1 The Assassins' Village (7 page)

Chapter 7. Sunday midday

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which oér leaps
itself, and falls on th’other.             

Macbeth. Act 1 Scene 7

The hare crept from behind the thick prickly bush where it had been hiding. It stood on its hind legs tentatively. Its warm velvety nose twitched as it scented for traces of its enemy. It could smell nothing that threatened him. The air was heavy and still near the bottom of the river valley. The hare paused, still uncertain of hidden dangers. Earlier, it had heard the sinister noises that warned him peril lurked at hand. The fickle breeze carrying the telltale rank smell had alerted the long-legged herbivore. Now, there was neither sound nor scent. It sank down onto its haunches ready for flight, and then, with some timidity and hesitancy it gave one bound, and then another, towards a patch of bright sweet green vine shoots. It nibbled the new growth of the vegetation that had grown overnight by the stimulation of a recent shower of rain. It was sweet and succulent, especially delicious for a young buck hare. It relaxed a bit more; stretching its long neck towards a particularly tasty morsel.

There was an explosion followed by a squeal. The hare lay outstretched on the path. A petal: a blossoming of bright arterial blood, a torn throat, eyes open but already glazing over, a body still soft and warm.

Kristiakis lowered his shotgun from his shoulder grunting in satisfaction. He was convinced of a hit; a clean kill. For long he had carried a gun, well over forty years. He first learned to shoot as a youngster, before his teens, accompanying his father and fierce uncles on their long forays up into the wild deserted hills. Wrapped in thick jackets over black shirts and the skirt-like trousers or
vraka
they walked miles stalking their prey. Overnight, camping in the mean shepherd huts, Kristiakis had relished lying curled up around the blazing fire, drooping body and heavy-eyed with fatigue, as he listened to the heroic deeds and tales of their kinfolk. Years ago, his family had been founder members of the EOKA groups. These armed gangs of EOKA or to give them their full title; the National Organisation of Cypriot Combatants, had an old aim. They used terror to provoke the ruling British into acts of oppression, that they hoped would turn world opinion against the Colonial power forcing it to withdraw from the island. The later version of EOKA had a revised plan to rid the island of the ruling Archbishop Makarios. The leaders denounced Makarios for seeking a feasible settlement of independence rather than a full union or Eonosis with Greece. At any time, they could have instigated conflict to allow the Greek junta to ‘restore order’ and tighten its grip on the island.

The young Kristiakis had been involved from a young age in sabotaging police stations and other installations, delivering literature into the isolated villages and assisting in killing British troops. Brainwashed by his elders, he learned to loathe the Colonial powers and later this hatred turned to include his Turkish Cypriot neighbours. For a long time after the separation of Cyprus into North and South territories, he remained bitter and twisted, hotly denying any help from relation or friends. He still vividly remembered past skirmishes with the police, the British Army and later between the private armies of the Greek Cypriots. These assassins had long memories. It had taken a lengthy time for him to begin to come to terms with life as it
was now. He was one of the few who still bore a grudge against colonists despite Yanoulla’s soft touch with him.

Making sure his gun was safe, Kristiakis picked up his belongings, a scuffed and old leather satchel-type bag and a water bottle. He swung into his familiar loose-limbed step down towards where his hare lie. It was not the season for hunting and he was taking a gamble that the aging Mukhtar or village mayor would not seek him out for punishment. He loathed authority, and although one spell in goal long ago had been enough, he still did not much care for rules and regulations.

~~~

Above, on a small rocky outcrop camouflaged by spiny bushes, Antigone watched her brother searching for the dead hare. She had been sitting there for some time, alone but for her two tethered donkeys munching illegally on some neighbours’ grape vines. Oblivious to her donkeys’ bad behaviour she leant back against a flat yellow rock and blended into the landscape. Hidden from view, she became lost in her thoughts.

Antigone was younger than her brother and led a strange and somewhat sad life. She lived alone in a tiny ill-built house on the edge of the village. Kristiakis had no idea whether she was happy or not. A single woman past her prime, she had missed the opportunity to get married and have children. Antigone was elusive and shy, and as she spoke no more than a few words to anyone, many ignorant people thought her simple. But, it was perhaps dangerous to think that. She did enjoy her own company, but nothing escaped the sharp eyes of this somewhat fey creature. Antigone knew and saw all that happened in Agios Mamas. Her thoughts shifted from her brother to another male that had played a part in her life. Mr Leslie.

Of course she knew Mr Leslie. He had lived here in the village for at least eight years, together with his somewhat shrewish wife. She knew Sonja was shrewish because she often followed them unnoticed when they took their dogs out walking and she had heard raised voices coming from an open window of their house. She knew Sonja’s strident accent against the modulated tones of Mr Leslie’s. Antigone had listened to Sonja bemoaning about Leslie’s two grown up children
and the amounts of alimony he paid to his first wife by monthly arrangement.
Alimony
. What a strange word that had no meaning to the Cypriot way of life. If a couples’ marriage ended in failure, the husband would simply move out of his wife’s house and go back home to live with his parents.

Other snippets of family and village conversation came to her as she spied on them and others, angry snatches about other women, annoying neighbours, or unruly children up from Limassol for the weekend. No, Antigone knew almost everything that happened in the village. Mr Leslie. Her expression changed as she remembered.

What most people did not know or recall, was that she had known him before. During the so-called bad times, when he was known as Captain Leslie of the British Army and she just a young girl, barely sixteen years of age. Then, Antigone had been raven-haired and startlingly pretty. Slim wrists and ankles, an impossible tiny waist and perfect smooth olive skin enhancing her tallish willowy figure.

Back in those days she possessed a beguiling air of naivety. Interested in everything around her with a refreshing openness and a mind like quicksilver, Antigone was always asking questions and absorbing the answers. Any strangers in her village opened her eyes to the wonders of another world. Here was another land whose customs were foreign and alien to her narrow way of life. Intrigued, she watched and listened, her grasp of the English tongue growing rapidly as she learnt
about this new world. It was perhaps no surprise that the most instructive of teachers was Mr Leslie himself.

Conceivably, Antigone saw him as a fantasy figure, this tall, slim but muscular, good-looking Army officer who strode magnificently around the comparatively humble village of her birth. She shyly listened to him giving orders to his underlings in a cultured voice, and of a timbre so unlike anything she was used to; villagers being naturally loud and raucous in their everyday talk. Antigone was startled by his good looks; impressed by his smartly pressed uniform, leather boots that shone from soft polishing cloths and intrigued by his gleaming scarab gold ring brought all the way here from Egypt. To the impressionable Antigone he seemed like - almost a God. It was as if one of the old Greek legends found impressed in the ancient mosaics had come to life, and its hero had stepped out to fill her world with his presence. To Antigone he was suave and debonair, so
dashing
. She refused to listen to what her brother Kristiakis and their uncles said about the damned British. How the British refused to see things the Greek Cypriot way, and were only here because it suited them to carry on taking what they wanted, plundering the country and ignoring the wishes of the rightful owners. The British were no better nor different than any one of the other countless peoples who had conquered Cyprus to use for their own aims. She remembered the old stories about the rounding up of the men of the villages. How the houses and outbuildings were searched for guns, bombs and outlaws to the Colonial rule. The men had been imprisoned for refusing to hand over the ‘terrorists’ and the village school had been closed as a reprisal against seditious talk. How could they possibly compare Mr Leslie with those people?  He was not like that.

She met him in the most unusual places, along a deserted track leading to an unused vineyard, or a rocky outcrop at the far end of a wooded little coppice. Best of all, Antigone loved the old stone house at the bottom of the river valley where the water ran pure and sweet along the parched banks when the autumn rains came. On a shady little grassy knoll she would sit at his feet whilst he stood and read from little hard-backed books. His words were strange and Antigone had little hope of understanding the old English in the texts. But how the sound of his voice flowed over her, enveloping her, strong, clear, beautifully modulated, it entranced a young girl who believed he was on a pedestal alongside Adonis. Sometimes he would bring paper and sketch her against a backdrop of olive trees and the towering mountains behind, capturing the whole essence of Antigone and her beautiful country.

If Kristiakis or her rough uncles had but known Antigone was meeting a man without a chaperone, a stranger and a
foreigner
, she would have been in trouble. And so, she would creep out, unseen, except for a goat or two and meet Mr Leslie as if by chance in a quiet secluded spot. The young Antigone was hopelessly and deeply in love…

Chapter 8. Sunday morning

Nor time nor place did then adhere.              

Macbeth. Act 1 Scene 7

The contents of the mug stood cooling on the desk, the froth from the milk slowly dissolving to leave a flat, scummy white lid of a meniscus.  Diana, seated at her study desk looked lost in thought. Earlier, the sunny room had seemed to beckon her. As she’d slipped into the comfortable, familiar chair she flipped open her notebook, taken up her pencil and within minutes the story had her completely absorbed. She wrote rapidly. She sat there for more than three hours, as sheet after sheet became covered with her open-handed writing. As the words came fast, Diana found she was almost having trouble keeping up with the pace. To her, writing was like launching a child out into the wide world. The child was conceived in passion, and brought to life with the most agonising birthing pains. After weeks and months of nursing to a tentative adolescence, it was then finally moulded into maturity.

Notwithstanding the change in genre, Diana knew this book was going to be different. For a start, Diana felt that all the characters were around her in form and colour. She could reach out and almost touch and feel them. As her pencil scratched, they marched seemingly without effort across the paper. She had the beginnings of a plot formulated in her mind, but mostly she was working on a multitude of anecdotes that she’d gathered from the villagers hereabouts. Parts of stories, scraps of gossip, and hearsay all loosely knitted together that she would eventually unravel into one cohesive yarn (sic).

Some days she wasn’t able to write much at all. She would find herself struggling to put the tales into the right places of her unfinished novel. Other days, the golden days, she could see the story stretching like a bright shining road leading the way towards its rightful end. Diana paused in her writing to take a glance at her wristwatch. With an exasperated sound she put down her pencil and noticed the coffee. Where had the time gone? It felt like only five minutes since she’d walked into the study to jot down a few ideas. It was nearly time to get ready to go out for Sunday lunch at the local taverna. She took a sip from the coffee mug. Yuk, it was stone cold and she’d gone off coffee in this hot weather anyway. Diana could only vaguely remember Steve bringing it into her. He would be mad at her, saying she’d become too dehydrated and end up sick for not drinking enough. Not that coffee was a good hydrator, but he was right concerning fluid intake. He was also concerned after she’d spectacularly passed out at the beach. Now, what had caused that? She was rarely ever ill, and could only put it down to too much sun, coupled with too much cider, and the shock of what Bernard had told them about Leslie.

Leslie. How that man’s name kept cropping up. It was not difficult to assess the antipathy he caused amongst their friends and neighbours. As for Diana, Leslie hadn’t given her any major cause for complaint just an annoyance on behalf of the others. There had been two minor irritations. Diana had found herself seated next to Leslie during a meeting to discuss the drama groups’ funds or, rather lack of them. Leslie was invited along, as he knew someone on the Arts Council, who might be persuaded to put in a good word for AMIS with an approach for some government funding. At first, Diana thought she’d imagined his thigh lightly pressed up against her as if by accident. As time went on, she shifted restlessly in her seat. Again she felt his leg, only this time with a little more applied pressure. With an amused chuckle to herself, she moved away on her seat as far as she could, and during the break switched to another chair. She was relieved when he had not attempted to follow her. The second time had been at a party. She remembered he had tried to kiss her. She put it down to him probably being a little drunk. Being cruel, she could say he was just a tad ridiculous, but surely just a harmless man old enough to be her father.

An unexpected blare from her radio shocked her out of her daydream. One minute she had been sitting in relative silence, the next she almost jumped out of her chair as Dire Straits played their hit;
Sultans of Swing
.

‘What in the world?’ she said to herself as she gathered her wits and turned the volume down to something less harmful to her ears. How on earth had that happened? Was it a power surge? She’d mention it to Steve; he’d probably have some idea.

Diana remembered something she’d thought about when she was lying wide-awake in bed. She had to write that into her story! The murder was brutal and she thought she could cover it up nicely with some great red-herrings. She turned the page of her notebook and jotted down the outlines, she knew just who she was going to bump off.

Time was pressing now, she knew she’d better start getting herself organised. First, she needed a glass of water. Diana tidied away her manuscript; as she was very superstitious about letting others read her unfinished work, and hurried down the stairs. As she was passing through towards the kitchen she met her sister Elaine coming in the front door.

‘Phew! It’s amazingly hot!’ Elaine exclaimed, ‘Far too hot to sit outside painting really.’

She removed a large straw sunhat from her head and shook out her short and damp blonde curly hair. Elaine had the usual smudge of paint on one of her cheeks and Diana was for moment reminded about Charles Kingsley’s “
The
Water Babies.”
Tom, the chimney sweep always had sooty smudges on his face and hands. Elaine set her easel and paint box down on the floor and wiped the sweat from her brow. ‘I don’t know how you do it. Sit out there for hours in all that heat. By the way you’ve got paint on your cheek again,’ she said giving her sister a cheeky grin.

Elaine looked at her reflection in the hall mirror and pulled a face. Shorter than her sister Diana, but facially they were similar.

She was staying with Diana and Steve. Originally she’d come out for a fortnight’s holiday, but bowled over by the amazing diverse scenery of the beautiful island, she had stayed. So far Elaine had painted a good number of canvases and had almost enough for another exhibition on her eventual return to the UK. Recently, Diana asked her sister just what her long term plans were. Elaine had been noncommittal; she had made a lot of new friends out here, both expatriate and some good female Cypriot ones. She’d recently received the decree absolute from her marriage of some twenty years and felt unsure of exactly what she wanted to do with her new found freedom. Steve and Di were perfectly willing to support her, but now four months later, Steve had the sneakiest suspicion they were perhaps making it all a little too comfortable over here for her. Four months from the original two weeks he considered long enough.

Elaine scrubbed her face with a wet tissue. ‘Oh, the heat’s Okay. I think that after a while you don’t notice it. Besides, today I’ve managed to sit under a particularly huge old olive tree and the shade was wonderful. Here Di, what do you think of this?’ Unlike Leslie with his modern art, Elaine was conservative with her landscapes. She held out her large sketchpad for Diana to examine.

There was a pause as Diana stared at the picture Elaine was holding up in front of her. She didn’t know what to say.

‘Well? Don’t you like it? What’s wrong?’ Elaine had noted Diana’s reticence and turned the pad round again to look at the picture herself.

Diana took a step back from the picture; she felt her scalp crawling and the hairs prickling on the back on her neck. She could feel the blood draining from her face. She didn’t want to look at the picture. Elaine had captured the rural scene entirely. A wide sweeping vista of little terraced fields of grapes and olive trees reaching the edge of a riverbed. A tumbledown stone-house was nestled in a shady grove of citrus, and the ubiquitous donkey grazed nearby. It should have been perfect – except for one detail. Why had Elaine painted a small body lying grotesquely strangled, in the roots of a gnarled olive tree? Every limb looking like it was twisted and distorted in agony. And why had she painted the body in deep red?

‘Oh my God!’ she heard herself whisper.

‘What? Surely it’s not that bad? I personally thought it was one of my best,’ Elaine said huffily. She held it out from her with arms outstretched. ‘Still, if you don’t think so.’ ‘No, it’s not that. I just wondered why you painted that – that figure in it, like that. It’s horrible!’ Diana finally gasped. She was shaking and the recent feelings of nausea were with her again.

‘What figure? What
are
you on about? Are you having me on?’ Elaine demanded crossly and glanced over at her sister. She paused, taking in the colour of Diana’s face. There was concern in her voice, as she said, ‘Hey. Are you all right? You do look a bit funny.’

Swallowing hard, Diana pushed back the rush of sickness and forced herself to peer at the picture once again. She saw the faultless blue sky, the sweeping fields of green, the little house in the trees and the dusty looking old brown donkey. There was
no
body lying in tortured pain, or covered in blood. Had she imagined it? Like last Tuesday night at the rehearsal and Leslie’s script. When he had angrily tossed it onto Alicia’s lap she’d been sure it looked as if it was almost
dripping
in blood. Was she going mad? A shaft of panic rose in her.

‘You look a bit peaky. Come on, sit down for a mo,’ Elaine led a dazed Diana by the arm, over to a chair. ‘There. Is that better? Steve’s right, you’ve been overdoing it a bit too much lately. Too many late nights and scratching away for hours with that new book of yours. You need a break, besides you’re over forty now.’ Elaine finished with what Di suspected was a smug voice.

Di had to laugh as she brushed her sticky hair out of her eyes; Elaine was a right one to talk when it came to work. She was almost never without a paintbrush in her hand when she felt inspired, and loved to rub in the fact that she was the younger sister.

Sitting down and looking at the picture clearly, she realised it was perfectly normal. It was a rather good landscape with absolutely nothing sinister in it whatsoever. The whole incident made her feel ridiculous. She recalled the other evening; Leslie’s script was probably a trick of the light too. Failing that, she needed to see the optician.

Di gave a little embarrassed laugh before replying, ‘I’m fine, but you’re absolutely right. I have felt rather jaded lately. We have been overdoing the going out bit, especially at night. A good social life is all very well but not if it makes you tired all the time and with this hot weather as well. Phew!’ she repeated the gesture with her hair and stood up to look once again at the sketch.

‘I’m sorry; it’s a fine picture. You’ve captured the feel of this part of the country really well.’

‘Mmm. I thought maybe this tree’s not quite right. I’ll go back and do some more tomorrow. I haven’t time now, as I need to pop down into Limassol to meet a friend and I could do with a shower first. Do you want to come for a ride?’ Elaine added this last line with a tone of reluctance in her voice.

‘No thanks; you remember we’re going to the village taverna for Sunday lunch; most of the crowd will be there. Afterwards, I really ought to get out and get some exercise. I’ve sat down too long this week writing. Look at these shorts, they’re far too tight!’ she grimaced at her behind in the mirror. ‘It’s certainly getting to be ‘does my bottom look too big’ in this scenario! I’m probably hitting the red wine a bit too much too. Trouble is, it’s cheap and palatable, and is deathly for making me put on weight. Why are you going to Limassol, and what time do you think you’ll be back?’

‘Oh nothing much, ‘Elaine said airily. ‘I’ll be back in plenty of time for supper. Not that you’ll want any after a hearty village Sunday lunch. See you later then,’ she hauled her painting things up the stairs towards her bedroom.

Diana shrugged to herself. As a child, Elaine had always been a bit scatty and secretive. Why was she going all the way down to Limassol on a Sunday for goodness sake? Perhaps she was seeing someone. Now
that
would be good for her.

She wandered outside in search of Steve and found him reading on the terrace. He had a large jug of water and a glass in front of him. Di helped herself to his glass, kissed the top of his head and flopped down into the chair opposite. ‘Hi hon.’

Steve looked up and smiled a lazy smile at her, his deep blue eyes crinkly in his suntanned face. Once again she was reminded of how good-looking he was.

‘I don’t suppose you fancy a walk later after lunch?’ she asked.

‘Hi yourself sexpot. A walk? Now there’s a good idea. I’ve been going over my lines and I have to say it’s all a bit daunting. No, actually it’s ruddy frightening! Macbeth is a huge rôle to play. Far bigger than anything I’ve done before. Look at this, Act one, scene seven. “
If it were done when ‘tis done then ‘twere well it were done quickly
.”  That is the beginning of just one of a dozen long speeches by the Thane himself! What if I can’t learn it all in time?’

Diana laughed at his worried look. ‘Oh you will. Don’t worry. You’re brilliant at learning lines and besides I’ll help you and we can go over them together. The few scenes we share anyway.’

‘Thanks. God is that the time? We’d better get our shoes on and trek up to Costas’. Yes, your idea of a bit of cardiac exercise is an excellent one and should do us good. Shall we go down to the river for a change? It’s sure to be a bit cooler under the trees and we can walk off some of our lunch. We might see some interesting birds too.’