Daughter of the Winds (5 page)

Pru followed him off the bus with unhappy resignation.
She did not want to be sharing a house with another woman. Woman rarely liked Pru. She had experienced a fair amount of animosity from the plainer girls at school. Pru assumed it was because they felt inferior beside her undeniable beauty. More than one of her friends’ boyfriends had made a pass at her over the years. She couldn’t help how she looked. She never encouraged the admiring glances and compliments but the least she could do was be worthy of them. She felt that it was her duty to make the most of her God-given looks and enviable figure. Even by having a child so young, Pru felt she was giving her body the best chance of regaining its elasticity.

Pru licked her lips and pulled her shimmering hair over her shoulders
ready to face the hostility of whichever unfulfilled housewife she had been placed with. The front door was open and Pru found herself face to face with the friendliest looking woman she had ever seen. The lines on her face were soft and gentle and her eyes were lakes of milky green.

“
Howay in, Pet.”

Pru looked at the woman in confusion
.

“
Come in, come in!”

“
Oh. Okay.”

“
Sometimes I forget that I’m not in Newcastle anymore, you’ll ‘ave to forgive an old Geordie woman! He he!”

Without saying a word
Pru followed the older woman through to the back of the house.

“
Mek yerself at home while you’re here. Toilet’s just through there, and this is yer room, pet.”

Pru was ushered into a spacious, homely bedroom on the ground floor
of the house. There was a crocheted patchwork blanket on the bed and Pru let her fingers tease the holes.

Without asking, the woman started to unpack Pru
’s bag, refolding the few items of clothes she’d packed into the top drawer in the mahogany chest of drawers. Stunned and dazed to find herself in this situation, Pru studied the other woman impassively. She was wearing a pale blue housecoat over a brown polyester pleated skirt. Pru was amazed to see that she was wearing tights underneath and they crackled as the skirt and tights rubbed together. In this heat, thought Pru, that was just crazy. But the older generation were inclined to think that bare legs showed, shall we say, a certain lack of morals. Pru’s own mother had accused her of being little more than a trollop for leaving the house showing bare legs protruding from her mini skirt.

It was difficult to place an age on Mrs Fisher.
Fifties? Sixties? All that was certain was that Mrs Fisher was a good deal more mature than Pru in more ways than one. Pru couldn’t see what they could possibly have in common and hoped that the war didn’t last too long or she was likely to be the first casualty of this war to die of boredom. This wasn’t at all what Pru had been expecting. She didn’t like the idea of sharing a house with an old couple any more than she relished the idea of sharing it with a young couple. Tomorrow she would have to get on to the CO.

“
I’ll put the kettle on for a brew while ya freshen up,” smiled Mrs Fisher. “Anything to eat, pet? Mebbe a buttie?”

“
Actually, yes, a biscuit or something?”

“
Coming reet up.”

She closed the door quietly and padded
away leaving Pru alone with thoughts of her balcony in Varosha. She’d give them forty-eight hours to sort themselves out and then be back in her apartment by tea-time. Determined, she stood up and went to find the Geordie woman. She flung open her door and nearly collided with a hot cup of tea. “Prudence, I’m so sorry hinny, but there’s a man here who says he needs to talk to you reet away. There’s been some bad news, pet.”

Chapter five

I stretched out and was reminded that I was
n’t in my own home as my toes hit the wooden footboard at the base of the bed. I lifted my groggy head off the feather pillow and squinted at my watch. There wasn’t enough light to see by but I could hear birdsong close by and knew that a fresh day had begun without me.

Despite my
puffy eyes from the previous night’s breakdown I felt slightly better than usual. I was still tired but not exhausted. I was still emotional but not heart-broken. I was still seeking direction but not lost. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the cracked ceiling. I couldn’t recall any dreams at all. Half thoughts formed in my mind as insubstantial as mist. I tried to follow the gossamer threads of translucent pictures but they wouldn’t lead me to anything tangible.

Most mornings I woke trying t
o free myself from a nightmare, still coated with sweat and balancing on the knife-edge of a panic attack. Images, smells and feelings lingered from my dreams seemingly more real than the Egyptian cotton sheets that cocooned me. The dreams all followed the same format. First I would be running, then I would be trapped and it would be pitch black. Sometimes I’d be in a cave, sometimes underwater, sometimes in a coffin. But always, always, I could hear a baby crying and I couldn’t get to it. Then just as I thought I was going to die, there would be a bright flash of light and I would wake up. But not last night. No dreams.

Today was the start of it all. I wanted to find people who had lived in
Famagusta at the time of the Turkish invasion. Perhaps they would know who my parents were. Perhaps they would know what had happened to them. As I slipped out of my creaking bed I wondered if I would be able to get a trip into Famagusta’s Ghost Town to track down the apartment where I’d been born.

I opened the door of my humble home-from-home and smiled at the view.
It was quite simply perfect. I leant on the doorframe and folded my arms against the chill of the new morning. There was no one between me and the sea. Yes, there were trees and rocks and roads but I felt like I could have reached out and trailed my fingers in the blue water.

People talk about a tranquil sea being like a sheet of glass but to me it looked like the blue satin sheet of a freshly made bed, decadent,
unrumpled and oh, so inviting. It was calling me to stretch in it, lie in it, roll around in it. I could smell the seawater from here, or was I just imagining that? I licked my lips and could taste the saltiness. If it were closer I would have dived into the water then and there, but for now I would have to content myself with paddling in the glossy water with whichever of my senses could get me the closest.

My view down the mount
ain towards the sea was unencumbered by any people or buildings. The usual English suburban morning punctuation of car doors slamming was gloriously absent here. The sky was cloudless but still muted and in reflection the sea was deep blue with a thread of gold running through it. There was freshness to the morning but it still gave the assurance of heat to come. The day held such promise and limitless possibilities.

It took me less than ten minutes to wash and dress for the day.
It’s amazing how different you can feel when you start to do something conducive rather than sit around and mope all day. I pulled on a cream sundress over freshly shaved legs, something I’d done for the first time in weeks, and pulled a thin silk cardigan around my shoulders.

It felt ridiculously self-obsessed to be spending time on self-grooming.
I battled against the feeling that important, life-changing things had happened and vanity had no place in this new world. But then there was that other voice. The one that said, “Have you seen yourself?” and “What will people think?”

I slipped on my gold trimmed flip-flops, the best of a bad bunch at the airport, and admired my freshly painted deep red, almost black, toenails.
I decided against washing my hair this morning and I let it fall past my shoulders in messy voluminous brown waves, having found its natural curl in the damp heat of the night.

I picked up my makeup bag and considered my naked face.
At home I wouldn’t even think about taking the milk in off the doorstep without applying mascara first. My mother-in-law mistook my insecurity for vanity and said, “Get over yerself! Who’s gunna stop their horse ‘n’ cart to look at you?” There was no getting away from the fact that she thought I was shallow. I spent too long in the bathroom preening myself and not enough time checking on my elderly neighbours. It was clear to her that I had my priorities all wrong.

What she didn
’t understand was that I was crippled with self-doubt about my appearance. Getting out of the shower, I would catch sight of myself in the steamed-up mirror, and see the sagging outline of a body past its best. When Dom was out I would wax my top lip, pluck at stray hairs on my chin and shave my bikini line. I was disgusted by the way I looked: skin too pale; hair too dark; breasts too large; feet too big; mouth too wide. It was a battle every day to get myself in a fit state to leave the house. Lately I’d stopped trying. No amount of potions and lotions could change what I was on the inside: a failure.

Squinting into the powder
-covered mirror of my compact, I moved my head from side to side looking at my face, oval section by oval section. Applying makeup now would be inharmonious with my naturally beautiful surroundings. With my middle finger I applied a generous coating of lip-balm on my full lips, the bottom one of which had a tendency to burn when exposed for too long to the blistering sun. The first time we were on holiday together in South Africa, Dom said it was because I pouted too much. And then, as I opened my mouth to protest, he had kissed me firmly, holding on to the back of my head as I struggled until I gave in to him and melted against his body. He was the only one who’d ever been able to poke fun at me and get away with it. I warned him that his charm and dimpled cheeks would only get him so far.

I frowned at my reflection in the small mirror at the light brown eyes glaring back at me with contemp
t. Thoughts of Dom in happier times were bittersweet. Would we ever get back to that place where we would laugh at each other’s jokes and run our hands over each other’s backs as we passed in the kitchen? There was a time when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other but now I couldn’t tolerate the thought of him touching me or seeing my useless, naked body. I ran my hand down over the front of my dress and a spongy, saggy tummy wobbled under my hand. It would take a lot of courage to get myself into a bikini again. Perhaps at my age those days were over.

My tummy had that desperate hollow feeling of hunger but I hesitated before going up to the main house.
Would they even be awake yet? What was the protocol? Did I eat at the house? Was food even included in the price, whatever that may be?

The house still looked asleep as I a
pproached it through the silent, shaded courtyard. I wondered about skirting around it and heading down the main road to go and find somewhere open for breakfast. As soon as that thought came to me, the kitchen doors were flung open and three children spilled out of them, jostling one another. They raced towards me, the young girl reaching me first amid cries from her younger brothers. She was the one who had been having her dress altered yesterday but I didn’t know her name. Her chin length hair was unbrushed and tangled. Her mischievous smile and twinkling eyes gave her an elfish appearance.

“
Yassas
,” she sang.

“
Yasou
,” I replied.

“
Breakfast,” she said in heavily accented English as she took my hand.

It was a strange and slightly uncomfortable sensation to have a small warm hand in my palm but I allowed myself to be led while the other two children yapped around my ankl
es like small, over-excited terriers.

“
Kalimera
, Leni. You sleep good?”

“
Yes thank you, Antheia.” I looked around the kitchen expecting to see the other guests but there were just three of children and me. As if reading my mind Antheia said, “The holiday people eat in the breakfast room.”

“
Oh, I’m sorry. Could you show me where it is and I’ll get out of your way?”

Antheia laughed at this and came and patted my cheek with her pudgy hand.

“You are not holiday people! Sit. Cypriot coffee or Nescafé?” While she made it a question, an answer did not seem to be required.

My
new landlady poured me a thick cup of Cypriot coffee, complete with the coffee dregs from th
e
brik
i
and placed a glass of water by its side. What had George said about me? She must have got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was more of a friend than I was.

“
You are writer, yes? I will teach you about Cyprus. It is beautiful country.”

“
Yes, but I write about food,” I began apologetically. “I’m sorry, I think that I might have misled you. I have some writing to do and also a little… um… personal research while I am here. I only met George yesterday.”

“
I know,” she nodded. “And this will be your home. You will have breakfast every day. If you want dinner you tell me in the morning and I will cook for you. On Sunday you help me cook dinner for my family and I will show you real Cypriot cooking. Yes?”

I couldn
’t help but smile as I didn’t appear to have any choice. “Yes,” I said, “that would be great. Thank you.”

I tucked into the loveliest breakfast ever to have graced my unworthy stomach.
Peaches with Greek yoghurt and honey drizzled over the top, alongside several slices of toasted bread and yet more honey.

“
What you do today?” Antheia asked.

“
I’m not sure, yet. Perhaps hire a car? I’d like to arrange a trip to see the Ghost Town.”

“
Varosha?”

“
Erm… I think it’s called Famagusta,” I ventured.

“
Varosha is part of Famagusta. The place that is now the forbidden zone is called Varosha. There is nothing to see. The buildings fall down. There is nothing there now.”

“
I know, but I would still like to have a look if I can. It fascinates me that no one has lived there since 1974. It’s so mysterious, isn’t it?”

Antheia shrugged and started wiping down the table in front o
f me even though I was still eating.

“
It is no mystery. Turks come, Greeks leave. That’s it. You want dinner today?” She scrubbed fiercely at an imaginary mark on the wood.

It was only subtle, like the shift in wind direction, but I sensed that the atmosphere had changed between us.

“No, thank you. I’ll get something to eat when I’m out, if that’s okay?”

“
Sure.” She shooed the children out of the kitchen and left me alone to finish my sticky breakfast. I drank as much coffee as I could and then picked up my bag and crept away through the back door. It wasn’t easy to put my finger on why the sudden shroud of discomfort had settled over me. It seemed, at least, that Antheia didn’t think much of my plan to get into Varosha. Perhaps I’d been naïve in thinking people would be supportive of my quest.

Replete and gastronomically ecstatic with splendid Cypriot fare
, I put on my sunglasses and strolled round to the front of the house. I felt a little disappointed not to have seen the beautiful little girl from yesterday and wondered whether she was enjoying a lie in on this glorious Saturday morning. Another notable absence was the old woman from the day before. Her chair sat empty but just as unwelcoming.

She was the only person so far who had made me feel like the outsider I surely was.
Perhaps if I explained to her that I was trying hard to reverse that situation? How I so desperately wanted to find somewhere to belong to. I didn’t think it would make much difference to the old woman. She didn’t care about me, and why should she? To her I was another tourist coming to spy on the Cypriots and to make light of their life and their troubles.

Not for the first time since my mother had explained the accident that led us to be in each other
’s lives, I wondered why it meant so much to me to ‘belong’. I was neither British, nor Cypriot. I didn’t know whether I had my biological mother’s eyes or my father’s temperament. I didn’t know whether I had a rich family history of grandparents who fought heroically in the war or was related to farmers who had spent their lives working the stony ground. Was there a family history of madness? A predisposition to cancer? Did diabetes run in my family? Would I ever know and why did it matter so much?

I looked up from my dragging feet and was surprised to find myself in
the town already. The main promenade was already busy with holidaymakers as I approached the gilded beach. I stood in the developing heat and watched as people dragged sun-loungers into position on the lemon sands and applied sun-lotion on each other’s backs. Some were reading books whereas other brave souls were already taking a dip in a sea that had yet to warmed by the summer sun. Small children dug holes in the sand with severe concentration etched on their smooth, plump faces.