Say You Never Met Me

by Martin Yallop

  Chapter 34

  Things were looking up for George too. He had visited the Aliens and Immigration office on three consecutive mornings and had twice seen one or more girls that looked like Slavs or southern Europeans amongst the queuing domestic servants and construction tradesmen but he had not been able to find an opportunity to talk to them. He had already realised that ogling pretty, young, blonde women might be a pleasant enough way of spending a couple of hours each morning but was not going to be any help in gathering information unless he could firstly get them away from the men that were obviously their employers or minders and secondly gain enough of their confidence to get them to talk to him openly about their backgrounds, how they came to be in Cyprus and whether they expected to travel to London or other European cities. On the third morning, George summoned up his courage and went to the side office to collect a number. An hour later he took his turn and found himself facing the neatly dressed, middle-aged woman he had seen on the first day.

  “I’m… er… writing a book about migrant workers and I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about how many immigrants come to Cyprus, where they come from, how long they stay and that sort of thing.” The woman looked at him blankly without saying anything and George wondered if she had understood him. “Oh, sorry. Don’t you speak English?”

  “Of course I speak English but we do not give information here. This is an office for accepting and processing applications from aliens to reside in Cyprus. Do you want to stay in Cyprus? Please show me your passport.”

  “No, no. I’m just visiting. For a couple of weeks. Like a holiday, you see. My passport is in the hotel safe.” George realised he was lying to a police officer; again, and broke out in a sweat despite the air-conditioning. Mustering his courage he went on. “Look, I’m sorry. I realise how busy you are but isn’t there somewhere… another office… maybe in Nicosia, where I could ask for some statistics about migrant workers?”

  After a pause and still looking at him impassively, the woman replied, “You must ask the sergeant. Wait please,” and she rose briskly and disappeared through a door behind her. George sat and continued to sweat under the silent gaze of the two women applicants sitting at the other occupied desk. He had not yet got used to the curiosity about strangers and foreigners and he felt like an alien – like an alien recently arrived from a distant planet. He nervously rubbed his face to see if he had missed part of it while shaving and resisted the temptation to touch the top of his head to see if he had grown feelers or horns without noticing. The woman reappeared and stood in the doorway.

  “This way.” George squeezed past her into a small office. He noticed it opened on to a corridor but had no window. Seated at the desk was the man who had handed him his number an hour earlier. George sat down.

  “You are asking questions about immigration?” The absence of the customary ‘good mornings’ and ritualistic enquiries about each other’s health unsettled George even more.

  “Yes. I’m writing a book about migration of workers in Europe and I have noticed that Cyprus has quite a lot… well, certainly some, foreign workers. I wondered if you or someone in the immigration service – I can see you are very busy – could perhaps answer some questions for me. Possibly.”

  The sergeant continued to look straight into George’s eyes. Even in plain clothes he was unmistakably a policeman. His desk was completely empty except for a telephone. He did not look at all busy and George felt that he become today’s investigative workload. “We do not give information here except to people making applications (‘and not much information, then either’, thought George). What things do you want to know?”

  “Oh!” said George, taken unawares at suddenly being able to ask. “You know... How many permits are issued each year, to what categories of workers, where they come from, how long they stay, where they go when they leave, that sort of thing.”

  “And for who do you write this book? Is it for your government or some agency?”

  “No, no. It’s just a private project. “ George suddenly realised which button to press. “You see, I have a PhD in sociology and the migration of labour in and around Europe is an important matter. I am hoping if I can collect some information and produce a well-researched book, I may well get some consultancy assignments from the EU or be able to obtain a post at one of the universities specialising in European studies.” The sergeant’s eyes lost some of their hard suspicion. George was glad he was a respectable and well-qualified British academic and not a semi-literate, Bangladeshi construction worker.

  “Our job is to apply the immigration law of Cyprus. We do not have the authority to release the information you want but I can give you the name of the head of the statistics department – he is my brother in law. Or I think the university may have done some research. You could ask there, Doctor…. Doctor….”

  “Hawthorne. George Hawthorne.”

  “Well, Doctor George. I am sorry I cannot help you further but here is the name you need. Tell him you have spoken to me.” The policeman scribbled a name and telephone number on a piece of paper and George took it with what he hoped was a grateful smile. “Good bye. Enjoy your stay in Cyprus.”

  Chapter 35

  George could see that getting information from official sources was going to be difficult at best. And even then, it was not really statistics he needed. What Helen wanted was names, dates, addresses and case histories – the sort of information that would only come from face to face contact with some of the victims of trafficking and only if he could gain their confidence and offer protection from the probable consequences of opening up to him. Time to try another line of attack. But first he felt he would be wise to move. He walked out of town in the other direction and went into a block of hotel apartments not far from the port roundabout. He had to call twice in addition to ringing the bell on the reception table before anyone appeared. Eventually a shabbily dressed man appeared on an upstairs landing.

  “Do you have a room?” he called.

  “I do not know,” the man replied and disappeared. George was about to leave when the man appeared again. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A week at least, maybe longer.”

  “Oh! You are a tourist! Wait one minute. Wait please.” The man disappeared again and a woman appeared almost immediately in his place. She scurried down the stairs, taking off a grubby, pink nylon pinafore as she came. Evidently she and the man had been cleaning rooms.

  “I’m sorry. We were not expecting anyone at this time of day. How long do you want to stay?”

  “I don’t know exactly but a week at least maybe longer. I want to explore Cyprus.”

  “You will love Cyprus,” said the woman enthusiastically. “You must visit some villages. My village is Lefkara. It is very beautiful. In the mountains and they make beautiful lace. You should take some home for your wife. And you must go to Paphos. My sister lives in Paphos. They have a restaurant. I will give you the address and I will tell her you are coming. Yes, we have a nice apartment with its own kitchen and sitting room with separate bathroom. Do you want that?”

  George smiled to himself. He had found the sort of hospitality he had been told to expect but he was even more amused to find that well intentioned but un-asked-for advice was a characteristic of Cypriots as well as of the Greeks in the Ionian Islands.

  “Could I see the room first?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It is newly decorated. You will like it. Did you have your lunch yet? You have not had time to do your shopping. I will make you something.”

  “Well…” George came to a decision, “Thank you. That’s very kind, Mrs… “

  “Maria. Call me Maria. My husband is George.”

  “My name is George, too, Maria, George Rose. Er, why did George think I was not a holidaymaker?”

  “Ah! You see, some of our rooms are let longer – to girls who work in the clubs. They treat the girls very badly, very badly, but
I look after them, I am like their mother, you understand. They are such a long way from home but they have to come, they need the money and this is the only way for them. George thought you maybe wanted a room for a girl. Or that maybe you wanted the room for a very short time – some hours. We do not allow that. It is bad. This is your room. You see, it is nice, no?”

  “No. I mean, yes, it is fine.” The room did indeed have a kitchen and a sitting room but they were part of the bedroom. And it was newly decorated and air conditioned, even if the furniture had seen better days. “This is absolutely fine, Maria. Just what I wanted.” And with exactly the right clientele, he thought to himself.

  The two men who asked for George the following morning at the town centre hotel found he had checked out.

  George thought he had better see for himself. Maria’s George had told him they were very boring, not very good and very expensive. Our George would have added seedy, sad and unsatisfactory to the list. The two clubs he visited were miserable places, warehouses decorated by someone with very bad taste and an account at the cheapest furnishing store in the world. The other patrons were silent, solitary men or small groups of Russians and other Eastern Europeans who drank heavily and talked loudly to be heard over the seventies pop music. The girls who acted as hostesses looked tired of their careers. George had unsatisfactory and inconclusive conversations with several but they could not understand that his intentions did not involve paid–for sex and they were suspicious and nervous under the eyes of their employers. When they discovered he was English, their main interest switched to checking his marital status and financial standing in the apparent hope of becoming his exclusive property, preferably through marriage, and accompanying him back to England. Only one of them was very attractive close up. If the Immigration office had been plan ‘A’ and the clubs were plan ‘B’, George hoped plans ‘C’ would be more fruitful. Plan ‘C’ revolved around the unexpected bonus of finding himself in the same block of hotel apartments as a couple of the ‘artistes’. He was counting, too, on Maria’s motherly approach. What he could not decide was how much to tell her. Certainly it could not be everything but his instincts told him that a description of Susanna’s death and his suspicions that it had something to do with the trafficking of girls from Albania would put her firmly on his side. It was not her intentions he doubted but her discretion. She had lots of friends and a large family and so spent much of every day on the telephone or being visited by them. He decided to adopt a gradual approach and, recognising he was in this for the long haul, set himself the task of exploring Cyprus. He bought himself a mobile telephone with a pay as you go subscription and hired a car at what he thought was a very reasonable rate, from a friend of Maria. He did not need the car to visit the pubs near the fort. He was disappointed in the music but not nearly as disappointed as he had been prepared to be. A couple of bands performed some covers with reasonable skill and a lot of enthusiasm but did not seem to have any of their own material – a deficiency that would have been a disadvantage for embryonic British and American bands. He drank lots of beer and made friends with the bar staff who were pleased with his custom recognising that the Brits would put away considerable quantities of alcohol while the locals nursed an iced coffee for the whole evening. He admired the local girls, darkly pretty with bold, slanting, Levantine eyes and olive and coffee skin but always in groups or with parentally approved boyfriends or, more often than not, George suspected, brothers and male cousins keeping a watchful eye.

  His first encounter with the club girls in the hotel apartments took place one afternoon in Maria’s kitchen. He was returning from a planning session on the beach when Maria called him in to meet Anita and Dora. The two girls were sitting on hard, kitchen chairs clutching glasses of fruit juice and not eating the little sugar and honey soaked cakes Maria had put out for them. George accepted Maria’s offer of coffee and allowed himself to be pressed into trying what he hoped would be the least sickly sweet cake. It was coated in icing sugar. He had to start it somewhere so he asked Anita where she came from. Maria answered for her.

  “They come from Russia. Life is very hard there, very hard. No work, not enough to eat, a very difficult life. Anita and Dora send most of their money home. They are good girls. They look after their families.” The two girls took their blank gazes off George long enough to flash brief but warm smiles at Maria. “They work very hard, very long hours. They are good girls,” she repeated, returning the smiles.

  “I’m sure. It must be very difficult.” George realised he sounded patronising and added, “It must take a lot of courage to leave your families and travel all the way here, to somewhere unknown and strange, to do a difficult job, too. I admire you. I really do.” He couldn’t be sure if the girls’ blank stares softened. Maybe just a little, he thought. Enough is enough for now. “Oh well, better go up and shower the sand off. Nice to meet you girls. Hope to see you again.”

  As he rose to leave, Dora said quietly, “We are from Moldova. It is not Russia any more.”

  Chapter 36

  Autumn took George by surprise. After a summer of wall to wall, Mediterranean sky of a blue that northern Europe could never hope to copy, he was not prepared when the sun was abruptly switched off and lightening leapt from one black cloud to another as the storm rumbled in from the hills behind the town. Then it rained in torrents. Then the power went off as last winter’s temporary repair to the grid realised it should have been made more permanent and gave up pretending it was up to the job. The wide ditches lining the road leading to the port roundabout were whipped into yeasty froth and the dust turned to liquid mud as it was washed off roofs, roads and trees. For an hour the level rose then the ditches overflowed, spewing muddy water over the road and around the parked cars. Four-wheel drive jeeps ploughed through the shallow lakes sending their wakes splashing into shop doorways and Maria’s cellar. George stopped wondering about the fate of the little fish and helped Maria and her George to mop up the water and brown slime. Dora and Anita set off bravely for work but returned bedraggled and cold half an hour later saying the club had a power cut too and had decided not to open tonight. Nobody was about, anyway. They joined Maria and the two Georges around the kitchen table and Maria’s George declared it was winter and produced a bottle of fiery Zivania for them to sip by candlelight while Maria made the girls and the Georges some supper. There had been other occasions casually to exchange greetings and a few words with Anita and Dora and they had become less wary of him but until now George had made small talk, not feeling the time was right to ask too many questions about how they came to be there or whether they knew any other girls who had been taken to England.

  “Your name is very nice. It reminds me of home.” Dora took another sip of her Zivania.

  “Oh, it’s very common; both in England and here. Why? Is your father called George?”

  Dora laughed. “No, not ‘George’, George. Rose. Your family name is Rose?”

  George had almost forgotten which name he had used. “What! Oh yes. Like the flower. You have roses in Moldova, I’m sure.”

  “Of course. Every Easter my mother fills the Church with roses, many, many roses. All her roses are pink. It is very beautiful and there is a special service. That is why I like your name. It is something of home for me.”

  “That must take very many roses, Dora; to fill the Church. Your mother must have an enormous bush,” said George then immediately wished he had not but nobody seemed to notice.

  “She has many bushes but everybody helps. We grow many roses. And it is also a girl’s name. There are many girls called ‘Rose’ where I come from.”

  “Yes. In England too. Maybe some of your friends are in England?”

  The girls exchanged quick glances.

  “Some, yes.”

  “And they do the same work as you,” asked George sensing an opening?

  “Yes… well. Sometimes it is more difficult. We are lucky, you know. We are paid ok
ay and if we do what we are told there is no problem. You know what we do?”

  “Yes. I think so.” George did not want to discuss their work. He knew it would include activities not strictly in the job description of a dancer. “Did I tell you that my girlfriend accidentally became involved… mixed up... you understand?… with men who take girls to England and make them go with men? She was just travelling from where we were living near Corfu to visit her mother. She was killed. In England. A few weeks ago.” He had their attention now. “Her name was Susanna,” he added as a quiet afterthought and found that his eyes were moist. He looked down. The room was very still apart from the low bubbling of something on Maria’s stove.

  Dora touched his arm then withdrew her hand as if she was afraid to intrude. “I am sorry, George. I did not know this happened to English girls also. I am very sorry.”

  “Well, it’s in the past now. What about you? Do you know anyone who has died because of… well… the work you do?”

  Another exchange of glances then Anita said, “I do not know if anybody has died but I know girls who have suffered very badly. Some have disappeared. Maybe they are dead. Who knows? Some we knew at home, some we have met later. There is one girl, Paula, who we knew at home. She wanted to work in Europe, real work, proper work, she had been a secretary but the pay at home is very low so she had no money and when a man said he would pay her fare and find her a job in Holland, she took the risk. We know it is a risk. I met the man but I did not like him, did not trust him. He was… what is the word… creeper, you understand? We borrowed money from our family and friends to come here and we have paid most back to them. Paula had no money so she let him buy the ticket and fix the visas. She left Moldova when we did but we have heard nothing, nothing. We don’t know what happened but we think she is being made to work somewhere, like as a prisoner without pay. You understand, George?”