Aphroditi touched her husband’s sleeve.
‘I’d like to go now,’ she said, trying to make herself heard above the noise. Her tone of voice was firm, like her husband’s earlier.
Savvas looked at his wife. Aphroditi was the only person in the room not acknowledging the brilliance of the performance. He knew that she still harboured resentment about everything to do with the Clair de Lune.
‘Very well, agapi mou,’ he said patiently. ‘I just need to have a word with Markos and then we’ll leave.’
‘I’ll be waiting in the foyer,’ said Aphroditi.
Even before the applause had died down, she had left. From the stage, Markos saw a flash of a green dress as she disappeared out of the back door. The whole evening was exceeding even his own expectations.
Chapter Six
HÜSEYIN ÖZKAN BEGAN work each morning at six when the sun was still low in the sky but already spreading a warm glow. Laying out sunloungers and stacking them up again was mindless work, but he was happy earning his own money and sometimes he even got overgenerously tipped. Many of the tourists seemed to have little concept of the value of the Cypriot pound, but he was not going to educate them.
Hüseyin’s afternoon break gave him time to play an hour of water polo each day, and in the evenings a game of volleyball would take place. When the day was over, the increasingly athletic eighteen year old would buy a cool Keo beer. As the sun went down, he would sit on the sand with his friends and drink it. He felt he had the perfect life.
The teams were mostly made up of Greek Cypriots, but some of the strongest players were Turkish Cypriot, and he often tried to persuade his younger brother, Ali, to come down to the beach for a game. The fifteen year old, who was taller than Hüseyin, though with a much slighter frame, was reluctant. The simple truth was that he did not want to play in a mixed team.
‘I don’t trust them,’ he said. ‘They’ll break the rules.’
Ali spent more time at home than Hüseyin and had been more influenced by their father’s opinions. Ali knew that Halit Özkan often regretted the fact that they had moved to an area where they were surrounded by Greek Cypriots. He would have preferred to be in the old town, where they would not be in a minority. Ali was aware that his father feared trouble, and when they both read in Halkın Sesi of EOKA B’s new activities, he fully expected that violence would spread their way.
As the holidaymakers reclined in the sun, sipped cocktails, swam or lost themselves in the latest thriller, Hüseyin noticed that they were always oriented towards the sea. The sunbeds had to be laid in rows, pointing towards the rising sun. These foreigners did not want to look inland. Even Frau Bruchmeyer, who lived on the island now, saw only its beauty and the paradise created by blue sky and sea.
Although during their short conversations she never forgot to ask after Hüseyin’s mother, she seemed unaware of the knife edge on which the Cypriots were living.
Markos continued to feel uneasy about Christos’ connection with the new movement for enosis. It seemed absurd to him that anyone should feel the need to disturb this tourist paradise. He could see from the way the girls sauntered up and down the beach in their bikinis, and how the men casually clocked up ludicrous bar bills, that these tourists, whether from Greece or further afield, did not have a care in the world. In spite of a constant battery of criticism from Christos, Markos maintained his position: why do the one thing that would upset their mother? But above all, why destroy this coastal arcadia?
The Clair de Lune continued to enjoy a full house every night. ‘Marilyn’ sang three times a week, and on the other nights there was a selection of cabaret acts, all previously auditioned by Markos. One of the most popular was a belly dancer from Turkey. Another comprised three performers from La Cage aux Folles in Paris, who achieved the almost impossible feat of doing a cancan on the tiny stage.
As the holiday season continued, and the reputation of The Sunrise and its nightclub grew, Markos brought in singers from all around Greece, some of them big names in Athens and Thessaloniki, and flew others in especially from Paris or London. Savvas continually studied the accounts, and even with the plane fares, he could see that Markos managed to make a large profit. Membership of the club became highly coveted, and after a few months its cost soared. The drinks were astronomically expensive, but for vintage whiskies, nobody cared what they paid.
For the first time in Cyprus, the high prices became desirable in themselves, making the Clair de Lune a place to be seen. People began to queue for entry to a club where cost and status were synonymous and where spending an evening on one of its purple sofas made them part of an elite, the crème de la crème. To people who could afford luxury, the proximity of modest one-storey homes where families still ground their own wheat, grew vegetables and milked their goats was irrelevant. Inhabitants of these parallel worlds had their own reasons to be content.
‘This is what the jet set wants,’ said Markos, when even Savvas balked at the new price list that the club manager was proposing. ‘They don’t want things to be cheap.’
‘But spirits only cost two shillings at the bar in town,’ fretted Savvas.
‘Trust me,’ said Markos.
When film stars began to frequent the place, and soon afterwards a famous Hollywood couple spent two consecutive nights there, Markos knew he had proved his worth on every level. From now on, in his boss’s eyes, he could do no wrong.
Business in the rest of the hotel had continued to grow. In late September, when the hotel was booked to capacity for the first time, with all five hundred bedrooms fully occupied, Savvas Papacosta announced that dinner would now be held in the ballroom.
With a mosaic floor and slender, elegant pillars at the entrance, the ballroom, like the reception area, had been modelled on the recent discoveries at Salamis. Excavations had revealed tombs filled with treasures from thousands of years before. The architectural and decorative motifs of the once thriving town of Constantia, as Salamis had been known in Roman times, had inspired Aphroditi, and she had taken many of the details and applied them to the grandest space in the hotel.
The ballroom was circular, to reflect the shape of the ancient amphitheatre. Around the edge of the room were a dozen female figures. The limestone originals were no more than thirty centimetres high, but Aphroditi had commissioned hers to be larger than life-size, so that they appeared to be holding up the ceiling, like the caryatids at the Erechtheion in Athens. Each of them held a flower in their right hand. She had resisted the temptation to paint them in the bright colours that would have been used on the originals. She wanted the colour to emanate from the walls, where she had designed a repeated pattern of a woman’s face with garlands of foliage, in gold and green. The face had been faithfully produced to mirror the original in the Salamis gymnasium, and yet it looked eerily like Aphroditi herself. Huge eyes gazed from all around the room.
She had even commissioned copies of a chair that had been found in one of the tombs in the ancient city. The excavated fragments were made of ivory, and the cool, smooth texture of the original material had been reproduced in wood. With meticulous attention to detail, an artisan had spent two years on the pair of chairs, reproducing the ornate plaques that embellished them. Everyone marvelled at the carvings of the sphinx and of the lotus flowers. An upholsterer had been given free rein with the padded seats and had chosen gold silk to match the gilding that had been applied to the sphinx’s crown. The chairs were sat on by Aphroditi and Savvas at the top table. They seemed like royalty on their thrones.
The two pieces of ornamental furniture were not the only objets that had kept the best artisans of Nicosia busy. The gossamer curtains that hung from the very high ceiling had been embroidered with gold thread to match the gilded foliage painted around the walls.
It was a temple to materialism in which some, but not all, of the ancient conventions had been respected. The materials were probably more lavish than those used to construct the originals on which t
his costly pastiche was based. Aphroditi had combined all the elements that had impressed archaeologists at Salamis and brought them together into one room.
‘Agapi mou, do you like it?’
‘Well I think our guests will love it,’ said Savvas tactfully, the first time he saw the finished result, with the drapes in place and the tables arranged in a fan shape round the room.
‘Don’t you think it’s glamorous?’
‘Yes, my darling, it’s definitely that.’
Crystal glasses, white porcelain plates and brilliantly polished cutlery all caught the light from the chandeliers and sparkled.
In the circular floor space in the middle there was a huge but completed copy of the celebrated Salamis mosaic of Zeus disguised as a swan. This was intended for use as a dance floor – most importantly for the first dance of a bride and groom – or sometimes for theatrical or orchestral events. Aphroditi’s ambitions for this space were unlimited. Famagusta had a tradition for theatre and the arts, and she wanted the hotel to be known for something even more spectacular, for a level of performance that no one had seen before.
To mark the end of the summer season and the beginning of their first autumn, Aphroditi realised a dream. She invited dancers from London to perform Swan Lake. On this mosaic, in such a setting, it would be unique.
Savvas was nervous.
‘Darling, it’s a very expensive thing to do …’
‘We need to have events like this, Savvas. We’re the biggest but we have to be the best as well.’
Dancing on mosaic tessellations was far from ideal, but Aphroditi was determined to find a way. The compromise was that the dancers would only perform highlights.
Swans, said the invitation simply, and when the VIP guests came from around the island to Cyprus’ most glamorous hotel, they were, once again, speechless at what the couple had achieved.
Few there had seen classical ballet danced in the round, and when the prima ballerina finally came to her graceful, tragic end, they found themselves gazing at a dancer who appeared to be enveloped in the wings of the swan. She and the mosaic had become as one. The audience was on its feet, applauding and calling for an encore. Even men dabbed their eyes.
‘It was perfect,’ admitted Savvas, ‘and everyone loved it, but I do have a few doubts about the cost …’
‘It’s not just about money,’ said Aphroditi.
‘It is, actually, Aphroditi. In the end, that’s the only thing it’s about.’
Aphroditi had heard the same words from her father over the years and hoped they were both wrong. It rendered so much of what she did futile. How could the effect of the gold-leaf finish and the unforgettable spectacle of the dying swan ever be measured? On this matter the couple increasingly disagreed.
For Savvas, expenditure of any kind had to be for a purpose and needed justification, whether it was for a certain grade of marble in the bathrooms or a piece of jewellery for his wife. Savvas divided income by number of guests by number of rooms occupied and then calculated profit. For him, it was maths not emotion.
He applied the same principle to staff. His criteria for recruitment were similarly clinical. He wanted the best people working in his hotel and he did not care who they were, as long as they arrived early for their shifts, did their jobs faultlessly, did not steal from guests and did not ask for pay rises.
It was this pragmatic philosophy that had led to The Sunrise having a balance of Greek and Turkish Cypriots among the staff, a ratio that also happened to reflect their relative proportions on the island. For every Turkish Cypriot there were four Greek Cypriots, and all of them (even if Turkish was their first language) spoke both Greek and English. There were a few Armenians and Maronites too. For the foreign guests there was little possibility of differentiating one from another. Every member of staff had to work hard to please the boss, whatever their ethnic origin, whether they went to the mosque or church. What they did and where they went outside working hours was their own business. By the end of the year, the hotel was employing one thousand people.
Though Savvas Papacosta himself was not particularly interested in the cultural richness of Cyprus, he did make one concession in the hotel. Once a week, he agreed that there should be a Cypriot Night, with local recipes along with traditional dancing.
On these nights, both Greek and Turkish Cypriot members of staff were asked to demonstrate the steps, wearing specially made local costumes. The men looked dashing in their red waistcoats and sashes, baggy knickerbockers and long leather boots, and the women were pretty in their full-length gathered crimson skirts and white blouses. No one was obliged to take part, but it was noted if they did not. From time to time Emine persuaded Hüseyin to join in. He could earn some extra money that way and he could dance effortlessly.
Although every nationality found the steps challenging (especially the American guests), they were enamoured of the food, getting a flavour for the first time of the ‘real’ Cyprus. The French-trained maestro chef took the night off, and two chefs from the best tavernas in Nicosia were brought in. They came with trays of ready-made specialities and then spent the day preparing more. Greedily, guests piled their plates high with meatballs, halloumi cheese, stuffed vine leaves and kleftiko, and were ecstatic at the range of desserts, kataifi, baklava and every type of Turkish sweetmeat. For many, it was their first taste of zivania, which was served in generous quantities, and the hotel had even taken delivery of some cheap china so that guests could write on their postcards, ‘Having a smashing time!’
Fuelled with alcohol and sweet pastry, guests danced until midnight and then adjourned to the Clair de Lune to dance a little more. When they emerged from the purple and the darkness, they crossed the foyer and stood on the terrace to watch the sun emerging over the horizon. Just as Savvas Papacosta had always intended, The Sunrise provided the best place from which to observe this daily phenomenon. It was a truly awe-inspiring sight.
Chapter Seven
THE BEACH BECAME a little quieter at the beginning of October, but work continued for Hüseyin. He was asked to mend broken loungers and umbrellas, and after that helped repair the hotel boat. This was followed by several other maintenance jobs on the beachfront. Similarly the salon had slightly fewer customers and Emine was able to take a little time off, which she used to visit some of her more elderly clients who liked to have their hair cut or permed at home.
One of these was Irini Georgiou, who lived in the same street. For the first time in several months, Emine went to see her, taking shampoo and a few rollers. While she waited for Irini’s hair to set, they had plenty of time to gossip and catch up on each other’s news.
‘Markos is doing so well,’ said Irini proudly.
‘The nightclub is obviously a huge success,’ Emine replied. ‘So many customers tell us about it! One of our regulars is a German lady – easily seventy years old – who goes there every night!’
‘Markos has mentioned her,’ said Irini. ‘And what about your Hüseyin?’
‘Well he’s certainly earned himself a bit of money in the last few months. I don’t know if he wants to be on the beachfront for ever, but at least it gives him time for his sport …’
Neither woman brought up the subject of politics. The summer had been a period of intense political instability, of which they had both been aware. Earlier in the year there had been the threat of a military coup against Makarios, and Turkey had put its forces on alert. Turkish Cypriots had even been told to store up food supplies in their homes, and Emine had filled her cupboards. The coup had been averted but Makarios had continued to face opposition, from some of his own bishops now as well as the Greek junta. This ongoing threat and fear made both the women anxious and sleepless, but had had miraculously little effect on tourism.
In his financial forecasting, Savvas Papacosta had expected a steep decline in bookings to begin in the autumn. Despite this he had projected there would be a sizeable profit. What he had not anticipated was that people w
ho had come in July would want to return again in November. This meant that occupancy of the hotel was still at fifty per cent. Temperatures were balmy and the sun warm and kind, and the sea promised to hold its heat. The glamorous shops and smart cafés in the city remained open and the Clair de Lune was full to capacity each night.
Once a week, Aphroditi telephoned her parents. Trifonas took a keen interest in everything happening at The Sunrise, and most of the phone call was taken up with answering his flow of questions. Aphroditi was very surprised one day in November when it was her mother who picked up the phone rather than her father. She could hear Trifonas Markides coughing in the background and gathered that he was not even feeling well enough to play golf.
She wondered if she should go and visit them.
‘I’d rather you left it a while,’ urged Savvas. ‘Guests like to see us. Or to see you at least …’
It was not an idle compliment. Aphroditi’s presence thrilled the female guests in the way that the nightclub artistes excited their husbands. What would she have on that night? Would she be wearing some spectacular jewellery? All such questions were on their minds.
‘But I’m a bit worried about—’
‘Why don’t you wait until January? There’s bound to be a drop in bookings after Christmas. It would be a much better time.’
A moment passed while his words sank in.
‘But …’
‘You can’t go now.’
‘Savvas! I think my father is—’
‘I’ve told you what I think.’ He banged his fist on the table. ‘We have to put all our energy into this enterprise, Aphroditi.’
It was the first time she had realised that for Savvas, work came before everything else. And it was the first time he had shouted at her.
She retreated, shaking with anger and shock. For several days she came to the hotel to perform her duties as the boss’s wife, but she did not speak a word to her husband.