When Lawrence Durrell first climbed the steep slope from the mountain village of Bellapais to the villa that was to be called Bitter Lemons, he wrote that the snaky path he negotiated in a rain storm "resembled the bed of a torrent".
It says something about the sluggish tourist development of Northern Cyprus that, when we arrived, the conditions were much the same. The rain had stopped, but the path resembled a dried-up gully, which the taxi refused to negotiate. It halted, appropriately, by the Tree of Idleness, at the centre of Bellapais by the 14th- century Augustinian abbey. The elegant gothic remains, overhang citrus gardens stretching down to the harbour of Girne (Kyrenia).
Durrell came here in 1953 with his two-year-old daughter, Sappho, to begin a new life and write his planned Alexandria Quartet. But within two years, Archbishop Makarios and the guerrilla chief, Colonel Grivas, had begun their war to evict the British.
Durrell had settled into unpolitical village life at Bellapais. But, strapped for cash, he accepted the post of director of information services (spin doctor) for the British. Soon the masons and carpenters who had helped build the villa, the rowdy drinking company and the friendly farmers deserted him. Before the villa was finished, he moved into Nicosia (Lefkosa) and, within a year, retreated in misery to England. But he had completed Justine and out of this experience came Bitter Lemons.
The villa now has a number of additional luxuries that Durrell did not enjoy, including a pool in the leafy courtyard where ripe avocados drop on your head as you dip.
The Republic of Northern Cyprus, set up after the Turkish invasion of 1974, is not recognised by any country apart from Turkey and suffers further isolation under a Greek embargo that forbids flights over Greek airspace. So it takes eight hours to get there from London, via Izmir in Western Turkey. Neither is it the victim of foreign investment (much as it would like to be).
It is not local madness that is turning beautiful coastlines across Europe into frantic rallytracks of mongrelised food houses elbow-to-elbow with rasping discos and tatty trinket stores; it is "international investment" that dictates the density, the style (to pathetically misuse the word) and the decibel environment of a tourist resort.
So when you sit in the little port of Girne watching the boats tilt and bob in the April sun (April, May, September and October are the best months), you have the eerie experience of natural sounds allowed their full value. You hear the waves lap and slap; the birds sing unflustered; the wind is allowed its full silken whisper. For those nurtured on the raucous hubbub of the Costa this and the Cte de that, it must seem like a power failure. (They have nice power failures, too, in Girne, when the world at night assumes a liquid sinuosity by candlelight.)
The prices are soothing too: four quid for a three-course meal; £8 for a gourmet experience. Even Ken Livingstone could not offer a better fare's fair deal: a dolmush (minibus) will take you the 20 miles from Girne to Lefkosa for 60p. As you speed west to the orange and lemon groves around Güzelyhurt, the roads have that old-fashioned, evacuated look.
North Cyprus is a particularily beautiful region; there are the cosy beaches around Girne, well serviced by restaurants, and on the east coast between Gazimagusa (Famagusta) and Bogaz, there is a 15-mile stretch of sandy beach. Famagusta once a great port, the most spectacular victim of the division of the island, contains a ghostly memento of its great commercial days: section of abandoned high-rise hotels.
On our last evening, we went further up our hill to the small restaurant, Guthrie's Bar, run by Deirdre Guthrie whose parents, doctors working in Kuwait, built their summer house here just one year before Durrell arrived. As a teenager, home from boarding school, Deirdre, along with her mother often visited Durrell down the road. "He would talk for hours, but mostly about himself," she recalled. Thirty years ago, a Swedish film maker did a documentary on Bellapais, including interviews with Deirdre's father and mother. She ran the old film for us.
It was curious to see our village unfurl before us in shadowy black and white: the café owners, bread-makers, shopkeepers, acting out their past life around the Tree of Idleness. I tried to match the faces to those I had seen, giving latitude for age. Then I suddenly realised that, of course, this was a totally different population. These were the Greek villagers Durrell knew, replaced abruptly in 1974 by Turks. It was a dramatic reminder of the ravages of politics.
When Deirdre's parents returned three months after the invasion, the village was totally depopulated, plaintive with the sound of abandonded animals.
Now, time has done its work and Bellapais has grown a new history for itself that appears as rooted as the old.
Durrell on Cyprus
First impression of Bellapais and the run-down villa he was to buy and renovate:
"Everywhere grew roses, and the pale clouds of almond and peach bloom; on the balconies grew herbs in window-boxes made from old petrol tins . . . My reverie was interrupted by a moan. A heifer was the cause of the noise. It stood, plaintively chewing something in the front room, tethered to a ring in the wall."
Settling in with the locals:
"The bottle of cognac was low and I now recognised in it, despite its colourless innocence, a formidable adversary which, if taken too lightly, would unhorse me completely. I seized my host's arms . . . and suggested a change to wine. 'Wine,' he said and his voice was charged with professional tenderness."
He comes to collect his belongings:
"As I turned the last corner and came to rest under the belfries of the Abbey, I saw that the whole village was there in the little square. But as the [car] engine fell silent I was aware of some altogether novel factor about the scene. It lacked all animation . . . I walked across to the little café which was crowded but utterly silent. Everybody looked at the ground, awkwardly and with a shy, clumsy disfavour."
Five best restaurants
1 Abbey Tower Bellapais Splendid Turkish cuisine; £10 a head approx, including wine.
2 AGED Bellapais Honest, copious fare for about £6 a head.
3 Le Jardin Three miles east of Girne French restaurant with a high- class reputation, but we kept sneaking back to the Abbey.
4 Courtyard Inn Off the coast road east of Girne Noted for its fillet stuffed with paté and prawns. £10 a head.
5 The harbour cafés in Girne Good for snacks and salads for well under a fiver.
