'Calm?' He snatched a glance at me. 'My God.' We passed a bunch of United Nations soldiers – Swedes, I think – deliberately conspicuous in their blue berets; they have to wear uniform at all times, even when they're planning on disgracing it.
'Well, at the moment anyway. But better than most of the Middle East, and at least your driving's much better here.' He instinctively slowed, though he'd been crawling already. 'And usually your guns aren't loaded.' You see them at all the roadblocks that cut the old city clear across the middle; a Greek carrying some modern sub-machine gun, then twenty yards on a Turk with one of those old Thompsons with the brass receiver. But neither have magazines in, and both guards grin cheerfully as you pass.
"Theycan be loaded,' Kapotas said dryly. 'One of our National Guards put in the magazine the other day. A friend had stopped for a chat and they got into an argument and the guard put in the magazine to impress him.'
'What happened?'
'He shot his own foot off, of course. And all the Turks dived for cover and the United Nations rushed in five hundred men and after a few hours they just about calmed things down. The friend, I think, is still running.'
Over the river and down Byron Avenue past the government buildings, the traffic thickened – but stayed polite. Kapotas asked, 'Do you know the Castle Hotel? '
'I've passed it.' And kept on going, though I didn't say that. I remembered it as being on Regina Street, just inside the walls: a gloomy, tall-windowed old place that had been modernised with a new name and a paintbrush when Castle bought it. I'd never stayed there, and with one of the best hotel bars just a few hundred yards away in the Ledra Palace, I hadn't done any drinking there, either. Well, I'd have to do some now; it would hardly be the sporting spirit, in these hard times, to sneak off and spend Castle's cash in the Ledra.
We went through the Paphos Gate in the vast sixteenth-century Venetian wall that runs a three-mile ring around the old city, weaved around a few of the narrow car-jammed streets and came out just alongside the hotel and opposite as obvious a knocking-shop as even Regina Street could produce. I'd forgotten what that road did best.
Kapotas did some nippy parking and I took my flight briefcase and grip out of the back seat.
'You travel light,' he commented.
'Aircrew mostly do.' Some of them live pretty light, too.
The lobby was narrow and dimly lit, with the original worn marble tiles on the floor and rather garish green and gold paint on the plaster mouldings of the ceiling. A man built like a Regimental Sergeant-Major, with a scruffy red uniform and a big moustache, came out from behind the desk. He seemed sadly pleased to see us.
Kapotas waved a hand at him. This is Spyridon Papadimi-triou, our hall porter.'
'Sergeant Papadimitriou.' He clicked his heels and bowed half an inch, which was all his shape allowed. So I'd been almost right about his rank, and now I could see two rows of faded medal ribbons across his heart.
I said: 'Roy Case.'
Kapotas was looking around nervously. 'Where is everyone?'
Come to think of it, it did seem a bit quiet – for April, when the tourists begin.
'They have all gone. Vamoso.' The Sergeant rocked on his heels and looked quietly happy.
'You mean the staff? Gone where?'
'They have not been paid for two weeks. And this afternoon you come and tell them perhaps it will be never, so…" He looked even more happy.
I said: 'Why not you?'
'I have not been paid forsix weeks,' he said proudly.
'Oh God,' Kapotas said quietly, almost like a real prayer. And maybe it was. His fingers rattled on the desk top.
I said: 'I have to carry my own bags, then? '
'Your own bags?' He looked at me with sick pity. 'You have to help me cook dinner for the guests.'
2
In fact it wasn't that bad, except for the parts that were worse. There were only twenty guests, and only the dozen that were payingen pension rates and would lose by going out decided to stay and face our menu. And the menu itself was easy since the late staff hadn't been in such a hurry that they'd forgotten to pinch every bit of food that wasn't too heavy, like half a deep-frozen sheep, or too bulky, like the fresh vegetables, or too wet like several red mullet, a flayed octopus and three kilos of minced meat, family tree unknown. 'They must have hiredtaxis to take it all,' Kapotas said, looking into a larder that was empty of everything except a few sauce bottles and a dead mouse.
'They shared together and got a van,' the Sergeant said helpfully. Kapotas just looked at him.
It also turned out that Sergeant Papa wasn't the only one left. There was a small, dark, ugly chambermaid who was supposed to be his niece, and – surprisingly – the barman, Apostólos. I'd assumed he'd've been the first to go, plus the tools of his trade. But Sergeant Papa leant his big backside against the kitchen sink, lit an expensive cigar, and explained why not.
'He has brought in too many bottles so, naturally, he does not want to take them all out again.'
'Brought them in?'
'All barmen bring in bottles. They buy whisky for perhaps two pounds, then sell it in drinks for six pounds. Naturally they do not want to use hotel stocks and give the hotel the profit.'
'Naturally. But that being the case, hop out to the bar and bring back a bottle of Scotch for cooking purposes.'
'I am thehall porter.' I'd given him a corporal's job.
'If the pilots are doing the cooking, at least the sergeants can fetch them a drink.'
He looked me in the eyes, didn't quite smile, and went out at his own pace. Kapotas wiped his forehead with a shaky hand and said: 'You did say for cooking purposes?'
'For purposes of the cook; it comes to the same thing.'
'Can you really cook?'
'Can't you get your wife to come in?'
'With three children?'
'Oh well. Most unmarried men over forty can tell one end of an egg from ihe other. Have we got any eggs, by the way?"
'Yes. They must have been too difficult to carry.'
Tine. Hard-boil a dozen and some of the beans and we'll start with an egg salad. Then we make the mince into meatballs – what d'you call them? -keftedesl – and we'll do something to the fish. I'm buggered if I'm touchinghim.' I glared at the octopus and the octopus stared blankly back.
He sighed and got started. I looked around. 'You know, if I worked here for any time, I'd scarper whether I was paid or not.'
The repainting job had stopped at the service door; the kitchen looked like a Crimean War hospital before Florence Nightingale got into the game. The stone walls were decorated with fifty years of spilled sauces, the ceiling was black with oily grime, and there was fungus growing from the food scraps in the cracks in the floor. The only ventilation came from a couple of small barred windows, above head height over the blackened old cooking range.
Kapotas nodded gloomily. 'But we are lucky that Papadimi-triou stayed loyal.'
'Don't kid yourself. All the others'll get their usual jobs as waiters and cooks and things, particularly with the tourist season just starting. But he wouldn't get to be hall porter anywhere else. And I never heard of a hall porter living off his salary yet. I wonder how much he charges for that "niece" of his?'
'Oh God. Am I running a brothel as well?'
'You and every other hotel manager. Is this fennel or last week's spinach?'
Kapotas and the niece did the serving, the Sergeant found that his dignity allowed him to double as wine waiter, and I remembered that the real gourmets say red mullet should be grilled complete, not even with the scales scraped off. Ouren pension guests would live like kings and ruddy well like it.