He sat down next to me on the intercity bus to Limassol. Seventy or so, old before his time and weary, but kindly, with laughing eyes and a little paunch that led the way. We soon got talking, and he told me he had arrived on the island the day before to see to the renovation of the house he grew up in, in the village.
He would stay until the end of the month and head back to London before his name day, the feast of St Andrew the Apostle, which he wanted to celebrate there with his children and grandchildren. He told me the story of his life, or at least a chapter of it. The London of the 1970s, which he arrived in as a wide-eyed village lad. The fish and chip shop he opened in Haringey. His son, who didn’t want to study and took over the business. The grandchildren from his elder daughters, whom he has close by and dotes on. His youngest daughter, who wants to settle in Cyprus, and the flat he bought her in Limassol.
Then he fell quiet for a few minutes, which gave me a chance to catch up on my notes. He was asleep, but… not entirely. He was somewhere in that strange territory between sleep and waking, where you’re floating on the surface and down in the depths at the same time. At one point he stirred, surfaced for a moment and sank again, mumbling, whistling, snuffling. I wondered whether he was having nightmares. I would have liked to know what nightmares a good man might have: a devoted family man, father and grandfather. They must belong, I suppose, to the part he didn’t share with me and, it would seem, shares with no one. The dark corner we each keep for ourselves alone.
He opened his eyes properly and looked out of the window, towards the distant outline of the city. I asked him what he would do first when he got to the village. He said he would go to church to pray, and that in London he goes twice a week to All Saints church in Camden Town. I found myself thinking of all the priests, bishops, cantors, church wardens, members of Christian associations and other virtuous compatriots I had met in the Cypriot community when I lived and worked in the British capital for two years.
I felt ill at ease among them, as I do among anyone who has a ready-made answer to every question, supplied by their dogma, be it religious or political. Still, I told him I hoped his prayers would be answered…
