‘What about your boys?’
‘We’ll take them with us. It’s about time they saw a bit of the world. London, Mombasa then down to Jo’burg. I think that’s the route that BOAC fly. I loved geography lessons when I was at school – it was the only thing I was any good at. I loved the foreign-sounding names of countries and cities.’
I knew that I was gibbering: making noise, not conversation.
I suppose that it was my fault; girls have had more romantic proposals than that, haven’t they? Put it down to inexperience – she was only the third or fourth woman I’d asked. The room seemed unnaturally quiet. A dying fly buzzed itself to death on its back somewhere. The ceiling fan clicked slowly around: why do those damned things always click as they revolve? When my pipe was finished I walked over to join her at the window, and knocked out the pipe ash on the sill. I watched the soft black bones of burned tobacco fall down the face of the outside wall, and into the courtyard. Eventually I couldn’t bear her silence, and asked, ‘Well? What about it?’ although I hope I sounded kinder than it looks on paper. She sighed.
‘Let me think about it.’
‘You want me to go?’
‘Yes, I’ll call you.’ This time, for some reason, I believed her.
‘You won’t have to call very loudly. Because I won’t be going far. I intended to be around for a couple of days, but I won’t crowd you.’ She looked doubtful. ‘I mean it. I have a few things of my own to do – I’ll ask Yassine to let me have a room.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Finding Pat Tobin for a start. I was going to ask you where – I know you came to see him a few days ago.’ I’d given her the perfect opportunity to tell me why, but she wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it.
‘I don’t know. He spent all night at a table with that German boy from the UN before he left. You could try there.’
‘OK.’ I’d get round to asking her directly, but not yet. Something held me back.
‘And I promised David that I would talk to you. Some of your regular friends have been calling wanting to know where you are.’
‘When I am available, you mean.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. The choice will always be yours, you know.’ I had started to talk about something else. Again she didn’t take the bait.
‘Tell David that I’m considering my options, and when I get back to business he’ll be the second to know.’ It sounded as though she was already telling me no without using the word. I could hear pots and pans being rattled around in the kitchen. It was getting on for lunchtime, and I wanted a beer.
‘I’m going down for a Keo,’ I told her. ‘Why don’t you join me in the bar?’
‘OK, sailor. Twenty minutes – I’ll take a shower first.’ As I reached the door she said, ‘Charlie,’ again. I turned. She had moved from the window, and the sheet had dropped to the floor. She had a perfectly ordinary body, and I loved every wonderful damned inch of it. I tried not to compare her with other women I had known, but when I did it was like comparing Cinemascope with jerky silent films. Which was stupid. She was half in shadow and half in bright light, like those postcards of women you could buy in Germany just after the war. Then she said very clearly, ‘It may be very unfashionable, but sometimes I just long for someone to make a choice for me, Charlie. Remember that.’
‘Is that what you want me to do?’
‘I don’t know. If you try it we’ll find out.’
I said OK, stepped through the door and shut it behind me. For the first time I looked closely at the rugs in the corridor over the uneven wood floor. I was sure that they were the same pattern as those in Yassine’s club in Ismailia.
I had trudged upstairs wanting to get something settled. I trudged downstairs more uncertain than ever.
Yassine intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs before I could get to the bar.
‘Don’t go out on the street for an hour, Charlie.’
‘Why not?’
‘Fucking Greeks. Someone’s been killed out there.’
‘When?’
‘Not long ago.’
‘Who?’
‘A soldier, I think. I have locked the gates – the area will be swarming with police in a few minutes.’
I had heard pop-pop sounds while I was wrestling with Steve, but hadn’t identified them as gunshots.
‘What else do you know?’
It was the first time in our acquaintance that I had seen Yassine truly rattled. He removed his fez, and mopped his face with a handkerchief he carried in one sleeve.
‘The woman with the baker’s stall said he was a man who came in here a lot. Listen. Here come the police.’ Sirens. Bells. The hammering sound of boots on flagged paving. People shouting. A woman sobbing. No requiem for the dead ever gives you the real noises.
Half an hour later I did go outside. My nose wasn’t bothering me: I just had to make sure it wasn’t Pat. Collins sat in a Land Rover parked up behind a civvy police car and an ambulance. Between them they blocked the narrow street. He was smoking a fag, and looked blank. I’d seen that look on his face before after he had shot the boy up in the Troodos, but he risked a small smile when he saw me.
‘Where did you spring from?’
‘Doing an errand for Mr Watkins.’ I nodded at the ambulance, and asked, ‘Anyone we know?’
‘No. Just some German lad who works for the UN.’
‘Was he in his UN clobber?’
‘Yes. And I don’t understand why they did it. It was a stupid hit . . . it will turn the UN against them, just when EOKA was making some headway over there.’
‘Maybe it was nothing to
