Below the Radar - Cyprus Summer of '74

Chapter 36 : Buttons Bay (Good Vibrations)

Alex woke early the next morning, four hours after he'd finally fallen asleep on the floor of the lounge he was sharing with two other teenagers. The ceiling fan rotated slowly as the early morning sun shone through the open windows, its rays creating shadows across his legs, moving in time with the lazily flapping curtains.

He lay in his football shorts on top of the old sleeping bag he was given for a mattress. Deep in thought, thirty minutes passed until he heard the rest of the enlarged household finally begin to stir.

Fourteen members from the three families currently residing in the house slowly congregated in the kitchen and dining area. Flight Sergeant Frost had not been home for two days, working through the night and sleeping in the squadrons' hangar when he got the chance. His wife Lynn was adjusting to her strange new role in her own house. Part welcoming and supportive hostess, part enforced matron and cook, her own family being impacted as much as the newcomers to their home. The three large boxes of rations had created excitement the previous afternoon, but were already nearly empty, though there were still plenty of hard biscuits and a few less enticing tins of assorted meals. The bakery had again opened early and provided plenty of fresh bread and along with some fresh fruit, steaming mugs of tea and a variety of cereals all of the kids tucked into a light breakfast.

Amid the hubbub of the kitchen over breakfast, Don quickly downed his tea before heading off once more. He was in for another long shift supporting the huge and ongoing administrative and organisational effort needed to manage the expected arrival of the last of the forces families being evacuated from Limassol plus hundreds, maybe thousands more stranded holidaymakers.

As breakfast was completed Alex slipped away with a borrowed towel, shorts, t-shirt and a couple of Cypriot pounds in his pocket. He knew his mum would have to balance her time during the day looking after the two youngest children whilst helping complete essential chores and arrange meals for the large household they were now part of. She quickly gave him the ok to find his mates and look after himself for the day, promising to be back for supper by 7pm.

***

He made his way to his mate Graham's house on Hawker Drive, via a circuitous route that took him past Kate's house on Queen's Street. He slowed his pace to a crawl as he passed by, but no matter how slow he went or how many times he doubled back he didn't catch sight of anyone in the house, let alone Kate herself.

The sun began to climb in the clear blue sky with another searing hot day in store. Alex, Graham and several more school mates met up and started to make their way down to Buttons Bay. More often known simply as Buttons, the beach was a favoured gathering place for youngsters from early May through to the end of September. During school term kids made their way to the beach in the afternoons if they could and at weekends, but during holidays it was full all day. The small snack bar, drinks kiosk, shallow warm water and small rocky outcrop made it popular. Added to that it also had the benefit of large rolling sand dunes with plenty of shady bushes and small stunted trees not twenty yards from the clear blue water. The wide sandy beach acted as a magnet for large groups of boys and girls. It was a safe gathering spot, boys surreptitiously weighing up the girls in their skimpy bikinis while girls juggled the challenge of simultaneously ignoring and flirting with the boys. The nearby dunes and patchwork of secluded sandy hideaways were ideal for bolder boys and girls who, despite all the false swagger and practiced nonchalance had managed to eventually get together and wanted more privacy.

Alex and his mates took their place amongst a large crowd of boys, joining the loose group and failing just as obviously in their attempted disinterest in the nearby girls. They aligned their towels, extending the long rows of colourful towels and Alex quickly scanned the opposing line. No sign of Kate.

He spent the best part of the day there lazing on the sand, swimming around the small reef, playing a variety of ball games and even wandered over to the nearby swimming pool for an hour. Still no sign of Kate and it felt like time was running out. Alex half-heartedly dived off the top board a few times, swam a few lazy lengths before scouting the nearby canoe and scuba clubs for anyone he knew.

Throughout the day tales of the last week since the coup and subsequent invasion were told and retold on the beach. Cross over stories were saved for the neutral territory provided by the drinks kiosk where the girls and boys came together.

"Honest, my mum was trapped in the middle of a raging gun fight in Limassol. She was looking after loads of toddlers, nearly twenty of them were at the nursery. They were all hiding under the table and had to stay there until an army unit found them and escorted them out."

Duncan, a lad that Alex sat next to in Maths proudly told the story of his dad. "You know my Dad's an MP. Well he was one of those who confronted that mob of locals heading into Episkopi. Apparently, they only wanted to go through on the way to Limo, but were all armed with rifles and guns in jeeps and shit like that. My dad and his section only had batons, but they turned them around. Or, as dad now likes to tell it, they were 'armed only with a mixture of common sense, diplomacy and steely determination'".

A young girl Alex didn't know, was desperate to join in. She jumped right in adding, apropos nothing in particular, "Well my dad's a sergeant in the Regiment, but I've no idea where he is or what he's doing, we haven't seen him for three days now".

It was a familiar story. Many of those lounging on the beach had not seen their Dad's for several days as they worked around the clock. Mum's were almost as busy working as volunteers on base or simply keeping newly jam-packed houses running.

An older shapely girl, Louise, with long sun tanned legs and a micro bikini flicked her beautiful long blonde hair to one side and raised herself on her elbow. She already had the attention of nearly every single boy on the beach, but now she told her captivated audience how she'd been helping out at the busy airfield and had checked a famous British actor onto his flight home. Just like thousands of others Edward Woodward, the well-known star of a recent spooky film about pagan rituals on a remote Scottish island, had found his holiday cut short.

Oddly, as stories were shared, the regular aircraft that flew overhead before banking away to the northwest, carrying stranded tourists, hardly registered. The main runway at Akrotiri was only a few miles away, but most of the beachgoers had lived around aircraft most of their lives and took little notice of the noise or the long shadows cast.

Eventually stories ran out and thoughts turned to the evening, namely the disco at the Youth Club. Everyone was going of course, but Alex raised his head from the sand as he heard whispers of a midnight swim being planned off the cliffs after the disco later. He'd heard this suggested many times before following a disco on camp, and whilst some of the older 6th formers had already got the t-shirt, normally the idea fizzled out to nothing.

Things were different now. Hundreds more teenagers were staying on base due to the evacuation, including loads from Limassol and BG. It had changed the dynamic and beneath the tension and hectic activity around the whole camp there was a matching sense of excitement. The security of the base and increased workload had resulted in the relaxing of many normal parental controls, enhancing the freedoms and resulting propensity for risk in many teenagers. The nights' full moon would complete the mix.

Alex thought he could wangle it and immediately began working out how, but it would only matter if he could first find Kate and then convince her to go with him tonight. He had heard many similar plans in the past, which never went anywhere, but this time things were different.

So, if it did go ahead, Alex wasn't going to miss out and within five minutes he had his plan locked down. In another two he'd convinced Graham to go along with it, which was just as well, as without Graham the plan was useless. A simple variant on an oft used ploy, that somehow seemed to take in parents most of the time – Alex would tell his mum he was staying at Graham's down the road as the evacuated family that had been there had flown home yesterday, so he could kip on the floor of Graham's bedroom, which would create more space at 23 Alexandra Hill in the process. This was true, but Graham had more freedom and for the moment, a bedroom to himself, so they could sneak in and out of his window easily.

So all it needed now as for Alex to find Kate, hope she had forgiven him for the Troodos fiasco and at least still liked him and then convince her to join him on a late night trip down the cliffs. Considering how all his other plans had turned out so far he had no reason to be confident, but something kept him up beat, despite the nagging feeling that somehow time was running out.