Daughter of the Winds (13 page)

Stefanos
stopped abruptly and stared straight ahead. I could see the muscles in his jaw pulsing as he tried to control his anger. Even in the deepening darkness of the night I could see the hardness in his eyes. I had read some of the facts about the Turkish invasion of 1974 as I tried to research the country of my birth but to hear it like this from someone emotionally involved in the struggle made it hard to digest.

“
I’m sorry, Stefanos. I didn’t mean to sound...” My voice trailed off. “I don’t know anything about the personal cost of war. I am only just beginning to find out about what it cost my family.”

“
Your family?” Stefanos turned on me with nostrils flaring and thinly disguised contempt in his eyes. “
Your
family? What do
your
family know of loss? You were safe within the boundaries of the British army bases, your family didn’t see any fighting, your family aren’t wondering what happened to their loved ones and whether they’ll ever be able to find their bodies and lay them to rest.”

“
Don’t you dare lecture me!” I snapped at him placing my hands with unnecessary force on the table in front of me so that the wine glasses rattled. Stefanos’ eyes widened and he physically moved away from me with what looked like fear on his face. “You don’t know anything about my family or about me.” I stood up, hands shaking and voice quivering. “The woman that I call my mother was
shot
by the Turks. My biological mother was
killed
by the Turks. I don’t even
know
what happened to my birth father. My whole world has been turned upside-down and I might not understand everything that happened,but I a
m
tryin
g
to understand. I a
m
tryin
g
to learn more. Why do you think I am asking all these questions? Eh? Why do you think I am desperate to get into Varosha? I don’t kno
w
anythin
g
about where I came from or who my biological parents were. I am trying to get some answers. And what about you? You weren’t even born then. How dare you carry around all this anger and resentment when you have lived a happy and harmonious life in the arms of your family this whole time? You have no understanding of real pain. You are like every bloody student I’ve ever met, thinks they know every-bloody-thing but actually have experienced NOTHING!”

He caught my arm and stood to face me.
I could feel his breath on my cheek and smell his musky scent. I looked at his perfect lips that parted with a sigh and he took a step closer to me so that our bodies were touching. He let his hand slide down my arm and I shivered, suddenly breaking free of the trance I was in.

“
Don’t touch me, Stefanos!”

I shook my arm free and stormed into the cottage. I paused at the door and faced him.
He looked confused and hurt standing in the shadows. An apology began to form on my tongue and I started to reach out towards him, wanting to run my hand over his firm chest. I knew the alcohol was impairing my decision-making skills but desire was taking over my cognitive reasoning. I watched as look of triumph crept into his eyes and he started to smile lazily, taking a step in my direction. I gripped hold of the door tightly in one hand. The smugness on his face ignited a rage in my heart as I realised then that I had fallen into his trap.

With a smile that didn
’t reach my eyes I slammed the door firmly in his face.

Chapter ten

Cyprus,
1974

When Pru awoke to the polite applause of the early morning rain, she had the feeling she had been battling with bad dreams all night. Rain, which had long been absent on this island, was an unfamiliar sound to Pru, yet she found herself comforted by its staccato beat. An unsettled feeling of foreboding was tapping at her consciousness and her throat was sore and scratchy. She tried a small cough, her voice sounding far away and not at all like her own, and pain coursed through her body with torrential force. Her stomach erupted with a fire that she was unable to name. With her eyes squeezed shut she tried a deep breath through her nose but her expanding chest met aching ribs and caused an arrow of pain to shoot through her left shoulder. But still Pru didn’t open her eyes. She knew there was something she needed to remember but, with equal certainty, she knew there was something that she did not want to recollect.

While the shutters on her eyes
were able to block out the sights in front of her face, the smells assaulting her nose were not so easily kept at bay. There was something different about her room today. The pillow under her head smelled starched and the air surrounding her was thinner, cooler and percolated by the scent of crisp efficiency.

A murmured statement.
A man’s voice.

“
She’s waking up. I’ll get Eddie.” There was the anguished scrape of a chair leg on a hard floor.

“
Eddie’s home,” she thought to herself. “That’s good.”

“
Hinny?” A woman’s voice this time. “Can you hear me?”

Pru knew the voice but couldn
’t associate it with a face for the time being. “It’ll come back to me,” she thought and she burrowed her head deeper into the pillow and drifted away to sleep.

“
She’s lost a lot of blood and she’s been given a heavy sedative. I’m afraid she might be coming in and out of consciousness for some time yet. But all the signs are as good as they can be at this time. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“
Yes of course, Doctor. Thanks.”

Eddie looked at his fragile wife, lying prone before him.
She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Her milky skin was alabaster smooth. A rose-pink flush tinted her high cheekbones. Her eyelids pulsed with visions that only Pru could see. Her dry pale lips parted in a gasp then went slack.

Eddie had known
as soon as he laid eyes on her that he had to have her. She had evidently felt the same and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. When her folks had kicked her out of home Eddie never once felt trapped by the situation. He had felt like it was always meant to be and it had strengthened their relationship. It was the two of them against the world now and they were unstoppable.

B
ut as infatuation had been replaced by pregnancy, everything had changed between them. Where there had once been love was now mutual resentment. He realised now that they had never talked about the future and, as a result, they hadn’t realised that they both wanted wildly different things. They didn’t have much of a social life in Cyprus but on Eddie’s days off they would head out to Fig Tree Bay on the back of the Suzuki and swim the few hundred meters out to the small rocky island where they would snorkel for hours, pointing out the rainbow of fishes darting through the turquoise waters, returning back to the shore with reddened shoulders and wrinkled skin on their fingers. They would then sit at George’s Taverna as the gossamer of salt hardened on their skin while they drank beer and awaited the catch of the day. Some days they would be served the freshest calamari dragged up the beach from the little fishing boats, hung on lines to be dried by the sun. Once they were given sea-slug to eat. They laughed about it, wondering what the people back home would make of it and marvelled at how different their lives were to those of their parents. They would talk as the sun started to slip down the sky of how lucky they were and how life couldn’t get any better.

But then, as the pregnancy progressed and Pru found she couldn
’t do the things she used to do, she seemed to get angry with Eddie. Everything he did would infuriate her. She looked at him with contempt. Her once smiling lips now curled towards her button nose in contempt.

Eddie would never have considered himself a needy man but it was apparent now that he wanted to be needed by someone.
Pru withdrew into herself and Eddie searched out alternative forms of validation. He threw himself into his work, volunteering for all the overtime, the more dangerous the better. He was hand-picked to escort President Makarios off the island amid fears for his safety. The feeling of importance he got from this seemingly simple task glowed deep inside him and he stoked the embers of this fire as a man desperate for warmth on a freezing cold night.

Eddie squeez
ed the wooden arm of the chair until his nails ached and his knuckles stiffened. If he’d been home he could have stemmed the bleeding at the very least. She needed him and he had let her down. All this bravado, guns and fighting didn’t make him a man. He had fallen short where it was most important. He had failed as a husband.

Eddie hated this feeling of helplessness.
He was trying his hardest to contain the molten anger threatening to erupt from deep inside. He was scared that if he let go, he would never stop. Nonetheless he was sorely tempted to start kicking and punching inanimate objects. Perhaps even the animate ones too. He wanted to hear things break and feel them crumple in his fists. His thoughts whirled around his head with dizzying ferocity. They had shot her. The bastards shot her. Did they look through their sights at her and squeeze the trigger? Did they know what they’d done?

Eddie couldn
’t help but feel the army had failed the both him and Pru. While the British army were just watching and listening, a very real fight was going on. And that very real fight had come over his doorstep tonight. What would it take for them to get involved, and how many people would have to die? Somebody somewhere needed to take very real and immediate action against the Turks instead of viewing the whole scenario as part of a testosterone-fuelled chess match.

“I love you, Pru. Can you hear me?” he whispered. “If you can hear me, I want you know this one thing. I am
so
sorry.” He stood, leant over the bed, kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and then left without looking back.

Pru tried to swallow but her throat hurt.
She tried to lick her lips and found them rough and dry under her tongue. She was so thirsty but she couldn’t move to get the glass by the side of the bed. She needed a drink of water so badly. Water. A fragment of a memory caught in her mind, enticing her, beckoning her, a snake in the Garden of Eden.

She
could see herself in the kitchen with a glass. The tap was running cool water over her hand. No. Stop. The shutters came down abruptly on the thought. There was nothing there. She’d get a drink later. Right now, she was so tired. Somewhere across the room she thought she heard Eddie say he was sorry. So he should be, it must be really late by now. What time does he call this? Doesn’t he know she needs her sleep? He should have been home hours ago. Pru sighed and drifted back into the hospitable arms of sleep.

Chapter eleven

I snapped awake from my dream and sat bolt upright like a sprung trap. Wheezing, I dragged the air down into my lungs in large gulps. I placed one hand over my heaving chest and panted. I dreamt that I was trapped under a collapsed building and couldn’t get out. It had all felt so real. I could still recall the roughness of the rubble, the bricks on my body and the weight of them pressing down on me. I had been cold, so cold, and it was wet where I lay amongst the debris. In my dream it had been raven black and I couldn’t see anything. My legs were trapped and somewhere I could hear a baby crying – my baby – but I couldn’t get to it. Then there was a blinding flash of white light and I was catapulted into consciousness. Always the flash of light.

I blinked and my eyes adjusted to the reality of the honey-gilt room before me. I felt comforted that it had been nothing more than a dream
, even though it still felt like a reality. Goosebumps rippled over my arms as the cooling air sighed on my sweating body. I sat slumped over for a minute, still waiting for the hammering of my heart to subside. It was one of those dreams that stayed with you. I knew them all too well. It had been a while since I’d had a nightmare like that one. It would hang around me like a shroud for the rest of this evening, making me feel uneasy and unsettled no matter how many times I told myself it was just a dream.

I squeezed my shoulders upwards and rolled my head from side to side.
I seemed to have strained something while thrashing about in my dream and my neck had stiffened in response. I was mildly surprised to find that I was still fully dressed. I remembered now that I had only intended to doze a short while away from the harsh glare of the sun. I wasn’t feeling as refreshed as I’d hoped I would. In fact, if anything I was feeling more exhausted now than before I laid down. I pushed myself out of bed and slipped out to the patio area with a blanket around my shoulders. It was beautifully and resplendently warm outside and the blanket was entirely unnecessary as anything other than a comforter. I sat on the bench with my knees up to my chin and thought about what had happened today.

An appalling night
’s sleep last night meant that I had been awake before the morning was out of the starting blocks. In Protaros I had headed straight to an Internet café where I sat for twenty minutes with a drink looking for information on Facebook and then on Friends Reunited until I found what I had been looking for. A quick Google search and I was a step closer to my prize. I had been surprised at how easy it had been really. All that information on thousands of people you hadn’t met laid bare for you to pry into. I felt like a voyeur sneaking a peek at these people from the hidden safety of my Cypriot café and eavesdropping on conversations not intended for me. Knowledge is a heady drug that I craved as much as a flower seeks daylight. Without it, I was suffocating and withering day by day.

I hastily tapped out
an email to Dom explaining what I’d learned so far and where I would be staying for the next couple of weeks. After a brief hesitation I hammered out a few kisses and pressed ‘send’. Armed with an address and a flicker of excitement, I wandered the streets of Protaros until I found the place that I was looking for. I positioned myself in a café over the road where I could keep an eye on the building I sought. I snacked on the chips and souvlaki they brought me but barely tasted it as I watched for some movement or sign of life opposite me. It looked like I was going to have to return later.

Now standing outside the building, which was now teeming with a certain kind of fun seeker, and still groggy from my nightmare riddled sleep, I was nervous in anticipation of what the evening might hold.

“
Forgive me, Mum,” I said to the air as I stepped into the neon-bathed bar. This certainly wasn’t somewhere designed to appeal to the locals of the island. The music was too loud and was blaring out ‘classic’ Brit pop. Oasis was all but drowned out by a group of men with their arms over each other’s shoulders singing along with ‘Wonderwall’ in flat Northern tones. I hovered at the door and fingered the shoulder strap of my bag nervously.

This was usually the kind of place that I avoided when holidaying or working abroad.
I never went into bars like this at home so I certainly didn’t seek them out when I was away. But I was here with a purpose; nothing else would have convinced me to set foot over the threshold.

My eyes scanned the bobbing heads in the darkened bar but no
one stood out. Now that I was here I realised that there was more than a slight possibility that he wouldn’t be here at all and, even if he was, the chance of me recognising him was slim. The air was thick with the scent of spilt beer and cloying aftershave. I manoeuvred my way towards the bar through the throngs of people, my trainers adhering to the lager-lacquered wooden floor. As I tried to squeeze past a man in a Ben Sherman shirt too small for his greed-induced girth, he turned and said “Aye, aye! She’s touching me up!” to much hilarity from the assembled crowd. I managed a weak smile and tried again to get past him. This time he purposely blocked my way.

“
Hey honey! I might not be Fred Flintstone, but I could certainly make your bed rock!” he said with a raised eyebrow and eyes full of mirth and suggestion.

His mates laughed and cheered and while he basked in their admiration I slipped away.

“Tosser!” I muttered under my breath and squeezed through enough people to shield me from the oaf and to get me closer to the heart of the din where people were shouting orders to the bar staff.

I
got to the bar as two over-made-up young women moved away from it clutching their alco-pops. One glanced disapprovingly down at my attire and then away quickly as if she thought that I was the kind of woman who would start a fight. She leaned in closer to her friend who glanced at me sideways from under her false eyelashes. I met her surreptitious glance with a brazen stare of my own as they scuttled away. I wasn’t in the best of moods tonight, possibly because I was way out of my depth and getting tired of treading water. I glanced along at the bar staff. They didn’t look old enough to drink alcohol, never mind serve it.

There were only three of them and they seemed to be overworked. As soon as they handed the change to one person they were already asking the next one what they wanted.
Pint after pint was pulled as I watched. It was surprisingly busy in here for the off season, but it was about as close as you could get to the high season before the schools broke up, so it stood to reason that nearly everyone here was childless or single. A quick glance behind the bar confirmed that this establishment would not be featured in my culinary tour of the island unless Walkers crisps and pickled eggs counted as a Greek delicacy.

Several times I opened my mouth to order a drink and the barman looked past me to
either a young man leaning over me or a young girl who out-cleavaged me. Time to take assertive steps. I put both of my elbows on the bar top and felt something sticky on my arms. I pulled myself up to my full height and fixed my eyes on the nearest barman.

“
Yep?” asked the barman.

“
Keo please.”

“
Bottle or glass.”

“
Bottle.”

“
Sure.”

“
Is Eddie in tonight?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

The tanned boy in front of me cocked his ear at me and I leaned in closer to shout.

“I said, is Eddie here tonight?”

The boy just looked puzzled and shrugged as we exchanged money for beverage.

“
Damn!” Maybe I wasn’t in the right place after all. Deflated, I turned around and walked straight into the chest of a tall, well-built man.

“
Who wants to know?” came a clear strong voice that cut through the music easily without shouting.

I looked into his face.
It wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting. In the photos I’d seen of him, he’d been fresh faced with a pointy chin. This man was altogether rounder and softer looking but there was no doubting that, when I was born, this man had been my mum’s husband. I had found Eddie.