Like everyone in the room, Markos found his eyes continually drawn to Aphroditi. He was disconcerted to see that she was so much the centre of attention when it was Savvas Papacosta who was the proprietor and the man who had put this hotel together. He saw his boss almost fade away beside his wife.
Markos constantly circulated during the reception, keeping his distance from both of them. The only thing Savvas required of him that night was to promote the nightclub.
Markos could not be certain, but from the years he had spent behind the bar he could guess who was likely to form his clientele. They would be the ones who stayed up till all hours, the heavy smokers, the men who had turned down champagne and asked for something stronger, perhaps those on the edge of a conversation, looking about them, bored or restless even. It was not an infallible test, but it was a place to start. He approached these men, introduced himself and could tell immediately from their response whether his antennae were well tuned. Some of his targets were immediately stirred into life, their facial expressions transformed from neutral to excited. More revealingly, they accepted with alacrity when he suggested seeing the club.
He led his potential clients away from the reception and down an internal flight of stairs that took them to a discreet locked door. He opened it with a flourish, leading them into his domain.
The route into this nocturnal underworld made people feel that they had privileged access to a private space. If he had taken them out of the hotel to the more public entrance, they would not have felt the same connection. Markos was careful to give each one of them the impression that they were the only person to be escorted in this way.
After a few minutes or so, during which he described the cabaret artists who were booked to appear and listed some of the vintage whiskies, his guests accepted complimentary membership of the club. Markos was in little doubt that they would be there again on the opening night.
He delivered them back to the reception, which continued in full swing. Sometimes he watched a man being reunited with his wife and registered her pleasure at seeing her husband’s more contented demeanour. It seemed to Markos that women were easily pleased.
Returning from one of his guided tours, Markos glanced out towards the terrace. It was now dark and the sky was dense with stars, all the more visible because of the absence of moonlight. He wandered outside, where the numbers were beginning to dwindle, and looked around him.
He noticed that Aphroditi had moved from her position beneath the floral sculpture and was sitting at a table with an elderly couple. She looked up and seemed to stare directly at him before moving her eyes back to the silver-haired woman. Markos retreated to the air-conditioned reception area. For some reason, he was irritated that he did not even warrant a slight wave or a hint of a smile. Even though the night was cooling, he had felt his temperature rise.
Aphroditi was with her parents. Her mother was dressed in black. Since the day her only son had been killed she had worn no other colour. On this celebratory summer’s night, her mourning weeds seemed all the more heavy and sad and made her look much older than her years. Aphroditi’s father, Trifonas, wore a dark grey suit and pale blue shirt. He was a handsome man, white-haired like his wife, but still full of vigour. He was enjoying being back on his native island and was particularly happy that this great project had reached fruition. The Sunrise was the first hotel investment that Markides Holdings had made, and Trifonas could already sense that it had been one of the wisest decisions he had ever made.
Nowadays, Trifonas Markides developed property from a distance. He had a company based in Nicosia that looked after the day-to-day running of each investment. From his study in their house in Southgate he spent half an hour on the telephone each day. The money had made them very comfortable indeed. In the cold south of England temperatures, they kept the central heating on for most of the year, matching the Cyprus climate inside their home. They had a Jaguar, thick carpets and what Artemis called a ‘char’. Trifonas played golf most days, and on Sundays they drove to the Greek Orthodox church. They were involved with fund-raising for Greek Cypriots who had made their way over to England and needed financial assistance, and occasionally they went to one of the big Cypriot restaurants nearby for the wedding of a child of someone they knew from the church. On the whole, however, although Trifonas socialised at the golf club, Artemis kept herself apart. Life for her had stopped in 1964 and this state of paralysis was her way of being. All the money in Cyprus and Britain could not bring Dimitris Markides back.
Aphroditi knew that she had her father’s approval, but she hoped for her mother’s too.
‘What do you think of it?’ she asked.
‘It’s beautiful, darling. You have done a wonderful job,’ replied Artemis, forcing a smile.
‘You should come and stay here!’ suggested Aphroditi.
Her parents had kept their own apartment in the building that had been given to Aphroditi and Savvas as a wedding gift and they always used it on their rare visits to Cyprus. They almost never went to the Nicosia apartment.
‘We couldn’t do that, dear.’
Aphroditi had known even before the words left her mouth that her mother would refuse. Such an environment would be far too public for her.
A waiter came up to them with a tray of drinks.
‘Hello, Hasan.’
‘Good evening, madam.’
‘It’s gone well tonight, don’t you think?’
‘The guests have all been very impressed,’ the waiter replied with a smile.
Aphroditi took three glasses of champagne and handed one to her mother.
‘No thank you, dear. Something soft, if you don’t mind.’
‘Even tonight, Mother? Just to make a toast?’
Although they only had minimal time together these days, Aphroditi still found herself irritated by her mother. Why could she not lift her mood a little, just for once, on an occasion that meant so much to her daughter?
Even at Aphroditi and Savvas’ wedding, Artemis Markides had sat quietly apart from the celebrations. Dimitris’ death had been a catastrophe for them all, but Aphroditi yearned for its shadow not to cast a pall over this event too. He was dead, but she was still living.
Aphroditi noticed how her mother avoided looking at the waiter. Her mother’s prejudice against Turkish Cypriots upset her, but it was something she avoided mentioning. Aphroditi supported her husband’s way of thinking. The hotel must employ whoever was best for any job, regardless of background.
‘It’s another way to set The Sunrise apart,’ Savvas had explained to his mother-in-law, when she had raised the issue that afternoon. ‘To make it more truly international, we must have a broad mixture of staff. The chef is French, two of the receptionists are English, our banqueting manager is Swiss. In the hair salon we have a Turkish Cypriot … and many of the kitchen staff are too, of course.’
‘But …’ interjected her mother. ‘Waiters? Front of house?’
‘Well, I don’t like to disagree,’ answered Savvas, ‘but we want the best people. And of course the people who will do the job for the money we’re offering. It’s business.’
Savvas saw the world through a prism of profit and loss.
Aphroditi got up from the table.
‘I must see if Savvas needs me,’ she said, making her excuse to walk away.
Something that did not help between Aphroditi and her parents was that the truth had always been kept from her mother. Artemis Markides had been protected from the irrefutable facts about her son, and at times like this, Aphroditi was filled with an urge to tell her everything; to scream out the truth:
‘He killed someone, Mother. Your precious son
killed
a Turkish Cypriot!’
She had lived for almost a decade with these words close to her lips, but they could never be spoken.
There had been a careful cover-up, which was easy to arrange for a man with as much money and influence as Trifonas. Paying someone off to change the story was very straightforward. Markides did not want any suggestion that his son had been killed in retaliation for another murder. A fact such as this would taint the family name for ever.
Aphroditi knew that her brother was not innocent. He had been in the thick of the pointless antagonism between Greeks and Turks that had swelled into hatred after the British had left. Neither side had been entirely happy with the constitution of the republic signed in 1960, but when Makarios had put forward a proposal to amend it, violence had erupted. The blood of a Turk meant the spilling of the blood of a Greek, and so it had gone on. It was an animosity that ran deep in some, and at times it had threatened to destroy everything. It had deprived Aphroditi of her only brother, devastated her mother, torn apart her father’s life, and if things had carried on as in the previous decade, the livelihoods of everyone on the island would have been ruined, whether they were Greek or Turk. She could see no sense in a conflict where there was no winning side.
She stood for a moment looking out towards the sea. It had been her suggestion when the hotel was being designed that the terrace should reach right out on to the beach so that guests could hear the lapping of the water and step barefoot on to the sand. On a night like this, when the sea was still and the stars were bright, they might also see the most magical thing of all: the reflection of a meteor shower.
In the five minutes she allowed herself to stand beneath the canopy of stars, her anger subsided. Frustration with her mother often got the better of her. Artemis Markides was like an empty shell from which any capacity for emotion had crawled away. It had made Aphroditi even more appreciative of her father’s unfailing affection. Since they had moved to England, she had missed him deeply.
When Aphroditi turned round, her parents had gone. Even their glasses had been cleared. She knew that her father would be taking his wife back to their apartment. She hated late nights. The next morning they would be flying back to London.
Markos was standing in the shadows. On this peaceful, star-filled night, in spite of the calm exterior he had on display for the guests, he had been a little anxious. He knew that Christos was in Nicosia meeting up with his fellow revolutionaries.
Suddenly something caught his eye. Against the backdrop of the inky sky, he noticed a pale, translucent statue. It was Aphroditi, motionless and alone. Markos could not decide which weighed more heavily on him that night: concern over Christos, or the vision of Aphroditi like an exquisite marble artefact resurrected from the sands. Both of them gave him a strange sense of unease.
T
HE LAST OF
the revellers left the party at midnight. Less than twelve hours remained before the first guests would arrive with their suitcases.
When Savvas arrived at The Sunrise early the following morning, dozens of people were already clearing, sweeping, dusting and polishing to make everything as perfect as before. Furniture needed to be rearranged. Drinks had been spilled, and debris was littered on the marble floor. The amount of cleaning up reflected the success of the party.
‘Good morning, Kyrie Papacosta.’
‘Good morning, Kyrie Papacosta …’
Savvas heard the words a dozen or more times between the car park and the reception desk.
Members of staff were in no doubt about the standard that was expected in this new hotel. If a surface was shiny, it must be polished so that you could see a reflection of your face. If the napkins were white, they had to be dazzlingly so. Windows must be so clean that they would cease to be seen. The head of housekeeping was tyrannical. Chambermaids had been instructed that unless beds were correctly turned down, they could lose their jobs.
‘Who are our first arrivals, Costas?’ Savvas asked the hotel manager.
‘We have two couples from Geneva, Kyrie Papacosta, and they are coming together. Twenty-six Americans. A group from Germany. Thirty from Sweden. Half a dozen British couples. Some French. A few Italians, and the rest, I believe, are from Athens.’
‘That’s a healthy start. And exactly the right number for now.’
‘Oh – and Frau Bruchmeyer, of course,’ Costas Frangos added. ‘We’re sending a car to collect her from The Paradise Beach later this morning.’
Frau Bruchmeyer had come on holiday to Cyprus the year before and never gone home. That November, her niece had arrived from Berlin with some slightly warmer clothing (a few cashmere cardigans, slacks and a woollen jacket), her jewellery (a piece of which she wore to dinner each night) and some books. The rest of it – her furniture, her family portraits and her furs – was left behind.
‘I don’t need those things,’ she said. ‘I need very little here. Just some money to keep me going.’
Day to day, she had little need for cash, just enough to tip the staff, which she did constantly and generously. Her monthly bill was paid by banker’s draft.
She began each day with a forty-minute swim from the golden sands beneath her room. Early risers, mostly workers in other hotels, would see her taking her supple body through a routine of stretches and exercises. Then they saw her white-capped head moving towards the horizon and back again. Finally, she sat to contemplate the sea.
‘I have swum in every ocean in the world,’ she said, ‘but in none more beautiful than this. Where else would I want to spend the rest of my days?’
No aspect of her life would have been better back in Germany. Here, her laundry was taken care of and her room kept spick and span. She ate like a queen and, just like royalty, never had to shop or cook. There was a constant supply and variety of company, of which she never tired, and she was only alone when she chose to be.
From her balcony across the bay, she had watched the progress of The Sunrise, and had set her heart on taking the penthouse suite. Until that time, The Paradise Beach had seemed comfortable enough – she occupied the best of its rooms – but she could see that the new hotel was going to be in a different league. With the sale of a few diamond rings, she calculated that she had enough in the bank to last her another fifteen years. She imagined this should suffice, even though she had the energy and vigour of someone half her age.