Daughter of the Winds (10 page)

The
twelve-week scan showed nothing in my womb at all. I quelled my panic and fixed the sonographer with a stern gaze.

“
I’m sorry. It happens sometimes.” She stroked my arm.

“
What does?” I asked, forcing her to vocalise her doubts.

“
Sometimes the body miscarries without us knowing it,” she sang in a high-pitched, breathy voice you hear women using with pre-schoolers. “I’m afraid you aren’t pregnant.”

I flinched at the words.
“
I
a
m
pregnant.
I
fee
l
pregnant. I know that I am.”

“
It is possible you still have some pregnancy hormones present but there is no foetus, I’m afraid.” She looked resolutely away now as if she could sense that I was going to be one of those awkward patients. “If you could take a seat in the waiting room someone will be out to talk to you in a minute.”

To be fair to her, she did look genuinely upset for me but I still felt she was just bad at her job.
There had to be a baby there. Ther
e
ha
d
to be. I could smell everything around me, I felt sick every morning without fail and my breasts were tender. There was no way I had lost this baby without knowing it.

The matronly lady who took us into a side room explained everything that the sonographer had said but with a harder tone
, as if this was meant to convince me. I asserted my views that I had not had a miscarriage so she made me produce a urine sample for a pregnancy test. She returned within five minutes.

“
You’re still showing a strong pregnancy reading, which is concerning. There is a possibility that this pregnancy is ectopic.”

“
Ectopic?”

“
Yes, it means the foetus is growing outside of the womb.”

“
I know what it means,” I snapped. “What happens now?”

“
I want you to come back in tomorrow so we can monitor hormone levels to see whether the foetus continues to grow or has indeed miscarried.”

Dom and I gripped each other
’s hands with dread. The sickness I felt now had nothing to do with the pregnancy. It was pure, soul-crushing fear.

The following day
’s blood tests showed hormone levels still increasing but not at a level that would be consistent with a healthy pregnancy. Despite their urgings I refused to be admitted to hospital.

I knew then in my heart of hearts that the pregnancy was ectopic
, although I didn’t say it out loud. I’d had some pains in my side that I had assumed were normal pregnancy twinges. I just wanted to enjoy the last day of being pregnant even if nothing was going to come of it. The next day’s scan showed bleeding in my fallopian tube and I was whisked down to surgery where they removed my fallopian tube, my baby and my future.

It was another one of those situations where words don
’t suffice. More than that, I don’t even want to try and describe it. I don’t want to even think about having to sign the consent form that said “sure, take my baby”. I don’t want to open those particular floodgates for fear of being washed away. Don’t make me go there. I just can’t.

When I awoke following the surgery I felt different.
There’s no way of explaining it to someone who hasn’t been pregnant but there is a feeling you get when you are carrying a child. I had felt at ease in the world, like I had finally found my place within it. I felt altogether calmer, like my previous worries had all been put into perspective. Now I just felt empty. Physically and mentally empty.

Dom asked me to stop referring to it as a baby.
He said it was never a viable pregnancy so there was no point attaching a personality to it. That’s when I realised that he could never understand. A woman falls in love with her baby long before a man possibly can. From the moment of conception a woman’s life is already changing but the man doesn’t feel the impact until a long time later. Sometimes not until he feels the baby kick under his hand in his partner’s stomach or, more often, not until he holds that child in his arms.

I turned to Mum but Dom turned to his work. Maybe that was the beginning of the end for us.
Or maybe we would get through this trial and get stronger. Only time would tell. But first, before I could work on our relationship, I had to find out who I was and that quest had brought me to the island of my birth.

I looked around me then and felt sudden
ly exhausted. I motioned to one of the waiters and mouthed, “Bill please.”

I knew what I had to do and I couldn
’t put it off any longer.

Chapter eight

Cyprus,
1974

Pru let out a yelp of surprise as she swung open her front door and came face to round flat face with her landlady who lived downstairs.

“
Kyria
Kostas! You made me jump!”

“
This come for you.” She held a narrow neatly wrapped brown parcel in her hands. She was unsmiling and looked weary standing before Pru. They had a perfectly amicable relationship but it rarely went past the polite acknowledgement stage. Pru didn’t understand how this woman came to own the beautiful apartment block she lived in. Pru had never seen a husband around and Kyria Kostas’ only income seemed to come from Pru and Eddie.

“
Oh, right.” Pru glanced down at it briefly and noted that it was covered with airmail stamps. “Probably something for the baby. Eddie’s parents are going to spoil it and it’s not even born yet.” Pru was already annoyed with her unborn child for taking all of the attention. She had expected a little more reverence in her direction seeing as she was the person carrying and sustaining this baby.

The Greek lady nodded with her eyes half closed and turned to go.

“How’s Helene?” Pru asked. She had never before enquired about the pregnant woman downstairs.  Time spent with Betty and Bernie had made her crave company in a way she hadn’t before. She was feeling in need of some sympathy for what she was going through. Perhaps it would help to talk to another woman.

“
Okay. See?” Mrs Kostas pointed a crooked finger over at the row of trees to her right.

Pru tossed the package behind her into the hallway so it landed with a clunk and closed the door behind her, pulling it until she heard the
‘click’ of the lock catching.

Mrs Kostas was already halfway down the concrete steps by
the time Pru turned back. Her landlady had never been very welcoming. Pru thought that, seeing as they were providing her with a decent income, she could act a little bit more grateful. Under the shade of the nearby Cypress trees Pru could see the blossoming figure of Mrs Kostas’ daughter-in-law, Helene. Pru couldn’t see her face but could see her legs that were set in the rather inelegant position that only a pregnant woman can appreciate. Helene was three weeks further on in her pregnancy than Pru was but the two women had shared little more than glances of the co-afflicted in this heat. From Pru’s position on the steps she was still in the shade and lingered for a moment, bracing herself for entry into the heat-condensed air.

Gripping the warm, metal
handrail Pru lowered herself down the last few steps and headed towards the trees. As she reached Helene, the darker woman raised her head and nodded. “
Yasou.
”

“
Yasou
. How are you?”

Helene shrugged and looked away.

Pru continued, “It’s so hot, isn’t it? I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know whether it’s the baby or the heat keeping me awake.”

“
Is not so hot.”

“
No, well I suppose you’re used to it, but it’s a lot hotter than summer in England so I er....” Pru looked over in the direction that Helene was facing. There was a crowd gathered at the end of the road by the hotel.

“
What’s going on over there? More building work at the hotel? What is there to see? People here would cross the road to watch paint dry. They really need to get a hobby.”

Pru squinted against the sharp glare of the egg yolk sun and shielded her eyes with
her hand to focus on the scene that had so captured Helene’s attention. There was a grand hotel a few hundred yards down the road towards the beach. Pru had been there once when they first arrived here. It had been someone’s twenty-first birthday, she didn’t remember whose now. She only remembered thinking that this was where she wanted to live, not in married quarters like the other carbon copy army wives.

Pru could only make out shapes and shadows from this distance under the scowling sun. Workman
were dancing on the watery haze of heat that was shimmering above the newly lain, sticky black road.

“
They move the bodies,” Helene stated bluntly.

“
What bodies?” asked Pru squinting harder. “You don’t mean dead people?”

“
The bodies. They take them away now. The Turkish bomb come hit hotel. Many bodies.”

“
Don’t be ridiculous! I hardly think... Are you sure? No one told me. They wouldn’t have let me come back here if…” Thoughts whirred around Pru’s head. Death and destruction so close to her beloved home didn’t seem possible. She had only arrived back this morning but she would have thought Eddie would have said something. She would be giving him an earful when he came home tonight.

“
Sit,” commanded Helene, her hazel eyes never leaving the exhibition of devastation in front of her.

Pru,
slightly stunned by the scene in front of her, and by being told what to do by the Greek woman, lowered herself onto the creaking wooden chair. Heat prickled her body and the ripples of realisation coursed through her body. Now she knew what she was looking at, the vista came into sharp focus in front of her unwilling eyes. The shadows she could see hanging from the windows weren’t workmen. They were dead bodies. Her heart hammered in her chest. She’d never seen a dead body before.

Pru wrapped her arms tightly a
round her stomach. Half of the hotel was still standing but the other half had disappeared. There were no jagged lines of crumbling walls, no piles of bricks and mortar, it just looked as if half of the rooms had been scooped away. Pink-papered walls were now open to the elements. A bed sheet was draped in a nearby tree, snagged by dry branches as it attempted to flee from the horror. A man’s body hung upside-down from one of the lower floors. His body was naked, either blown from his clothes by the impact or wrenched from his innocent slumber. He was European-looking. Blond hair hung limply from his immobile head. A British flag still crowned the hotel but looked impotent rather than majestic.

“
I didn’t know the fighting had been so close. We’ve been staying up near the base. I only got back this morning,” Pru whispered. “I mean, I hadn’t heard. I thought it was miles away. No one said anything. When did it happen?”

“
We see no soldiers. The planes they come from many miles. They bomb army shop too.”

“
The NAAFI?”

“
Yes. Planes come round and round.”

“
But I was on my way there. I was going to cook a nice meal for Eddie. I… I know the people who work there.”

The other woman exhaled slowly and rubbed the side of her c
urved stomach.

The only two places Pru ever shopped for food and household essentials were the NAAFI and the little shop by the side of the road run by a Greek woman and her daughter
, Anemone, who sold the most delicious fruit. It was unfathomable to Pru that parts of her day-to-day life were being affected by the war. Luckily it had been all over so quickly and a ceasefire had been hastily agreed. She wondered briefly about her little fruit shop. The woman and her daughter were probably safe. They lived in one of the villages in the hills and brought their fruit down to Famagusta by cart every day. She didn’t even know the woman’s name but she was quite taken with the little girl.

Would they be back by the side of the road today in their makeshift hut that looked more like a bus-shelter than a shop? Pru had been planning on making a lemon meringue pie today. It didn’t look likely now.

The two pregnant women sat in s
ilence as the sun continued ascending the cloudless blue sky to its zenith. Mrs Kostas wordlessly appeared, bringing the pregnant women cool water and then disappeared again. Minutes later she was back with a salad and a bowl filled with thickly cut bread. None of the women spoke as the bodies were removed from the hotel and driven away. The food stood untouched. Mrs Kostas crossed herself and shuffled back inside.

Silence pressed down upon Pru until at last Helene broke the quietude, her voice croaky through either emotion or lack of use.

“The planes come. Early in morning. The childrens were on the roof when planes come from sea. They think this is very good, yes? But the planes, they go ‘bang, bang, bang’. The childrens is okay, but they lucky. Next time maybe not so lucky. They go swim in the sea and come back with the... errr, the bang, bang, bang?” She held her fingers apart a little to show the size of the object she was referring to.

“
Bullets,” Pru answered. “Or shells, I suppose.”

“
Bullets,” repeated Helene slowly, rolling the word over her tongue. “My husband, he is gone.”

“
Jesus! Dead?”

“
I not know. He with father in Kantara mountains. He is not come for me. Big fighting in mountains. The Turkish planes big boom-boom bullets on mountains.”

“
Dropping bombs?” Pru suggested.

“Yes. The trees on fire. My husband he help the National Guards. I pray and I pray.” Helene clasped her hands in front of her chest to emphasise the point.

“
Well, it’s all over now, isn’t it? They’ll work everything out, and we can get on with our lives. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. It was quite irresponsible of him to swan off when you’re about to have a baby. I wouldn’t have let Eddie do it.”

Helene snorted.
“The fighting still not stop in mountains.”

“
Really? Can’t anybody do what they’re told in this country?”

“Men wait for this day. Five years, ten years. They hide guns in mountains. Greek people and Turkish they very different. You English think we are same. We no same. In North the Turks beat my grandfather with guns and shoot his dog. He lucky. In other place all men dead.” Helene looked back towards the hotel.

Pru studied Helene
’s profile. There appeared to be a veil of tears over those amber brown eyes but she was not letting them go. There was strength in the way she held her head and the way her strong chin jutted forward that Pru admired.

“
Well. Must be off. I’m sure you’ll see that there’ll be no more fighting now.”

Helene gasped and grabbed Pru
’s arm.

“
Look, I’m sorry that people are dying but it really has nothing to do with me!” Pru tried to pull away.

“
Arrgghh! Baby.” Helene bared her teeth and emitted a guttural sound.

“
What? No. Just a false alarm. I had one myself, only the other day in fact. That really is hurting me you know. Could you just–”

Pru looked down to the floor as the amniotic fluid spread over the cement floor.
No longer noticing the nails digging into her arm, Pru instinctively lifted her feet in disgust.

“
Oh, shit!”

“
The pains start in my bed last night but then stop. Aaaaaarrrrrrrhhhhhh!”

“
Can you walk?”

Helene nodded with her eyes closed.

“Then let’s get you inside.”

Pru helped Helene to her feet but seconds later the Greek woman was crouched over and grunting.

“That’s it. It’s okay. It’ll pass. Shallow breaths now,” soothed Pru and then, louder, “Kyria Kostas? Kyria Kostas!”

The older woman appeared at the doorway wiping her hands on her apron.
In a swiftness not usually associated with a large woman of such advancing years she was instantaneously at the other side of Helene gabbling in Greek.

“
Okay then, I’ll leave you to it. You know I’m just upstairs if you need me. Not that I can be of any help, I’m sure.”

Helene linked her arm through Pru
’s and leant her considerable weight on her, baring her teeth in pain.

“
Oh! Okay, um… I’ll help you into the house and then I really should go.”

They got Helene into the house and onto the sofa where Mrs Kostas crouched by her side and questioned her in Greek.
Satisfied, she stood and beckoned to Pru.

“
Here!” she barked.

Pru took up position on the floor and Helene took her hand while Mrs Kostas went into a back room.
Another contraction shook Helene and her whole body went rigid, the veins on her neck bulging with the intensity of the pain that coursed through her. She gripped Pru’s hand and Pru squeezed back.

Between them, Pru and Mrs Kostas placed sheets under and over Helene.
In turn, each woman washed their hands in hot, soapy water and put on a clean apron fresh from the basket of washing lying on the kitchen table. Pru followed Mrs Kostas in a trance-like state and then stopped suddenly.

“
Wait. What are you doing? Shouldn’t we get her to a hospital? You are not suggesting she does this here, are you?”

“
Eh?”