Corporal Cotton's Little War (16 page)

Kitcat frowned. ‘The Germans shot ‘em,’ he growled,

‘Couldn’t you stop ‘em? With the Bren?’

‘I couldn’t see ‘em. The trees were in the way. I just heard the shooting. When I got down to the beach the whole goddam lot were dead.’ Kitcat indicated a large blue-grey rock close to the water’s edge. ‘They were lying in front of that thing. They’d stripped ‘em of their watches and wallets and everything. They’d even cut one of Samways’ fingers off to get his ring. It was a good one. I’d noticed it.’ His face twisted in a spasm of unhappiness, and as he turned and pointed, they saw that there was a line of graves at the other end of the beach.

‘I buried ‘em,’ Kitcat said. ‘I didn’t do it so goddam good but I buried ‘em. Then I thought the Germans might come back so I went on board for food. There was some left but they’d already stripped the blankets and things. After that I went up the slope there and lived for four days under some bushes. I came down when I saw you. You come to pick me up?’

As Cotton explained why they were there and what had happened to
Claudia,
Kitcat’s face fell.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he groaned. ‘I’m right back where I was then, aren’t I? In the shit. All the same,’ he continued, ‘I guess it’s better being in the shit with friends than being in the shit on your own. If your boat’s wrecked, what are you doing here?’

‘We think we might repair this one,’ Cotton pointed out.

Kitcat’s eyes lit up but his enthusiasm died quickly. ‘You must be joking,’ he said.

‘Samways thought you might, didn’t he?’

‘Well, yeah, I guess he did at that.’ Kitcat shrugged, ‘You can count on me anyway.’ He indicated his stripes. ‘Don’t take no notice of these. They’re only aircrew stripes. Until I became an air gunner I was just a goddam fitter.’

‘Engine or airframe?’ Docherty asked.

Kitcat stared at the stoker. ‘Engine,’ he said. ‘I was going to re-muster as a flight engineer for one of the new four-engine jobs, as a matter of fact. Anything’s better than a Blenheim.’

Nobody was listening to him and Docherty grinned at Cotton. ‘We’ve got help,’ he said. He swung back to the Canadian. ‘Can you swim?’

Kitcat gazed at him, puzzled. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m a good swimmer.’

‘Underwater?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘That makes three of us,’ Cotton said. ‘Where’s the Bren?’

Kitcat gestured. ‘Up there.’

‘Get it. Go with him, Docherty. I think we’re in business again.’

When they returned to
Claudia,
however, Docherty let out a howl of fury.

‘The Germans have been!’ he yelled. ‘They’ve pinched the bloody spares!’

Cotton ran to the wheelhouse. The blood had dried to black now but the place was full of flies and loud with the sound of their buzzing.

‘It wasn’t the Germans,’ he growled. ‘It was those bloody Greeks.’ He gestured at the girl who was watching them with a worried face. ‘Her cousin and his pals! They’re going to use ‘em to repair
Loukia.’
He turned to Gully. ‘Get Bisset! Quick!’

By the time Bisset appeared, Docherty was quivering with disappointment and rage.

Cotton glared at Bisset. ‘Where were you?’ he demanded angrily. ‘That bloody Petrakis has pinched everything!’

Bisset didn’t lose his temper. ‘I was up there,’ he said, gesturing. ‘Building a shelter for the kid and fetching him water.*

‘Couldn’t you have stopped the bastards?’

‘If you go up there - ‘ Bisset refused to become angry - ‘you’ll notice you can’t even see the boat. And if I
had
seen ‘em, I could hardly have stopped ‘em. You had the rifles.’ He looked gravely at Cotton who flushed as he realized the injustice of his accusations. ‘Finally,’ he went on quietly, ‘it seems to me that instead of arguing how we lost the things, we’d be better occupied bending our minds to the problem of getting ‘em back, don’t you think?’

Cotton came to life and whirled on the girl. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded. ‘Where have they gone?’

She looked scared and backed away. ‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You’d better.’ Cotton lifted the tommy-gun and, cocking it, pointed it at her chest. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded.

‘They’re hiding.’ She looked agonized and desperate at his change of manner. ‘What have they done?’

‘They’ve stolen everything we possessed,’ Cotton said. ‘They’ve been over the whole boat,’ He stopped dead, thinking, then he whirled round. ‘Bisset, you and Chippy go and check the stuff we took ashore! The food. The planks. The dinghy.
And
the guns. Don’t forget the guns.’

Without a word, Bisset turned and climbed from the boat, followed by Gully. Gotton pushed the girl against the engine-room bulkhead and pointed the gun at her again.

Kitcat’s jaw hung open. ‘What’s she done, for Christ’s sake?’ he asked.

‘It’s not what
she’s
done,’ Cotton snarled. ‘It’s what her bloody cousin’s done! We were going to transfer everything from this boat to
Loukia
and repair it. The bastards have taken the lot.’

Docherty glared at the girl who stared back at him with huge dark eyes. ‘You know what she wants, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Shut up, Docherty,’ Cotton said. Even now, in his fury, he was embarrassed by Docherty’s suggestion.

‘She wouldn’t worry. Them wops go at it like ferrets.’

‘Shut up!’

Docherty was about to continue but changed his mind and stopped. Cotton’s face was dark with anger and for a moment Docherty thought he might even turn the tommy-gun on him.

Bisset reappeared. He looked as calm as if he’d just been to fetch the milk from the front step. ‘Nothing’s been touched,’ he said. ‘Petrol, wood, dinghy, guns. They’re all there.’

‘That’s something then,’ Cotton said. He gestured at the girl with the muzzle of the gun. ‘Where’s Petrakis?’ he demanded.

She hesitated before replying. ‘He’s in the goatherds’ shelter,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

She pointed to the hill. ‘It’s up there. It’s a big cave with room for the animals in winter.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d better show me the way.’

Her face became anguished. ‘I daren’t.’

Cotton grew angry. ‘Who is this cousin of yours, for God’s sake? God Almighty? I want back everything he took off this boat. It belongs to the Royal Navy, and I want it.’

She gazed at him for a long time and he could see she was trembling; then she nodded.

He went on staring at her for a moment longer, his eyes angry, then he turned. ‘Gully, you look after the kid. Docherty, get everything ashore we’re likely to need. I’ll go after that lot with Bisset. Christ knows when we’ll be back but we’ll be bringing what they took. You can bet your life on that.’

Docherty didn’t argue and Cotton was about to climb down from the boat with Bisset and the girl when he stopped and thrust one of the rifles into Kitcat’s hands. ‘Can you use one of these things?’ he asked.

‘I’m better in a turret.’

‘I expect you’ll manage. Keep your eyes open.’

He thrust the second rifle at Bisset and gave the girl a push. Without speaking, she led them along the water’s edge to the rocks and began to climb.

Halfway up she tried to explain. ‘It was none of my doing,’ she said.;

‘Never mind that,’ Cotton said sharply. ‘Just show us where he is.’

She didn’t speak again, but kept on climbing. As he started to pant, Cotton wondered if she’d try to run. He knew he’d never be able to catch her if she did and he knew he couldn’t shoot her. He hoped she’d not try to run.

The night’s rain had left the path running with water and slippery. It was an old stream bed and climbing it was like going up a rickety staircase which was always in danger of collapsing. Constantly, their feet slid away from them as the surface crumbled, and Cotton was wearing only rubber-soled pumps so that the stones dug into the soles of his feet.

Near the top of the hill, the girl branched off from the stream bed between two boulders, and they saw they were in a second smaller stream bed that fed water to the other. They continued to climb across the purple-brown boulders, their shoes everlastingly slipping in the mud, and again the girl turned, this time by a huge rock overhung by cactus. In front of them, Cotton saw a pile of manure and realized that for some time he’d been treading in the small hoof prints made by a donkey.

‘How much farther?’ he asked.

‘A long way still.’

‘If you try any tricks -’

She gave him a cold look. She seemed frightened no longer, only full of dislike for him. ‘I shan’t try to trick you,’ she said.

They went on climbing until the bay below seemed only a cleft in the rocks, and they could no longer see the boat between the trees.

‘Chrysostomos will have others with him,’ the girl said. ‘He has men up there and might not want to give you back the things he’s taken.’

‘He’d better,’ Cotton growled. ‘How many of them are there?’

‘Chrysostomos says there are many.’

‘Right.’ Despite his ancestry. Cotton had the Englishman’s contempt for dark-skinned foreigners. He’d often heard it said that an Englishman was equal to two Germans, three Frenchmen and any number of wops, and he believed it. It was nothing to do with race, only background and that sense of superiority the British had enjoyed for generations.

He turned to Bisset and indicated the rifle. ‘Can you use that thing?’ he asked.

‘I’m a Regular like you,’ Bisset said. ‘Among other things in peacetime, they taught you to shoot and not to panic when disaster’s hanging over you.’

Cotton looked quickly at him, wondering if the airman was suggesting he was getting hot under the collar too soon, but Bisset had the placid self-assurance of a butler bringing in the port and Cotton could only admit to himself that, if there were one thing that Bisset was not, it was excitable.

The girl’s steps had slowed down now and she began to look uncertain, even unwilling. Cotton gave her a push. ‘Don’t stop,’ he said.

She gave him a bitter glance and began to climb faster so that it took Cotton all his time to keep up with her. Eventually they reached a small plateau, backed by a low brown escarpment.

‘There’s a cave,’ the girl said.

They moved forward more slowly, keeping close to the cliff and treading warily. At last, they saw the hole in the cliff face. There was no sign of life.

‘That it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do they live there?’

‘Yes.’

‘All the time?’

‘Yes.’

The bareness, the starkness of the landscape, startled Cotton. ‘How?’ he asked.

‘They’ve got fires. And blankets. They carry water up.’

The sheer graft of it troubled Cotton.

‘Girls?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you lived here?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ve been here before?’

‘I helped them carry bedding up when the Germans came.’

‘Are you a Communist too?’

‘I believe in God,’ she said. She spoke simply and Cotton didn’t doubt her word.

‘Then why do you help them?’

‘Because he is part of my family and Greeks are very close. I expect eventually, when things grow better, I shall live in the cave with them.’

‘With all those men? Aren’t you afraid?’ Cotton noticed that, in his concern for the bleakness of the life she was choosing, he’d forgotten to be angry with her. She hadn’t forgotten to be angry with him, though.

‘Chrysostomos is my cousin,’ she said coldly. ‘He’ll look after me. Besides, by then there’ll be other girls.
Someone
must resist the Germans.’

‘We’re
doing our best,’ Cotton said.

She sniffed. ‘But, at the moment, it’s not very good, is it?’ She spoke simply and, remembering Norway and Dunkirk and France and the men being evacuated at that moment from the Greek mainland, Cotton had to admit she was right.

He stopped. The cave lay just ahead, sheltered by creepers and saplings. He gestured to Bisset and they moved again, the girl behind them now. At the entrance to the cave, they halted again, then Cotton drew a deep breath. God alone knew how many men there were inside and how many of them were armed. He looked at Bisset.

‘Right?’ he said.

‘Right!’

They entered the cave at a rush, the girl following them. Then they stopped dead. Inside were Chrysostomos Petrakis, the two other men, Xilouris and Cesarides - and the donkey, munching at a pile of dried grass.

Cotton stared round him. The cave represented living at its starkest, devoid of comfort beyond mattresses made of ferns and a fire on which a blackened pot simmered.;

‘Where’s the gang?’ Cotton demanded.

Petrakis and the others said nothing and Cotton jeered.

‘This all there are?’ he said, realizing at once that Petrakis was a man who fought with his mouth, persuading people he was a great leader when his band consisted only of himself, a donkey and two men who were little more than boys.

The three Greeks had straightened up. They had been bending over a pile of sacks and Cotton saw at once that they contained all the things they’d carried from the boat. Tools. Spark plugs. Spare parts.

‘I’ve come for that,’ Cotton said.

Petrakis smiled. ‘It is only
klepsi-klepsi’
he explained. ‘A little stealing. All soldiers do it. It’s even permitted if it isn’t too much.’

‘That lot belongs to His Majesty King George VI.’

‘King George VI?’ Petrakis’ eyes glittered. ‘Who is he? I don’t bother with King George VI. Or King George of the Hellenes either. I am a Communist. I suppose you know what a Communist is?’

‘We have Communists in England.’

‘Pb-pb!’
Petrakis sneered. ‘British Communists are British first and Communists afterwards. Greek Communists are different.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

Petrakis’ face was dark with anger as he gestured at the sacks. ‘This is ours,’ he said.

‘It belongs to the Royal Navy,’ Cotton said stubbornly. ‘You stole it. I’ve come for it!’

‘No!’ Petrakis barked the word angrily.’
We
need it.’

‘What for?’

Petrakis glanced at the other two Greeks. ‘Because you are losing the war,’ he snarled.