Janet did, locking it, and following Stavos’s lead crossed the main road to walk parallel with the beach. At this part of the bay sheets of nets hung from their poles or were laid out on the sand, drying, and a lot of lobster pots lay in apparent disorder. Flocks of gulls screeched and argued overhead, suddenly dipping to scavenge what bits there were still among the netting. The smell was overwhelming and there were no holidaymakers or parasols for a long way. The working area was quieter than Janet had expected, too: practically deserted, in fact, with no one in any of the boats.
To Stavos she said: “Where is everybody?”
“This is the between time,” he said. “The morning boats are back, with their catches…” He indicated the drying nets. “Those are theirs,” he said. “The night boats won’t go out for another three or four hours.”
“When do you normally fish?”
“When it suits.”
Janet look at her watch. It was 2 P.M. “What time will we get to Beirut?”
“Depends on the sea. The forecast is good so I would expect around midnight.”
“They are expecting you?”
“I know a way to make contact.”
“So I could be taken to see John tonight?” Janet asked, feeling another sweep of excitement.
“That will be for them to decide,” Stavos said. He halted at the water’s edge and said something in Greek. The younger man waded immediately out to a flat-bottom dory tethered to a buoy about five yards offshore. He did not bother to remove his shoes or roll his trousers up: by the time he reached the boat the sea was up to his thighs. He released the line and hauled it into shore. In the daylight Janet guessed he was younger than she’d first thought, probably little more than twenty.
To Dimitri she said: “Your son?”
“Cousin,” said the older man. It was the first time Janet had heard him speak. The English was thickly accented.
The man halted the dinghy about a yard offshore and Stavos said: “I could carry you out?”
“No,” Janet said, at once. She quickly took off her shoes and waded into the water without attempting to roll up the bottom of her jeans. Remembering Sheridan’s teaching she got easily into the boat, wedging her behind over the gunwales first and then swinging her legs inboard.
Both men followed without bothering to remove their shoes. The youngest man rowed, pulling them out to the fishing boat anchored furthest from the shore. As they passed the stern Janet saw there was no name but a lettered number. She thought it was C-39 but the marking was worn by sea and weather so she could have been mistaken.
The younger man vaulted easily from the dinghy into the larger boat, while the other two steadied it against the side. He leaned over, reaching out to help her. Janet accepted his offer: after hauling her halfway out he changed his grip, cupping both hands beneath her arms finally to bring her into the boat. It meant his fingers brushed briefly against her breasts. Janet pulled away at once, deciding it was an accident. The man appeared unaware of what he’d done, paying her no overt attention, instead taking the line from Stavos to trail the dory to the stern, where it would be winched from the water into its davits.
Janet thought the condition of the fishing boat was appalling. She was accustomed to Sheridan’s immaculately maintained vessel, with its neatly curled and stowed lines, tightly reefed sails, scrubbed and stoned deck and burnished metalwork.
This boat was squat and bulge-stemmed, lobster pots discarded where they’d clearly fallen, weed-clogged nets tangled and lumped in the stern. Amongst it all were bamboo-poled fishing lines and several ropes of cork floats. There was a central wheelhouse and alongside a minute cowl over steps leading below to what Janet supposed were cabins or at least some sort of sleeping accommodation. Directly behind, amidships, was the engine flap which Dimitri already had open, his body upended over the machinery. The working area where Janet presumed fish were gutted or prepared on homeward journeys was behind the engine area. There were actually knives in some kind of frame and the deck here was slimed with guts and scales which had not been washed down from the previous trip and which, inexplicably, had escaped the seabirds. Perhaps, thought Janet, even they had been unable to confront the stench. It was more than soured and rotting fish and their innards. There were exhaust fumes from the diesel engines which at that moment shuddered into life and the smell of the diesel itself and then something more for which she could find no comparison or identification: just a general odorous miasma of dirt and neglect.
“There’s a bench in the wheelhouse,” Stavos said.
Looking more intently Janet saw that a plank had been fixed along the bulkhead furthest from the wheel itself: it was padded with various pieces of sagging cloth and blanket, some of which hung down like lank hair to reach the decking. Pointing to her wet jeans bottoms Janet said: “I’ll stay outside for these to dry.”
“Please yourself,” shrugged the man, going towards the bench himself.
Neglected though the boat might be, there was nevertheless an oddly disjointed sort of efficiency about the fashion in which the group got it underway. Janet never once saw Stavos give any obvious command but the other two men went through what appeared an established routine, slipping anchor and stowing things unstowed-although doing little to clear the mess, rather moving it from one jumbled area to another-and preparing themselves and the vessel for sea. Janet tried to find herself a convenient place on one of the clearer sections of the deck directly in the dropping sunlight; although it was still comparatively hot, her trouser hems clung uncomfortably wet and cold around her ankles, sometimes actually making her shiver and she was anxious to dry them as much as possible. The ship had a flat stern and she wedged herself into the corner it made with the starboard rail, stetching her foot out on top of a lobster pot to catch the warmth. Because she was thinking about her feet she turned to the two seamen and saw both had, unseen by her, discarded their footwear and rolled up their sodden trouser bottoms: they moved flat-footed and assuredly around the boat, their toes splayed almost like fingers as they felt their way.
Janet was not conscious of their clearing the lee of Larnaca Bay but realized they must have done so by the increased movement of the boat. It obviously had a shallow draft, and the square back made it even more vulnerable, so very quickly it began to pitch and roll, although the swell was comparatively small. Janet had to take her leg down from the pot for balance. In the wheelhouse the moustached man hung nonchalantly against the spoked steering, a spilling handmade cigarette stuck precariously to his bottom lip. She decided against going there yet.
The sun was losing its heat, and the sea was becoming dulled from bright silver into soft gold. There were a lot of yachts and pleasure boats, both sail and engine driven: some, she thought, were too small to have ventured this far. Caught by the thought she looked back, surprised how low Cyprus was becoming on the skyline: it was just a continuous black and vaguely undulating shape, from which it was difficult to pick out positive landmarks. From the direction she imagined they had come Janet guessed a hazed white area to be the pier and marina at Larnaca but she couldn’t be sure. She wondered how Stavos navigated: there did not appear to be any aerials or electronic equipment but she knew there had to be: a radio, at least.