Fortune and Misfortune

Our flight to Cyprus was unremarkable apart from an infection that I’d picked up somewhere. My skin burned and itched, and I found myself rubbing the affected areas frequently. During the early morning taxi ride to our hotel, I recall being in some discomfort and tried desperately not to embarrass my wife or the chairman’s favoured taxi driver with undue scratching. Yes, this time I’d been picked up, at company expense!

I was thankful that we weren't moving into our medium term accommodation straight away, for it meant that I had access to the hotel doctor on the morning of Tuesday 31 May. The General Practitioner was a kindly man in his late fifties. After a brief dialogue in broken English and an even briefer examination, he wrote down my symptoms in Greek. Then he consulted a leather bound textbook, to identify the cause of my problem. This book was clearly old and the reverence it received from the doctor suggested that Hippocrates himself had inscribed the fly.

The doctor referred to the text at leisure, consuming the amount of time that an English doctor would allocate to three patients. Then he picked up his telephone and called a pharmacist nearby, to inquire further what he should prescribe. On replacing the receiver, the GP admitted that he wasn’t sure about the cause of my trouble, but said that the tablets he’d prescribe should help. If there was no improvement in a week, I should come back. In the meantime, there was the not-so-small matter of his fee to address, not forgetting the cost of my medicine at the pharmacy. Ouch, here were yet more unforeseen financial differences between England and Cyprus, and big ones too.

The following morning, I set out from the hotel for my first day at work. As I left the room, I kissed Allie, gave her a big hug and wished her luck during her discussion at Episkopi Primary that day. In an hour or so, the chairman’s driver would appear and whisk her the twenty kilometres or so west to the school. To allow for ‘Cyprus Time’, the mysterious factor that caused human lateness everywhere on the island, we’d booked the driver half an hour early. That way, Allie was more or less certain to arrive in time, and reasonably intact.

Over the previous twenty-four hours or so, the pharmacist’s tablets had had no effect whatsoever on the itching. I just felt slightly woozy, which I suppose took my mind off the discomfort. The local wine had had much the same affect the previous lunchtime, and had been significantly cheaper.

Feeling apprehensive, I eventually reached the side street where cesspit fumes had acted like a dose of smelling salts not so long ago. I can’t recall much else that happened on my first day. It was a confusing fog of meetings and briefings, interspersed by cups of strong black coffee and tea. As I walked to our hotel after work, with the afternoon sun scorching my back, I mulled over all the things that I’d seen and heard, trying to make sense of them, and identify some priorities. Slowly, slowly, I guessed that various issues would fall into place.

Allie was waiting for me, determined to make the most of our plush surroundings. She was strangely circumspect about her meeting and I knew from experience that I would have to wait for the full story to emerge. The South African receptionist at our hotel had kindly allowed us to keep our room for an extra three hours. Then, she said that we’d have to move on to our next lodgings, as we had planned on 1 June. With our room key in Allie’s hand, we headed for the pool for one last swim. The second re-pack of our luggage that holiday would have to wait.

By eight in the evening, our luggage stood ready in the hotel foyer as we sipped long cool drinks at the bar and admired our emerging tans. A taxi driver arrived fifteen minutes late – punctually by Cyprus Time - and commented unfavourably on the number and weight of our suitcases. To add spice to the moment, I felt like fabricating a little story about us being illegal immigrants with a smuggled stash of contraband designer jeans, but I didn’t. He might have friends or relatives in Immigration or the Police. His comment was an obvious ploy for a large tip.

On our arrival at the rooms, the older proprietor greeted me like a long-lost son. This was odd, given that I had not met him before. Shortly afterwards, I concluded that his over familiarity was a smoke screen, one crudely fashioned to obscure the hyperinflation that had hit the cost of my accommodation during the past month. The proprietor’s deception annoyed me, for I’d agreed a fair price with his younger partner, and kept my side of the bargain. It seemed like yet another mugging of a hapless foreigner. So much so that, if there’d been alternative accommodation on hand that night, I’d have walked out there and then, but I knew there wasn’t. The unforeseen price hike meant that we’d have to cut back even further on our expenditure, starting with our planned meal out that evening.

The extra cost also strengthened our resolve to find Allie a job. Accordingly, rather than sunbathing on the next two days, Allie said that she’d visit all of the private schools in Limassol that I’d seen during my reconnaissance, and a few more besides. At one of these schools, the head teacher offered Allie work on the spot, after the briefest of discussions and without seeing her qualifications or references. This made Allie suspicious that the head’s kindness was tinged with significant desperation. The work offer also came with a precondition: that we’d have to send Rob and Anne to the school on a fee-paying basis. Since we’d already agreed to place our children in SCEA schools, Allie declined.

This was a brave and difficult decision for her to take, not just because a second income was so vital to our economic survival, but because Allie sensed that she wouldn’t get the job that she really wanted, the one at Episkopi Primary. Although the head teacher had seemed impressed with her curriculum vitae and Allie had been very impressed by the school, a sixth sense told her that the job wasn’t to be hers. Apparently, LET posts were highly prized by Service dependants as well as British-qualified Cypriots, as well as British expatriates. Consequently, competition for the one post available would be intense.

Allie unravelled her devastating news to me as we sat at a tavern on Thursday lunchtime waiting for a cheap ‘village salad to share’ to arrive. As we waited and waited, a large lumbering cockroach committed itself to an ill-advised venture. It wanted to come out of the cold shadows and taste an apparently better world, one with warmth and sunshine. Like me, it didn’t research the pitfalls properly, however. A waiter’s foot crushed the insect’s ambition in an instant and I heard an awful crackley-squelchy sound as its skeleton gave way under the pressure. Like this unfortunate insect, our high hopes that Allie might find well-paid, meaningful work in Limassol lay squashed and lifeless on the floor.

Now fate sometimes plays a cruel hand in the game of life. On the afternoon of the very next day, Friday 3 June 1994, I bought a copy of The Lion from the old Woolworth store on Makarios Avenue. During my reconnaissance, I’d found that the paper gave a superficial and rosy view of Forces’ life in Cyprus. Still, it allowed me to reminisce about the short detachment that I’d enjoyed so much in 1976, by ‘revisiting’ some familiar places like Dodge City through its photographs. The reason for making my purchase that day though was to scour the Vacancy Section. After all, The Lion had been the source of the teaching opportunity for Allie at Episkopi.

Finding the right page, my spirits soared for there - right in front of me - was yet another LET teaching job for which Allie was suited. This time, the requirement was for a Year One Teacher at Akrotiri Primary School, where the corporal and his wife sent their children. I showed the advertisement to Allie who, since leaving Episkopi two days earlier, had felt that we’d wasted a lot of money on her trip. Like me, she was mightily relieved and hugely excited therefore by the prospect of a second chance of becoming a LET.

Even though I finished work early on Fridays, it was far too late in the day to call the school by the time we made our discovery. Instead, we’d have to talk optimistically about it over the weekend and telephone the head teacher on Monday the 6th, the day Allie was due to fly home. If she called early enough, she might be able to squeeze a short visit to the peninsular into her tight schedule that day. I had a feeling about this job. I didn’t know why: my air force connection, the chance meeting with the corporal's wife, the Hercules’ ‘fly past’, the Red Arrow’s ‘salute’ perhaps.

That evening we celebrated, despite the remaining uncertainty over Allie’s employment, and my continuing skin problem which needed further attention by this time. The following morning, once the effects of the previous night’s wine had worn off, I walked into the doctor’s empty surgery for a second time. On this occasion, the GP took a sample and, after a short telephone call, a man arrived carrying a briefcase. Opening it and placing my sample carefully inside, he announced that he was a microbiologist. In an hour, we would all know the real cause of my condition for sure.

After skulking in nearby streets like a would-be burglar, I arrived back at the surgery exactly sixty minutes later. The microbiologist had already telephoned through his findings, the first time anything had happened ahead of schedule in my recent experience of Cyprus. The doctor was able to tell me therefore that the cause of my itching reflected his initial diagnosis. His response was to prescribe more of the same medicine, this time at a higher dose.

I wasn’t sure whether it was the continuing side effect of the tablets or the previous night’s wine, but one glance at his second bill made me feel very light-headed. Bewildered by the cost, I toddled along to the pharmacist to pick up my prescription and yet another sizeable invoice. All this paying for healthcare was alien to me. The National Health Service back home paid doctors and generally capped the cost of prescriptions, even to those in employment.

Worse still, I felt that I couldn’t claim back my outlay on these experts and pills from my employer’s health insurance. I didn’t want the chairman to think that I had some incurable disease that was going to affect my performance this early in our relationship. I didn’t even want to take time off work to visit the doctor, in case it gave my new employer cause for concern. There was nothing else for it. I would have to suffer in silence, and hope that the stronger dose of medicine brought quicker relief.

Monday morning came and, after two helpings of strong black coffee and toast in a nearby café, Allie and I began our separate missions. As I ambled along the back streets to work, keeping in the shade to avoid the early heat, Allie went back to my room to begin her packing and rehearse what she would say to the head teacher. The day before, we’d bought several large denomination Phone Cards and Allie was ready to call the school at Akrotiri at around eight a.m.

I popped back to my room at lunchtime to ask Allie how she had fared, knowing full well that she might still be at Akrotiri. To my dismay, I learnt that she hadn’t even spoken to the head, let alone visited his school: the entire station was ‘stood down’, to mark the Queen’s official birthday. Again, circumstances outside our control dashed our hope and optimism. If only the head teacher at Episkopi had known about the vacancy at Akrotiri. If only the Queen had had one birthday a year, like the rest of us. ‘If only,’ was becoming a millstone round our necks and, to prevent further expensive mistakes, we had to become much better at mixing information with cogitation, and fast.

So close to, yet so far from, that vitally important second chance, all Allie could do was spend the afternoon hand writing a moving letter to the head teacher at Akrotiri, enclosing typed copies of her curriculum vitae and references. In her letter, Allie expressed a strong interest in the Year One vacancy as well as her frustration at not being able to speak to the head about it whilst she was on the island.

I told a colleague what had happened on my return from lunch. She had access to the RAF station and said that she’d arrange for Allie’s letter to be delivered to the school by hand. Apparently, the local post service often took two weeks to move letters from Limassol to the WSBA and sometimes they disappeared completely. This clearly wouldn’t do, for we might loose our last chance of reasonably paid employment for Allie in September. I thanked my colleague profusely and said that I’d bring the letter to work the next day.

That night, I decided to see Allie off personally at the airport. I still wasn’t acclimatised to the heat though, and I dozed quietly on the front seat of the taxi, until the moment it neared Larnaca Airport. There, a swerve, thud and squeal from the car’s brakes woke me suddenly. Through the front windscreen, I saw the body of a hunting dog being propelled away from me at speed, as if it had been jerked away violently by some unseen leash. The sound of metal against flesh had been sickening and all three of us became further distraught after the car had stopped and we’d run back to see the dog’s crushed and bloody body lying inelegantly on the side of the road. Eventually, the taxi driver calmed down sufficiently to call the police on his mobile telephone, to tell them what had happened and ask them to remove the corpse.

The dreadful shock I suffered that night caused a mental flashback to a time eighteen years earlier, when another car I was travelling in hit a dog in Cyprus. I was with some young officers returning to their mess after an innocent mezé near Heroes’ Square. As we rounded a bend in the road, somewhere between Limassol and Episkopi, we found a golden retriever standing in the middle of the road. Confused by the headlights, and paralysed by fear, the beautiful dog stood its ground. Equally traumatised, our driver remained on course. Heavy braking prolonged the time that the dog had left to live by a few split seconds. Then God came to take him away.

As we laid his blood-stained body on the verge, a fellow passenger said that the locals often dumped unwanted pets in the WSBA, hoping that British animal-lovers would care for them. If this were the story behind this sad animal, then we’d let him down badly. No one in the houses nearby recognised our victim.