The Final Cut. Michael Dobbs

as were his accounts. It made for an intimate and almost conspiratorial atmosphere around the five small tables covered in faded cloths and recycled candles, with holly-covered paper napkins left over from some Christmas past.

      Maria Passolides, a primary school teacher, watched as her father, a Greek Cypriot in his mid-sixties, hobbled back into the tiny open-plan kitchen from where with gnarled fingers and liberal quantities of fresh lemon juice he turned the morning’s market produce into dishes of fresh crab, sugar lamb, suckling pig, artichoke hearts and quails’ eggs. The tiny taverna was less of a business, more part-hobby, part-hideaway for Passolides, and Maria knew he was hiding more than ever. The small room was filled to chaos with the bric-a-brac of remembrance – a fishing net stretched across a wall and covered in signed photographs of Greek celebrities, most of whom were no longer celebrities or even breathing; along cluttered shelves, plates decorated with scenes of Trojan hunters fighting for control with plaster Aphrodites and a battalion of assorted glasses; on the back of the door, a battered British army helmet.

      There was an abundance of military memorabilia – a field telephone, binoculars scraped almost bare to the metal, the tattered and much-faded azure-blue cloth of the Greek flag. Even an Irish Republican tricolour.

      In pride of place on the main wall hung a crudely painted portrait of Winston Churchill, cigar jutting defiantly and fingers raised in a victory salute; beneath it on a piece of white card had been scrawled the words which in Greek hearts made him a poet the equal of Byron: ‘I think it only natural that the Cypriot people, who are of Greek descent, should regard their incorporation with what may be called their Motherland as an ideal to be earnestly, devoutly and feverishly cherished…’

      It was not the only portrait on the wall. Beside it stood the photograph of a young man with open collar, staring eyes and down-turned mouth set against a rough plaster wall. There was no sign of identity, none needed for Michael Karaolis. A promising village boy educated at the English School. A youthful income tax clerk in the colonial administration, turned EOKA fighter. A final photograph taken in Nicosia Gaol on the day before the British hanged him by his neck until he was dead.

      ‘Vangelis’.

      Since he had buried his wife a few years before, Evanghelos Passolides had been captured more than ever by the past. Sullen days were followed by long nights of rambling reminiscence around the candlelit tables with old comrades who knew and young men who might be willing to listen, though the numbers of both shrank with the passing months. He had become locked in time, bitter memories twisting both soul and body; he was stooped now, and the savagely broken leg that had caused him to limp throughout his adult life had grown noticeably more painful. He seemed to be withering even as Maria looked, the acid eating away inside.

      The news that there was to be peace within his island only made matters worse. ‘Not my peace,’ he muttered in his heavy accent. He had fought for union, Enosis, a joining of all Greeks with the Motherland – one tongue, one religion, one Government no matter how incompetent and corrupt, so long as it was our Government. He had put his life on the line for it until the day his fall down a mountain ravine with a thirty-pound mortar strapped across his back had left his leg bones protruding through his shin and his knee joint frozen shut forever. His name had been on the British wanted list so there was no chance of hospital treatment; he’d been lucky to keep his leg in any condition. The fall had also fractured the spirit, left a life drenched in regret, in self-reproach that he and his twisted leg had let his people down, that he hadn’t done enough. Now they were about to divide his beloved island forever, give half of it away to the Turk, and somehow it was all his fault.

      She had to find a distraction from his remorse, some means of channelling the passion, or sit and watch her father slowly wither away to nothing.

      ‘When are you going to get married?’ he grumbled yet again, lurching past her in exaggerated sailor’s gait with a plate of marinated fish. ‘Doesn’t family mean anything to you?’

      Family, his constant refrain, a proud Cypriot father focused upon his only child. With her mother’s milk she had been fed the stories of the mountains and the village, of mystical origins and whispering forests, of passions and follies and brave forebears – little wonder that she had never found a man to compare. She had been born to a life illuminated with legend, and there were so few legends walking the streets of north London, even for a woman with her dark good looks.

      Family. As she bit into a slice of cool raw turnip and savoured its tang of sprinkled salt, an idea began to form. ‘Baba…’ She reached out and grabbed his leathery hand. ‘Sit a minute. Talk with me.’

      He grumbled, but wiped his hands on his apron and did as she asked.

      ‘You know how much I love your stories about the old days, what it was like in the village, the tales your mother told around the winter fires when the snow was so thick and the well froze. Why don’t we write them down, your memories. About your family. For my family – whenever I have one.’ She smiled.

      ‘Me, write?’ he grunted in disgust.

      ‘No, talk. And remember. I’ll do the rest. Imagine what it would be like if you could read the story of Papou, your grandfather, even of his grandfather. The old way of life in the mountains is all but gone, perhaps my own children won’t be able to touch it – but I want them to be able to know it. How it was. For you.’

      He scowled but raised no immediate objection.

      ‘It would be fun, Baba. You and me. Over the summer, when school is out. It would be an excuse for us to go visit once more. It’s been years – I wonder if the old bam your father built is still there at the back of the house, or the vines your mother planted. And whether they’ve ever fixed that window in the church you and your brothers broke.’ She was laughing now, like they had before her mother died. A distant look had crept into his eyes, and within them she thought she saw a glint of embers reviving in the ashes.

      ‘Visit the old family graves,’ he whispered. ‘Make sure they’re still kept properly.’

      And exorcize a few ghosts, she thought. By writing it all down, purging the guilt, letting in light and releasing all the demons that he harboured inside.

      He sniffed, as though he could already smell the pine. ‘Couldn’t do any harm, I suppose.’ It was the closest he had come in months to anything resembling enthusiasm.