Swimming to Ithaca

by Simon Mawer

  ‘Tom, come in,’ she cries, and suddenly she is there close to him, swimming up to him, her limbs flexing beneath the surface. ‘For God’s sake, you’re right out of your depth.’

  ‘Look,’ he says to her, pointing downwards at their shadows moving together on the seabed far below. ‘It’s like flying.’

  She looks; and panics. ‘Oh, God!’ Her cry is almost a prayer. ‘Oh God, no!’ Panic comes from somewhere else, from the darkness and the shadows deep inside her; it wells up out of the depths, floods through the fragile constructs of sanity and self-composure, sweeping everything before it. Her arms thrash around. The placid skin of water is ruptured and torn, ripped apart as though with a knife. Her legs writhe. There is a moment when she seems about to go under, and he watches her, wondering whether this will be the moment when she dies. Absurd, that: he wonders whether she is going to drown there before him, and all the time she can fly just like him.

  It takes talk and calm to get her back to shore. Binty sees her flailing arms, hears her cries and swims out. They talk to her, calm her, persuade her to lie still, not to look down, to remember that she can swim as easily as they. Slowly the seabed rises towards them, the gap between their floating bodies and the black frogs of their shadows diminishing, until they can put down a foot and touch. She wades out of the water and sits, shaking as though with cold, on a towel. He looks down at the two women, Binty with her comforting arms around his mother, his mother shivering.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ Binty snaps at Tom, as though he just might, as though he might deliberately swim out there in order to drown his mother. That is the idiocy of adults, he thinks.

  ‘It’s all right,’ his mother says. ‘I’m quite all right.’

  But she’s not, is she? She’s shaking, and she’s in tears. He has never seen her in tears before, not really in tears. He stands there looking down on them, then wanders away to entertain himself.

  Like a family welcoming their hero back from war they stood in a group on the perimeter track and watched as the Comet approached. The aircraft bucked and twisted in the hot spring air as it came in over the coastal flats, touching down with a puff of blue smoke from its tyres and a small sigh of relief from the watchers. It roared down the runway past them, then slowed and turned in the distance.

  ‘Is Daddy inside?’ Paula asked. ‘Is he waving to us?’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  The aircraft was coming back at them now, like a threatening wading-bird, its legs reflected in shining pools of mirage. It turned broadside to them and the engines died. Vague shapes swam behind the Perspex bowls of the windows. ‘I can’t see him,’ she cried, ‘I can’t see him!’

  They watched while the stairs were manoeuvred into place and the passengers filed down to the concrete, their faces screwed against the heat and the light, their clothes crumpled. He appeared with the crew, after everyone had disembarked. Paula jumped up at him and shouted ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ while Dee kissed him and Tom stood aside and watched. Edward reached out and tousled his son’s hair and called him ‘old boy’. They walked across the apron towards the car, and all seemed normal. ‘How did your mother take it?’ Dee asked. She felt that she was searching for the right things to say, the correct phrases, the usual platitudes.

  ‘You know how she is. Tough. There’s a sort of fatalism about her.’

  ‘I hope you sent her my love.’

  ‘Of course I did. So how have you all been without me?’

  She shrugged and looked away. ‘Fine. We’ve been fine.’

  ‘What have you been up to?’

  They climbed into the car, the children pushing and shoving in the back seat. ‘Up to?’

  ‘What have you been doing with yourselves?’

  She looked away out of the window across the airfield. ‘This and that. Nothing much.’ Out there in the middle of the dry grass there was a hut painted with red and white stripes. On its roof a radar scanner went round and round, seeking things out, sensing messages that were invisible and inaudible but there nevertheless, projected intangibly through the warm spring air.

  ‘Are you all right, Dee?’

  She looked round, and almost didn’t recognize him sitting there, his hand on the ignition key, his foot just ready to touch the accelerator as the engine came to life. ‘Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You don’t look well.’

  Perhaps it was his question, his faint air of concern, that breached her defences, for quite unexpectedly she was weeping, sitting there in the car beside Edward with the children shocked to silence in the back seat, and weeping uncontrollably, convulsively, like someone struggling for air, like someone drowning. He reached out and put his arm round her and patted her on the back. ‘It’s all right, darling,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. I know it’s all been a bit of a strain, but now it’s all right.’

  And then, as the convulsions abated, she told him: the swimming, the going out of her depth – ‘It wasn’t Tom’s fault, don’t blame Tom’ – that awful space beneath her and the panic welling up inside. ‘I thought I was going to drown. I thought I was going to drown. I still feel that I’m going to drown.’

  ‘Still feel it? But you’re safe. I’m back and you’re safe.’ He held her awkwardly, as though he had just rescued her and didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘You’re on dry land. You’re here and now and I’m back with you.’ He patted her shoulder and carefully eased her upright in her seat, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine started. ‘Let’s all go home and you can have a rest, and the children will be especially quiet and good. All right?’

  She swam, out of her depth, throughout the night, and woke in the early morning when it was still dark. Edward was beside her in the bed, turned on his side and facing away, breathing deeply. She lay there sweating beneath the sheet and clinging to her secret memory like a drowning woman clinging to a lifebelt. Her hand moved between her legs, evoking a thin, impoverished flood of sensation that washed over her and, in the first light of dawn, cast her up on dry land. When Edward awoke she had already been up two hours. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said as he appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well. Not in the last few days.’

  He came over and embraced her. His hands on her hips were somehow repellent. ‘Please,’ she whispered against his neck. ‘Not now.’

  Later that morning – Edward had gone to work, Voula was hoovering in the sitting room – the phone rang. But when she hurried into the hall to answer it there was no one on the other end, just a thin rush of sound like a chill wind blowing through the wires. ‘Hello? Hello?’

  The receiver whispered its hollow, electronic silence back at her.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Who’s there?’ Then softer, dangerously, she asked, ‘Is that you? Where are you?’

  When she phoned Phaedon Taxis it was Stavros who replied. Nicos had gone, he told her. If she wanted a taxi, he would drive. Where had he gone? The line was silent for a moment. ‘He’s a grown man,’ he said. ‘He do what he like.’ And the phone went down.

  She’s standing in the garden, by the hibiscus bush. ‘Tom,’ she says. He looks up from what he’s doing, which is pursuing a scorpion into a crevice among the stones. Paula’s somewhere else, doing whatever stupid thing keeps her amused, digging.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Binty’s coming to take you for a swim.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘You said you were doing nothing. Anyway, I thought you liked going with Neil.’ For a moment she stands watching him. ‘Tom,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘The last time, when you went with Binty. To Lady’s Mile.’

  ‘Yes?’

  She tries to smile. It’s a half-smile, with half the face, just the bottom part. ‘You came back after swimming, didn’t you? You came back for your ball.’

  He shrugs and returns
to the scorpion, which has backed into the hole and sits there with its claws raised, like an armoured car or a tank backed into a narrow defile. Chelae, the claws are called. It’s from the Greek. He knows that. He knows words.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Did you come in?’

  If you taunt a scorpion lots, it’ll sting itself. If you surround them with fire, they’ll sting themselves. He’s been trying to test these things scientifically. He wants to see whether it’s an old wives’ tale. How old do wives have to be before they tell tales?

  ‘Did you? Come into the house, I mean?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.’

  She stands there watching, irresolute, scuffing at the ground with one toe, like Paula does when she doesn’t know what else to do. She says, ‘I love you all very much, you know that, don’t you? I love you and I love Paula and I love Daddy. You know that?’

  She’s never said anything like that before. Does that make it an old wives’ tale? He shrugs, prods, watches the scorpion watching him with black scorpion eyes, armoured against the world.

  The killings began. The British read about them in the Times of Cyprus, heard about them on the wireless, discussed them at cocktail parties and on the beach. Threadbare, squalid incidents: a Turk shot in a café, a Greek informer gunned down in his house in front of his wife and children, an off-duty soldier dying on a pavement in Nicosia, two military policemen shot in a street in Famagusta. Occasionally there would be a photograph, a grainy rectangle of newsprint showing limbs in postures that they never would have adopted in life – a foot twisted, an arm bent round, a head turned in the opposite direction from the body.

  ‘You really ought to be in married quarters,’ Binty told Dee. ‘You can’t be safe stuck out there in the town.’

  ‘In June,’ she said. ‘They’ve promised June.’

  ‘And that canteen where you help out. It’s really not safe.’

  ‘Of course it’s safe. It’s inside the port. There are guards.’

  She felt detached from the world around her – from Edward, and Binty and Douglas and the others, detached from their fears and concerns. It had been like this when Charteris had gone. She had heard nothing for months and the life of the grimy city had continued around her, but all the while she had felt herself dispersed on a cold and distant ocean that she had never seen but which raged, icily, in her mind.

  Stavros drove her down to the canteen. He was sullen and suspicious, but he was her only link. ‘What’s he doing?’ she would ask. ‘Tell me what he’s doing.’ His eyes, watching her in the mirror, evaded hers whenever she looked. ‘Is he doing anything dangerous? You can tell me, you know you can tell me.’

  ‘Look, I not know anything, understand? I tell you that.’

  ‘The fighting that’s going on, the Turks and the Greeks. Is he tied up in that? Please tell me.’

  ‘I know nothing, lady.’

  They drove through the narrow streets, with the domes of the cathedral on one side and the minaret of the Djami Kebir mosque on the other. ‘This is not a good area, lady. The Turks.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Nicos.’

  Her laughter made him bridle. ‘What do you mean, “bad as Nicos”?’

  ‘A joke.’

  He shrugged. ‘Jokes, always jokes, you English. I only warn, that is all. Better we go somewhere else.’

  ‘Well, I want to go this way.’

  He drove on in sullen silence until she offered a sacrificial apology. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I snapped. Signomi.’

  He glanced in the mirror. ‘Nicos say that you are a lady with, how do you say? – pnevma. Spirit. I like that.’

  It seemed that for a moment his defence was down. ‘Have you …’ she hesitated in case the question would conjure up its own denial, ‘have you heard from him?’

  He made a gesture with his hands, taking them from the wheel and opening them momentarily to the sky. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘Tell me. Don’t talk in riddles.’

  ‘He tell to me to look after you. That is why I am not happy you go through this area.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  Another silence.

  ‘Did he say if I can see him?’

  They were past the Castle and down by the waterfront where the sea unravelled to the horizon, towards Egypt. There were the old godowns, the storehouses, the harbour gate with its armed guard. He drew in to the kerb, and in a moment was there at the door, opening it to let her out. ‘Perhaps,’ he said as she climbed out. ‘Be ready if I phone.’

  ‘What do you mean, be ready?’ Her heart, her perception of time itself, had stopped. ‘You’re talking riddles again.’

  ‘I don’t know riddles.’

  ‘Stories. You’re telling stories.’

  ‘I tell nothing. I just say to be ready for if I call. And you tell no one. You understand? Tell no one.’

  ‘I won’t. Of course I won’t.’

  ‘He trusts you,’ he said. ‘I do not.’

  She sat with Marjorie, smoking, waiting for custom. The canteen was in danger of closing. With the outbreak of violence had come curfews, usually in the evening, sometimes throughout the whole day. Often the men were confined to camp, shut in their lines of sweltering tents out in the hinterland, behind barbed wire and sandbags and the impenetrable barriers of military routine. ‘I don’t know whether we should strike the flag,’ Marjorie said. ‘Not the kind of thing I want to do, but it all depends on the powers that be.’

  But for the moment they soldiered on. That phrase, of course, was Marjorie’s. ‘I suppose you won’t be able to help out once you move into a married quarter?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to carry on alone.’

  ‘They ought to send someone else out from England.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. They might, if there was still demand, but in the present circumstances …’ Marjorie looked at her sideways. She had a way of looking at you, as though she was peering over spectacles that she didn’t, in fact, possess. ‘By the way, where has your Nick gone? I haven’t seen him for days.’

  ‘I’ve told you, he’s not “my Nick”. And I don’t see why everyone is so interested.’

  ‘It sounds as though you’re missing him, darling.’

  At that moment the phone rang, as startling and intrusive as a stone thrown through a window. Marjorie went to answer it, then looked across to Dee. ‘It’s for you.’

  Dee took the receiver. ‘Hello? Who is it?’ There was the crackle of interference on the line. Somewhere far away a voice twittered, some distant, unintelligible conversation.

  ‘Hello? Who is this?’

  For a moment she thought it might be him. But another voice spoke: ‘I thought I might find you there, hidden dreamer. I rang you at home but there was only the maid, gibbering at me in Greek. I haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  ‘Well, don’t sound so enthusiastic. Look, can’t we meet, at least for a chat? I’m at that bar on the seafront. Aphrodite’s. I won’t say anything embarrassing. Promise. Just a social chat, like old times.’

  ‘Old times weren’t like that.’

  ‘No, I suppose they weren’t. New times, then. I’ll be on my best behaviour. Nothing that anyone could gossip about.’

  ‘Look—’

  He talked over her: ‘No, don’t say it. Don’t say anything. I’m there right now. Try and get away if you can. Just a few minutes.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t. I don’t think it’s—’

  ‘Don’t think, just do it.’

  ‘Damien …’ And then the click of the receiver on the far end, and the buzz of the dialling tone. She looked up at Marjorie. ‘Damien Braudel,’ she said. ‘Apparently he’s at a bar near by. Do you mind if I nip out to say hello? Just for a few minutes?’

  It was a fine morning. The heat had not yet blurred the air and the sky
still possessed that intensity of blue that you never saw in England, as though it were a solid medium, not transparent. Before her was the cool expanse of the sea, ruffled by the morning breeze. There were a few couples strolling in the sunshine, some hopeful fishermen standing by the sea wall. A radio blared from a café. Was she being watched? She felt like an animal, a mouse or something, scurrying along beneath the watching eyes of carnivores – Geoffrey’s watchers in their anonymous vans, their neutral cars, their fawn raincoats and shop-soiled lightweight suits. Were they watching her now? She had no answer to the question. Once you think you are being watched, you are.

  Cleopatra Street was bisected by sunlight, as though cut by a knife, the buildings on the right in shadow, the ones on the left in the glare. A grocery shop erupted across the pavement with crates of vegetables and fruit. Among the cars jammed along the pavement was a white coupé with the maker’s name, Borgward, in chrome letters. The Café Aphrodite was almost unchanged – only the name, in accordance with the EOKA edict, had been replaced by Greek lettering: AΦPOΔITH. Otherwise there were the same dusty bottles in the window, the same half a dozen Formica-topped tables out on the pavement, the same feeling that the place still hoped for a clientele that had never materialized. Damien was sitting at the same table as before, nursing a similar brandy sour. He half rose as she approached. ‘Long time, no see.’

  There was an awkward greeting, a fumbled handshake combined with a chaste kiss, cheek to cheek. Precisely which cheek was determined by a kind of lottery, a self-conscious bobbing of heads, a fumbling avoidance of mouths, a clumsy apology. She sat down across the table from him and tried to compose herself. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to be quick. Marjorie’s expecting me. She’s all on her own.’

  ‘Can’t we get some lunch somewhere?’

  ‘I’m sorry, there just isn’t time.’

  Waiting for her order – she wanted tea, with fresh milk, not that terrible evaporated stuff – they constructed some kind of a conversation out of whatever there was to hand: the children, their spouses, the situation on the island. ‘I think they may ship all the families home,’ Damien said. ‘This place is a tinderbox at the moment.’