The Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page A

a single aspect that he would allow his wife to change.
    In those frantic days before the hotel opened, signs were installed above the door and even the front of the bar was embellished with its name in mother-of-pearl inlay. Aphroditi had lost the battle. She knew it was futile to try to change what was now a fait accompli, but nevertheless bitterly resented Markos’ victory.
    Markos could not help being pleased that Savvas had been as good as his word. He knew that he was more than Savvas’ major-domo, whatever Aphroditi wanted to think. Day by day he had turned himself into Savvas Papacosta’s right-hand.
    When The Sunrise opened, he rather hoped that the boss’s wife would not be around as much. He found her manner with Savvas proprietorial. It was often the way with wives, he felt. They behaved as if they owned their men.
    Privately, he wondered why the boss’s wife was even working in the hotel. When she was Aphroditi’s age, his own mother already had her three children and only left the confines of the house and their orchard in order to go to the village market. Even now, it was just once a year that she left her home in Famagusta to go to Nicosia. The rest of the time she was tending the house or the garden, making
shoushouko
(a grape and almond sweet) or halloumi, or creating lace. Markos accepted that times had changed, and that girls – his sister, even – now dressed differently, thought differently and even talked differently. In spite of all this, the very
existence
of Aphroditi in his workplace bothered him and he treated her with great caution and exaggerated politeness.
    One thing he was certain of was that she would play no role in the nightclub. It would be entirely his own domain. Savvas Papacosta was aiming to attract a set of the super-rich whose taste for cabaret had been whetted in Monaco, Paris and even Las Vegas. He had told Markos that with the right acts and music, they could make more profit for the hotel than the accommodation and catering put together. It would be on a different scale from any similar venue in Cyprus, open six days a week, from eleven at night until four in the morning.
    At eight o’clock precisely, Markos watched Savvas and Aphroditi Papacosta say their farewells and slip away. It would be seven or eight hours before he himself left. The pianist continued to play and he knew there would be a core of clients who would linger to enjoy the atmosphere until well after midnight. Some of them would return after dinner and spill out on to the patio to enjoy the balmy warmth of the night. Others, mostly men (though occasionally a lone female guest), would perch on a bar stool to give him their views about business, politics or something more personal. From his position behind the bar, Markos was adept at making the right responses and adjusting to moods that changed with the level in the whisky bottle.
    He readily accepted offers of ‘a stiff double’, clinked glasses with a smile, toasted whatever the customer wanted to toast and stealthily lined up the drinks beneath the bar. Clients happily reeled off to bed after an evening of satisfying conviviality, while Markos poured the unwanted liquor back into the bottle and cashed up.
    He drove past the new hotel on his way home. It was two thirty in the morning and lights were still blazing inside The Sunrise’s reception area. Numerous contractors’ vans were parked outside as people continued to work through the night.
    There to the left of the main doors a huge sign had been erected, ready for illumination: ‘Clair de Lune’. He knew that everything inside was in place, as he had already inspected it that morning. Whatever Aphroditi Papacosta imagined, there was little with which she would be able to find fault, and for the group of guests who would be given a privileged preview of facilities that night, he was confident that the nightclub would be the main attraction of the new hotel.
    Savvas Papacosta was giving him an