Her Prince encouraged these fragile aspirations which were (so she hoped) going to transform the spoiled society girl, anesthetized by too many parties, into someone very valuable to herself and to others. No, the aspirations did not go as far as sainthood. But she planned for calm, balance, and a personal freedom in her solitude. She, like me, had wanted to settle in Greece, but the vagaries of the Control Exchange had defeated these intentions. But Cyprus was a sterling-area Greece, and that decided us.… Though I had not actually met her for about six months — during which we were both taken up with buying a house, or land, and in general feeling our way towards an island residence — I had seen her about the little harbor of Kyrenia, always alone, and usually reading a book. She wore a Wren’s white mess jacket with brass buttons and a dark swimsuit which showed off to perfection not only her line but also the blonde skin which the sun turned to brown sugar. Nobody could tell me who she was — indeed I knew nobody to ask. But once or twice a week I passed her as she lay asleep on the mole, myself also with a towel and a book. Then one day we found ourselves sitting together at a lunch party and felt the tug of a familiarity which we had been too polite to profit by: we already knew each other so well by sight. She was amused and pleased when she found out that I spoke Greek and could become a friendly Caliban for her; myself, as I was passing through a particularly lonely period of my life, I was delighted by such a chance friendship. From then on we met once or twice a week for dinner — and when there was any need for an interpreter she had no hesitation in driving up to Bellapais and digging me out.
Our friendship prospered in the very notion that we were going to become neighbors; and that we were both going to live alone and work. I showed her a half-finished novel called Justine, while she, with much hesitation, entrusted me with a half-finished travel book called provisionally The Bamboo Flute. It was about her first solo flight around Indonesia and Bali and it was organized in a series of cinematic rushes which at that stage had a bright but highly provisional air. But there were good things in it about colors and smells. I remember one sharp comparison of smell between a crowded country bus in Indonesia and the London Tube; the Indonesians however primitively they were forced to live, she said, smelled of nothing, were astonishingly clean; but the London Tube smelled of wet mackintosh and concrete and damp hairdos.
Inevitably our book discussions found a place in the general context of all the others — of the readings of Indian texts, of the amateur attempts upon the world of breathing exercises, attempts at meditation. It was an idyllic time spent in blue weather on the green grass of the ancient Abbey; I had been elected what the Chinese called (so she said) “a friend of the heart.” And indeed so had Piers who made frequent summer appearances in order to advise her about her house and add afterthoughts to his own beautiful house in Lapithos. It was the last summer before the Fall — before the political situation, envenomed by neglect and stupidity, burst into flame and turned into a fully-fledged insurrection. For a longish while, however, the manifestations of the crisis remained quite moderate — for the Cypriot Greeks were most peaceable people and they knew that the British people in the island were not the architects of the policies which ruled it. But with the arrival of troops and the gradually mounting toll of incidents and counter incidents tempers wore thin and at last wore out altogether. All our hopes of a peaceful and productive life in this paradisiacal place went up in smoke.
As the problems connected with the buying of her land, and permission to build upon it, proved somewhat long — for the Government, if honest, was somewhat dilatory — Piers persuaded Martine to build an encampment of mock Indonesian huts on her land where she could live during the summer and see her house emerge from the scrub and arbutus of the little promontory. The island, we discovered, produced an excellent rush matting in several thicknesses and the heaviest proved tough and weatherproof for walls and roofing. The idea was miraculous in its simplicity — the local carpenters could run up a whole room in a day. It was like playing at dolls’ houses; for a couple of hundred pounds Martine built herself a temporary matting house with room enough to invite her summer guests, with kitchens and bathrooms — everything, for there was water on the land which Piers could later draw off for the big house.
Intoxicated by this discovery, she at once launched into what gradually turned into a miniature village almost, with a main square from which all the huts led off, with grouped water points and drainage and septic tanks. Piers, the born architect and planner, was lost in admiration and envy at this freestyle building and often, when he ran into problems with the big house, would swear and ask her why the devil she could not live forever in a matting house, repairing it at little cost as fast as it deteriorated? There were times when she almost agreed, when the big house seemed too solid and too consciously thought out — for at heart, like all the family of Gainsboroughs, Martine was something of a gipsy. The instinct had perhaps worn itself out a little — though her father, old Sir Felix, had expressly chosen a traveling profession — diplomacy — which sent him to a new country every few years. She had been marked by this wandering life, and she spoke with eloquence and insight of what it had meant to her and to her brother, in terms of actual domicile, to inhabit buildings which were beautifully appointed but in which nothing belonged to one — everything belonged to the Office of Works, even the choice plate. One brought one’s books and pictures into play to be sure, but an embassy for all its comfort could never be a home. But this was how she knew Rome, Moscow, Buenos Aires: and this was how she had become a linguist. But her childhood had been full of this strange sense of not belonging; lying awake at night listening for the official Rolls which wheeled on to the gravel after midnight, bringing their parents back from some boring reception — so fatigued by their social duties that they could hardly exchange a word and often even dined alone in silence; simply to recover from the deep wasting fatigue of a life which was a mirror life. Only at holiday times did things seem to come alive, but then the cottage in Devon was owned, it was theirs like the mill in Ireland and the flat in Capri. The subtle difference cut very deep; but was it really necessary to own the house one lived in in order to feel happy? Surely there was something false about the proposition? Then perhaps it was simply the artifices and limitations of the diplomatic life? She had begun to look upon diplomats as kindly lampreys gesturing in the dark pools of the profession among the fucus and drifting weeds of protocol and preciousness. Nor was this really fair — for Sir Felix was far from being a mountebank, hence no doubt his frequent relegation to quite minor missions in the role of a lifesaver or life-giver — to ginger them up, or to create new openings as he had in Latin America. But Martine in a dim incoherent way wanted a different life: and here it was.