Within three months, Aphroditi had sold her father’s businesses and the finances were in place to demolish The Paradise Beach and begin the rebuild.
The new hotel would have twenty-five floors and six hundred bedrooms but it would be built to a lower specification and aimed at a less affluent market than The Sunrise. Its scale meant that profits would be fast and guaranteed. If they threw every cent they owned behind it, and worked to an accelerated schedule, paying out a premium for overtime, they could open in less than eighteen months. They made the decision together. The more they invested, the faster would be their return.
‘It might be a little while before you have any new jewellery …’ Savvas murmured in mock apology.
‘I think I have more than enough,’ said Aphroditi. ‘There aren’t enough days in the month as it is.’
This was true. During the first year of The Sunrise, when profit had flowed in almost faster than he could count it, Savvas had regularly commissioned new pieces for his wife. He bought gold by the ounce and sets of stones from different merchants so that he could calculate the initial value of the investment. A jeweller, usually Giannis Papadopoulos, who was the best in the city, was then paid a fee for design and creation, processes in which Aphroditi was closely involved. She favoured the very simple and modern but liked to add details inspired by the jewellery found in the tombs at Salamis. This added value, but the intrinsic value of the raw materials was what mattered to Savvas Papacosta.
Nowadays, Savvas had no time for anyone but the merchants who sold him concrete and glass, and he was already calculating his return in the same way as he had done with his wife’s jewels.
Irini Georgiou hardly saw her elder son these days. He was now spending from nine in the morning until four the following day at The Sunrise. He was the best front man a hotel could wish for, charming his way out of any problem or scene created by a guest, whether it was over some glitch with plumbing or an inadvertent error in a bill. Each one of them left completely satisfied and many were even under the impression that Markos was the owner.
Irini hardly saw Christos either. He was evasive or absent and she could not bear to learn the reason. Fortunately, she had something to distract her. Maria had just produced their first grandchild and Irini spent much of the day in her apartment, singing lullabies to little Vasilakis. It was a peaceful antithesis to the violence that was being perpetrated close by. Every time her husband returned from the kafenion with news of another EOKA B bomb attack against a police station or a politician, she held the baby closer.
Chapter Nine
HIGH SEASON CAME and business boomed at The Sunrise. It had quickly established itself as the number one hotel in Cyprus and they were obliged to turn potential guests away. They simply did not have enough rooms.
Hüseyin sometimes looked at these tourists and realised how unaware they were of the tensions on the island. Vacations were a time for rest and relaxation, a chance for businessmen to enjoy time with their wives and children in a place where the office could not reach them. A few browsed the headlines of the international newspapers available in the hotel’s bookshop, but did not remove them from the carousel. The Cyprus papers were not sold in the hotel; only the International Herald Tribune, The Times, Le Figaro and Die Zeit stood alongside the glossy magazines and a few paperbacks.
Hüseyin knew that the front pages of local newspapers would have disturbed them. Behind the beautiful tableau of sea, sun and sand, a civil war simmered while tourists remained entirely oblivious. The atmosphere of uncertainty unsettled every Cypriot, whether or not they were directly threatened.
There were always papers lying around at home, usually brought in by his father or Ali, and they inevitably provoked discussion and argument. In the past few months there had been dozens of bombings and attacks, mostly against police stations, during which sizeable quantities of arms and ammunition had been seized. In April there had been more than thirty explosions in a single day in Paphos, Limassol and Larnaca.
‘Don’t fret too much,’ said Emine when she saw Hüseyin frowning over the headlines. ‘We’re not the targets this time.’
‘Your mother’s right,’ said his father, Halit. ‘It’s not us they’re trying to terrorise. And it looks as if Makarios is having some success in any case.’
To counter the activities of EOKA B, Makarios had set up a new auxiliary force, the Tactical Police Reserve. It was used to go on search missions and that month had captured forty Grivas supporters.
‘It was different in the 1960s,’ Halit Özkan reassured his children. ‘We feared for our lives just walking down the street.’
Hüseyin did not need reminding. Even though he had been a boy then, he remembered those times well, especially the summer of 1964 when the island had been close to war. Greeks had attacked the Turkish village of Kokkina in the north, believing it to be a landing place for arms from Turkey. Turkey had retaliated with napalm and rockets. Although an all-out war was averted, the area had been put under an economic blockade and families like his own had experienced severe deprivation.
It was after this that Halit Özkan had moved his family to the enclaved village. They were soon joined by his widowed sister and her son, Mehmet. It was safer, but it was imprisoning too. What Hüseyin recalled most vividly was feeling hungry all the time. They shared everything they had, but it was never enough. Basic foodstuffs were not reaching the community and they were living off whatever his father and cousin could get hold of when they took the risk to leave the area.
He remembered his mother being frantic if they were not back before dusk. She would stand by the door looking up the street for what to the child seemed like hours, and when they finally appeared she would hold her hands out to his father and embrace him as though he had been missing for weeks.
There was a day when his father returned alone. Within moments their street was full of people gathered round him, and lots of people were speaking at once. Hüseyin had been left on the outside of the circle, standing on tiptoe, straining to see one or other of his parents.
The boy was too young to be told what was going on, but there was quiet weeping among the women and an unusual silence between the men. He waited with dread. Something was going to happen.
Not long afterwards he saw his father being driven out of the village. It was July, and a huge cloud of dust rose up behind the truck.
Nobody told him to go to bed that night, and for once he was allowed into a group of older boys to kick a ball around in the street, taking care not to go too close to the barbed wire that sealed off one end of it.
Before it got light, the truck returned and his cousin’s body was carried in. His had been the first corpse Hüseyin had ever seen. One moment Mehmet had been playing with Hüseyin in the yard, smiling, teasing, swinging him round, acting as goalkeeper while the younger boy tried to dribble a ball past him. Now he was still and pale. Hüseyin had stood on a chair at the edge of the room to get a better view over the heads of all the people gathered around the dead body. In spite of himself, he wanted to have a good look.
His cousin had been fifteen years older than Hüseyin. He had been training to be a lawyer and the younger boy had hero-worshipped him.
Mehmet had prided himself on looking smart. ‘A man should always go to work in a clean shirt,’ he used to tell Hüseyin. That day he was dressed differently, the child observed. He was wearing a filthy shirt, one that was as crimson as a Turkish flag.
Although the adults tried to protect the children as much as they could, there was no avoiding the truth. Someone had hacked his cousin to death. They no longer talked of it, but Mehmet remained in their thoughts every day, his memory kept alive in the name the Özkans gave their late, unexpected baby born a few years later.
‘It’s as if he has been sent to replace your cousin,’ said his mother, who at the age of forty-one had imagined that her childbearing days were over.
During the period that followed the murder, Hüseyin
remembered the hunger being more acute. No one in his family was willing to risk going to buy food, so they lived on pulses for many months. Hüseyin was thin then, and had remained slim ever since, even though he was now impressively athletic.
Everything got better when his family had moved to town. They felt safer and his parents smiled again. It seemed that everyone had a tragedy in their family, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
‘It’s something we all share,’ said his mother. ‘When someone we love dies, it doesn’t matter who we are. The pain is just the same, just as terrible.’
Hüseyin noticed that his father stayed silent when his mother was expressing these views. He did not disagree with her openly, but usually found something else with which to occupy himself, suddenly concentrating on an unnecessary repair job, picking up a newspaper to immerse himself in the day’s news or going outside to smoke. All of these activities were modes of silent protest.
It was always Ali who challenged their mother, and on many evenings ferocious arguments would ensue.
The endless hours of conversation Emine had in the salon with Savina, when they talked of the past as well as perms, had given her a strong sense of how futile all the violence had been. She was as fond of the younger woman as she was of her sisters. The two women had exchanged scores of similar stories of their families’ respective suffering, so she hated it more than anything when her son started his fighting talk.
Emine and Halit knew that Ali was the more politically minded of their two older sons, but neither was aware that he had joined the Turkish Resistance Organisation. The TMT had been formed in the late 1950s to counter the activities of EOKA and the threat to their community. It also campaigned for taksim, partition of the island. Ali was sure that his father would be proud to know he was a member, but he could not tell him without his mother finding out too.
Ali had no faith that the Turkish Cypriots were safe. The Turkish government had been prepared to step in when their community had been threatened in the past, but there was no saying that they would do so again. Under the TMT’s secret symbol, the grey wolf, Ali was ready to fight.
‘We should be able to protect ourselves,’ he said to his brother when he was trying to persuade Hüseyin to join. ‘Our parents are fooling themselves if they think we are safe. There’s no reason to believe the events of the sixties won’t happen again.’
Hüseyin did not want to fight. It was not in his nature. When family rows erupted, he wandered out of the house and back towards the seafront, even though he had spent all day there.
Once on the beach, he would hurl himself into the water to cool down before launching into a match, joining whichever team was short of a player. Many times he played in the same team as Christos Georgiou, and sometimes they even walked home together.
As the summer days went by, Hüseyin had noticed that Christos was hardly seen.
While Hüseyin was stacking chairs and daydreaming of sporting victory, Christos had found a new focus, a very different obsession from the one that preoccupied his teammate. He was learning how to construct home-made bombs, and the optimum strategy for surprise attack.
Makarios’ enemies were continuing to conspire against him. The police station in Limassol was destroyed in a bombing and the Justice Minister kidnapped. Grivas and his EOKA B were gaining ground. But even as explosions were being perpetrated elsewhere on the island by Christos and others like him, life in the resort continued as normal.
Aphroditi came to The Sunrise several times a week in the afternoon for her hair appointments, and each evening for the cocktail party. Many times she saw Markos, but she avoided speaking to him. Savvas was almost full-time at the Paradise Beach building site, and except for his attendance for cocktails he scarcely appeared. The flagship hotel did not seem to suffer from his absence, but it disturbed Aphroditi that Markos Georgiou was clearly accepted as the man in charge, even though he had no official position. Nothing had been formally said.
At the beginning of August, when temperatures were exceeding forty degrees most days, the foundation stone for The New Paradise Beach was laid. Another reception was held to mark the moment. From then on, Savvas was on site from dawn until dusk, driving straight from the dust of the building works to The Sunrise and appearing for drinks with his guests still damp from the shower.
One night, following a gala dinner, he and Aphroditi drove home in silence. It was unusual for Savvas not to have a few comments about the guests or complaints about something he felt should have been repaired or redecorated. Once inside the apartment, he walked straight to the bedroom and lay down.
‘Savvas?’ asked Aphroditi. ‘Is there something the matter? Aren’t you going to get undressed? Not even your shoes?’
‘It’s hardly worth it,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be up again before it’s light.’
Before Aphroditi had even removed her necklace and put it away in a drawer, her husband had turned out his bedside light.
‘Do you have to be on site every day?’
He switched on the light and sat up abruptly.
‘Of course I do! How can you even ask that question?’ A combination of exhaustion and the brandies he had consumed that evening made him irritable. ‘I have to be there, but meeting all those people at The Sunrise every night … that’s something I don’t need to do.’
‘What? But that’s important, Savvas. Much more than anything else!’
‘Well it isn’t for me, Aphroditi.’
The process of building had become more interesting to Savvas than the finished result. He enjoyed seeing the figures that showed him how money was being earned to pay for every iron girder and pane of glass, but the day-to-day workings of the hotel and meeting the guests who stayed there had lost its allure.
‘So I am supposed to go on my own?’
‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow, Aphroditi. I’m too exhausted for this discussion.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about it now. Everyone loves coming for cocktails on the terrace – and every party needs a host and hostess. So what do you propose?’
‘Markos can stand in for me.’
‘Markos Georgiou?’ Aphroditi did not bother to conceal her dismay. ‘But he’s no substitute for you! He’s just a barman! A nightclub manager!’
‘He is a lot more than that, Aphroditi, as you well know. Look, all of this can wait until morning; right now I want to sleep.’
Aphroditi hated her husband dismissing her view in this way. She knew as well as he did the source of all the funding. At the beginning, she had felt an equal in the business, but ever since Savvas had begun work on rebuilding The Paradise Beach, he had changed. Nowadays he spoke to her like a child.
Suddenly the words slipped out.
‘Don’t forget where all the money came from.’
There was a pause. Aphroditi wished she could take them back, but they were out now, like birds freed from a cage.
In silence, Savvas got out of bed and left the room. Aphroditi heard the door of the guest room slam.
She lay awake for hours, angry with herself for losing control but furious at her husband’s rebuke and even more so at the suggestion he had made. Under no circumstances would she play the role of hostess next to Markos Georgiou. The idea was totally preposterous. He was, whatever her husband claimed, merely the person who oversaw the alcohol inventory, polished the glasses and booked a few seedy singers.
The following morning, Savvas left without waking his wife. When she got up and wandered into the kitchen, she found a note on the table.
I meant what I said last night. Today is going to be a long day for me, so I would like Markos to be the host for cocktails tonight. He will meet you at The Sunrise at six thirty. I hope you have had a chance to sleep on this.
No, she thought. I haven’t.
The day was the hottest yet that summer, but it was the fury inside that made her boil.
Chapter Ten
APHRODITI GOT TO The Sunrise ear
lier than usual for her hair appointment. A hotel guest was just having some rollers removed and Savina was backcombing her hair into a fashionable bouffant style.
‘Kyria Papacosta, how are you today?’ she asked, looking up from her activity.
‘A little tired actually, Savina. I didn’t sleep too well.’
‘It was such a hot night, wasn’t it?’
‘I didn’t get a wink either. And it’s going to be even hotter tonight,’ added Emine.
Aphroditi forced a smile. How were they to know that her home was constantly cooled by air-conditioning? The sultry weather was not the reason for her lack of sleep.
‘So how would we like our hair today?’ asked Emine.
Aphroditi shook out her plait and it rippled around her shoulders and down to her waist like melted chocolate. Her eyes met Emine’s in the mirror.
‘I’d like you to cut it, please.’
‘Just the usual?’
Once every six weeks, Emine trimmed Aphroditi’s hair by half an inch, just as she had been doing for years.
‘No. I’d like you to cut it off, please.’
The hairdresser took a step back. Aphroditi read her look of surprise in the mirror. In all these years, she had kept her hair almost identically long in a style that was infinitely adaptable, for chignons, braids, plaits and other traditional styles that all Cypriot girls wore.
‘Cut it off?’
The customer had paid and left so Savina now came over and also stood behind her.
‘Why? How?’ she asked with incredulity.
Aphroditi produced a magazine cutting from her clutch bag and handed it to them. It was a picture of an American actress, her hair just touching her shoulders.
Both the stylists stood there scrutinising the picture. Emine picked up a long shank of Aphroditi’s hair and let it fall again.
‘It could be done,’ she said. ‘But do you really want this?’
‘You will look so different!’