Villa People

Another perfect day. 1

September, here as in so many places, the best month: the sun energises rather than oppresses; nights bring deep refreshing sleep, dreamless or beckoning. The children are back at school; the whole north coast is still.2

The obligatory menu (calamari, salad with feta, tomato salad, moussaka, grilled bream - all as dull as death on an island teeming with almonds, pines, and every kind of crop, where the scent of thyme fills the air) arrives at my table on the terrace of this restaurant, high on a bluff overlooking a small harbour. 3

Cement steps curve down along the slope to a car-park with a rock-strewn beach and new marina. Two short lines of fishing boats face each other, unused, in the lee of the breakwater. Everything is pristine.4

A palm and a couple of pomegranate trees edge the terrace - two large roofed-in areas sitting parallel, with a short flight of stairs between.5

I’m wondering why such an out-of –the-way place should seat so many when I realise, yes, weddings here would be spectacular – atop this cliff , the sea its backdrop, with dancing and embarrassing uncles and beautiful, dark-tressed Cypriot girls dressed like princesses in tiny, shiny frocks, makeup and murderous, jewelled Jimmy Choos..6

But I’m not going to think about that now. 7

My charcoal comes out of its case and I’m collecting again, my attention drawn this way and that. Settling like a gadfly here then there, it drifts lightly over the company, the Cypriots sitting higher, on the main terrace area, and the knot of foreigners, like myself, at tables along the cliff-edge of the lower section.8

The segregation is not complete. Four young men, locals or a mixture, have gathered in the near corner, by the steps leading down to the sea. In their twenties, they’re at leisure although this is a week-day. Perhaps they are at college and term has not yet begun, and one or another has family here. 9

One lad’s hair snakes along his back, gathers in a dark knot at the nape of his neck. He is very beautiful in that physical, sculpted way Greek men sometimes are, and the others respond accordingly – marking out their territory by sprawling in their chairs, slapping and squaring off against one another, pleased with themselves as they sit beside brothers or friends. No girls are with them today; women would be superfluous.10

Yet he and his companions are merely young men at lunch. Once I’ve sketched the group, noted their postures, observed their attitudes and, beneath these, their boredom, nothing more holds my attention; so the gadfly moves to the English party closer to hand.11

Villa people. 12

There are no hotels in this fringe of a resort, carved over aeons of rock-fall from the thousand metre mountains that stand above. All the big contractors have been quick to invade – unsold villas loom all along this tongue of ground thrust into the sea. 13

There is a river too, dry this season of the year, which over the ages created this sienna-coloured spit from the outwash of the mountains. These people probably do not know that this river has been dammed only a few kilometres above where they sit, or concern themselves about the history of cataclysm, earthquake and landslip so evident in the cliffs that rise steeply above the broad, curving bay.14

One man in particular catches my eye. 15

White haired – expensive, well- cut hair, enough length in it to frame the handsome head yet look good without much care; sunglasses - gold wire-frames, reactive lenses, bright blue eyes behind, almond-shaped, half-closed, shrewdly intelligent; the ruddy, healthy complexion of someone at the end of a month’s ease by the sea; a blue Oxford shirt, open at the neck, which matches the eyes and flatters the physique of a college oarsman (retired).16

I look more closely, begin to draw, feel no need to conceal my curiosity. A Roman senator at leisure would not have looked more easy or commanded greater authority; and perhaps this presence - so compelling - is a goal he has worked towards all his life. Or perhaps it really is as effortless as it seems; and he was born so fortunate and striking and strong that he can sit here or anywhere and look completely in charge of the secrets of others, of his life and that of his companions.17

For a moment, I watch the rest of his party. 18

All are roughly the same age, late fifties. 19

A larger, many-chinned man sits beside the first, on his left. Ex-public school, he is perhaps a golfer, perhaps from Surrey; a little over-fond of food and wine, one can see him at his law office, in a dark suit. The large area of flesh showing above a white collar lends him an aura of solidity, but fails to hide an ingenuous good nature – surely a professional handicap. 20

Two women also sit , one with her back to me, partly obscuring my view, the other at the inside end of the table. 21

These trouble me, as wives sometimes do. Such well-groomed, beige diminishment... Neither shows any animation; and I see in the one whose husband is the senator a kind of suppressed fury, as if his glossiness has been won at her cost. In the other, a fluttering, careworn quality hints at a lifetime spent coping with her partner’s inattention.22

Are they old friends? I think not. 23

While the men could work nowhere but London, and get on as men working in the professions in London will – re-establishing their comforting hierarchies here as they do anywhere - the wives do not behave like intimates. Boundaries are still firmly in place, they do not sit exchanging secrets or make jokes, heads together, at their husbands’ expense.24

Neighbours, then. 25

The smiling Cypriot waitress, whose black eyes shone with relief when I greeted her in good Greek, arrives with my salad, a bottle of water and a Keo, which although it disgusts me I have ordered because driving up the new-cut track above the dam to the ridge between the mountains - its fresh surface shifting and sliding under the wheels of the 4x4 - was hot work and tiring and took all my nerve. I close the notebook, and put the charcoal pencil back in its box.26

Over three years of visits to this place I have learned what to order, what is reliable here in this beautiful land of regrettable cuisine. Today I have ordered tomato salad which means: sliced tomatoes, sliced onion, a little olive oil (not always the best) and red wine vinegar of no conceivable merit. Nothing in the salad is a great pleasure but it is nourishing and simple and will do.27

I do not come to Cyprus for the food.28

For a few moments I concentrate on the salad, noticing flavour and texture. The onion is a surprise – very sweet and white; and the olive oil is generous, deep-green and fragrant. There is, thank God, only a trace of the nasty red vinegar. 29

In a few short moments, having exhausted my interest in tomatoes, I return to my work. This time I choose a fresh Muji brush-pen from the silver box, securing the cap atop it as I always do, testing it on a soft white napkin to check that the ink is properly black and the brush supple, taking pleasure in its effortless delivery of line. 30

I work to express the essence of my fascination. At first I try just to draw –to create line without thinking or judging, allowing what I look at to command my hand. I try this once, twice, again, missing it each time – what emerges from the pen falls short even of resemblance. 31

Why?32

I think a moment.33

Ah. 34

My feelings of attraction and a tinge of submissiveness are interrupting the flow from eye to hand, and briefly, I am irritated. 35

I am restricting myself, disrupting the capture, self-censoring. I need to look more closely, at him, more closely, disobey the social convention not to stare. I must allow myself, force myself, to be bold and rude and make him my subject. Make him subject to my eye and my hand. 36

Objectify him.37

And now, I see - though my eyes are well hidden behind my sunglasses - my quarry is aware of my interest.38

I wonder what he will do?39

I set myself to studying his features more closely, to allow my looking and responding to inform my hand. Where does my attraction lie? In the possibility of winning someone so self-possessed and earthed, yes; but there is more…. Something visceral.40

He sees me watching him, but acknowledges nothing. With his peripheral vision he watches me watch him, yet does not let his party know what is happening. Under my stare he grows ever so slightly more expansive, more fluid, more charming; that is all.41

This amuses me. 42

I look again, more deeply. 43

As it disappears into the blue shirt, the neck is tanned and strong, above a torso broad and substantial. The forehead – before I drew it domed, but it is a rectangle, the crisp white hair forming a neat half-halo around it; and two deep vertical lines, one longer than the other, bisect its shape. The almond-shaped eyes, partly obscured by sunglasses, betray a strong sensuality, curve downward at their outer edge, and end in a network of crow’s feet. Laugh-lines. 44

Ah.45

There….46

In a moment it is done. 47

Looking back on it months later I will see, in this quarter-face, courageously gained, the entire party, the day, the terrace, the meal, the man. And then I will remember that these were also the eyes of my lover, long ago.48