The man Steve greeted was a tall, heavy fellow in his forties, I’d guess. He had a moustache big enough to swing on, and, if his face was in a cup, black enough to hide where it ended and the coffee began. His hair was thick and black, but thinning on top. She went on tiptoes to kiss him; one cheek after the other.
‘Ekrem, this is Charlie. He is dear to me.’
‘Like a brother?’ The man had a deep, sonorous voice. I could smell the morning coffee on his breath. It was like confronting a grizzly bear.
‘No, not like a brother – nor like the other men I have brought to you.’ He wrinkled his forehead. He might have been expressing surprise: I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. ‘So don’t cheat him.’
‘What do you want today, Perihan?’ he asked.
‘Lunch. Something we can eat and drink in the fields.’
Then he turned to me, and held out his hand. ‘I am Ekrem.’
‘I am Charlie.’
‘You like Cypriot bread, Charlie? New bake.’
‘Very much.’
‘Cold meats? Cheeses?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then come into my cave.’
I don’t know how thick the walls of Ekrem’s shop were. It was dark in there, and cool – almost damp. The scents of a hundred different foods competed for space. It wasn’t a process you could hurry. When Steve pointed to something that was past its best Ekrem would shake his shaggy head. If she persisted – as she did with some pickled artichoke heads – he would look sad. As if his best friend had died. But it was all a performance – as were his ecstatic sighs when she chose right. She bought as much food as my mother would have done in a week in the 1940s, and then stood back for me to pay for it.
‘Where are the spices?’ I asked him. ‘I can smell spices.’
He beckoned me to follow him through the shop, through its heavy walls to an attached room that was little more than a wooden shed. It was also dark, but dry and musty. The spices were on slatted wooden shelves just above the floor. Sack after sack with their tops rolled back to show their contents. Dried peppers; sandalwood and willow; cumin and turmeric. Reds and browns and yellows. The very air in there was like snuff. I told him, ‘I was in Istanbul – three years ago. They have a spice market.’
‘My uncle Arslan. He also has a shop. Maybe you saw him there?’ I had said the right thing; the giant was beaming.
‘Maybe I did. But I cannot remember the names.’
He nodded, and we walked back to where Steve was guarding his still-open cash drawer. He fixed me with an eye lock, and I knew exactly what he wasn’t saying: I trust this woman with my money. Look after her. I nodded: there are some things you don’t need words for.
In the street outside the sun was momentarily dazzling. Steve was putting the food on the back seat of the car.
Ekrem held me back. ‘She said your name is Charlie.’
‘That’s right?’
‘The same Comrade Charlie who was locked up in the English stockade the first night he was in Cyprus? Failing to salute an officer, isn’t that right?’ OK; so he had the story more or less right.
‘I rather think that’s me, Ekrem. Is it a problem?’
He shook his head and smiled.
‘No. I am a comrade too. We are strong in Northern Cyprus – we have to be. EOKA is a gang of fascists, you see. Someone will have to stop them if you British leave, or Belsen will happen again.’ He shook my hand a second time. It was a comradely shake this time.
‘Will we leave?’
‘You’ve left everywhere else, comrade.’ He smiled again to soften it. ‘But remember to come to me if you are in trouble again. OK?’
‘OK, Ekrem, and thank you. I appreciate that.’ They were the words that Warboys had used to me. I’ve said it before; what goes around comes around. The last thing I asked him was, ‘You called her something else when we met.’
‘Perihan, yes.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Fairy queen. You will see. When you walk with her it is as if she glides above the ground. Just like a fairy. Perihan is what my children call her.’
In the car again Steve asked me, ‘And what was that all about?’ as she slipped it into gear, and revved the engine for take-off.
‘Nothing. We found we had something in common, that’s all.’ I looked out of the window away from her.
‘Both Freemasons?’
‘Something like that.’
It was something I wasn’t prepared to explain yet. I joined the CP by accident in 1947. I had been squatting in a large North London house with a number of war homeless families, and gave the organizer some cash to contribute towards what I was eating and drinking: it had only seemed fair. A few days later he handed me a Communist Party membership card in the name I was using at the time, told me I’d joined an international brotherhood, and that he was very proud of me. It was too late to back out by then; besides, he was far bigger than me.
Steve didn’t push it. That was nice.
Famagusta didn’t end. It thinned out. The houses – some quite substantial, some not much bigger than sheds – began to have more and more ground between them. Large gardens with vegetables and unfamiliar flowers . . . and eventually a sea of thick, high scrub, with the Mediterranean looking over its shoulder. A million sparkling lights on the surface of the sea.
When she stopped the car under a stunted tree at a crossing of two dusty tracks the first thing I heard was . . . nothing. Silence. Like
