Wednesday 2nd November

In my book I never really described any memories of my life in Cyprus, I was seven when we left but can still remember a few things.  They are more like tiny ‘viral’ (I think the terminology is) video’s, short little scenes that I replay again and again in my head.  The most common one is of course the day we left, this was traumatic enough for a seven year old, leaving what had been my home and the only place I could remember, without the added anxiety that I knew in the back of my mind that I was also leaving my father.  I had escaped the awful dead atmosphere in the house and run down to the beach, the place was almost deserted, just a small white haired boy who was more interested in charging into the gentle surf than in me, well I didn’t care either.  I can remember sitting in the dunes and holding my two hands in an open square through which I looked, I suppose I was imitating the taking of photographs, and I kept adjusting my view, capturing segment after segment of the horizon. I crept back into the house and Grandma, visibly irritated by my absence scolded me, “Oh there you are, Catherine, where have you been, and today of all days.”  Chastened, I glared back at her my silent accusations.  There were suitcases and packing cases all around us and despite the heat Grandma had on a tweed suit and a white fox fur, with its’ glass eyes staring out at me, and as if she knew what I was thinking she confirmed my worst fears, in French, I might add, presumably so that the servants, who actually knew everything, would not understand.  AndI knew and understood nothing.

Another memory was having my photograph taken by an official photographer.  I can remember wearing a very pretty tartan dress and being perched on a really high stool, at least three feet off the ground.  The photographer wore a white suit with a red flower in his lapel, he told me to look at it and say cheese, and then there was an almighty flash and a loud phut sound, and startled as a rabbit caught in a hurtling car’s headlight beam I attempted a toothless smile.  I can remember this so clearly as Grandma used to quite often bring the photo out for visiting relatives to laugh at, “Oh just look at the poor child, she looks terrified.” And I was.

And then there was the day with my father on a nature trail of our own, a ‘lizard hunt’, and we actually saw a few that day too.  We were like two conspiring thieves, stealing time away from Grandma’s beady eye.  I loved that day, crawling flat on the ground among the sand dunes, or running along the beach like a pair of children, what am I saying, I was a child, but running like this with an adult was unheard of.  That day I felt my father was all my own, no mother hovering around behind his chair, no Grandma engaging him in small talk at dinner, just me and him, the way we were supposed to be.  And never were to be again

And then, lying awake at night listening to the arguments, first my mother’s raised almost hysterical voice, then Grandma’s short snappy one shutting her up, then my father’s exasperated shouting and the slamming of doors and retreating footsteps. And I never knew why.

And that is about it, those four memories, for me at least, because try as I might I cannot remember anything about Grandma and me that makes it specifically Cyprus; my memories of Grandma are really all the same whether in Putney or Cyprus I cannot distinguish at all.