Daughter of the Winds (23 page)

I was buzzing with equal quantities of excitement and trepidation. I took a deep breath to steady myself and to arrest my urge to sprint across the road. It would be all too easy to make a mistake now. I remained immobile holding onto the wall a moment or two longer while I steadied myself and looked about me.

These were the streets where Mum and Eddie had walked as a newly married couple in love.
This was where my other mother, Helene, had lived and died. I’m not sure what emotion I expected to feel but it certainly wasn’t this. I felt elated. I’d made it, I’d found the place. But now what did I do? I’d not really thought any further than the need to get into Varosha unnoticed. My concerns for Anna had vanished now and there was no way I was going back to Famagusta to find Stefanos. This was where I was meant to be. I drummed my fingers on the wall, considering my next move. Instinct had brought me this far and it seemed churlish to stop listening to it now.

I pushed myself away from t
he wall, noting the white flakes of paint clinging to my sweating palms, and stepped boldly into the weakening sunshine. The hairs on my arms rippled even though there was no breeze. There were clouds in the sky but they were skirting around the sun for now and the rays were still warm. I didn’t know exactly where the old flat was so I picked my way carefully to my left down the street, touching everything I could: the leaves on the overgrown bushes, the low lying walls, the miniature dunes of sand which had gusted up against the sides of the houses. Lizards stuck to the sides of sun-warmed homes which would still be throwing out warmth even as the sun set. Untrusting of this anachronistic outsider they darted away as I drew near.

I was trying to conjure up the image in my head of the map that Eddie had drawn for me.
I had stared and stared at it last night and this morning, but even so, it was difficult to equate these perishing edifices with the neat blue biro lines drawn in Eddie’s hand.

There was a pretty
building on my left that showed the ravage of almost four lonely decades of sun and rain but still held an aged, ragged beauty. Round balconies of black wrought iron railings stood before tall doors and windows. On the ground floor window boxes held dried brown offerings, which would have obscured the view if anyone had been looking. I gazed at it for a long time. I was as sure as I could be that this wasn’t Mum’s old flat although, I confess, I’m not entirely sure I’d recognise Mum’s apartment if it fell on me. Now I was here I wanted to look around a bit more. The hotel had been an impersonal space and I itched to see someone’s home from all those years ago.

“
Just five minutes,” I told myself.

It was difficult to find the path that led to it but I picked my way through the weeds and up the cracked
, bowing steps. As I stood on the top step it crumbled beneath me with all the solidity of a meringue. It was enough to make me stumble and grab at the rutted railings but otherwise I was unharmed. I found my right hand covering my heart, as if that would help stop the hammering in my chest.

There is an eeriness about knowing that you are the first person to set foot in a pla
ce for many years. I could feel it like an imprint of a previous life. I fancied that the inhabitants were just round the corner, out of reach of my outstretched hands, and their voices a little too quiet to hear.

The first door that I tried was unlocked.
Was I surprised by that? It seemed amiss by the previous inhabitants to go out and leave their home unprotected, but then, the kind of things that they needed protection against were unlikely to be stopped by a standard house lock.

Even though I knew that no
one was in there, it felt like I was intruding and I almost knocked before easing the door open as quietly as I could and tip-toeing into the stale and time-frozen room. I expected to see a mound of unread mail and flyers in a heap on the floor as often happens in a house that has lain uninhabited. But I shook my head, there was nobody to deliver the mail and takeaway menus here. No postman would be traipsing up to the door with letters bundled by a red elastic band.

I absent-mindedly wondered if there was an office somewhere holding onto the mail for when the people of
Varosha returned. Had their mail been redirected? Of course, having a mail service wouldn’t have been a priority in Famagusta during the invasion. I mused that it would be a priority in England. There is something so innately British about the Royal Mail and letters. I would still be “Tsk-ing” if my mail wasn’t delivered by mid-morning even in the middle of a war. Some things are just the British way.

My feet padded into what looked like the living room.
I looked down, expecting to see carpet, but the cushioning under foot was forty years of dust. The imprint of my footsteps could be seen clearly behind me, complete with the wavy lines of the tread from the underside of my shoe. There was an oval table, with one side folded down, pushed against a wall with four chairs arcing round it. Three of the chairs were pushed out from the table around the open sides but one was pushed firmly into place.

Two coffee cups and an old coffee pot sat on one side of the table next to a sepia coloured newspaper.
Two small glasses with pink and orange flowers and two forks sat flanking two empty white plates on the other side of the table. The set-up suggested this was the home of a family of four people with two young children.

The fact that the breakfast things were still laid out suggested t
hese people had been in a hurry. Perhaps they stayed as long as they could, telling each other that it would never happen, they would never leave their home. It wouldn’t come to that. They all sat down to breakfast together and enjoyed a cup of coffee, pretending all was normal until... Until what? They heard tanks? Voices? Gunfire? Perhaps they left at the urgings of their neighbours. Perhaps they were dragged from their home.

The other side of the room held two hard-looking sofas facing a low oblong coffee table.
There was more wood than padding in the seats and the rough orange-brown fabric had bobbled with age. There were no cushions to soften the effect of the austere furniture. On the wall there was a painting of a lioness and cubs lying supine on a dark green background. The painting was at a slight angle and I couldn’t resist straightening it a little. My fingers came away black with dust and I wiped them on my shorts.

I walked through a
doorless archway into the kitchen. There was no glass in the windows and the shutters were wide open. Where a back door once was, there was nothing but air. This room had taken a lot of the battering from the elements. One wall had been once covered with framed photographs, but now some lay on the floor, faces smiling up through the shattered glass pinned down by splintered wooden frames.

I picked up one of the pictures and its frame came apart in my hand.
I let the dark wood fall to the floor but held firmly onto the photo. I turned it over to see illegible angular Greek writing on the back. The snapshot showed an angelic little girl of about five years old on the shoulders of a muscly dark man with an age-masking beard. Her hair was loose in rat-tails around her shoulders. And she was displaying two cavernous holes where her front teeth should have been. The camera had caught her in the middle of a shriek of glee.

The man, her father I assumed, was holding her knees and she was gripping the sides of his head.
The joy on their faces radiated from the picture and filled the little kitchen with sunshine.

“
And where are you now?” I asked the picture out loud. The child would be older than me, perhaps with children, perhaps even grandchildren. Maybe she now carries children on her own shoulders. Does she remember this picture? Does she long for her childhood home? Did they get out of Famagusta safely?

I turned then to take in the kitchen and frowned.
It wasn’t only the wind and the rain that had been through this room. I could now see that that all of the drawers and cupboards were open and everything had been taken. Green squares on white walls showed where cupboards had been removed from above the sink. I puzzled over why the inhabitants would have taken their cupboards with them and then I saw the green glass beer bottles on the side. There was no doubt that someone had been in here since the Greek family had fled.

I placed the photograph in the back pocket of my shorts
– I don’t know why – and headed towards the stairs. Nervously sticking to the outside of the steps, where I hoped they would be more stable, I slowly picked my way up to the landing using the ornate bannister as support. The style seemed more French than Greek.

At the bedrooms I noticed t
he doors were missing here too but I didn’t step over the threshold. The first room came alive as cockroaches scuttled into the corners and I shrank backwards instinctively. There were two stripped beds in the centre of the room. A filthy blanket and pillow were on one of the beds. On the floor were more beer bottles, some teaspoons and aluminium foil. Drug users.

Pink curtains danced around the
floor-to-ceiling windows with the deftness of ballerinas as the breeze picked up outside. Their movements caused me to feel uneasy and I went back towards the stairs, unable to stay here any longer now I knew what had been going on in the child’s bedroom. I had expected everything to be frozen in time, a snapshot of perfect 1970s’ family life. Instead, I had seen that nothing is sacred. These houses had been looted, used and destroyed. Nature wasn’t the biggest enemy of this town. Man was. I snorted at my own naivety, thinking that anyone respected the lives of the previous inhabitants here.

The day had lost none of its warmth but it was mercifully overcast now
as I rushed back into the open air. The clouds had sneaked up on the sun and smothered it. It felt like the spotlight had been turned off at last and I was free to explore the Ghost Town in anonymity.

I closed the door carefully behind me
, even though there was no one there to complain if I left it ajar. I could almost hear my mum’s voice shouting, “Were you born in a barn?” Some habits die hard. From my vantage point at the top of the steps I looked across the street and imagined the neighbours of this family. Did they know Mum and Eddie? Did they exchange pleasantries on a morning or did they pass by on the street, too caught up in their own lives to be interested in the English woman and her army husband?

The light wind stirred up sand, litter and memories, spinning them in the air indiscriminately.
I sucked in the air which was both fresh and oppressive. No food smells pervaded the air from houses or cafés. There was no lingering odour from cars and motorbikes thickening the air. There were no well-heeled ladies sweeping by leaving a wake of perfume and hairspray. And yet, although the air was untainted, there was something unbearably heavy in the ether. Hints of war and hatred still lingered on street corners and loitered in the abandoned buildings. Menace and slyness beckoned you round corners and into deserted alleyways.

The end of the pitted road opened up into a larger
square which contained a few shops and two identical apartment blocks, two storeys high, each housing four families by the looks of it. I carefully descended the steps, taking care to walk on the edges to avoid the cratered concrete blocks. I was about to turn and head back up the street to explore the top end when it loomed at me. The rest of the world dropped away for a minute as I saw with unwavering clarity the apartment block where I had been born. It looked at me expectantly like it was thinking, “It’s about time.”

Chapter twenty

Cyprus,
1974

Pru swayed in the inky water. She opened her arms wide and threw her face up to the purple sky. This was her last goodbye to the world. She looked at the stars blinking at her. Her father had taught her the names of the stars and the constellations. She turned her head slightly and spotted the Plough, the Great Bear and acknowledged the orange glow of Mars. She wondered if Dad was up there somewhere, watching her. Wasn’t that what some people thought happened to you when you died? If it was true, she’d be seeing him again soon enough. And what of her baby? What happened to those who died before even taking their first breath? Where does God stand on what constitutes a life, she wondered. At conception? When its heart starts beating? Or when it takes its first gulp of air in its mother’s arms? It was too late to be considering theology now. She’d either see her baby boy in the afterlife or she wouldn’t. There was certainly no chance of seeing him again in this world. As far as she could see, there was only one option open to her now.

She nodded to
the Seven Sisters, spotted the Milky Way and then pinned her sights on the scimitar moon. She would walk to her death while fixing her gaze upon that glimmer of light. A silver chink in the darkness that would deliver her from perpetual grief. She walked forwards, her feet finding cold rippled sand under her toes. There were no stones to impede her progress on the welcome mat spread before her.

A flash of intense golden light illuminated the beach and coloured the air orange.
Pru felt the explosion rather than heard it and was thrown forward into the water. Shock and fatigue rendered her arms unable to hold her up and her face plunged into the salty liquid. Coughing she remerged from the shallow water wiping the strands of wet hair from her face. She turned with terror as a percussion of explosions boomed through the clear night and stung her ears. Pru was frozen to the spot and unable to do anything but kneel in the water and sway with the tide.

Her pulse was pounding in her ears like the aftershocks of an earthquake. She couldn
’t hear anything except a ringing like the distant peels of cathedral bells. She watched as people came running out of the taverna and looked towards the throbbing glow in the distance. They didn’t see Pru sitting on her heels up to her chin in the water, nor would they have cared if they did. Two of the younger men set off at a sprint up the beach and Pru dragged herself out of the water to do the same. The sea didn’t want to give up its prize so easily and it pulled on her hospital gown, wrapping it round its watery fingers and yanking her into the deep. She struggled to her feet but fell sideways with a splash and felt the stitches on her stomach give way.

Pru fumbled with the tie on the gown at her neck and ripped the blue material off her battered body.
Naked, she pushed herself to her feet and looked up the beach towards the orange glow in the sky and the fast moving would-be heroes. She was searching her mind, trying to get her bearings, so that she could work out exactly which building had been hit. She kept coming back to the same answer but didn’t want it to be true.

“
The baby,” she whispered.

Rivulets of liquid ran cold from her hair over her bare body.
Pru started wading back to the dry sand but her progress was slow and cumbersome. She reached the tide-line and collapsed with a muffled thud on to her front. The cool sand clung to her wet body and scratched at her raw skin. It took a Herculean effort to get herself into a standing position and she staggered to the discarded housecoat. At first she carried it by her side unencumbered by embarrassment at her naked body. She only realised that she was cold when her teeth started to chatter. It was then that Pru struggled into its limp arms and closed it around her, thankful for its protection once more.

“
Not the baby. Not the baby,” she kept murmuring to herself over and over again.

She stumbled and
almost fell to the sand again. Her legs were too weak to carry her any further but she could see where the bomb had hit. Pru sank to her knees in dismay. Through heavy lidded eyes she expected to see fire crews and ambulances but eerily, few people were around. The apartment where she had been sitting earlier that night was now a singed, hollow husk. A shell had passed straight through the building leaving a hole right through its heart. The men she had seen jog up the beach were standing by a group of older men and, some feet in front of them on the ground, there was a huddle of bodies covered in dirty cloths. The smell of burning thickened the air even though nothing appeared to be alight anymore. Pru closed her eyes as tears formed around her eyelashes, stinging her raw face.

The men had gone by the time Pru opened her eyes again.
Some time had passed but she couldn’t tell how much. The bodies were still there lying in the street where they had been dragged. Propelled by the need to look at them, to see whether it really was who she feared, she pushed herself upright. Pru willed her feet up the slight incline to where the bodies lay under the trees.

Helene
’s profile was easily recognisable under the cover. Her black wavy hair spilled out from its cotton tomb and Pru suddenly retched without warning. The pain of her empty stomach did little to slow down the reflex action of her muscles convulsing and causing her to heave. Warm water splattered her toes and she hunched over the puddle of vomit percolating the dusty ground.

When she was spent, Pru staggered to one side and rolled onto her back. She gingerly straightened out her legs
, concentrating on slowing down her breathing to stop her stomach from trying to eject everything it had ever had in it. Every inch of her limbs ached and screamed at her. The nausea was slackening its hold on her now and the tears started to trickle down her face. She wasn’t sure what she was crying for; there was no particular thought associated with the weeping. They needed no urging to spring forth from her eyes and she was soaked in her unnamed grief within minutes.

Pru wanted to experience the numb feeling that she
’d harboured earlier. Anything would be better than this desperate feeling lying heavy on her chest. She was struck by the futility of life. Her baby had died but
she
, Pru, had lived. Helene’s baby had been born safely but then Helene had died. In the depths of her self-pity, Pru felt that Helene was the lucky one as she did not have to wake up in the morning knowing that her baby was dead. She had been spared that gut-wrenching knowledge that she had been unable to protect her only child. Pru wished that she had stayed with Helene and her mother, then all of this pain would be over for her. She too would have been lying beneath a white sheet, stripped of grief and pain.

Again, Pru wondered at the eerie silence of the streets surrounding her and sat upright.
This was normally a busy area and if people weren’t rushing to some place, they were sitting out under the stars, telling stories and drinking ouzo. She snorted to herself. “They knew,” she thought. “They knew another attack was coming and they’ve already left the area, leaving the Kostas to fend for themselves. How
could
they?”

Once more the sea invited her to sleep in its clutches for eternity and she
steeled herself to make the walk back down to the seafront. The sea promised peace, a release from the pain. Its soothing whispers told her it understood what she was experiencing and didn’t blame her for ending her life. It knew she had done all she could and no longer had anything to live for. The Turkish soldiers had taken away her future and that of the Kostas and there was nothing more she could do here.

The line between the sky and the sea was becoming visible again as somewhere over the horizon the sun was starting to make an appearance.
Black was starting to give way to purple as the night began to lose her dominance.

“
Now or never,” Pru thought.

In a trance-like state
, Pru stood up, trying her best not to notice the pain flowing through body as readily as blood through her veins. “It won’t be hurting for much longer,” she told herself. Standing by the shell of her former house, Pru afforded a last glance backwards and fancied she heard a soft cry from the debris. Sighing she turned and started to walk towards the sand.

Her steps faltered, she wasn
’t getting any strength to her muscles and she was finding it increasingly difficult to propel herself forward. At this rate it would be dawn before she reached the sea.

“
Wha
t
wa
s
that noise?” For a moment Pru contemplated whether it was the weaker part of her mind playing tricks on her or something more compelling. She no longer felt in control of her body or her mind. It was as if the part of her that was essentially Pru was shrinking and, if she didn’t do something decisive now, she would be lost forever.

She stared at the rubble but no further sound came, and yet, she had the feeling that she should retrace her steps and investigate.

“
God, tell me what I should do. I am so tired” she whispered.

She strained her ears but
couldn’t hear anything over the inviting shushing of the waves like a mother soothing a fretful child. In spite of her resolve to receive the embrace of the sea, another noise had Pru starting back towards the building.

“
Hello? Is anyone there?”

She couldn
’t make out anything from the gloom and chaos that greeted her at the hole in the wall. An acrid smell seized her nostrils and she wrinkled her face against the unpleasant smell.

“
Hello?” she asked again softly, feeling slightly scared by her own voice echoing back to her to amplify her intrusion.

A shrill bleat from the middle of the room alerted Pru to something still living amongst the stones
and dust. And again, that same noise.

“
Oh my God! The baby!” Abandoning any pain and doubts she had, Pru stumbled in the darkness towards the sound and listened again. This time the cries were more insistent. She pulled aside the table and found a basinet lying on its side. Inside its cushioned shell was a pink pearl. A baby girl.

Pru had trouble getting her hands underneath the squirming mass and it took a couple of attempts to ease the baby out of the confines of her wicker bomb-shelter.
She clutched the baby to her chest, terrified of dropping the priceless package, and made her way out of the building, more carefully this time, fearful of tripping or the building collapsing in its entirety around her. By now the baby’s crying was more insistent even though it wasn’t very loud.

“
Shhhhhh. Shhhhhhh. Are you hurt? Where does it hurt, baby?”

She rushed round to the front of the building ignoring
the shrouded bodies and hurried to where the street was lit so she could see the baby better. Falling to her knees she placed the swaddled baby on the floor and unwrapped the blanket. She ran her hands over the baby girl’s smooth arms and bucking legs but could find no marks or injuries.

“
Shhhhhh. You’re okay now, you’re okay.”

Pru clasped the baby tightly and rocked her but the crying didn
’t stop. Her little rosebud mouth opened and closed at Pru’s breast.

“
Are you hungry, baby girl? But I haven’t got anything for you.”

Looking around her, Pru could see no alt
ernative. She needed to get Helene’s baby to a hospital, but until then, Pru would have to feed her herself. She tentatively loosened her coat and let it slip down to expose her left breast still full of the milk that should have been sustaining her own son. Instinctively the baby searched for her nipple, latched on and began to suck. In a sensation that was both painful and euphoric, Pru allowed the baby to feed from her as she looked on in wonder.

Pru didn
’t know how long she sat there cradling the baby at her bosom before she heard the rumbling of the truck and saw the headlights coming up Lakira Street. She glanced over her shoulder at the oncoming vehicle and assumed it had come to take away the bodies of Helene and her mother. She wrapped the coat around her and the baby, tucking in the blanket to preserve her dignity. The truck stopped beside her, and she was about to point to where the bodies lay when an abrupt yelp took her by surprise.

“
Oh sweet Jesus! Pru!” Marjorie was on the floor beside her with her arm around her shoulders. “Are you okay? I can’t believe you did this all on your own. Someone help me here!”

Strong arms hoisted her to her feet but she kept both of hers around the suckling baby.

“I’m fine Marjorie, really.”

Pru could hear murmurs coming from inside the truck and realised she must look quite a sight.

“I knew I should have stayed with you. Were you in the building when it was hit? Sweet Jesus. You two are lucky to be alive!”

“
Yes,” whispered Pru stroking the baby’s cheek with the side of her thumb. “It’s a miracle. We saved each other’s lives.”

Pru felt a blanket being draped around her shoulders and someone helping her up into the truck.