Daughter of the Winds (2 page)

“
Sounds great. Can I take a look?” I asked, eagerly sitting forward in my chair.

“
Sure. I can drive you up there in half an hour, if you like?”

“
Oh gosh, no. No. There’s really no need.” I shook my head smiling at his hospitality. “You’ve already been far too kind. If you could write down the address for me I’ll get a taxi up there.”

“
Of course. No problem.”

“
Thank you. And one more thing, George?”

“
Yes?”

“
The bill.”

George waved his hand dismissively
“Pfft!”

“
No George, seriously, I must pay you.”

“
I will add it onto your bill when you come back tomorrow night. You look like an honest woman. This way I make sure that you come back for the mezze!” He walked away laughing to himself and I smiled at his disappearing back.

George was one of those
likeable
people. Even when you didn’t want to talk, they would always make you smile whether you wanted to or not. I had come here expecting to be fully anti-social but I had suddenly found myself agreeing to come back for dinner the following night. I could never resist a good meal.

Chapter two

Cyprus,
1974

“But
why
do I have to go?” whined Pru, jutting her chin out and balling her fists up at her side.

“
C’mon, Sweetheart, we’ve been through this. It isn’t safe for you here. There could be fighting in the streets of Famagusta any day now. Think of the baby.”

“
Think of the baby?
Think of the baby!
I do nothing
but
think of the bloody baby! How about we think of
me
for a change, Eddie? I’m eight months pregnant in a foreign country with no family and no friends. I don’t want to leave our home to go and stay God-knows-where with God-knows-who.”

“
Right.” Eddie sighed, bowing his blond head. “And when you’ve come to your senses, the buses will be picking people up from noon. Our pick up point is the corner of our road and
Jules Verne
. And remember, it’s one
small
bag per family. I’ll see you after work.”

Eddie turned on his heels
, avoiding Pru’s glare. He hated arguing but sometimes there was just no getting through to her.

“
Screw you, Eddie!” shrieked Pru.

“
That’s what got you into this mess in the first place,” he muttered as he stalked out of the flat, car keys jingling in his hand.

“
Bastard!” screamed Pru, looking around frantically for something to throw, but her husband of five months had already disappeared down the stairs and out into the street below. The sound of her voice lingered in the sparsely decorated room until it gave way to silence.

             
The young woman sighed and flung herself into the orange armchair by the open balcony doors. This wasn’t what she’d imagined her life would be when she left Bedford on a grey February day to go to Cyprus with her handsome army husband. The sun had been a welcome change but she was having trouble adjusting to the food and the lifestyle. For weeks she had persisted with making the same food Mam used to make. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, egg and bacon flan, steak and kidney pudding, but nothing turned out like it should. Pru reached out to the side-board and grabbed her favourite 8-track. There was a moment of fumbling and then
Tubular Bells
filled the tiny room.

             
She let out a huge sigh as the melodic tune lifted her spirits. If it wasn’t for the interminable heat she could almost imagine that she was back in her bedroom in England listening to music on her headphones. She liked her apartment. It was one of the only things she
did
like in Cyprus. There was a small balcony from which you could just spot the sea through the gap between the grand hotels. They were quite close to the famous Argo Hotel where, rumour had it, Raquel Welch was staying at this very moment. It pleased Pru to think of herself as a neighbour to the great and the good. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor stayed there sometimes too. Yes, thought Pru, this was definitely the right neighbourhood for her.

             
Pru counted herself lucky to have been able to secure this apartment. They’d managed to negotiate the rent down because of that God-awful stench that hung heavy in the streets. According to the boy across the road, it was due to a pig’s head that had fallen off a truck. When the local council had come to investigate they simply kicked the head further into the bamboo.

The smell had
long gone now, even though the locals were still talking about it. The ants had probably stripped the meat to bone anyway. They were as big as bullets and, as far as Pru was concerned, twice as deadly. She often woke up to find they’d eaten the gusset off her knickers in the laundry. Eddie once woke up to find them covering his feet like a moving blanket of black sequins. She hated them passionately, but not as much as she hated the scuttling cockroaches. Disgusting armoured creatures, she squealed every time she saw one. Pru was meticulous in her cleaning of the flat and her extermination of the strange Cypriot insects.

Now that the pig head smell had gone
, Pru could inhale the scent of the orange blossom and jasmine. Most Cypriots seemed to favour geraniums but Pru couldn’t stand the overpowering smell. She missed English smells like freshly mown grass and Dad’s greenhouse full of tomatoes, the smell of a Victoria sponge baking in the oven and of Pear’s soap. She could buy some of these things from the NAAFI but the aroma wasn’t quite the same after it had bounced off the tiled walls and floors.

Pru
didn’t believe for a single minute that they were in any danger here. How could they be? This was where Elizabeth Taylor holidayed. Pru had heard that there were problems between the Greeks and Turks on the island but she had never seen any outward hostility between the two. She and Eddie often headed into Famagusta’s old town to eat where it was cheaper. The Turks ran most of the restaurants there but they were never anything but polite to the interlopers.

More than anything though,
the main feeling Pru was experiencing was annoyance. She didn’t see why she should be moving out of her apartment when the fight had nothing to do with her. And how about the rent? Would the army be reimbursing them for the time they would be paying for their apartment but not actually living there? She didn’t think so.

“
Why now?” she moaned. “Why wait until I’m eight months pregnant before you invade? Selfish bastards!”

She pushed herself out of the chair with a sigh and headed towards the bedroom to pack
‘one small bag’.

Pru
’s idea of ‘small’ appeared to be larger than most people’s and she could see several people looking unkindly at the case by her side. She sat on the wall in the shade and waited for the bus to come and evacuate them. In the midday heat, Pru’s delicate skin could burn in ten minutes and her nose blister and peel. Hot weather didn’t suit Pru. Sure, she liked the sunshine, the sea and the evenings warm enough to sit out in, but the summer sun was fierce and aggressive here. Even in the shade, the heat still made its mark on her and Pru’s chest throbbed with the red rash of prickly heat. Pru was always relieved to watch the sun give up and slip soundlessly into the sea. Not that it gave as much respite as it should. Back home the arrival of summer would be greeted by the removal of one heavy blanket from the bed. No longer any need for warming pans wrapped in tea-towels under the sheets. Windows would occasionally be opened during the day but always closed by night time.

In Cyprus, however, the
nocturnal heat danced around semi-naked bodies while the windows and doors hung open in the futile hope of catching a winsome breeze. There was no expectation of intimacy between Pru and her husband. The last thing she wanted was to feel another hot and clammy body against hers. It surprised her to find that the woman who lived downstairs was pregnant. How anyone managed to conceive in this heat was beyond Pru’s comprehension. She was surprised the population hadn’t died out years ago.

Discordant yapping alerted Pru to the fact that the l
ocal children were arriving home from school already. Pru wondered how on earth they were meant to get a decent education if they did such short days at school here. She was going to have to talk to Eddie about where they were going to educate their child. Eddie had never cared much for school but Pru had done well in her O-levels and had been studying for her A-levels when she had been forced to leave home, drop out of college and get a job. She’d dreamt of going to Art College to study Fine Art. But that was all behind her now. Pru ground her teeth in irritation at the thought. She wasn’t sure who she blamed most; her Mum, Eddie or the baby. She did a quick calculation in her head and realised with horror she’d be well into her thirties by the time she got her life back. What fun could she possibly have then?

The smell of the fumes from the traffic turned her stomach and she was just ab
out to head back to the apartment when a small white bus slowed down in front of her and wound down the window. The wheel arches were peppered with rust and the exhaust pipe was belching out thick black clouds. Disgusted by the thought that this was to be her lift, she reluctantly stood up to be first in the queue.

It was then that Pru noticed the face looking back at her from within the vehicle.
A young boy, no more than fourteen, was pointing a rifle in her direction. Time froze as Pru noticed the minutiae of the scene unfolding before her. The boy had the smoothest of brown faces with the slight covering of soft dark down above his top lip. He could have been any one of a number of boys playing soldiers with their friends with a block of wood as a hand-gun. But this was no toy in the overlarge hands of the man-child before her. The rifle looked heavy in his lean arms. There was something in the way he cradled the weapon and the narrowing of his black eyes that left no room for doubt. The rifle was loaded and his finger was curled around the trigger.

This was a boy who should be kicking a ball in the park or climbing trees, but his lifeless eyes suggested that such childish pastimes had long since been forgotten. As they locked eyes, the rest of the world shrank around t
hem. The open mouth of the gun expanded to fill up all of Pru’s vision. The heat of the day was sucked away down the looming barrel. Pru tried to take her eyes off the gun and concentrate on her connection with the boy. She willed him to hear just one word.

No.

She thought she saw the muscles in his forearms tense and she braced herself for the explosion but she was unable to duck and too scared to even flinch.

No.

His eyes narrowed and his cheek pushed up against the armament almost tenderly.

No.

A shrill scream rose from somewhere behind Pru which made her jump and broke the connection between her and the would-be assassin. No one else made a sound or movement as the bus continued at its stately pace inches from their feet. The eye of the rifle slid from Pru to the man standing next to her, and then to the woman holding his arm. The boy was taking each person in his sights one by one. The strange thing, Pru reflected later, was that no one ran or took cover. Every man, woman and child stood motionless as a young boy decided their fate. It was the first time that Pru had even noticed the people who had been waiting by her side. And even though she knew that they were all in danger, she could only feel relief that the boy was no longer looking in her direction.

A sudden screech of tyres and a gritty dust cloud was thrown into the air.
Satisfied that they had put the fear of God into the English people, the boys in the white bus sped off. Pru sat down suddenly onto the wall with her pulse booming in her ears. She felt the baby squirm within her and felt genuine fear for the first time. She let out the breath which she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She briefly considered locking herself in the apartment until it was all over but Eddie’s words about there being fighting in the streets of Famagusta seemed all too realistic now. Perhaps Eddie was right after all. Not that she would tell
him
that, of course.

Layers of voices were asking each other
, “Are you okay? Is anyone hurt?” Pru could hear them but didn’t feel like answering. Every concerned step in her direction was met with a frosty glare. She didn’t see why this should make them all friends when moments earlier they had been murmuring about the size of her bag. Nothing had changed, Pru reassured herself. Everything was still the same as before. Pru sat up straight, consciously lengthening her neck and pushing out her rounded breasts. A jumped up little boy playing ‘soldiers’ would not intimidate her. She pulled her long blonde hair over her shoulders and, knowing that she looked good, clasped her trembling hands in her lap and waited for the evacuation bus to appear.