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  He was concerned for the woman and her children and, recognising humanity in himself, felt untroubled.

  Hal had a boyish habit he’d never lost. He would score the outcome of things in his mind as if they were sporting results. It made him smile to do it. At school, getting news of the war in assembly or chapel, he would say in his head, England three, Germany one, or RAF, four hundred for four, Luftwaffe, all out for thirty-five. As he grew up, he knew it was absurd, wrong, even, but he still had to do it. Now, at thirty years old in a Land Rover in Cyprus he did it automatically: EOKA, out for a duck.

  Looking around him, and above, he noticed that the sky was blue all over, with nothing in it but light. It was the sort of blue you might see on a ceiling with angels painted on it, now high, high above Cyprus, instead.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘All right, Davis, thanks very much.’

  Davis, the interpreter, left the room.

  The interrogation cell was in the guardroom, a building that wasn’t far from the recreation ground for the troops and held corporals being punished for falling asleep on guard duty as well as Cypriots suspected of terrorism. The walls were fairly thin. The roof was metal and the cells were simply small narrow rooms with good locks on heavy doors. Loulla Kollias was in one of these.

  Davis stepped out into the corridor, which had windows along it onto a yard at the back. He wanted to get away from the door because he didn’t want to hear or know what was going on. It wasn’t as if it was happening to him, but he found that his hands were sweating and his mouth was dry.

  Very recently, three soldiers had been court-martialled for causing bodily harm to a prisoner. Their fate was supposed to be an example, but it was known amongst the SIB that the interrogation in question had elicited information about EOKA that, followed up, had stopped a hijack. The SIB had been encouraged, not deterred, in their methods.

  Davis walked away from the closed door and along the corridor to the end, where there was another door that opened onto a small yard at the back. He went into the yard and lit a cigarette. There was a ten-foot wire fence right in front of him, and past that, a hill sloped gently upwards. It was a warm day. The sun heated his skin.

  Inside the room Loulla Kollias, who was fifty-two years old, was tipped back in the chair he was bound to. The soldier fetched big metal jugs of water and wet cloths were placed over Kollias’s face, his head gripped still while the jugs were poured onto his mouth. The cloths made it very hard to breathe. The heavy wet layers filled his mouth and his throat with the water as he gagged and suffocated. It isn’t an extreme method of interrogation to nearly drown a man when you’re saving lives.

  Davis waited in the yard for fifteen minutes, then he walked away from the guardroom and across the recreation ground onto the long road back towards the main garrison. Below him, along the edge of the polo field, two horses were being exercised. A woman, one of the officers’ wives, was being given a lesson, she was giggling as the horse trotted and bounced her in the saddle. Davis walked along the path and watched them and missed his home. He thought of his study in Cambridge, and afternoons spent reading, and wondered how he would ever forget these things happening here in Cyprus, or get over them.

  A Land Rover was coming towards him; he recognised Major Treherne in the passenger seat and stepped aside, saluting. He liked Major Treherne, who seemed to be a good man, as far as he could tell, although it was hard to fathom soldiers – professional ones. He wondered what would happen if he were to stop him that night in the mess and say, ‘They’ve been torturing the prisoner you brought in. They nearly drown him…’ But his imagining stopped there; it was unthinkable, and anyway, he wasn’t sure what went on, he couldn’t have sworn to it in court, he was just guessing. Torture was probably a silly word, an exaggeration. His mind went around like that, excusing himself, condemning himself, lost in notions of responsibility, while the major’s Land Rover passed him, throwing up the dust.

  Hal was hoping Clara would be at the beach. He nodded to the interpreter – whom he always thought a worried-looking fellow – and the Land Rover bumped over the narrow road past the guardroom to the tunnel through the rock, accelerating towards its entrance.

  The darkness swallowed them very quickly. The tunnel smelled of stone and earth; Kirby had to put the headlights on, and the lighted disc ahead grew bigger as they drove towards it and then, suddenly, they burst out into the light.

  The beach was very sunny. Hal saw Clara and the twins – their outlines sharpening as the glare settled – with bare legs and covered tops, playing by the water. He jumped out of the Land Rover while Kirby was still turning it on the sand to go back through the tunnel and ran towards her. ‘Having fun?’

  Clara grabbed him and held onto him, full of joy.

  ‘I went home but you weren’t there,’ he said.

  ‘We were here.’

  ‘So I see.’

  He kissed her, he wanted to make love to her and held onto her tightly, trying to let go but not able to yet.

  The twins were jumping about. He looked at them at last, went down onto his knees and let them push him over. The skin on their bare legs was dusted with fine sand. He tickled them, carefully, one after another, their sand-gritty feet pressing into the palms of his hands. They giggled and choked with laughter as he put his face into their tummies and pretended to bite them, as Clara lay on her back and closed her eyes, smiling.

  With the sun blinding them and the cliff above them, they played in the sand.

  That evening they left the girls at home and went to the Limassol Club. The Limassol Club was where the British went for a change of scene from the mess, and to entertain their wives. It was a big white building, well guarded, in the part of town near the governor’s mansion.

  Mrs Burroughs had organised a reading of The Tempest in the garden and had chairs set up in a semi-circle. The women had to share roles, but there weren’t very many men interested so they had whole reams of text to themselves.

  The men Evelyn Burroughs had roped in were two young subalterns, and they read their parts blushingly, grateful to be asked and for the gentle attention of married women. There were lanterns in the garden with moths around them, and the dark night behind was springlike. The women wore cardigans or wraps over their dresses and held their books near the lanterns to see.

  Inside, the bar was crowded, noisy laughter and cigarette and cigar smoke drifted slowly from the open doors.

  Hal knew that he was tired, but didn’t feel tired. Every few moments, almost without realising, he felt a small tug on the invisible thread that tied him to Clara and glanced out into the garden.

  It was good for her to have a night away from the children. He tried not to, but just occasionally he resented the strain the girls put on her. He was very proud of the way she had managed the move to Cyprus, dimly aware, and ignoring the feeling, that this was a danger time for her. He was relieved they had moved onto the base – he could sense a relaxing in her and he thought she really was happy, not just pretending for his sake.

  Clara, in the garden, was enjoying herself. Hal may have had his first small triumph as a soldier, but she’d had her first triumph as a real army wife. She hadn’t cried and clung to him and told him not to get blown up. She had spent the day having lunch with Deirdre Innes, taking the children to the beach, and when he’d come back she hadn’t cried either, but laughed.

  She hadn’t been listening to the reading, but was lulled by the language and her own thoughts.

  That morning she’d had letters from home, and from James, now stationed in Malaya. Her mother understood it was the everyday things Clara wanted to hear about. Just as Clara wrote to her mother about where she did her shopping and the beaches, so her mother wrote back to her about a sudden hailstorm that had battered the spring flowers – she had spent a morning kneeling in the wet soil, to tie them to stakes – or a trip to London to see about finding a flat for Clara’s younger brother, Bill, nearer to his chamber
s in the City. She didn’t write of missing the children, or her own and George’s constant anxiety for Clara and her brother. Clara kept the letters together, and read parts of them to Hal, whose own mother’s letters were brief and tedious.

  A third man came across the garden to them.

  ‘Ah – there you are! Does everybody know Lieutenant Davis? He hasn’t been with us all that long. He’s the interpreter attached to the regiment.’

  The young man nodded to them all, not making eye contact, and Clara moved her chair a little to accommodate him.

  ‘How long will you be with us, Lieutenant?’ asked Evelyn, summoning a waiter.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. I go where I’m told to,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve run out of copies, I’m afraid, but I’m sure Mrs Treherne will let you look over her shoulder.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Clara. ‘Here.’ She held her book near him. He sat hunched forward, and his uniform made stiff folds across his chest. Clara smiled at him. ‘The Tempest,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I remember. I saw the noticeboard.’

  They were near the end of Act One, and took Davis’s arrival as a signal to pause. Deirdre Innes giggled. ‘I must say,’ she said to Lieutenant Castle, who was next to her, ‘you’re attempting a rather masterful Prospero!’

  Deirdre Innes was flirting, thought Clara, and Castle’s attempt at masterfulness – if he had made one – had been entirely unsuccessful.

  ‘Ought we to move inside?’ asked Evelyn. ‘It’s a little dim out here, but rather suits the play, don’t you think?’

  They all agreed to stay outside. Deirdre Innes made a show of shivering inside her wrap and holding her book nearer Castle – or the light behind him.

  ‘Do you know the play, Lieutenant Davis?’ asked Evelyn.

  ‘We did it at school.’

  ‘Well, jolly good, then. You can read Gonzalo.’

  Clara didn’t think Davis wanted to read Gonzalo, but Evelyn was irresistible.

  ‘Carry on,’ she said leaning towards him, and staring over her spectacles.

  Davis had a biggish, aquiline nose, and hair that fell forward. He peered at Evelyn, and his eyes, which were surprisingly large, were fearful. She nodded. He glanced down to the text and – without even the benefit of a cocktail – began.

  ‘“Beseech you, sir, be merry,”’ he cleared his throat several times, ‘“you have cause, So have we all, of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss…”’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I –’ and then he stopped again, blinking down at the page.

  This wasn’t shyness. They had all been shy. This was some form of discomfort that stopped them all, and Clara recognised it. Lieutenant Davis was staring downwards, as if bewildered by his own silence. Clara said, ‘Poor man, he’s only just arrived. Shall I?’

  Evelyn was grateful to her, and in her gratitude didn’t argue that it was a man’s role, but said, ‘Clara. Please,’ and Clara began,

  ‘…for our escape

  Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe

  Is common; every day some sailor’s wife,

  The masters of some merchant and the merchant

  Have just our theme of woe…’

  The waiter brought Davis a drink. He took it and drank it down.

  The little party of readers continued, quite a few cocktails were drunk, and it became what Evelyn had wanted, a Very Jolly Time, but Davis, and Clara beside him, had another experience, of shared, unspoken sympathy that was mysterious and comforting.

  When the play had ended, they smiled at each other.

  Clara said, ‘I’d better go and find my husband,’ and got up.

  He stood up too, while around them their fellow readers gathered bags and glasses and prepared to go inside. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, which, coming out of sleeves that were a little too short, were long-fingered.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Clara, thinking it was odd to be talking to a man who was younger than her.

  ‘Much better, thanks,’ he said, and grinned at her.

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said, and she walked away to find Hal.

  The SIB had got their information from Loulla Kollias, not because of the near drowning or because of the beating the Turkish Auxiliary Policeman had given him, which was not severe, but because of the very kind words from the interpreter, Davis, that followed it. He had told him, as politely as he could, that if he would only tell them where Demetriou was hiding, his family would be safe and he would keep the families of others safe, too. Loulla Kollias had conceded.

  He was left on his own then to sleep, but confined by physical pain and the shame of his weakness, he didn’t sleep. In the dark part of the night, after the moon had gone and before the sun came up, he died. He died of a heart-attack, which couldn’t have been prevented, and perhaps was nobody’s fault, but it was a very lonely death, and fearful.

  Chapter Eight

  In March and April the hillside behind the garrison and even the cliffs below were bright with wild flowers. It hadn’t been a bad winter, compared to English winters, but it was good that the thunderstorms were over and the roads were better.

  The houses on Lionheart Estate were small and semi-detached; Clara thought living there must be what being working class might be like, except for the outside lavatories. She didn’t know how anybody lived with those. Deirdre and Mark Innes were on one side and another officer and his family on the other; she felt a stronger sense of community than she had ever felt, even during the war. In Germany they had moved around a lot, and married quarters for a captain and his wife were very different from those for a major with a family.

  Sometimes Clara could hear Deirdre and Mark arguing next door and she hoped they couldn’t hear her and Hal making love. The twins were unwakeable, but she pictured Deirdre and Mark, sleepless in their beds, overhearing them. She tried to be as quiet as she could but it was difficult. Hal was virtually silent when he made love to her, perhaps a legacy of the etiquette of the boys in their lonely beds in the dormitories at school. He would please her, sweetly, and hold off and wait; the more intensely he felt, the quieter he would become, and Clara felt closer to him than if he had demonstrated noisy masculinity. He would hide his face in her neck, forced closer to her, made vulnerable by his silence.

  And laughing afterwards, too, was noisy. She would cover his mouth and her own with her hands and feel his breath on her palm.

  In Cyprus there were strawberries in the early spring.

  A grocery van owned by a Greek Cypriot named Tomas visited the houses on Lionheart, Marlborough and Oxford Estates almost every day. Tomas was something of a favourite with the officers’ wives. He was flirtatious and unattractive – but pleasantly so – the father of four children. Sometimes one or two of his children came with him, and sat on big bags of Cyprus potatoes in the back, getting streaks of red earth on their legs. The van was small and dark green, with corrugated sides that rolled up and a diesel engine you could hear stopping and starting along the curved roads of the estates. The wives would go out with baskets or string bags to buy lettuces, vegetables and fruit.

  Clara’s first strawberries of the year were bought from Tomas. It was nine o’clock, and Hal had just left. They had made love that morning – even more quietly because it was daytime – and she had stayed in bed with her legs stretched out, listening to him downstairs, getting ready to go. He had brought the girls in for tickling and Clara felt very happy with the early sun coming in onto the creases of the white sheet and the girls’ hair, tangled from sleep. It was a slow ecstatic morning. After breakfast she heard Tomas and they went out to catch him.

  Clara stood in the road, which was quiet and empty. Tomas handed her the strawberry box last and she walked back with it in her hand, not putting it into the shopping bag. The corners of the cardboard were stained pink. The string of the heavy bag was digging into the fingers of one hand and the strawberry box was light in the other. The girls walked behin
d, slowly, not in straight lines.

  In front of their house Clara put down the string bag and sat on the grass. She took the first strawberry. It was warm from being in the passenger seat with the sun coming through the windscreen. ‘You can’t get these until the summer in England,’ she said.

  ‘’Tis-it?’ asked Lottie, and then Meg:

  ‘’Tis-it?’

  Deirdre Innes’s front door banged behind them as she came out with her little boy, and they all turned. She had on her sunglasses and a bright green dress with a white belt. Deirdre was irritable even in pleasure, and her light mouse hair always fought to fall out of the curl she tried to keep in it. ‘Picnic?’ she said, dropping her keys into her big straw basket and trying to take her little boy’s hand. He was called Roger, and would soon be three.

  ‘Here.’ Clara held a strawberry out to her.

  ‘How marvellous.’

  Roger, who wore pale blue cotton rompers and had fat legs, stared at Lottie and Meg, who stared back. Deirdre threw the strawberry stalk away from her. ‘We’re going down to Dodge. Coming?’

  Dodge City was the nickname for the row of shops on the base. It had a wooden walkway along it and the buildings had been hastily thrown up, giving it the appearance of a frontier town in the Wild West – hence its nickname. There was a hairdresser and a small general store. Greek-run and friendly.

  Deirdre and Clara walked to Dodge and the children went so slowly it took a long time. They chatted and finished the strawberries, looking up occasionally at the dark blue horizon of the sea.

  ‘Cyprus – the Sunshine Posting,’ said Deirdre, with bitterness, and Clara didn’t draw her out, preferring to relish her own happiness as precious.