‘He must have been flying from Crete,’ I told Tony when we were back on the caique.
‘I sometimes wonder if she called to him and brought him here. Like one of the Sirens.’
I knew what he meant: had the pilot seen the statue below him in those last few moments before he hit the sea?
‘I know that Emil’s not been here long,’ I asked him, ‘but why is it still so clean . . . and the statue as well . . . so little algae, no weed?’
‘We’re in fresh water – I don’t where from. An underground river, I suppose. You dropped much quicker than you would have done in salt water, and that’s why you felt it cold as well – you did notice that?’
‘Yes. What next? Back to Kyrenia.’
‘Not quite yet, old son. I have to move us along the bay a bit, and closer in for the cabaret. I might even come over the side for that myself.’
I supposed he moved us about two miles, towing his small boat: it’s not that easy to judge in a curved bay. We had been there an hour when an open boat powered by a small putt-putt diesel put out from the shore. It looked like a converted ship’s lifeboat, and wasn’t going anywhere fast. We pulled our skiff up to the caique’s counter, climbed down into it, and, still tethered, allowed it to drift out towards the newcomers. A man and two women. They each waved. One of the women stood up, rocking the vessel, blowing extravagant kisses.
‘I take it you know them?’ I asked Warboys.
‘For some time. We became friends when I decided not to report them to the authorities.’
‘What for?’
‘Looting antiquities. We’re parked right over an old wooden shipwreck, and as far as I know no one else realizes it’s here. The ship was full of amphorae – terracotta storage jars.’
‘I know what they are.’
‘Keep your hair on. Most of them contained wine or spiced sauces, but some contained coins. They broke – when it went down, or later, I don’t know – and the coins scattered. The girls dive for them with ropes around their waists, like Ama girls diving for sponges in the Pacific – then they sell them piecemeal to visitors and museums. Very against the law, but very profitable.’
‘Don’t Ama girls dive naked?’
‘The GCs learn very fast, I’ve found. That was my idea for them. You’ll enjoy this.’
We watched them strip off and dive. The man stayed in their boat, and kept his clothes on. I was glad about that on the whole – he didn’t look in the best of condition. Tony showed me how, if I put the Mae West on back to front, I could float face down with my mask in the water, turning and lifting my head for breath. I only did it for ten minutes before I rolled over on to my back, and trudged my flippers until I collided gently with the skiff, then hung there. The girls had looked as graceful as seabirds – their arm and leg movements slow and strong. Their bodies changed colour and shape as their natural buoyancies overcame gravity. That must be what naked women look like in space. When Warboys got back to me we both clung on to the side of the metal boat. It angled up alarmingly but didn’t overturn on us.
He asked me, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like girls?’
‘You know I do. It’s just that I feel as if I’m at a strip show – and I’ve always hated them for some reason. I’m amazed how long they can hold their breath though.’
He reached over, and gently banged a fist on my forehead: a teacher driving home a lesson to a reluctant pupil.
‘That, if nothing else, Charlie, should give you cause for thought.’ Then he spluttered, because one of the girls suddenly surfaced giggling between us, her rope trailing behind her like a long tail. She lifted in the water, and quickly kissed me on the mouth, dropped back, turned to Warboys and did the same. Then she backed off with little hand movements, treading water and giggling.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked her. She shook her head in incomprehension.
‘No English,’ Tony told me, and addressed her in Greek Cypo. She smiled at me, and rattled back three or four syllables, then turned away from us, rolled forward and dived. She cut down into the water cleanly. For a moment her white backside, brown calves and the white soles of her feet balanced high in clear air. Then the sea seemed to swallow her with hardly a ripple. My eyes followed her brown shape away from us, deeper and more shadowy. Gone.
She had looked more at home in the water than many do on dry land. Were these the Sirens? Did women once have the power to turn men into swine? They probably never needed it; look around you in any bar on a Saturday night, and you’ll see men turning into pigs without help from anyone.
‘She said her name was—’ Warboys told me.
‘I know. I heard her . . . Aphrodite. Did you know that?’
‘Yes, she’s an old friend.’
I climbed into the skiff. He put a hand under one of my feet, and helped me scramble up, but made no move to climb in himself. He asked me, ‘Can you make it back aboard on your own?’
‘Yes,
