I followed Pat out onto the veranda because I knew Watson was joking: he had a dry sense of humour. Five minutes later I was sitting in a small wooden box made from railway sleepers, closed by a stout wooden door with a barred window. I had a bed with two old army blankets, a small saucepan full of tepid water, and a po. That was it. I doubt that hell will be as hot as it was in there. Tobin apologized for locking me up.
I said, ‘Then bloody don’t – you know he’s mad. Since when did you start siding with the boss class?’
‘Since he gave me my second stripe, sir.’
‘You don’t have to call me sir, either, Pat. I’m a civvy now, and I’m going to stay one.’
‘I understand, sir.’
Then he turned the key, and I was alone in the shadow. It was stifling. The last time I’d worked for Watson he’d welcomed me with a glass of Scotch; this time he’d locked me up in a wooden box. He was definitely getting worse. Maybe power had sent him off his head: it happens to most people with authority over you sooner or later. I removed my shirt and trousers, folded them to provide a pillow, and lay on the bed. A narrow band of light from the barred window in the door fell across the cell’s dirt floor. I watched a small grey scorpion shimmy across it. I was going to fucking love Cyprus, wasn’t I?
Watson’s office looked for all the world like an old-fashioned wooden cricket pavilion. It was painted dark green, and was rather smart. To my knowledge it had followed him from Cheltenham and to an RAF camp on the Suez Canal so far. He was like a tortoise: he carried his shell wherever he went. The cell was a comparatively recent addition, I’d guess – hidden around the back of the pavilion, like a dog kennel.
They brought me a plate of Spam and boiled potatoes, and another small saucepan of water at nightfall. By then I’d put my shirt and pants back on, and had wrapped the blankets around me. The potatoes were cold, and the flies in my cell became very excited at the smell of meat. Pat was accompanied by a small aircraftman who looked like Abbott of Abbott and Costello, and also looked a bit of a Greek – dark and swarthy. He leaked a lot, and I watched a drop of sweat from his brow fall on my food. He brought my provisions into the cell on a tin tray, while Pat waited outside. Holding the tray out to me he whispered, ‘Don’t worry, comrade, we’ll see you all right,’ and as my hand brushed his, he pushed something into it. A bar of wilting chocolate. He’d probably risked a slap in the chops for passing it to me. Comrade. They get everywhere, don’t they? I was being welcomed back to the Party.
The next morning Pat let me out, and took me to the wooden hut I was supposed to live in. It had beds for four, but no sign that any were slept in.
‘This is one of the civilian blocks,’ he told me. ‘We used to have four civvy operators, but we lost them. I think that’s when Mr Watson thought it was time to get you back, sir.’
‘Charlie, not sir. I won’t talk to you if you can’t manage the word Charlie.’
‘OK, Charlie.’ That was better.
‘What do you mean you lost your civvies?’
‘Lost them. Just like that. They went out one night and never came back.’
‘Bodies?’
‘No, nothing. The general opinion is that EOKA got them, but . . .’ He looked away from me and out of one of the windows.
‘But what . . . ?’
‘Between you and me, I think they just decided to jack it in, and pissed off.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously, sir. The boredom drives you crazy after a while. There’s nothing to do out here.’
‘I’ll remember that, Pat. I suppose that Lord-God-Almighty wants to see me now?’
‘No, Charlie. You had your induction interview yesterday, on yer own in the can. Now I’ve got to show you the ropes.’ I glanced around as we left. My kitbag and jacket had been dumped on one bed – I’d be lucky if they hadn’t been robbed out – and I noted a half-decent washroom and latrine by the door. There was a hook in the ceiling above each bed for the mosquito net, and one big flat paddled fan revolved slowly with a monotonous click. That noise could get to you. Tobin locked the cabin behind us, and handed me the key. ‘Welcome to Camp Careless,’ he told me. Careless didn’t sound like a WD name to me.
‘Careless?’
‘We made that up ourselves – if we get careless we get killed.’ It was enough for me: I’m not that brave.
‘When can I go home?’
‘God knows, Charlie. After me, with a bit of luck.’ It’s one of those phrases that you remember afterwards.
The Nicosia road from Famagusta hit a roundabout with four exits after about ten miles. The dirt road to the south led to our RAF camp, and the dirt road to the north to a couple of large army camps – including the comms HQ block – and the blockhouse they wanted me to work in. Continuing westward took you to Nic. In normal times I could have walked from where I slept to where I was to work in less than fifteen minutes. In normal times no one would have shot at me for doing so. These, everyone I met in the next few weeks assured me, were not normal times. In fact there was a street in Nicosia – Ledra Street – everyone called ‘Murder Mile’. If we had stopped going down it, I thought, no Brits would be murdered there . . . then we could have
