Daughter of the Winds (24 page)

“We’re being evacuated” explained Marjorie. “They’re taking us to Episcopi where there are Hercules planes waiting to take us back to England. Are you okay to travel? Is the baby okay?”

The questions kept raining down on Pru
’s ears but she could only hear the gurgle and murmur of a contented baby in her arms. Pru looked up long enough to notice that she was back on the same bus as a few days ago, with largely the same people, and yet, the world was markedly different now. She had been through something so life-changing, and so nearly life-ending, that she felt entirely removed from the circus around her.

“
Where’s Eddie? Does he even know?” asked Marjorie.

“
I honestly don’t know,” sighed Pru, finding her voice at last but never taking her eyes from the baby who had now fallen into a peaceful satiated sleep. “I think he’s working.”

Both women sat in silence looking at the sleeping baby until Marjorie spoke.

“She’s gorgeous Pru. What’s her name?”

“
She doesn’t have one yet.”

“
Well, I guess it’s all been a bit of a rush, hasn’t it? Mine were without names for three or four days before we decided what suited them.”

Pru bent over and kissed the baby
’s forehead. This poor baby no longer had a mother or grandmother and didn’t even have a name and yet she looked so content. She was blissfully unaware of the war that was unfolding around her that had already claimed the lives of at least two members of her family. Pru supposed the army might be able to track down the baby’s father, if he was still alive, but she was reluctant to leave the baby to the whims of the administrative system. She was going to see if she could stay in Cyprus and help track down the baby’s father. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her all alone.

Pru sat back in her seat and waited for the bumpy journey to conclude.
Each bump and pot hole in the unevenly tarmacked road reminded her of her physical ordeal over the last twenty-four hours. She pulled the blanket around the baby and then covered herself up, suddenly aware that she was woefully underdressed and completely naked under the ill-fitting coat. As if sensing her discomfort, Marjorie was tapping Pru on the shoulder.

“
Here.”

Pru looked down at the bundle of clothes in Marjorie
’s hands.

“
It’s obvious that you weren’t able to pack any clothes in the circumstances. So, everyone has donated an item of clothing out of their bags for you.”

Pru looked
around at the women and children in the crowded truck.

“
Thank you. That’s so...” Pru’s eyes instantly flooded and overflowed down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“
Hormones. Don’t fret about it. The knickers are mine. They’re clean, don’t worry! Claire has given you a top and a cardigan.” Marjorie leaned in and whispered conspiratorially “Silk! Here let me hold the baby while you get dressed.”

“
Hello, little dumpling. Are you coming for a cuddle with your Auntie Marjorie? Are you? Are you? Who’s a beautiful girl, then? Eh, eh? Yes you are.”

Pru slipped into the borrowed clothes with some difficulty due to the bumpy terrain and her aching body.
The bell-bottomed jeans wouldn’t do up over her still-swollen tummy, but a hastily-applied elastic hairband managed to bridge the gap between button and hole. The cardigan was soft against her battered skin and the well- worn flip-flops she eased her toes into were a perfect fit. She pulled a brush through her knotted hair and was starting to feel a little bit more like herself again when the bus pulled into the air base. There must have been over one hundred people sitting in the hangar next to a hotchpotch of bags and boxes. Men in uniform were pounding about with clip-boards and urgency.

“
Here you go, dumpling, back to Mummy,” Marjorie said as she handed the baby back to Pru.

“
Oh Marjorie, no. You don’t understand. You see, she’s not my–”

“
No, don’t make me hold her any more, I’m already getting broody again! Look honey, I can see Jason over there so I’m going to grab him while I can. Come on kids, stay with Mummy please. Okay Pru, I’ll see you later love. And make sure you get the two of you checked over by the doctor, okay?” Marjorie flowed into the crowds.

Pru saw Eddie
’s Commanding Officer moving through the crowds and hastened to him.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Mrs Clarke. Well, that explains why Eddie didn’t turn up for his shift tonight then! Boy or girl?”

“
Erm... girl. So, you haven’t seen Eddie tonight then?”

“
No. Well, congratulations to you both. Unfortunately I can’t stay and talk. Do excuse me.”

“
Of course.” Where was Eddie? He wasn’t at home and he wasn’t at work either. She had needed Eddie more than ever today, and not only had he left her at the hospital, but he hadn’t even gone to work. He was probably drunk somewhere and talking about how his wife had let him down. And in a way, Pru supposed he was right. She would never be able to give him children and they had little or no future together now anyway.

If she was sure of anything
, it was that her marriage was effectively over and she was leaving Cyprus without Eddie. Mind made up, Pru walked over to the registration desk to add her name to the list of those being shipped out to Oxfordshire that day.

“
Name?”

“
Prudence Clarke. And this,” she said without hesitation, “is my daughter Helene.”

Chapter
twenty-one

Leering at me from across the road, I could clearly see the half-shelled building where I was born. When I say that I saw it clearly, I don’t mean just that my vision was unimpaired, I mean that my gaze pinpointed the building and faded out everything around it. I knew without any trace of doubt that this was the building that I was looking for. Where it had all began. Where it had all ended.

I bit down the urge to run to it and looked around myself cautiously.
Now was not the time to get caught. It was unlikely that there were guards in these buildings; they seemed to patrol the points by the fence, and this building was away from the sagging wire fence but even so, I had to be careful. To get this close to the building and then not be able to go inside would be unbearable.

It took me longer to cover those final yards than it had to walk the previous mile.
I tried my best to savour these final steps leading to the realisation of my quest. Even though this was the reason that I’d come to Cyprus, the circuitous route that had led me to this point meant that it was all taking an unnaturally long interval to sink in.

My feet carried me soundlessly under the trees and to the front of the building.
The upper floor of the building looked remarkably intact, unaware of what had happened beneath its floor. In the bottom right of the building, there was a gaping hole as if the house had opened its mouth wide in shock. The shell that had hit it appeared to have gone straight through the middle of the apartment leaving an almost perfect cylinder like a cored apple.

I couldn
’t make out anything inside the building, just darkness and debris. If the building over the road was anything to go by, there was very little chance that this had been left as a shrine to my dead mother and grandmother. The sun was still obscured by a stubborn mantle of cloud and there was hardly any light permeating the gloom. Above, and to the left, I saw Mum’s old apartment exactly as Eddie had described it to me. It stood perfectly still, untouched by the tragedy that had befallen its neighbour. The curtains hung still and straight at the missing window. The front door was a light blue. It hadn’t been painted that shade, of that I was sure, but decades of sun had bleached everything to a shadow of its former self.

I waited for fifteen minutes silently before I broke free from my trance.
The heat that had built up through the day was oppressive and barred everything but slow and stately progress through its mire. Now that I was close enough to touch the bricks I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I thought I would start with the building closest. There was no door to walk through, only a gaping cavernous hole. I stepped over the threshold and looked around me. I expected to feel some of the memory of Helene’s death lingering in the air, but there was nothing. This was the place that I was born and the place that my biological mother and grandmother had died. And yet, there was nothing that separated this building from any other building in Varosha except the wormhole shot through its centre.

Any one of these buildings could be hiding a painful history.
With nobody around to tell their stories, the secrets would stay unearthed, untold and, to those too young to remember the conflict, unfathomable. I stepped carefully over the brick-strewn floor. I didn’t want to risk disturbing anything and have the entire building come crashing down around my ears.

The walls of the large room that had once been a kitchen-come-living room were remarkably untouched
by the devastation of the bomb. They still held the pattern of the wallpaper in muted greens. The physical carnage was straight through the middle of the room, like a cyclone had passed through. There was an overturned dining chair and table to one side but all other furniture seemed to have been removed, or used for firewood. I placed the chair on all four spindly legs and sat down delicately upon it. It groaned but showed no sign of surrendering under my weight so I relaxed my back into it. I willed something to happen then – something to link me to this room – but I was coming up empty. The elation at finding the building had been replaced by a heavy feeling of numbing anti-climax. Now what?

I
sat and looked closely at the dirty rubble under my feet. It was nothing but bricks and mortar. I tried to conjure up distasteful images in my head. I wanted to feel something. I expected to sit here and cry over my lamented mother. I tried to imagine her lying prone among these bricks but nothing moved me to any form of emotion.

My eyes travelled across the floor and, I
’m ashamed to say, I was searching for a physical sign of Helene Kostas’ death: a blood stain, a blast-torn locket, a waylaid shoe. Nothing I saw gave any indication of what had happened to the inhabitants here. Did it matter that no one heard her dying words? Did she realise that her child was alive and safe and would be loved and adored by a strong, courageous mother?

If she could see me now, would she be pleased at how I
’d turned out or would she be disappointed that I knew nothing of my heritage and knew only a smattering of Greek words? Did I look like her? Did I have any of her characteristics? Did we like any of the same things? I bowed my head and shoulders as I realised how little I would ever know and how pointless it was sitting here in this husk of a home.

There
was no bond between this woman and me. She may have given birth to me, but it was Mum who had plucked me from the carnage and given me my life in more ways than one. Pru hadn’t given birth to me, but without her intervention I would have almost certainly perished. It took two mothers to bring me into this world. One to bear me, and one to rescue me from the rubble and give me sustenance. I was indebted to both of my mothers. I was a product of them both.

I suddenly felt so very guilty for coming here to find out more about Helene Kostas.
It was a terrible slap in the face for Mum. I had no memories of Helene, no photographs and I felt sad that she was nothing to me. I had so wanted to feel a connection with her. Now I realised that the reason I felt nothing was that she had never been my mother. It was Pru who had held me, fed me from her own breast, nursed me when I was sick, attended every sports day and school play. She sat with me every night to help with my homework and stroked my hair when my heart was broken for the first time. And the second. And the third.

It was her that had instilled in me my strong sense of fairness and morals and it was
her that gave me the encouragement to go out and follow my dreams. Should she have told me sooner that I wasn’t her biological daughter? I had thought so, but now I wasn’t so sure. What good would that have done me except land issues on me that I would have been even more ill-equipped to deal with than I was now? She did the best thing for me that any mother could do; she brought me up in a secure environment feeling loved and wanted. She provided everything I needed, not everything I wanted. She taught me how to love other people unconditionally. It was my solid and loving relationship with her that was the driving force behind me wanting children of my own. I wanted the same relationship with my children as my mum had with me.

Suddenly I was hit with the realisation that I didn
’t need to carry the child myself for me to love it. I think that’s what Mum had been trying to tell me all along. Dom and I could look into adopting. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mum loved me above anything and everything else in the world, so it stood to reason that I would love a child in my arms as much as if I’d given birth to it myself. I smiled to myself. I’d travelled a long way to discover that everything I needed was back home waiting for me. It was only then that the tears welled up inside of me and gushed down my face. I felt bulbous droplets thud onto my bare legs but I did nothing to wipe them away. There was no one to hide them from and no shame in these tears even if there was.

I stood up feeling lighter than I had done in weeks and stepped out into the
heat which spread over me like warm butter. It was darker now than I had ever seen it during the day in Cyprus. Drops of rain as big as walnuts were intermittently plop-plopping onto the cracked dirt as if the clouds were finally letting go of the build-up of pressure. I moved swiftly up the concrete steps two at a time as the rain started to fall a little heavier, and a little heavier still. I reached Mum and Eddie’s splintered front door and threw it open just as a flash of lightening split the sky in two overhead. The door clattered backwards, smacked off the wall behind it and swung back into my shoulder as I entered. I closed the door quickly behind me as thunder rattled the deserted streets like coins in a collection tin. I knew the door wouldn’t be locked. It had never been in doubt. It felt like the home had been waiting for me and knew that I would visit one day.

I walked tentatively down the short white-tiled corridor passing a bathroom on my left and the kitchen on my right and then a door that led to the single bedroom. I continued past it until I reached the open but small living room.
I could imagine Mum in here as easily as if she were sitting here in front of me now. The window before me was opaque with years of looking out over the deserted streets, but at least it wasn’t broken. With no one to take in the view, it had been lost to high reaching trees which grew too close to the window and were now tapping out the mournful rhythm of a funeral dirge. Where cobwebs had once lightly dusted the corners, grey streamers now hung from the ceiling and down the walls. I reached out to swat away an offending spider’s web but it clung stickily to my fingers. I shook my hand vigorously and then wiped it on my top, repulsed by its adherence to my form like I was a troublesome fly.

On the right side of the room was a plain table with
a white Formica top and metal legs. Three matching chairs were sat at each open side. Where was the fourth? There was a low, chunky sideboard taking up most of the opposite wall. A comfortable chair was angled towards the balcony, ignoring the rest of the room. I could imagine Mum sitting there.

On top of the sideboard
was a record player and a bulky black machine. I wondered if it was a video player but on closer inspection I could see that it was an 8-track machine. They hadn’t really been used since the late 1970s and I remember Mum telling me about having to leave this beloved possession behind. I’d never heard one play and idly turned the knobs on the machine. It was a shame that there was no electricity here anymore. I would have loved to listen to some of Mum and Eddie’s music.

I looked to the side and saw just five 8-track cartridges beside it. I turned my head sideways so that I could read the names more easily.
I smiled as I went through them. Rolling stones
Exile on Main Street
; Curved Air
Airconditioning
; Bob Dylan
Planet Waves
; Mike Oldfield
Tubular Bells
and Jethro Tull
Aqualung
. Interesting mix of pop and progressive rock. Mum still liked those old bands. I wasn’t sure about Eddie.

I looked around me.
Why hadn’t this place been looted like pretty much everywhere else in Varosha? It wasn’t difficult to get in to but perhaps the half missing building acted as a deterrent.

I opened the sliding doors of the cupboard beneath and saw a stack of records.
They would probably be worth a fortune now at collectors’ fairs but there was no time to think about that now. I didn’t really know what I was looking for as I sat on the floor and opened the other sliding cupboard door. On the top shelf were two photo albums.

One was entirely in black and white.
It was Mum and Eddie’s wedding photos. They had an abundance of youth, so fresh and so naïve. Mum was beautiful, hair pinned back from her slender face with long white-gold curls cascading down her back. She wore a high-necked, empire-line lace dress. The flowers were roses but it was difficult to tell which colour in the black and white pictures. My best guess would have been pink. She looked delicate and blonde and even through the black and white pictures you could see the blush of her cheeks and the turquoise of her eyes.

Eddie looked dapper in his army uniform with his hat under his arm.
His severe haircut and rigid stance was a credit to his position. That was a man exploding with pride. They had so much to look forward to then. I felt sorry for the young couple in the photograph as I knew what hardship would befall them. But would they thank me for warning them? I doubted it. And if they were forewarned, what would they have done differently? I would probably have died in the rubble downstairs.

The other photos had the same signature smiles beaming from them.
Cutting the cake, signing the register and standing under confetti held permanently aloft by the snap of the camera’s lens. There was one picture of a stern looking older woman with black-rimmed horned glasses and a hat perched on her head. She was unsmiling but she was holding horseshoes on ribbons, no doubt a gift of luck for the happy couple.

I placed the thin photo album in my lap and reached for the other one.
It was a fatter album this time with a seascape on the front of it inked in midnight blue. Most of these photos were in pale water-colours and a lot less formal. The album held four small square photos per page. The first page showed Mum in a short white dress in front of a float covered in oranges, Mum standing by a fence stroking the nose of a chestnut brown horse, and there were two of her sitting in a red bikini on the beach with an enviable figure.