The Girl Under the Olive Tree (17 page)

They fell silent as if her outburst had shaken both of them. Bruce grabbed hold of her hand. ‘Then good luck! You’ll need it.’

‘And you too,’ she said, putting her other hand over his. ‘We’ve come a long way since the Highland Ball.’

‘I can see you still sitting in the library in that awful frock.’

‘It was rather dreadful, so frilly . . . Where will you go now?’ Penny asked, sensing the intimacy growing.

‘Wherever I’m sent . . . can’t say much, but now you see me, then you won’t. Who knows where I’ll be tomorrow? Be careful, Penny, don’t trust any strangers if the worst happens and we’re defeated. Your presence will be already registered here. They watch the ports and the cafés to see who is new in town. You’re easy to recognize. Go native, perfect your accent. Say you’re from Athens and you’ll get by. Blend in, don’t stand out, dye your hair, cover up and act Greek. You are taller than most women here . . .’

‘What are you trying to tell me, Bruce?’

‘Only that if things go badly, they’ll need nurses in the hills with the
francs-tireurs,
the freedom fighters,’ he whispered. ‘Look to the hills. You’re a mountain goat, use your legs and head into the mountains if the worst happens.
’

‘You don’t think we can win this battle?’ she asked in surprise.

He paused, looking around to make sure none of the other diners was in earshot. ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t think our men have enough stamina, arms or guns to see it through, but we won’t be leaving the island in the lurch. That’s all I can say.’ He looked at his wristwatch and sighed. ‘Time to get you back to base.’

The drive back was silent, both of them lost in private thoughts. Any romantic notions Penny had sensed had been quashed by Bruce’s pessimism. He was heading into danger; whatever he was doing was clandestine, a secret mission he mustn’t discuss. He’d told her enough for her to know she must make her own plans too, and she wondered if she would be more useful with the other nurses on board a hospital ship after all. It was one thing being brave and daring and willing to serve, but another matter to put others in danger should she have to flee again. If she was caught as an alien amongst the locals they might be shot.

Bruce dropped her off at the guard post on the beach. She stood waving to him, listening to the screech of the tyres as the spray of sand gritted her eyes, wondering just when he’d appear again. His company was always such a delight, she sighed. Was this the beginning of a new relationship between them at last?

There was something different about the place now. It was quieter, with not so many prostrate men on the shoreline. She made for the hospital barracks and bumped into Douglas Forsyth, her senior medical officer.

‘Good Lord! What are you doing here?’ he shouted.

‘Reporting for duty, sir. Sorry I’m late. There was a raid . . .’

‘Never mind that . . . why aren’t you on the ship?’ There was a puzzled look on his sunburned face.

‘What ship?’

‘They’ve gone without you, Nurse. They all shipped out under cover, took on board the worst cases and all the female staff for Egypt. God Almighty, you weren’t on base, were you? You’ve missed the bloody boat.’

Penny’s resolve shook at the news. Escape from the island was no longer a choice. She was stranded. Oh yes, it was one thing choosing to stay on but another when the choice was taken from her. Suddenly the reality of deliberately staying away hit her. You’ve done it now, she sighed, her heart thumping, and her courage failed for a moment but she swallowed back her panic and took a deep breath.

‘I’m billeted with a consul family; I’m Red Cross.’

‘You’d better leave with them. I can’t have you here, one female, hundreds of soldiers, wouldn’t be proper.’

‘Sir, I can still assist; you know I’m experienced.’ Nurses didn’t argue with doctors but Penny was beyond such formalities. ‘Surely a pair of hands is a pair of hands.’

‘It’s the rest of you that’s a problem. It’s against regulations. Where will you mess? Not with the orderlies . . . You’re officer class. I can’t have you singled out . . .’

Just at that moment the second in command arrived, Dr Ellis. ‘Two more silly asses with sunstroke . . . Nurse George, can you deal with them? I’ve got five more cases of the squits need isolating or the whole camp with come down with it. Doug, have you a moment? There’s a private who needs looking at; don’t like the look of his back?’

Penny shot out before Forsyth could call her back. They would sort out logistics later. She went to collect the tubes to give the patients cold enemas, a transfusion of salt and glucose, and ordered lots of cold water from the well. These fair-skinned soldiers were suckers for the sun, lying about with no idea how dangerous it was in such shadeless terrain.

Penny sped on her way, knowing tomorrow she must formalize her position here with the authorities, irregular though it may be. They might protest, but she was Greek Red Cross; if necessary she could be transferred locally. The ship leaving without her was a sign. The decision had been made for her. This is where she was meant to stay, and stay she would.

‘I know, it sounds so implausible, Lois, doesn’t it? Me being the only British nurse left on the island. “You’ve done it now,” I thought. Part of me had always known the risk I was taking. Yet part of me couldn’t believe it at first and kept searching round for Sally and the other girls. Surely someone else had hidden or forgotten the time, not heard the call back to camp, but no. I was the crazy one, left clutching little but my principles, and feeling my gut churning up,’ I said as we drove up the new National Highway, heading eastwards in a hired car from the port in Souda Bay, following printed instructions on how to find our villa. ‘I just stayed at my post and got on with the job, until things changed.’

‘One woman and thousands of men, how did you manage?’ Lois asked, while concentrating on driving on the right.

‘They brought me my food and I had a room of my own. I never went out at first, just on my rounds. Then, once things hotted up, well, all that formality went by the board but that’s another story.’

We turned off the main road, down towards the coast and the villages overlooking the bay, down a winding lane towards a village with a brightly coloured church at its heart. Then we turned down a winding drive to a fine two-storey stone house with a balcony on the first floor. It had an olive grove to the side, a courtyard in the shade and a gravel drive for the car. There was a sparkling swimming pool, which caught Alex’s eye immediately, and he shot out to examine it. I didn’t recognize any of it, though the name of the village, Kalyves, struck a chord somewhere in the back of my mind.

‘Do you like it?’ Lois was looking anxious for a positive response. ‘I thought you’d like something with character.’

‘I think it’s charming. We can walk into the village for supplies.’

‘You know it, then?’

‘I’m not sure. I can sense the sea isn’t far and there will be shops. I think we’ll be fine here but I insist you and Alex must not hang about for me. Take him on trips. I can hire someone to drive me when I need it, but now I could do with a cool room and drink.’

Inside was chilly after the sun’s warmth. The hall had patterned marble floors, and a fan rattled overhead. There were clean simple furnishings and heavy dark-wooded tables and chairs, lace drapes and tablecloths, wall hangings and old prints.

‘You must choose your own room, Aunt Pen,’ Lois insisted.

‘The one nearest the bathroom will do,’ I laughed.

‘I counted twelve shrines on the way here,’ Alex piped up. ‘Why do they have pictures in them and lamps?’

‘To remind us life is short and brutal sometimes, and memories are long. The lamp burns as a prayer for the dead to be remembered and a photo helps keep them alive. I think it is a nice custom.’

‘When you die, shall we put one in the garden for you?’

‘Alex!’ Lois gasped.

‘I would be very honoured but I think the people who bought my house might not want my ugly mug stuck in their flower borders.’ I laughed.

‘Can I have a swim?’

‘Only if one of us is watching,’ Lois warned. ‘I’ll take you exploring later and we can make plans. It says there’s a sailing school close by, we could take lessons.’

‘Cool,’ he said, racing up the staircase to explore.

I, too, retreated upstairs and quickly chose my room. From the window was the most glorious view of the White Mountains of the Apokoronas, still snow-capped even in the heat of the late afternoon.

I felt tired but excited. After all these years of absence, why did I feel as if I was coming home again, back to those heady dangerous weeks in May sixty years ago? If truth be told, I’d felt a strange connection the moment we entered into the bay and I saw the harbour, smelled the diesel fumes and oily seawater, heard that loud guttural accent. I also had a strange feeling that my arrival was the beginning of something important. It was hard to explain what I was feeling deep inside.

I peered out of the front window. In the distance I could see people going about their business in jeans and black shirts, on scooters and mopeds, and tourists in sundresses and shorts. Part of me was expecting to see everyone in traditional dress: breeches, cloaks, lace bandanas and white boots. Customs had changed, Europe was closer now. Then an old woman, bent, with a stick, covered head to toe in widow’s weeds with the full black headscarf covering her chin, came into view, taking me back instantly to those far-off days before the onslaught began in earnest on 20 May. That was the date none of us would ever forget.

I looked up into that ink-blue sky, half expecting to see what we saw then, and I shivered, hearing again the little girl shouting, ‘
Kyria
, look! Come and see! Men with umbrellas are falling from the sky!’

Rainer Brecht sat staring from his hotel balcony in Platanias, sipping a bottle of Mythos beer from the minibar.

The taxi, sent to collect him from the port, had rattled along the by-pass heading west of Chania, to a holiday resort still in the process of construction, judging by the concrete lorries blocking the main street. The driver tried out his excellent English and German after checking if his passenger spoke any Greek.

When the old man complimented him, the boy smiled and said his family had lived in America for a while. ‘Now we are home.’ Rainer was glad the boy didn’t ask the obvious question, ‘Were you here during the war?’ but it hovered just the same. He was the right age to be a veteran.

Their journey took him through many familiar routes, though the olive groves had shrunk, replaced by harsh concrete buildings. Chania was still sprawling out towards the high hills, an outline that he hoped would never change, but the mule carts and donkeys had been replaced by battered cars and bikes and smart buses. There was investment beginning, but here and there he spotted familiar squatted shacks and old houses dwarfed by high-rise apartments, and homes with iron rods sticking out of the flat roofs, ready for another storey to be added. It was a world away from the one they had jumped into in 1941.

Out in the bay he could see a distant island rising from the aquamarine sparkling water. The sea never changed its appeal or yielded its secret store of bones. He’d chosen this hotel for its bland anonymity. It was rough round the edges still, three stars, spotless, soulless. There was a smell of fresh paint ready for the new season, newly laid paths to the shingly beach. It was quiet, suiting his purposes well enough. This was a personal pilgrimage, a time for reflection. He could smell barbecue smoke and music blaring somewhere. He hoped it wouldn’t be intrusive or he would move on. He had not hired a car – his eyes were no longer reliable – but he would hire taxis for his trips into the interior.

The snapshots he’d collected over the years didn’t do justice to the colours of Crete. He was too late for the famous spring flower meadows, the heat had dried them out. He had a wallet full of sepia shots of his old brothers in arms and lined them up on the bed. How relaxed they all looked, smiling in the sun in shots taken on some forgotten beach before they set out on their campaign, none of them realizing what lay ahead. He had nothing else to honour them by but flashes of memory, and their ever-youthful faces, these silent ghosts who haunted his dreams, brave young men who never saw another dawn. He had come to pay his respects and recall each one of them.

How could they have known what was awaiting them right here in the sea, in the hills, olive groves and ditches just down the road?

No one knew that they were rushing headlong into the swallowing jaws of hellfire, or that their sacrifices would change the course of military history.

The transport planes flew out at first light towards Crete, in formation, skimming the water then rising over the mountains, heading west to their target, landing close to the western airstrip at Maleme. As they sat facing each other, Rainer had time to examine the eager faces of his men, wearing wool jumpsuits full of pockets, heads protected by new rimless helmets. Some grinned with confidence, others, grim-faced, kept checking their harnesses and kit, silently lost in the discomfort of the flight. How young they all looked with their bronzed features. He felt a stab of fear for them all.

Then came the guns roaring at their approach and he saw tension flash among them as the Junkers swerved but thundered on their course. The radio operator yelled, ‘Get ready, Crete.’

Rainer saw its shape, familiar from their briefings, coming ever closer in the morning light. They juddered down low and then swooped up to avoid being struck. He felt his stomach turn over as their target position appeared.

Some of the men started to sing their anthem to steady the nerves. ‘No road back . . .’ rang in his ears. Now, primitive instinct and months of training kicked in as they stood ready to harness up and check their chutes. He must be first out, leading the way by example as they leaped into the cruciform shape in free fall.

It was a strange sensation to leap from the sky, full of such power and adrenaline. Then came seconds of panic, waiting for the first chute to open. He felt the jerk and the lightening relief, but he turned in horror to see one of his boys caught on the end of the plane, his harness ripped as he fell like a stone to earth.