Swimming to Ithaca (39 page)

‘The Turks are just people, like the Greeks, like you and me.’ She felt disgust, and anger and impatience. ‘Like Damien Braudel. You know about Damien, don’t you? You know what happened?’

He gave a dismissive laugh. It was an expression from the dance halls of Tottenham. So what? it said. Who cares? Who gives a fuck?

‘Was it you?’

He smiled. ‘Is that what they say?’

‘He was at that café. You know where. That place near the seafront.’

‘You said you didn’t care about him.’

‘That’s not the point, is it?’

‘I s’pose not.’ He shrugged. ‘Do you think I’d do something like that?’

It was stuffy in the room and she was sweating, the thin rivulets of sweat running down from her armpits. She pulled away from him and went over to the window. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d be able to do something like
this
.’ Outside, the pigeons were still going through their absurd little rituals, pumping and preening at one another along the top of the wall.

‘Did he mean anything to you?’ he asked.

‘He was a friend. A human being.’ She looked down. There was a movement down there in the courtyard, someone moving out of sight. ‘Where’s your uncle?’ she asked.

‘He’s waiting downstairs.’

She opened the window and let the exterior sounds come in, the absurd burbling and the cooing of the birds and behind that the sound of the town – traffic, the honking of car horns, a ship’s siren somewhere in the distance, near at hand a woman’s voice calling.

‘Close it,’ Nicos said.

‘I want a breath of fresh air.’ But the air was only ever fresh up in the mountains, never down here on the coast.

‘Close it, I said.’ His tone had a new quality to it, a sharp edge of command. He crossed the room. ‘Close the fucking thing.’

‘All right, I’ll close it.’ As she reached out for the handle, a man appeared in the yard below. Khaki overalls and plimsolls, like a builder. He looked up for an instant, then moved out of sight. ‘There’s someone down there,’ she said, leaning out to look down.

‘What?’

‘Someone.’

There was a patter of sound. Nicos grabbed her waist and pulled her back. Someone shouted. It was impossible to say what, what language even. Just a shout, then another shout and a sudden noise outside the room, the sound of people running up the stairs. Nicos swung her away from the window just as the door slammed open and two men erupted through the doorway.

There was a chaos of movement and shouting. ‘Let the woman go! Let her go!’

‘Don’t shoot!’

‘Let her go!’

And then stillness: a strange, static geometry with the two intruders at either corner of the room, and Nicos and Dee at the apex, at the window. He held her motionless, his left arm tight across her chest. She could feel his breath just behind her, hot and sharp. With sudden clarity she noticed that the pistol had gone from the table.

‘Don’t be a silly bugger,’ one of the men said. They held sub-machine guns, the weapons levelled directly at Dee’s abdomen. ‘Let ’er go.’

A third man appeared at the doorway, a police officer with the familiar black cap and khaki shirt, an Englishman, pale and sweating. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and perfectly pressed but there were dark stains under the arms. ‘Come on, lad, let the lady go,’ he said.

Nicos spoke quietly just behind her head. The words were for her alone, breathed in her ear. ‘You brought them here,’ he said.

She tried to turn but he wouldn’t let her, kept her facing the guns. The barrels pointed – small round mouths of surprise. At her back she could feel Nicos trembling. There was something hard and accusing against the side of her head. ‘I didn’t, Nicos. I didn’t.’

‘You fucking brought them here.’

‘I didn’t,’ she repeated. ‘I promise.’

‘Come on, lad,’ said the officer. He had a serious expression on his face, as though a solecism had just been committed and he was really rather shocked. ‘Just take it easy. There’s no point in messing about with guns. Someone could get hurt.’

Faintly, as you might sense someone fall asleep, she felt Nicos relax his grip.

‘Put the gun down, son.’

‘Don’t hurt him,’ she said. ‘Please don’t hurt him.’

‘Of course we won’t hurt him.’

Still she didn’t move. His arm had gone from across her front but she stayed pressed against him. ‘I love him,’ she said softly, as though love might be a mitigation.

‘I’m sure you do, ma’am. We all do. A jolly good chap. Now just come over here and we’ll all be happy.’

She turned and looked up at Nicos. There was bewilderment in his eyes, and fear, and loathing. The gun was there in his right hand, no longer against her head but close to her cheek. She could smell the oil and the scent of its metal, like the smell of blood. ‘Put the gun down, Nicos. Please.’

‘Don’t drop the fucking thing,’ one of the soldiers cried. ‘The fucker might go off.’

‘Just put it down, lad,’ the policeman said. ‘Just put it down on the floor.’

Slowly, watching the soldiers, Nicos crouched down and laid the weapon on the tiles.

‘There’s a good chap,’ the policeman said. He held his hand out towards Dee. His eyes were blue, the lashes so pale as to be almost invisible. He smiled at her, as though to assure her of the wonderful things he had to offer – a return to normality, to family and friends, to Edward and Tom and Paula, to hearth and home. ‘Now come over to me, love. Just come slowly towards me. You’ll be quite all right, won’t she, Nick? She’ll be quite all right.’

She looked round and raised her hand to touch Nicos’ cheek, as though to assure herself of its reality. It was difficult to read his face, the tightness of the muscles, the rapid shallow breathing, the pupils dilated as they had been when they made love. Perhaps touching him would give some clue. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, scraped against the roughness of his beard, touched his lips which were soft and fragile, almost feminine. She wanted to kneel down before him. It seemed absurd. She wanted to kneel down before him and feel his hand on her head in some kind of benediction. ‘You must believe me,’ she said quietly. ‘I never knew they were coming.’

‘Come on, love,’ the policeman repeated.

She moved minutely away, smiling up at Nicos. Then she turned and walked towards the door.

As soon as she reached him the police officer grabbed her and flung her out of the room. Outside on the landing there were other hands to take hold of her, other voices, other accents. Behind her was a sound, difficult to interpret, a rush of noise, a scuffle and a cry. There was a shout, Nicos’ voice crying something. And then the shouting died. ‘It’s OK!’ a voice called. ‘It’s OK. All under control.’

She tried to turn back but hands held her and a couple of soldiers grabbed her and hurried her down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell were two Turkish policemen. Outside there was staring white sunlight and faces peering through windows and doorways. Suddenly she was shaking. Her legs almost gave way beneath her but there were always hands to bear her up, soldiers all around her. She saw that the street had been cordoned off and there were civilians crowded at one end. Barricades were being pulled into place. Policemen, dark-skinned Turks with heavy moustaches, were standing beside their vehicles and there was an army lorry as well, and an army blood
wagon. That’s what they’d been expecting. Blood. They’d been expecting everything.

Geoffrey stepped forward from among a group of policemen. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Do you need a doctor or shall we go? I’ve got my car here. I don’t really think we can talk on the pavement.’

He put a hand on her arm but she shook him off. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

He smiled reproachfully and stood aside for her to go out first. His car was parked against the kerb a few yards down, the Volkswagen that she knew so well. He handed her into the back, then went round to the other side and climbed in beside her.

‘I don’t want to talk, Geoffrey.’

‘Don’t be silly. Cigarette?’

‘Please.’ He fiddled with his lighter and there was the spurt of flame. She drew smoke into her lungs and stared away, out of the window. Some civilians had come out of a nearby block of flats to watch the drama, fat women in slack cotton dresses, men in white shirts and grey trousers, the uniform. There were children. A couple of boys began to shout something. ‘
Enosi
,’ they shouted ‘
Enosi!
’ Dee craned round to see but there were too many people in the way – policemen, a few civilians. And then they brought out Nicos. They’d handcuffed and hooded him, but it was obvious who it was. Pushing and shoving, they led him towards the police van. She watched as they opened the rear door and lifted him in like baggage. Two policemen followed, and then the doors slammed shut. There were two little windows high up in the doors, with wire grilles. ‘You’re a bastard, Geoffrey, do you know that?’

‘It goes with the job, Dee.’

‘What’ll happen to him?’

There was a silence. He smoked, watching her. ‘Depends what charges they bring. And that depends in part on you …’

The engine of the police van roared. There was a clash of gears. She drew on her cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray, and looked at Geoffrey. She attempted a smile. It felt like someone trying a difficult manoeuvre that they haven’t quite perfected, a cartwheel or a handstand or something. But she pulled it off. A smile. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Geoffrey. Nothing at all.’

Nothing has changed. The furniture is still in place, the pictures and the clutter of possessions that she accumulated over the years. Yet everything has changed: every object, every surface, every plane and every vertical. All has lost its gloss of recent handling and acquired instead a micron depth of dust, a grey bloom that might have been the brushwork of time itself, blurring memory and recall. This place is not the past, is certainly not the future. It is some kind of limbo, occupied by grey shades: Persephone’s kingdom.

Thomas closes the door behind him, picks up mail from the doormat – circulars, bills, letters from the bank and the solicitor – and takes it through into the kitchen. Sitting at the table he tears open envelopes and glances over the motley contents. One of them is a handwritten letter of condolence – ‘We were abroad and we’ve only just heard …’ – another comes from some charity, suggesting that the loss of a loved
one is the perfect moment to consider making a donation. There are, it makes clear, tax advantages to be had. Then there is a new bank statement, sent despite the fact that the account has been frozen, and a letter from the building society explaining how much money can be made available prior to a grant of probate, and one from the solicitor dithering over some technicality: ‘There appears to be a slight problem with one of your mother’s bank accounts. I think we would be best advised to meet personally in order to clarify this issue.’

Searching in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink he finds old copies of
The Times
neatly folded like laundry, and a packet, half opened and half used, of firelighters. It isn’t a cold day – an ordinary day of intermittent cloud and sunshine, the rain, when it comes, a fine drizzle, the sun, when it shines, something pale and glistening like a reflection – but still he takes these things through into the sitting room and prepares a fire in the grate: the firelighter, loosely bunched pages of the newspaper, a small pyramid of kindling wood from the basket that is still there beside the fireplace, some pieces of coal laid carefully on the timber construction. He waits for the wood to take, then puts the guard in place and goes quietly upstairs to his mother’s bedroom.

There is the painted wardrobe, the photograph of his father, the watercolour of Hope village, all the mementoes, the possessions, the
things
that are all that remain. There is also that dress, hanging in the wardrobe. He takes it out and carefully lays it, empty, a mere skin, on the bed. His mind plays over the memory of Kale standing there in the centre of the room, incongruous in the fashion of the nineteen-fifties, posing with a clumsy grace and twirling round so that the skirt flared out; then sitting suddenly on the bed for him to remove her shoes. And lying back as he lifted the skirt. Her expression of puzzlement. ‘What are you up to, Thomas?’ The rough scribble of her
hair, the closed mouth, the subtle shades of cream and ivory, and then the deep pink, like the throat of an exotic flower. Her smell and taste.

He picks up the phone and dials her number. A woman’s voice answers.

‘Is that Mrs Macintosh?’

‘Who’s this?’ The tone is guarded, as though he might do violence to her down the telephone line.

‘It’s Thomas again. Thomas Denham. You remember? I rang before.’

‘Oh. Yeah, that history teacher.’

‘Something like that. Is Kale there?’

There’s a pause, as though for thought. ‘Hang on and I’ll get her.’

He waits. There are sounds off, like talking overheard from the next room, and then the noise of the receiver being picked up and Kale’s voice loud in his ear: ‘Yeah?’

‘It’s Tom.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the house. I’ve got someone coming round to take stuff away. Look, I was wondering if you were still coming. You were meant to ring to confirm.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘You’re always busy. How’s Emma?’

‘She’s great.’ The word lacks the last consonant. ‘Grey,’ she seemed to say.

‘So you’re coming?’

She hesitates. ‘I dunno. Emms has still got a bit of a cold—’

‘You just said she was great.’

‘Well, she’s all right. You know what I mean.’

‘The sea air will be good for her. Better than Coldharbour Lane air, that’s for sure. She’ll love the boats and the seagulls, and the river. You’ll enjoy it, both of you.’

‘It’s just—’

What is it just?

‘I don’t know what the point is.’

‘The point is to enjoy yourselves, the two of you. Nothing more. No pressure, no relatives. I told you, just the three of us.’

‘I s’pose.’

What the hell does that mean? There’s a silence. He hates talking on the phone, hates the single dimension of it, the conversations without depth or colour. Like reading a play without seeing the performance. ‘You do what you think best,’ he says, dangerously.