Swimming to Ithaca

by Simon Mawer

  ‘It’s my special,’ she says.

  That night they undress quietly, with the silent, sleeping figure of Emma in the folding bed over by the window. ‘No noise,’ Kale whispers as they move together beneath the sheets. ‘Silent as mice,’ he assures her. So they make love in the dark, very quietly, while Emma sleeps. And Thomas feels all kinds of things – amorous, perverted, paternal. Those three, and probably others. Fearful, fumbling, fascinated. Fascinated, he knows, is something to do with snakes. Eve was fascinated, snared by a snake.

  Twelve

  Spring on the island wasn’t like the grudging spring of the Peak District. This spring was a startling eruption of nature – Persephone’s spring. Suddenly the sun was hot on the face and there were flowers growing in every scrap of dirt. Insects sounded in the vegetation, crickets and cicadas whirring and buzzing like small mechanical devices.

  She sat in the garden, writing a letter to Tom.

  Darling Tom

  I hope the football match went well. I try and imagine you running round the field in the rain – when here it is bright sunshine and really very hot …

  The radio sounded through the open french windows behind her – the radio always seemed to be on in this blessed island – and the new Governor was explaining to the people that we must build bridges of trust between the different communities. His hopes seemed at variance with the facts, for with spring had come the violence. It was only small bombs, targeting things, not people, but you could never be sure. You’d hear the concussion sounding flatly across the city, like a door being slammed. Pigeons would clatter panic-stricken into the sky and people would pause in their work, and then shrug their shoulders and get on with things. There would be a matter-of-fact report on the radio – a sewage plant damaged, a pump-house door blown open, a NAAFI warehouse on fire – and the engineers would set to work and put the damage right. But once again private life was circumscribed by fear and uncertainty. Families living outside the cantonments had been advised to lay in stocks of food to last them for a minimum of two weeks. Tins; no perishables. Prepare for siege. Curfews were often in force, confining people to their houses after dusk. Once more Edward carried a gun when they went anywhere. The wisdom was that when the killing began again women would not be targeted, but men off duty might be. ‘It’ll get worse before it gets better,’ he said, sounding like an old sailor talking of a squall at sea.

  Dee didn’t write to Tom about all this, of course. She wrote about the chameleon that Paula had found, and cicadas, about Daddy and the visit they’d made to the ruins of Salamis and the votive objects they’d found at Curium – Nick even came with us and did some digging himself, although I don’t think he was very happy about it. The letter was one of those wordy missives that she put together in the hope – a vain hope? – that when he read it he would hear her talking, feel his mother there beside him, jollying him along and trying to keep her presence in his mind when her bodily presence was so distant and in such a different place. Nothing about bombs and curfews.

  Geoffrey is taking us to Umm Haram today. Isn’t that a silly name? It’s meant to be the tomb of Muhammad’s aunt, and apparently there’s this large stone that floats over the place, only they’ve had to prop it up with pillars so that pilgrims aren’t frightened. That’s what they say, anyway. We’ll all go again when you get here for the holidays. Geoffrey says you should still be able to see the flamingos. Not long now, darling Tom. Paula sends her love, and so does Daddy, and so, of course, do I.

  She signed off – With all my love, Mummy – and sealed the letter. Edward would post it tomorrow. Then she sat for a moment watching Paula searching the bushes, that strange, aimless search of the very young, where they look but never see. ‘Maybe it’s changed colour,’ she called. ‘That’s what they do. It can’t have gone far. Just keep looking.’

  Umm Haram

  (Muhammad’s aunt – some say his foster-mother – who, coming to a place by the Salt Lake of Larnaca, fell from her mule, broke her pellucid neck, and died. Umm Haram literally means ‘Sacred Mother’.)

  Umm Haram came to Kition

  In Caliph Othman’s reign;

  She took a fall and broke her neck

  And never went home again.

  The Prophet’s aunt, probably;

  A formidable woman,

  Sitting on her mule and giving orders this way and that

  Like a memsahib.

  What did she think of the place?

  A crayon line of pink

  As in a child’s sketch.

  Seascape and landscape touched in lead

  By a pencil propped against the sky.

  What did she think of the place?

  Heat and light polish the water,

  And make a covenant of salt

  Between God and Man.

  The air shivers, like salt on the tongue.

  What did she think of the place?

  A stumble of the hoof, a sudden lurch,

  Engendered there the minaret, mosque and tomb

  And pilgrimage and reverence.

  Did she think that, in this perfumed grove,

  The thin gauze between life and death

  Would soon be torn aside,

  The covenant redeemed?

  Meanings danced on the surface of her mind, settling for an instant before darting out of reach. Was there a solution to the poem? Was it like a puzzle, with a right answer? A covenant of salt seemed strange, and rather frightening. The air shivers, like salt on the tongue, she thought, shivering in sympathy, seeing a slug sprinkled with salt, like her mother used to do in the garden at home.

  She listened for the sound of Geoffrey’s Volkswagen. It was just her and Paula going with him. She had tried to persuade Edward to come but he had already fixed up some sailing. ‘Anyway, I’m not really sure you ought to be going at a time like this. Not with the security situation as it is.’

  ‘The security situation,’ she had repeated in careful mockery, ‘would be better if you came as well.’

  He had shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I can’t let people down.’

  ‘You’re letting me and Paula down.’

  ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

  ‘Geoffrey can look after us. He’s been out here long enough.’

  ‘I only hope you’re right.’

  So it was just the three of them that drove out of Limassol along the coast road towards Larnaca later that morning. ‘D’you hear the Governor speaking on the radio?’ Geoffrey asked. Away to their right the sea glinted like steel. Ahead of them the peak of Stavrovouni, the Mount of the Holy Cross, rose up from the surrounding hills.

  ‘The man always seems to be pleading,’ she said. ‘At least Harding told people directly what he thought.’

  ‘Harding was a soldier – this one’s a politician. That’s the difference. The government think they can work a settlement, so they’ve got to have a politician in place.’

  ‘And can they?’

  ‘Who knows? The Greeks want union with Greece and the Turks want independence and partition. It’s not going to be easy to reconcile those two aspirations. Especially as both parties have the same fall-back position.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Shooting at each other. Hey, have you heard this one? You know the EOKA ban on the use of English lettering? Well apparently the Roxy Cabaret in Nicosia has had to change its sign to Greek lettering. So what’s it become? POXY.’ Dee laughed. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it myself. People are queuing up to have a look. Taking photos standing under it.’

  ‘What’s poxy mean?’ Paula asked from the back. ‘What’s funny about that?’

  ‘Poxy’s rude,’ Geoffrey assured her.

  ‘As rude as attitude?’

  He gave a shriek of appalled laughter. ‘Don’t,’ he cried. ‘Don’t!’

  The countryside sped past, the landscape green with the spring growth and painted with flowers. There were poppies and marigolds and catchfly, an
d wild gladioli, and orchids, dozens of different orchids. They passed through villages with slogans painted on the walls, and roadblocks where they had to edge round steel stanchions under the eyes of soldiers touting Lee-Enfield rifles. Beyond Stavrovouni, the crumpled edges of the Troödos massif were ironed out into the plain cloth of the coast. Dull flats under a bright sky. They turned off the main road and followed narrow tracks through grasses and reeds, and then, quite suddenly, there was the surface of the salt lake, glinting like beaten pewter. Geoffrey stopped the car and they got out. The air was heavy with salt, as though salt could be vapour as well as a solute – salt on the skin, salt sticky on the palms of the hands, salt tangible on the lips and tongue. A covenant of salt. Across half a mile of water was the sanctuary of Umm Haram – a cluster of domes like knuckles clenched around the single finger of a pointing minaret. And in the distance there was a faint smudge of pink across the surface of the lake. Flamingos.

  ‘It’s like looking at the poem,’ Dee said. ‘How does it go – a crayon line of pink? Is that it? I was reading it just before you came for us.’

  ‘How flattering.’

  ‘Tell me … what’s a covenant of salt?’

  ‘Many things.’

  ‘It’s biblical, isn’t it?’

  ‘Biblical, yes. Numbers, as far as I can remember. And Leviticus. An indissoluble covenant. In the Arab world you cannot do ill to someone who has shared your salt.’ He laughed. ‘Although salt is very soluble.’

  ‘And what if it loses its savour?’

  ‘What indeed?

  They drove round to the tekke. There was no one there, no cars in the rough car park, no pilgrims, no other visitors. A path led through olives and tamarisks to the entrance of the mosque where an ablution fountain dribbled water into the still air. An old man, turbaned and swathed in black and grey, nodded and grinned through a barricade of rotten teeth. Geoffrey gave him some piastres. They left their shoes in the vaulted entrance porch and tiptoed in. Paula giggled at going barefoot – ‘like a paddling pool,’ she said.

  Dee hushed her. ‘It’s like going into church.’

  ‘Is there Jesus?’

  ‘No, not Jesus. But there is God.’

  Inside there was that strange emptiness that mosques possess – no altar, no pews or chairs, no clutter of statues or icons – as though the vaulted space had been left vacant in order to accommodate what cannot be seen: a sense of the numinous. There were just three worshippers: two old men in baggy black trousers and a youth wearing ordinary clothes. They took no notice of the intruders, but went about their business with the silent method of workmen at their craft, standing, bowing, kneeling, prostrating themselves to touch their foreheads to the ground. The air was soft and humid, thick with the smell of feet.

  ‘They’re saying their prayers,’ Dee whispered to Paula.

  ‘Do they believe in God?’

  ‘Of course. They believe in their God.’

  ‘Is he different from ours?’

  Geoffrey led them round to the opposite side of the chamber, keeping to the wall as though leaving all the space to the worshippers. Behind the mihrab was the entrance to the domed mausoleum, and there, immersed in a stifling darkness, was the tomb itself. The upright pillars were draped in black velvet so that, to the believing eye, the massive cross-stone floated in the shadows four feet off the ground. Geoffrey leaned towards Dee and breathed in her ear. ‘This is the very spot where the old dear broke her pellucid neck.’

  Dee hushed him to silence, trying not to laugh, trying not to destroy the solemn nature of the place. They stood there for a long while in the silence, with only the scuffing of Paula’s feet sounding in the tomb chamber, and the muttering of prayer coming through the doorway behind them. Dee was conscious of Geoffrey’s presence just beside her, so close that she could feel the warmth of him and the touch of his arm.

  For lunch they drove to a place that Geoffrey knew. It was down an unmade track that wound through the coastal flats and finally stopped at a sandy car park among the dunes. The taverna was little more than a shack, with a rickety wooden terrace built over the beach. There was no one else around. Geoffrey was greeted with laughter and much flashing of gold teeth by the ancient crone who ran the place. She clapped her hands in delight at the sight of Dee and Paula and pinched the little girl’s cheek. ‘Koukles,’ she cried. ‘Koukles! ’

  ‘She thinks you’re both dolls,’ Geoffrey explained. ‘It’s intended as a compliment.’ A cool breeze rattled the cane chicks that sheltered the tables, but it was warm in the sunshine. Paula hurried through her food and ran down to the water. She hitched up her skirt, kicked her shoes off and paddled in the shallows, while the adults watched from their table. ‘Thank you for being such a good guide,’ Dee said.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Umm Haram? Beautiful. Very strange.’

  He lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  Paula was coming out of the water, holding something in her hand. ‘Look Mummy! Look!’

  ‘What is it? What have you found?’

  She came up the steps to their table, her feet leaving wet prints. She had found an oval shell, with a lucid brown pattern on the convex side, but as white and hard and polished as porcelain on the underside. A cowrie shell.

  ‘Is it beautiful, Mummy?’

  ‘It’s very beautiful.’

  The adults turned the shell over in their hands, looked at it with knowing eyes. The underside clearly resembled the female vulva.

  ‘Can I keep it?’

  ‘Of course you can. Go and see if there’s another one.’

  The little girl scampered away. Dee put the shell down on the table and looked up at Geoffrey. What, she wondered, was coming? Some personal confession? Was she about to be embarrassed? ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s about that taxi firm you use.’

  ‘Taxi firm? What about it?’

  ‘Phaedon Taxis, isn’t it?’

  It struck her how he pronounced the name, the d given the sound of th – ‘phaethon’. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Geoffrey?’

  ‘What do you think of them?’

  ‘They’re all right. They seem safer than most of the others. Fewer dents. Why on earth do you ask?’

  ‘What if I told you that the owner is an EOKA suspect?’

  ‘Stavros? How on earth do you know that?’

  ‘Things one hears.’

  She didn’t know whether to laugh. There was something absurd about Geoffrey, deliberately absurd, as though anything that might happen was, to him, some kind of joke. She had expected Guppy and marital crisis, maybe even some kind of confession, and she got Stavros and EOKA. ‘I can’t believe it. He’s a rather unctuous little man, but quite harmless I’m sure.’

  ‘Unctuous.’ Geoffrey repeated the word with glee. ‘Well, the story is that he is part of the oil that lubricates EOKA. So people tell me.’

  ‘Who tells you?’

  ‘Certain people.’

  ‘How mysterious you’re being, Geoffrey.’

  ‘I’m being serious. That’s a different thing. Could you keep what I’m going to say to yourself? I’d rather you didn’t even tell Edward.’

  ‘I can’t keep secrets from my husband.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh yes you can. All wives can keep secrets, even if it’s only the contents of their handbags.’

  She blushed and reached for a cigarette as some kind of distraction. Paula was still splashing around in the water, trying to find another of her shells. The breeze had died away. ‘Go on then,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Promise me?’

  ‘I promise.’

  He drew on his cigarette and stared out to sea.

  ‘The year before last the Army more or less wrapped EOKA up in the mountains. You’ve heard all about that, haven’t you? Operation Lucky Alphonse, and the forest fire.’

  ‘People say it was started by the terrorists. It was a
bit of a disaster, wasn’t it? Nineteen British soldiers killed, half the Paphos Forest burned down.’

  ‘That was a bit of a setback. In almost every other respect it was a victory – because it virtually destroyed the EOKA presence in Troödos. The only thing that took away from total victory was that old Grievous escaped. Somehow he was smuggled through the army lines—’

  ‘Dressed as a woman, that’s the story. Jennifer Powell told me.’

  ‘Jennifer Powell doesn’t know her arse from her elbow. What is more likely is that he was hidden in a car. We have information that unctuous Stavros Kyprianou did the driving.’

  ‘Stavros?’ She thought of the fat man and his little, twinkling feet. Somehow she’d always imagined him as a ballroom dancer, twirling his partner round, executing complex steps, his smile as fixed and smarmy as his Brylcreemed hair. ‘That seems fantastic.’

  Geoffrey turned towards her. ‘If Kyprianou did do the driving, it means that he is trusted within the organization.’

  ‘Even if it’s true, what has it got to do with me?’

  ‘You seem to know the family.’

  She laughed. He was absurd. He was playing a joke, leading up to one of his punchlines. ‘Hardly. I’ve only spoken to Stavros a few times. Once I was invited in for a coffee. You know the kind of thing. Glasses of water and lots of smiling and no real communication. They offered me those candied fruit …’

  ‘Glyká.’

  ‘His nephew Nicos translated for me, and that was that. You know I don’t speak Greek, Geoffrey. I know less about them than you could get from chatting to Stavros in a bar. Oh yes, Nicos went to school in north London and he likes that rock and roll stuff. There you are, that’s a useful bit of information.’

  Geoffrey seemed indifferent to her sarcasm. He sipped his coffee. ‘Nicos. Yes, that’s the lad’s name. Nikolaos. “Victorious people”, that’s what it means, more or less. Nike was the goddess of victory.’

  ‘You can’t blame him for his name.’

  ‘I’m not blaming him for anything, yet. Except for the fact that he seems to have taken quite a shine to you.’