It was not the only portrait on the wall. Beside it stood the photograph of a young man with open collar, staring eyes and down-turned mouth set against a rough plaster wall. There was no sign of identity, none needed for Michael Karaolis. A promising village boy educated at the English School. A youthful income tax clerk in the colonial administration, turned EOKA fighter. A final photograph taken in Nicosia Gaol on the day before the British hanged him by his neck until he was dead.
‘Vangelis’.
Since he had buried his wife a few years before, Evanghelos Passolides had been captured more than ever by the past. Sullen days were followed by long nights of rambling reminiscence around the candlelit tables with old comrades who knew and young men who might be willing to listen, though the numbers of both shrank with the passing months. He had become locked in time, bitter memories twisting both soul and body; he was stooped now, and the savagely broken leg that had caused him to limp throughout his adult life had grown noticeably more painful. He seemed to be withering even as Maria looked, the acid eating away inside.
The news that there was to be peace within his island only made matters worse. ‘Not my peace,’ he muttered in his heavy accent. He had fought for union, Enosis, a joining of all Greeks with the Motherland – one tongue, one religion, one Government no matter how incompetent and corrupt, so long as it was our Government. He had put his life on the line for it until the day his fall down a mountain ravine with a thirty-pound mortar strapped across his back had left his leg bones protruding through his shin and his knee joint frozen shut forever. His name had been on the British wanted list so there was no chance of hospital treatment; he’d been lucky to keep his leg in any condition. The fall had also fractured the spirit, left a life drenched in regret, in self-reproach that he and his twisted leg had let his people down, that he hadn’t done enough. Now they were about to divide his beloved island forever, give half of it away to the Turk, and somehow it was all his fault.
She had to find a distraction from his remorse, some means of channelling the passion, or sit and watch her father slowly wither away to nothing.
‘When are you going to get married?’ he grumbled yet again, lurching past her in exaggerated sailor’s gait with a plate of marinated fish. ‘Doesn’t family mean anything to you?’
Family, his constant refrain, a proud Cypriot father focused upon his only child. With her mother’s milk she had been fed the stories of the mountains and the village, of mystical origins and whispering forests, of passions and follies and brave forebears – little wonder that she had never found a man to compare. She had been born to a life illuminated with legend, and there were so few legends walking the streets of north London, even for a woman with her dark good looks.
Family. As she bit into a slice of cool raw turnip and savoured its tang of sprinkled salt, an idea began to form. ‘Baba…’ She reached out and grabbed his leathery hand. ‘Sit a minute. Talk with me.’
He grumbled, but wiped his hands on his apron and did as she asked.
‘You know how much I love your stories about the old days, what it was like in the village, the tales your mother told around the winter fires when the snow was so thick and the well froze. Why don’t we write them down, your memories. About your family. For my family – whenever I have one.’ She smiled.
‘Me, write?’ he grunted in disgust.
‘No, talk. And remember. I’ll do the rest. Imagine what it would be like if you could read the story of Papou, your grandfather, even of his grandfather. The old way of life in the mountains is all but gone, perhaps my own children won’t be able to touch it – but I want them to be able to know it. How it was. For you.’
He scowled but raised no immediate objection.
‘It would be fun, Baba. You and me. Over the summer, when school is out. It would be an excuse for us to go visit once more. It’s been years – I wonder if the old bam your father built is still there at the back of the house, or the vines your mother planted. And whether they’ve ever fixed that window in the church you and your brothers broke.’ She was laughing now, like they had before her mother died. A distant look had crept into his eyes, and within them she thought she saw a glint of embers reviving in the ashes.
‘Visit the old family graves,’ he whispered. ‘Make sure they’re still kept properly.’
And exorcize a few ghosts, she thought. By writing it all down, purging the guilt, letting in light and releasing all the demons that he harboured inside.
He sniffed, as though he could already smell the pine. ‘Couldn’t do any harm, I suppose.’ It was the closest he had come in months to anything resembling enthusiasm.
I see no point in compromise. It’s rather like suggesting jumping as a cure for vertigo.
Mortima despaired of trying to check her face in the flicker of passing street lights as the car made its way up Birdcage Walk. ‘So what kind of woman is Claire Carlsen?’ she asked, snapping away her compact.
‘Different.’ Urquhart paused to consider. ‘Whips don’t much care for her,’ he concluded, as though he had no identifiable opinion of his own.
‘A troublemaker?’
‘No. I think it’s more that the old boys’ network has trouble in finding the right pigeon-hole for a woman who is independent, drives a fifty-thousand-pound Mercedes sports car and won’t play by their rules. Has quite a tongue on her, too, so I’m told.’
‘Not something of which you as a former Chief Whip would approve. So why are we going to dinner?’
‘Because she’s persistent, her invitation seemed to keep creeping to the top of the list. Because she’s different.’
‘Sounds as if you do approve, Francis,’ she probed teasingly, her curiosity aroused.
‘Perhaps I do. As Chief Whip, I welcomed the dunderheads and do-nothings, but as Prime Minister you need a little more variety, a different perspective. Oh, and did I say she was under forty and extremely attractive?’ He returned the tease.
‘Thinking of giving her a job?’
‘Don’t know. That’s why we’re going this evening, to find out a little more about her. I could do with some new members of the crew.’
‘But to make room on the life raft you have to throw a few old hands overboard. Are there any volunteers?’
‘I’d gladly lash that damned fool Drabble around the fleet. And Annita Burke was born to be fish bait.’
‘I thought she was loyal.’
‘So is our labrador.’
‘Go further, Francis. Much further. Bring it back.’
‘What?’
‘Fear. They’ve grown idle and fat these last months, your success has made things too easy for them. They’ve found time to dream of mutiny.’ They were passing Buckingham Palace, the royal standard illuminated and fluttering proud. ‘Even a King cannot be safe on his throne.’
For a moment, they lost themselves in reminiscence.
‘Remind them of the taste of fear, the lash of discipline. Make them lie awake at nights dreaming of your desires, not theirs.’ The compact was out again, they were nearing their destination. ‘We haven’t had a good keelhauling for months. You know how those tabloid sharks