1

Every time Yannis entered his brother’s office in Elizabeth Street the elegant nameplate beside the door filled him partly with amusement and partly with irritation. Joannides Enterprises. It was so much like Alex! Enterprises could mean anything; it sounded both grand and suspicious. It made you think of anonymous wealth and power. But while he gave nothing away about his enterprises Alexis clung to his name and saw to it that others were reminded of it on every occasion. He had his initials embroidered even on his dressing-gown. Yannis, who made an old overcoat serve for a dressing-gown, always felt subtly patronised whenever his brother’s bold use of the family name confronted him. His own business was called Joannides Fruit and Vegetable Store. But that was different. A green-grocery wasn’t an enterprise; it was just a shop.

Nevertheless, or perhaps because he felt himself to be so unlike Alexis, he was fond of him. Even when they acted on opposing sides, as they usually did in community affairs, and people thought that they must be on the verge of becoming enemies, they could still laugh together because they saw through each other’s motives. Alexis was the elder by two years, and ever since boyhood he had taken the lead. The trouble was that he had also inherited Yannis’ share of worldliness.

The cool-looking Greek girl behind the desk in the front office—Alexis did not employ Australians because they were harder to control—looked up and gave Yannis her special, mature smile. ‘Good morning, Mr Joannides. This is an important day for you, isn’t it? Are you excited?’

‘I’m quite calm,’ Yannis assured her, but suddenly he did not feel at all calm. ‘Is my brother in?’

‘He’s waiting for you. He’s bought an extra nice carnation for his buttonhole.’

‘Ah … And I forgot to get one for myself.’

He walked unannounced into his brother’s inner room. Alexis was standing under the large portrait of Queen Frederika. He stared at Yannis with half-closed eyes.

‘Is that your best suit?’ he welcomed him.

‘Yes,’ Yannis said, sitting down and wiping his moist forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Do you think she’ll turn back when she sees it?’

‘I wouldn’t blame her,’ Alexis said, beginning to smile, which made him look younger than his brother. ‘But it’s pressed, anyway. Well—how do you feel?’

‘Like one of your wrestlers before a big fight.’ He motioned to other pictures around the wall; photographs of wrestlers, some dressed in leopard skins. There were also studies of Greek actresses. A miniature statue of a naked athlete stood on the birchwood desk.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Alexis said. ‘All men have to get married sooner or later.’

‘But most know the girls they are going to marry. I’m fifteen years older than she is. If Mama had left me in peace …’

Alexis grinned. ‘If we left you in peace you’d never do anything. You would still be in Cyprus, and you’d die a bachelor. So don’t be ungrateful. Your problem is not that you are too old, but that you are afraid of women. Tell me the truth: did you ever have one?’

‘Don’t be silly, Alexi. Your problem is that women are afraid of you.’

But he was too honest not to admit the truth to himself. He had possessed a few girls, but in one way or another, directly or indirectly, they had been paid. He was not sure why they were not attracted to him, but he thought it was probably because he had no conversation. On the whole he got on better with Australian than with Greek or Cypriot girls, but to marry one of these would have broken his mother’s heart.

‘The real reason is,’ Alexis said, ‘that you’re too fond of politics. You had better watch out. Anna doesn’t care a bit for politics, I am certain. She’s a good girl, brought up in the old way. Don’t go trying to convert her. That’s the quickest way to lose a woman. You’ll have a wife and a business now. Let it be enough, Yannaki!’

‘What about yourself? You are even fonder of politics than I. You’re a politician. And Elena has not run away from you yet.’

Alexis frowned slightly. It was always like this. Yannis and he rarely actually quarrelled but a certain hostility easily entered into their talk. Somehow it was not right for Yannis to put himself altogether on the same level with him. It was not just because he was poorer—in fact that was the least of it. The thing was much more subtle. They loved each other, and yet even as boys they had fought more bitterly than most brothers. Money? Yannis never accepted any from him. He had stopped offering it long ago.

‘My politics is not politics in the way yours is,’ he explained. ‘I’m not against things, I’m for things. That makes all the difference, you blockhead. And I don’t get involved with our piddling clubs. We should have left all that at home; it does not fit in here. As for Elena, she agrees with me. I wish you half the luck that I have had with her. She’ll be coming down to the docks to hold your hand.’

‘I can tell you what I am for,’ Yannis said quickly, but annoyed with himself for feeling on the defensive. ‘Only you don’t like it. Why argue? You stick to your bishop and your wrestlers and I’ll stick to …’

‘Marx and vegetables,’ Alex interrupted maliciously, brightening at once at his own witticism.

They were silent for a moment, studying each other. Alexis wore a white duck suit and a blue silk shirt. The carnation in his buttonhole was a blossom that had only just opened. ‘He is dressed as if he were expecting his own bride,’ Yannis thought. He was glad his brother was coming and he knew that, if it had been Alexis’ girl they were going to meet, Alexis would have been just as pleased to have him come along. ‘He will insist on my buying a carnation too,’ he thought. ‘And he will make me look an ass over it.’

Yannis’ remark about ‘your bishop’ was a dig at his brother’s interest in the recent appointment of a new Orthodox Archbishop to Australia, an unusually energetic man who wanted to carry out certain financial reforms. Yannis and his friends regarded them as aimed at the democratic rights of the community. The struggle was agitating all the clubs and societies. Yannis’ own club, Kypros, of which he was treasurer, had denounced the proposed changes as a reactionary plot and the thin end of the dictatorial wedge. Alexis, on the other hand, for personal reasons chiefly connected with the communal elections due soon in Melbourne, was supporting the reforms in the columns of Eleftheria, a weekly newspaper in which he owned a controlling interest. He liked to think of himself as a publicist and wrote for the paper under the pen-name of Lysandros. His articles were obscure and full of allusions which his wife culled for him from the classics. Yannis had no facility for writing but the articles had stung him into trying his hand at a rejoinder, under the name of Xenon. It had not been published. He knew that Alexis guessed who the author was, but this had not been openly acknowledged. Yannis did not care to appeal to family ties in a matter involving his principles, and Alexis, with a delicacy unusual in him, respected his feelings and was content that his brother did not force the issue. Yannis’ hatred for priests was well-known. He habitually described them as ‘the boys with the stove-pipe hats’.

In his secret heart Alexis shared the dislike, though he could not afford to indulge it. He had no more religion than Yannis, but he was a free-handed giver to Church endowments, and their mother, who lived with him, was devout.

‘God be with both of us,’ he said. ‘Mama is waiting for the girl as for the spring. She’s burning candles for her safe arrival. I only hope she won’t be disappointed.’

‘It will be her own fault if she is,’ Yannis said rather bitterly. ‘She fixed everything, right from the beginning, as if it was her own marriage. It’s a conspiracy. Mama had the idea, Mama wrote the letters, Mama asked for the photographs, and now she has Anna’s birth certificate.’

‘Well, you are her favourite.’

‘She thinks I am a child.’

‘No, but her mind is on children. You can’t let her down.’

‘And so she finds Anna a husband, sight unseen. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had one good look at me and caught the next boat home. It has happened before.’

‘It won’t happen to you, my boy. I shall not pay her fare back, and I don’t think you could without borrowing. What is more, she will probably like you. You have what is needed to make a wife happy.’

‘I have?’ Yannis asked guardedly.

‘You are generous,’ Alexis said, looking at his nails.

‘Rubbish!’

‘And simple. Girls love men who are simple. Only … not too simple. You understand?’

‘No, but what does it matter?’

‘It matters a lot. The simplest girl is not as simple as some men are. Not even a village girl.’

‘If I get into trouble I shall phone you,’ Yannis said sarcastically.

‘Do that, my son.’ Alexis looked at his watch. ‘It’s time we went and picked up Elena. But wait, I have something for you.’

He went across to a cocktail cabinet. Opening it, he produced a bouquet of roses in an expensive plastic box, which he laid on the desk. Then he went back and took out a red carnation.

‘Here. These you give to her, and this you pin to your lapel. And don’t argue. They are not the roses that grow round Lapithos—do you remember? But they are nice and big.’ He added with paradoxical pride: ‘Everything here grows bigger than at home.’

The grooms and lovers were getting out of hand. Ignoring the shouts of the ship’s officers and evading the harassed policemen who guarded the gangways, they assaulted the steep flanks of the vessel like boarding parties. Some were trying to get a foothold in the open portholes of the crew’s quarters, through which laughing men in singlets looked out. A few daring ones were climbing into the shore net that had already been dropped. One youth, handsome as Apollo, had taken off from a bollard and hand over hand was climbing up a cable at the bow, cheered on by the passengers and the waiting crowd.

Standing a little apart, Anna was looking down from the for’ard end of the boat-deck where the press was not so severe. This upsurge of collective passion frightened her because she could feel the responding need of the women of the brideship who were calling out to the men below. She was too nervous to take her eyes off the pier for long, afraid that she and Yannis would not recognise each other. Never had she longed so much for her mother, and never had her mother been farther away than now.

She began to scan the faces on the pier one by one. But the crowd was restless. A snapshot of Yannis was in her handbag and she would have liked to look at it again, but as it was possible that he was watching her unseen, she refrained. Once or twice she thought she heard someone calling her name.

Suddenly a hand was on her shoulder. ‘Desposini, Signorina … please, just a moment!’

It was only a photographer who had managed to get on board. He was a youngish man in a loose sports shirt, his top button undone against the early afternoon’s heat of this unseasonable November.

‘Your picture, please, Desposini?’

She shook her head, but he was pointing to a newspaper which he carried folded under his arm, and from it to his camera. Finally, not quite knowing whether this was something that was expected of her, Anna took out her lipstick. She wore a simple grey blouse, held in by a narrow belt, and her hair, plain and smooth with a faint parting in the middle, fell free from her forehead and was gathered in a tight roll above her nape. The man glanced up and caught the anguish in her large, defenceless eyes. ‘She’s a peasant girl,’ he thought.

‘Very pretty,’ he said, closing one eye and raising the camera. ‘Italian?’

‘Cyprus.’

‘Speak English, then?’

‘Little.’

The shutter clicked. ‘Won’t take too long to learn. Your name, Desposini?’

Desperately she wondered whether to give her own family name or that of Yannis. But he was not her husband yet, and perhaps he never would be; maybe he had thought better of it and was not waiting for her down there.

‘Anna Christofidou.’

She watched him as he wrote it down, hesitating over the spelling.

‘Age? How old?’

She did not understand immediately. The photographer looked about to find someone who could help. A slight, well-dressed young man with a rather sad face was leaning with folded arms against a lifeboat. He was looking at Anna with a mixture of amusement and pity.

She knew who he was, but not his name. He came from Nicosia and had joined the boat at Piraeus. He had kept himself apart from the others, neither joining in their games nor in the protests over the food which had been organised when an engine breakdown had delayed them in Port Said. She had seen him occasionally, sitting by himself, usually in the same spot on the after-deck, reading or making notes in a little book. The only people he seemed to like talking to were sailors. Some of the unattached girls had eyed him curiously but, either because he was shy or because he remained unaware of them, he made no response.

Anna remembered an incident which had taken place in Colombo. She was waiting at the jetty for the launch that would take her out to the liner, ready to sail. A party of tourist-class passengers, with the young Nicosian among them, had got out of a bus that had brought them back from Kandy. There was also an Italian family, father and mother with a brood of young children. One of these, a thin little girl of about three, dead tired, was giving trouble. In the launch she would not sit still and finally began to cry loudly. The mother, an excitable, unhappy-looking woman, tried to quiet her. When she failed, her husband, a muscular, thick-set man, reached across and slapped the child hard.

The girl began to scream hysterically and her father, losing control of himself, got to his feet, lifted her up and beat her furiously over the bare legs and thighs. Everybody looked away embarrassed except the youth from Nicosia. He, sitting next to the chastising father, rose suddenly, enraged, and said something in fluent Italian which made the man look at him in astonishment. But he went on beating his daughter. Thereupon the young Cypriot suddenly snatched the child and gave the man a shove which made him fall back heavily on his bench. Anna had seen her countryman’s face. His eyes were blazing, yet he looked as if he himself might start crying at any moment.

A heated argument ensued between some of the Greeks and Italians, and a fracas had been avoided only by the intervention of the purser who happened to be in the launch. There had been bad blood between the different nationalities earlier on, and all that day and the next insults were exchanged. But the young man who had so unexpectedly drawn attention to himself did not show up: he stayed below deck and later there was a rumour that he was ill and had been put in the ship’s hospital. Anna had not seen him again.

What had made the episode stay in her mind was less the event itself than the feeling, the atmosphere surrounding it. The day had been oppressively hot, the sky strangely white and the sea dull and syrupy. It was as if everybody had been waiting for an explosion to break the spell. In the evening, after they had left port, there had been a tremendous downpour, preceded by lightning of violent brilliance. The flashes seemed to be flung up by the sea itself.

The young man walked over and offered to translate.

‘The lady is twenty-two,’ he said, smiling gravely at her whispered answer.

‘She will be married here?’ the photographer enquired.

‘He would like to know whether you expect to be married soon,’ he said in Greek, politely deprecating the question.

‘I think so.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she will.’

‘And what is the bridegroom’s name, please?’

Giving the photographer an almost haughty look, the young man’s brows contracted. He wore a moustache and his markedly beaked nose, together with the slight prominence of his cheek-bones and the swarthiness of his skin, made Anna think for a moment that he was partly Turkish. She supplied the name, Yannis Joannides, and fumbled in her purse for the slip of paper with the address. She was anxious to be finished but the photographer was eager to take more pictures. Anna’s interpreter, sensing her uneasiness, told him that the young lady did not want to be bothered. Eventually, stared out of countenance, the other secured his camera, swung it over his shoulder and strolled away.

At that moment the nearby door to a companion-way opened. Father Loukas, the priest who had accompanied the migrants from Greece, emerged, followed by two strangers, one of whom carried an attaché case while the other, cool in a duck suit and with his eyes protected by tinted glasses, walked with the assurance of a proprietor.

The three men stopped, and the priest pointed to Anna. ‘You are being fetched, my dear,’ he said. ‘This is Mr Joannides.’

The man in the duck suit was coming forward, his hand extended. ‘I am Alexis,’ he announced; ‘I’m Yannis’ brother. They wouldn’t let him come with me, but he is waiting. This gentleman is from the Consulate and he kindly invited me to come along.’

Anna’s confusion gave way to an almost unbearable relief. She touched Alexis’ hand and managed to smile. ‘So good … I am so glad you are here.’

‘Kalos orises,’ he said. ‘Welcome. I hope you had a good trip?’

The young man from Nicosia, seeing that he was superfluous and that Anna had forgotten about him, nodded to the priest and walked away.

Anna had not the courage to look at Alexis’ face but she was aware that he was looking at her. She had often rehearsed what she was going to say at the first meeting. But she had never expected that it would be with Yannis’ brother. All she could repeat now was: ‘Thank you. Yes, very good. Thank you, thank you.’

The priest addressed Anna. ‘Well, I shall leave you with him. Goodbye.’

She lifted his hand to her lips, and he patted her shoulder.

Then she was walking down a passageway with Alexis behind her.

A steward was lounging outside her cabin. Alexis pressed a note into his hand. The man picked up her leather suitcase and hoisted the heavy raffia basket, her only other luggage, on to his back. Alexis took her coat and they proceeded to the gangway, past the indifferent sailors and across the upper bridge of the pier to the Customs.

Anna wanted to ask how Yannis was, but in the face of Alexis’ silence she held back. It was cool and there was a contrast of calm in the large hall, shaded on its open side by the tall white ship. The long benches were still empty. The official showed interest only in a cheap icon of Saint Demetrius which he felt beneath her linen, drew out, tapped lightly and replaced. Anna was thankful that he had not disturbed her wedding dress which lay carefully folded between tissue paper.

Alexis arranged to leave her heavy case behind until his agent should collect it. Taking Anna by the arm he guided her to the stair leading down to the pier itself, from which came an angry, ceaseless drone. On the far side of the barrier, half obscured by a policeman and by a tall, elegant woman, she recognised Yannis.

With his eyes screwed up against the glare he looked as in his photograph, surprised and amiable at the same time. He was bald but for a thin fringe of black hair, though his eyebrows were bushy. For a moment Anna hesitated, adjusting her sight to the stronger light, then she was through the barrier and not the man but the tall woman held her in her arms, and she received her kiss and felt a tear against her cheek.

‘Welcome, welcome, Annoula. I’m Elena.’

Anna hugged her, looking over her shoulder at Yannis. People were pressing against them and the constable gave her a gentle push, so that he might close the barrier.

Then Elena released her and at last she was face to face with the man who would be her husband. The terrible moment had arrived. Would he embrace her? Should she kiss him? What was she to do with her little handbag?

‘Welcome.’ He had put his right arm about her and he was the same height as herself. His hand was against her neck, large and rather soft, his lips touched her teeth and she felt the moisture. She closed her eyes and spoke his name. His face was clean-shaven and hot. Drawing away a little, she could see a mole just below his lower lip. The crowd was pushing her against him, but she resisted and turned her head. Elena was laughing behind her, and someone said loudly: ‘Ah!’ but it was not Yannis. Now she was free again and holding some roses, and suddenly she realised that the thing she had most wanted not to happen had happened, and she was crying.

‘Poor child,’ she heard Elena say, and then Alexis urging them to come to his car which was parked at the entrance to the pier. Anna put her hand out in an obedient gesture. Yannis took it in his own. The onlookers, with a common movement, opened a path for them and they walked through.

‘Nearly there,’ Elena said. ‘This is Java Crescent.’

They had passed the University and, driving north through Carlton, had turned left after crossing a railway line. Java Crescent was bordered on one side by a broad nature strip with low-hanging date palms. On the other side were old houses with corrugated iron roofs and uniform little front gardens, with a modern bungalow between them here and there like a gold tooth in a decaying mouth.

Alexis’ house differed from the rest. It was built entirely of concrete and had a flat roof. A second, recessed storey topped the first. It was surrounded by a modernistic iron railing which, together with the flat expanse in front, provided it with a kind of elevated forecourt, like some of the villas in Cyprus. All was painted light green. The house, which gave an impression of having been finished only recently, was in fact nearly ten years old but Elena enjoyed having it painted in a different colour every second year.

‘Our own place is not so smart,’ Yannis said, helping Anna from the car. ‘Alex is the capitalist.’

‘Ah,’ his brother said, leading them through the gate, ‘you can’t complain. As for me, I like good things. It depends on how much a man wants to work.’

He went ahead to open the door and they entered a cool hall. A chime tinkled. There was a smell of flowers and of polished floors.

‘Mama!’ Alexis called.

From upstairs, muffled by distance, came an answering voice, high and brittle.

‘She’s here!’ Alexis called up, loudly as before.

‘At least let her wash her hands,’ Elena whispered in an irritated undertone. Yannis had stopped by the telephone table under a painting of a huge sunflower which, buttery yellow, was glowing above his head like some opulent emanation.

‘She wants to wash her hands,’ he repeated after his sister-in-law as if he had thought of it himself. ‘Alex, let her wash her hands first.’

In the bathroom Anna slipped off her blouse. The mirror showed that she had rings under her eyes. A tiny pimple was coming out at the corner of her mouth, which always happened at the same time every month.

‘Heaven grant it will finish tomorrow,’ she sighed, washing her face and throat. Her figure was slight but her breasts were high and well formed and, she thought, almost too white. Only her hips were a little too large. She remembered what her mother used to say—that God had been in a good mood when He made her but had become absent-minded when He came to her lower part. Her legs were good. A small Andarte cross, to bring luck, her sole piece of personal jewellery, hung from her neck. She dressed again and hastily patted her cheeks to bring back some colour, for she had hardly slept during the night. Then she crossed herself.

‘Let us go to her now if you will,’ Elena said. ‘She is waiting.’

They went upstairs. Elena knocked at a door that led off the landing and the same high voice, strong and firm now, bade them come in.

Anna went into a room with drawn blinds. She smelled the sweet, overawing smell of green laurel incense, and saw a white counterpane on a bed. There was one upright and one easy chair and a plain table with sewing things. On a smaller one food was set out. In the middle of the room stood a blind woman.

‘Mother,’ Elena said. ‘Here is Anna to greet you.’

‘Kalos orises, daughter.’ The unseeing eyes stared straight at Anna, who stepped forward and spoke the customary greeting.

‘Please come closer.’

Anna advanced and halted before her. The old lady raised her hand and she kissed it, feeling the bones beneath the soft flesh.

‘Please, bend down a little.’

She bowed her head. The old woman touched it and let her fingers glide over her hair, stroking its softness with a weightless movement. When it was over Anna stepped back.

The woman spoke again. ‘Please bend down, Anna …’

Yannis, who had stayed by the door, cleared his throat and said: ‘She would like to touch you, you see …’

Submissively Anna moved closer. The old lady raised her other hand and again ran it over her hair, and from there to her forehead. Briefly she rested it, as if to test the texture of the skin. Then, moving outward, her fingers came to her ears and gently ran round the rim to the lobe. They circled her neck and throat and began sliding upward over her lips, along the nostrils and then, slowly, again and again, over eyes and brows.

Anna felt herself trembling. From the figure before her, in the black woollen dress, came the smell of soap and fresh linen.

The fingers were so light, so caressing, that against her will she was moved: if they had stayed on her eyes for a second longer she would have started to cry.

But now the hands, like two birds exploring, were travelling over her shoulder and arms. Then her own left hand was taken between the two hands of the other woman, turned over and patted and lightly kneaded.

Not a word passed. The searching hands were finding her once more, wandering over breast and waist and belly, slowly, to their own rhythm, until Anna felt naked and ready to sink into the ground. Why could this not wait until later? Had Mrs Joannides forgotten the difference between night and day or between being alone and not alone?

‘Mama,’ Elena said with a hint of laughter and caution.

‘Yes, yes … a moment.’ The hands and the arms were enfolding her now, drawing her close, embracing her like lovers’ garlands—insubstantial yet impossible to break.

‘Orea,’ the old woman spoke into her ear, only for her.

‘Orea. Fine. Beautiful.’ Then she kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other, not possessively nor formally but with tenderness, and Anna’s heart was touched so that she longed to give herself into these arms and to those eyes that could not see.

‘Beautiful, Annoula. Welcome. Be happy. Sit down and eat.’

She released her. Elena served the refreshments. There was liquor, already decanted into glasses, and glyko. Yannis drew the curtains back.

‘Your mother is well, and your father, and your brother and sisters?’ the old woman enquired, holding her glass stiffly.

‘They are all well, and send their respects.’

‘I remember your parents. But you were a little girl when we went away; you will not remember me.’

‘I think I can, Madam. You lived at the other end of the village, near the Mukhtar’s house. There was a big fig tree in your garden. It’s still there.’

‘Call me Mother,’ the old lady said, a little sharply.

‘Mother,’ Anna corrected herself.

‘Then you remember Yannis too?’

Alexis came to her rescue. ‘How could she? A child among so many?’

Mrs Joannides nodded. ‘We were friends, your mother and I. I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. There were fourteen of us.’

They were not friends, Anna thought. They merely knew one another, two women in the village. Maria Joannides, a tall figure in a garden, by a stone wall, by a fig tree. Had she been blind already then, before she went to Australia, after her husband’s death?

‘Be sure to show me your wedding dress, Annoula. They don’t make good ones here.’

‘You don’t believe anything they make here is good,’ Elena said.

Yannis interrupted quickly. ‘Of course, of course. Anna, you mustn’t drink on an empty stomach. I think I can smell food.’

Maria Joannides nodded. ‘He’s always hungry. You’ll never be able to satisfy him, my dear. As a baby he nearly sucked me dry.’

‘The cook is waiting,’ Elena said with a wry face.

‘The wedding will be on Sunday,’ her mother-in-law went on, as if she had not heard. ‘Did they tell you, daughter?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Mama!’ It was Elena again. ‘Don’t go at her like this; she won’t run away. The lemon isn’t curdling in the soup.’

‘She doesn’t understand her,’ Anna thought.

‘Well, it is already Thursday,’ Mrs Joannides said.

‘If she wants to stop it all she still can,’ Yannis spoke up looking from one to the other.

‘Kyrie Eleison,’ exclaimed Elena, raising her eyebrows.

‘Yannis, stay for a minute,’ Maria said quietly. ‘I have something for you.’ And to Anna: ‘Go and eat. We shall be down in a minute.’

As soon as the door had closed, she said to him:

‘Are you pleased?’

He laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible, Mama. Do let us go down, and we’ll talk later.’

She was still standing in the middle of the room.

‘I think she’s too beautiful.’

‘Too beautiful for me, you mean?’

‘No. For an ugly man you’re handsome enough. But I should have made sure they sent a plain one.’

‘Why a plain one?’

‘Because life is easier for a plain woman. People like her for her goodness.’

‘Well, she’s prettier than her photo. Usually they send snaps that are touched up like oil paintings.’

‘She is more beautiful than Elena, I think.’

‘She is younger, Mama. Aren’t you glad I am not getting a witch?’

‘Are you glad?’

‘Don’t talk about her like this! She’s a girl, not a motor car. Naturally, I am satisfied.’

She sighed. ‘In a year, I hope, we shall both be satisfied.’

‘All three,’ he said. ‘You are forgetting Anna. Mama, I beg you not to talk to her in this way. It’s not right.’

‘I wanted to ask you, Yannaki … you understand about women?’

He had already gone to the door and now stood, head bowed, handle in hand.

‘I am not a boy, if that is what you’re thinking of.’

‘Give her time, Yannaki, give her time.’

‘Really, Mama! It is you who wanted the wedding for Sunday!’

‘All the same, don’t hurry her. If you are good to her, she will be good to you.’

Yannis understood. ‘Yes, she is not like the girls brought up here; one can see that.’ On an impulse he added: ‘Thank you for arranging everything. I am quite happy.’

And to his surprise he realised that it was the truth. He was happy.

Elena and Anna sat by the dressing table in what Elena called her boudoir. Anna had a white powder jacket over her shoulder; her hair was down and Elena was brushing it with long, rhythmic strokes. Anna was gazing sideways at a copy of the evening paper which lay spread out on the floor. On the third page, looking straight up at her, was her photograph. It was a good likeness. The photographer had caught a moment when a breeze was blowing her hair and she had put up a hand to restrain it. Young Bride Gazes at New Country. Belle of the Brideship. Her name was underneath, and Yannis’. Mr Yannis Joannides, Fruiterer, of Brunswick.

‘Don’t be upset,’ Elena said. ‘Mama can’t see it, and Yannis will be overjoyed. I am sure he is buying up the whole edition.’

Anna put down the tortoiseshell comb she was playing with.

‘I am still worried about the dress, Elena. Mama liked it, and this is how we wear them at home, you see.’

Patiently, Elena repeated her argument. ‘It is very pretty, Annoula, and it suits you. But why up to the throat? If I had your arms and shoulders … If we cut it just a little lower it will look perfect under the lights of the church. How is it that your skin is so white? Look! I can see the vein in your forearm … Did you not have to work in the fields?’

‘Sometimes, but we don’t have much land. Papa and my brother work for the Forestry Department. We have a few sheep, like everybody.’ She glanced at Elena beseechingly. ‘You are quite sure it won’t be too low, the way you have pinned it? I mean … will it not show too much of me?’

Elena smiled. ‘You are talking as if I wanted you to appear naked. It’s your wedding, my girl. You must do as you think best.’

‘No, perhaps you are right. I am sure you are. Will Yannis like it, do you think?’

‘Poor boy, he will like anything. You will have no trouble with him, Annoula. You’ll be able to make him do what you want.’

Anna looked again at her picture. She was wondering whether Elena was right, and whether she really wanted Yannis to do always as she wished.

Elena said: ‘He is in love with you already, my pigeon. He can’t help it.’

‘Don’t make fun of me, please.’

‘Who is making fun? Give him children. That is all he needs. Sons.’

To her amazement, Elena saw that the girl was blushing. She bent forward and kissed her on the neck. ‘I am sorry. Mama has upset you, putting her hands on you like this. The old devil! She tried to do it to me too, when Alexi brought me home.’

Anna freed herself, smiling miserably. ‘What if I have no children?’

‘Don’t be silly. Why shouldn’t you?’

‘But you haven’t any yourself.’

Elena got up and walked to the window. It was dark outside but still hot. She drew a curtain and switched on a table fan.

‘Anna,’ she said, ‘listen to me. We have no children because we agreed not to have any. There is no other reason.’

‘You have agreed?’

‘Don’t be a baby, my dear. You must know there are ways. Do you want me to explain them to you?’

‘But I thought every woman wants …?’

‘I don’t. We have been married ten years. In the beginning we had no money, but time is passing and my husband has other interests. We don’t like children, either of us. It shocks you?’

Anna did not reply. She was slowly curling a strand of her fine hair round her finger.

‘You might as well know,’ Elena continued. ‘That’s the reason why Mama has to make sure for Yannis. She wanted a girl who is not as corrupt as I am.’

Anna sensed something brutal. ‘Excuse me, it is not my business,’ she said, ‘but I think you don’t like Mama?’

‘Of course it is your business. Mama doesn’t like me. But I—I’m indifferent. Her life is her life and mine is mine. If you are wise you will live your own life, too.’

She pondered for a moment. ‘I am from Salonika. My father was a lawyer. I was married when I was seventeen … My first husband was killed in the war. In Albania. My life wasn’t at all like yours, you know. And your Yannis is not like Alexi. Perhaps you should know that I am older than he is, though I don’t think I look it.’

A silence fell, and Anna was the first to break it. ‘Tell me about Yannis,’ she begged.

‘What is there to tell?’ Elena said, turning back from the window and taking up the brush once more. ‘Have you had a good look at him yet?

‘No, but I shall tomorrow. He is coming to fetch me for a walk.’

‘He is a good boy,’ Elena said. ‘Not terribly practical. But with any husband one must be careful. He is a bit moody and I think he can get angry, but only with other men. I can guess what you are wondering about. He has never been in love, at least not while I have known him. You’ll have him all for yourself.’

‘I was not thinking of that,’ Anna said quietly. ‘I was thinking of something else.’ She folded her hands in her lap and bent forward to make it easier for Elena. ‘This beautiful house, and this car—I know they belong to Alexis, but still … Yannis is probably clever. He has his friends. What use will I be to him? Won’t he become impatient with me? On the ship some of the girls were so excited, you would have thought they liked going away from home. But I’—her voice had sunk to a murmur—‘for a week I didn’t want to leave the cabin. And I had such dreams, Eleni … He is older, he has ideas. You say “make him do what you want”. But I don’t want anything. He will find out …’

She did not say what he would find out, but repeated: ‘What use will I be to him?’

Elena looked at Anna’s neck thoughtfully and said: ‘You are worrying about nothing. It’s not so bad for a husband to be a little older. Try not to show him that you are anxious; do not try to change him. Believe me, it’s not difficult.’ She hesitated. ‘But what about yourself? Did you leave a boy behind? Was there someone?’

Anna shook her head.

‘Nobody? That’s strange.’ She removed the powder jacket, laid it aside and put her arm round Anna’s shoulders.

‘Look at me, Annoula!’

Anna turned round but immediately dropped her eyes. Elena gave her an affectionate squeeze.

‘It is not as you think,’ Anna said without any trace of shyness. ‘I have a cousin, Stelios. He went away to work in Larnaca, in a bakery …’

‘Did he want to marry you?’

‘We did not talk about it.’

Elena already regretted the question. She remembered a French proverb from the Lycée. ‘Cousinhood is a dangerous neighbourhood.’ Why probe into these things? Next Sunday the girl would marry Yannis.

‘He liked me,’ Anna said simply. ‘My father was fond of him. But naturally this is much better.’

‘God give you are right,’ Elena said.

‘And then my younger sister, Katerina. She is engaged and they are waiting for me to get married. Her boy is a mechanic.’

‘I understand! How barbarous! She can’t marry before they have made a match for you? It happens here, too, sometimes. It’s a crime.’

‘But Katerina does not mind.’

‘And if your cousin Stelios could have married you, Katerina would have been selected for Yannis?’

Anna was laughing now. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Katerina would have run away. The priest came to my mother when the letter arrived from Yannis’ mother, and my mother spoke to me. They showed me the picture …’

‘Did you think he looked nice?’

‘It was only a picture.’

It was on Elena’s lips to ask if he looked as nice as Stelios, but she suppressed it. She was afraid that Anna would soon learn to hide her feelings; it was refreshing to have someone in the family who was sincere. She was like an unguarded well into which an inexperienced man might fall, but Yannis was protected by his temperament.

The proximity of Anna’s body filled her with a sensual, almost masculine pleasure. ‘If I were a man,’ she thought, ‘this is the kind of girl I would try to fall in love with.’ Yet, being a woman, she knew that it was unsafe to be moved by beauty. Men made themselves believe that the body faithfully returned the image of the spirit, but women could not afford to deceive themselves.

At midnight Maria Joannides was still awake, listening to the silence of the house. Her room was directly above Elena’s and for a long time the muted sound of voices had come to her. She hoped Elena was not turning the girl against her, as she had turned Alexis against her, and was trying to turn Yannis.

Her body yearned for the comfort of grandsons as the bodies of younger women yearn for children. It was like an ache. She had borne six, but the first three had all been daughters. One had married a hairdresser and gone to live in England, one was working in Nicosia, and the third was an invalid in a home at Famagusta. Her eldest son, the one she had loved the best, was dead. Yannis was born after she had been widowed. Much later, when blindness had closed in, Alexis had sent for her. This was after he had gone to Greece to find himself a wife—to Greece, not to Cyprus, which was characteristic of him.

The years passed and Elena had no children. She had said nothing for a long time but at last, unable to remain silent, she had asked outright what the matter was. Elena had replied:

‘The matter? The matter? There’s nothing the matter. It’s like this, Mama. Alexi is as useless as a wax doll.’

The worst was that when she told her son he had treated it as a joke. And yet, of course, it was a shameless lie.

But it showed what was becoming of Alexis. A strange boy! Only recently he had presented their church with two silver candlesticks, especially made abroad. Father Spyridon, who could not disguise his dislike for Yannis, never lost a chance to praise his brother. But to her it was a mystery how he earned so much money.

He told her that he was a sporting promoter: whatever that meant. He had built a gymnasium behind the house and now and then one could hear shouts and groans coming from there, and the clanking of weights when Alexis’ wrestlers, coarse, loud-mouthed men, were exercising. For all their strength they were clumsy. They would bump into her in the yard or the corridor and apologise with exaggerated humility.

Alexis had other concerns, too. He imported Greek singers and groups of dancers and, several times each year, hired big halls to put on his shows. For days before and after the house would be full of shrill-voiced or lisping women, while Alexis moved through the hubbub like a fish through water. He financed immigrants, arranging for their permits and finding them jobs. Rumours had reached her in her darkness that some people would not do business with him, but Father Spyridon told her that it was all envy.

She wanted to believe Father Spyridon, without whom her life would have been unbearable. It would be better, though, to live with Yannis, but he had no room. When Yannis’ children started to arrive he would have to take a larger house, and then she would leave Java Crescent with its athletes and its actresses, and with Elena’s insulting politeness.

Maria Joannides was in her seventy-second year but, apart from her blindness, she had never been ill and, now that Anna had come, she was ready to fight death.

Her world had stopped growing nearly thirty years ago, when she lost her sight. Her village, on the harsh, stubby plain of the Messaoria, with the green cap of Pentadaktylos to the west, had changed since then, but she never thought of that: anyone who came from there was part of a past that time could not touch. She took it for granted that Anna was now as she, Maria, had been then, half a lifetime ago, and forgot that there had been a war and a civil war and a great overturning of people and of faith.

Her last thought before falling asleep was for Anna. She would have liked to go to her and sit by her bed as she used to with her daughters, to take away her loneliness. This was the woman who would give ease and sons to her son, and she loved her for it. She had come from the barley fields where Maria had slept under the sky with her own husband to guard the harvest, and where in all probability Yannis had been conceived. Anna was still a child, but she was from her own country and must have the strength that Elena had not, the strength to surrender everything to a man, and through her surrender to defend him.