Swimming to Ithaca (24 page)

Emma promises, but Thomas senses that she knows all the tricks, the adult evasion and dissembling. She watches him with those bright, knowing eyes as her mother rubs her dry and bundles her into well-worn pyjamas. When finally she is tucked up in her bed she calls for Thomas to come and kiss her good-night. Confronted with this knowing six-year-old, he feels like an awkward teenager. He bends towards the little face. There is the warm smell of talcum powder and something else, baby pheromones presumably, designed to enmesh an independent adult in the snares of childcare. And as his face approaches her cheek she suddenly turns her head and catches his mouth full on her lips. There is a moment of wetness, and a giggle, and she has turned away.

‘I think we’re overexcited,’ Kale says. The plural is appealing. We. The mother–daughter complex. ‘Maybe Thomas should go down to the bar while we read a story.’

‘I want Thomas to stay. Thomas can read me a story.’

Thomas obeys Kale, although the temptation is to obey her daughter. He goes down to the bar and orders a Scotch, and only when the deed has been done and Emma is asleep does Kale join him. She has changed. She is wearing one of those dresses that fit all over, a tight tube of sprung cotton, the colour just the purple side of black. The material clings to her as though it is wet. She seems to have nothing whatsoever on underneath – you can see the loose movement of her breasts and the nub of her nipples, you can follow the curve of her belly and thighs. Her stockings are a kind of mesh, for catching minnows. The eyes of the other guests follow her as she perches on a stool at the bar.

‘Wow,’ he tells her.

‘Wow what?’

‘Wow, please. That dress. You’d look more decent if you were stark naked.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘We love it. All of us. Everyone in the bar.’

‘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.

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, and 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!
’