the doctor stood up, and switched off the video camera. She thanked everyone for their contributions so far, and suggested a short break. There was baklava in the kitchen, and hot coffee. Turkish, not Greek, she added, which got a loud, almost shocked laugh. Chairs scraped, and the old people argued softly over who was to fetch the coffee and who would stay put and rub their limbs.
She came over to Rex, who was sitting right at the back, by the window, his shirt undone. The Turkish Cypriot Pensioners group liked to keep warm.
‘I looked for you this morning,’ she said, sitting next to him. She smelt old-fashioned, he thought. Of coal tar soap and spray starch.
‘I was out of the office. You should have rung.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘They had a power cut at the Brunswick, and my phone didn’t charge.’
‘You have to pay for the VIP suite if you want electricity.’
She batted his arm. Terry, who’d been snapping participants with varying degrees of cooperation, came across.
‘Great talk, Helena. Smashing. You really draw it out of them.’