Corporal Cotton's Little War (20 page)

What was happening on the mainland was a nightmare and the lack of news troubled him. It was obvious that the conquest of Greece would be followed in good time by an assault on Crete, and if the invasion of Crete
were
in the wind, it was not surprising that the Germans were too preoccupied to bother about salvaging
Claudia.
There’d be plenty of time for that when they’d consolidated themselves across the sea approaches to the mainland.

There was no sign of life near
Claudia
and the three graves on the beach had sunk as the soil had settled under the rain that had fallen. They seemed smaller, somehow, and Cotton found it difficult to realize that one of them contained Patullo. He’d got to know Patullo so well, it was hard to believe he was dead.

They loaded the two Lewises on the donkey and added anything else they thought it would carry.

‘It’ll die of heart failure,’ Cotton said.

Annoula smiled. It was only a small smile but it pleased him to see it return. ‘Greek donkeys are very strong,’ she said. ‘And better that the donkey struggles than that the Germans find them.’ She paused. ‘They say in Yithion that they’ve collected all the big boats from Kalani.’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps they’re going to attack the British in Egypt.’

Not in caiques, Cotton thought. The navy was heavily beset and the army and the air force had more on than they could safely handle, but he thought they could still manage to stop an invasion by caiques.

‘Suppose the Germans come to Yithion?’ he said.

She shrugged and he went on, curiously troubled by what would happen to her. ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘Have you no other friends on the island? People you could trust?’

‘A few.’

‘You could come with us to Crete. Every destroyer that evacuates troops seems to have its quota of girls. I expect they’re taken care of by the British government or somebody. They’re probably earmarked, anyway, by some soldier. Have
you
been earmarked?’

She gave him a sad little smile. ‘No. Not me. Perhaps I am too plain. And I am not clever.’ Her head came up proudly. ‘I have once been to London, of course. It was a long way and very expensive so that I had to stay with relations.’

Cotton said nothing, feeling faintly guilty because he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about his family.

She lifted huge dark eyes to him and managed a smile, and he thought at that moment she looked anything but plain.

‘I’m already older than most girls when they marry,’ she went on. ‘Greek girls marry very young. Are you married, Cotton?’

‘Not me,’ Cotton said stoutly. He’d been resisting his mother’s blandishments for years. ‘When are you going to marry, son?’ she was always asking him. ‘Soon you’ll be so old, the confetti will knock you down.’

‘It’s good to be married.’ Annoula had been silent for a while and her words brought him back to the present.

‘Yes,’Cotton said.

To the right bird, he thought.
He
wasn’t going to end up like his Old Man. Cotton wanted to be accepted as an Englishman, and a blonde wife and fair-haired children seemed a good investment.

‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘To the right person.’

10

Most of the damage to
Loukia
was aft and, apart from splinter holes, there was remarkably little forward. By evening, Gully had constructed a platform out of a door and a couple of big rocks they’d pushed into the water, and was already at work patching the bow with canvas, oakum, tallow and wood. Docherty had almost reassembled the port engine already and was pleased with himself.

‘We need a drink to celebrate,’ he suggested.

Cotton passed round the raki that old Varvara had given them and Gully pulled his concertina from the drab pile of rubbish he called clothing and started to play “The Lambeth Walk”. Immediately, Docherty’s feet started moving and he grabbed the girl and began to dance with her on the sand. Her face lit up and she responded at once, her eyes merry. Cotton watched them, aware how attractive she looked when she was happy, and even faintly jealous. In his mad fashion, Docherty had a way with him and Cotton could see how he managed to get the girls.

Then he pulled himself up sharp. What’s this bloody regiment coming to, he thought, dancing when the Germans were only on the other side of the hill? It was as bad as that Roman geezer fiddling while Rome burned. On the other hand - Cotton paused, newly aware of the trials of command - all work and no play made Jack a bloody dull sailor and Docherty was the sort of man who needed lightness in his life. Cotton rubbed a big hand over his face. Jesus, he thought, no wonder ships’ captains always seemed so bloody wise. They needed to be trick-cyclists, commanders, disciplinarians, teachers and bloody fathers to their crews all at the same time.

‘Shorter cruises, longer boozes,’ Docherty grinned. ‘I used to be dead smashing at this. Rammer Docherty, the hearts and flowers kid of Tyneside. There’s nothing like a smoochy last waltz to strip a girl’s good intentions down to her ankles.’

He gave Annoula a salacious grin but she obviously hadn’t properly understood him and Cotton decided it was time the larking stopped.

‘That’s enough,’ he said sharply. ‘We got work to do.’

‘Ach’ -- Docherty flashed his mad grin at the girl -- ‘you’ve got more bull and flannel than a battleship. What’s wrong with a bit of fun? A bint and a tiddly bit of music. It’s just what we want.’

‘It’s enough,’ Cotton said and Annoula gave him a frightened glance and backed away from Docherty.

‘Marines,’ Docherty observed, ‘are about as much use as a blind bunting-tosser. You’re as bad as that lot on the bridge with all the poached egg on their caps, Royal. Always spoiling a matelot’s bit of fun.’

‘We’ve got a lot to do,’ Cotton said stiffly. ‘We haven’t time for stand-easies.’

Docherty scowled. ‘What wouldn’t I give for a pint of wallop, a plate of fish and chips and a turn round the Palais with a willing bird.’ He grinned at Cotton. ‘NCOs and petty officers come in three sizes - them with stripes but no authority, them with authority but no stripes, and them with neither. Join the navy and see the world. Join the Marines and scrub it.’

He went back to work, defiantly singing, ‘Officers don’t worry me - not much!’

As the sun began to sink Cotton set off to fetch the dinghy with one of the drums of petrol. Bisset and Kitcat went with him, and they took the donkey to bring back the propeller Docherty had detached.

It was already dark by the time they reached Kharasso Bay but there was a moon now and they were able, by the use of the torch, to uncover the drums and roll one of them down to the beach. Covering the others again with the rocks, they unearthed the dinghy and loaded it with the drum. There was still plenty of freeboard, so they pushed the rubber dinghy into it as well and fastened two or three planks across the stern. Then, waist-deep in the water, they launched the dinghy and Cotton started rowing.

It was hard work and by the time he reached the point, he was sweating heavily and his arms were aching. When he reached Xiloparissia Bay, the girl met him on the beach and together they dragged the boat up the sand.

‘I was worried, Cotton,’ she said.

‘About me?’ Cotton grinned. ‘I’ve been dragging heavy weights around for years.’ He was showing off a little for her, the same he-man act he’d performed a dozen and one times for the girls in Pompey, the big, straight backed, broad-shouldered Marine, muscular in body and mind, uncomplicated, proud of himself and the way he looked.
Philotimo,
he thought. Greek self-satisfaction. It was no different.

Docherty appeared through the darkness. He was whistling and, as he approached, he did a few dance steps, slipped his arm round the girl’s waist, and whirled her round so that she laughed. Then, as he released her, he slipped his hand under her breast and squeezed it so that she gave a little scream and wriggled away from him. Cotton stared at them disapprovingly.

‘We’d better get the stuff up the beach,’ he said. ‘The others’ll be back soon with the propeller.’

Docherty was still smiling as they rolled the drum of petrol up the beach towards the rocks, chattering all the time -- about the engines, about Alexandria and Suda Bay, about the war, about all the girls he’d had and hoped to have in the future. Silence was a thing Docherty could not endure and he was as irrepressible as a rubber ball, always ready to bounce back after a disaster, morally untrustworthy, uncomplicated but indifferent to conditions and hours of work; probably the sort who’d kept the navy afloat throughout its whole history.

‘One day I’ll be a dirty old man,’ he was chirruping. ‘And that’s bad. But at the moment I’m a dirty
young
man, and that’s fine.’

He glanced at Cotton’s disapproving expression. ‘You look like you swallowed a bun,’ he said.

‘You talk too bloody much, Docherty.’ Cotton spoke heavily, feeling that, if he wished, Docherty had the ability to dance quicksilver-like round his more stolid mind.

They hid the drum of petrol among the trees and, as he turned away, Cotton saw that Docherty was with the girl again, talking to her, and she was laughing and pushing him away. He scowled.

‘Let’s get the planks ashore,’ he snapped and Docherty patted the girl’s behind and waltzed up to Cotton.

‘Let them begin the beguine,’ he was crooning. ‘Bring back a night of tropical splendour. How about a dance, Royal?’

‘Get stuffed.’

‘How about a drop of raki then?’

Cotton gave him a look that would have spiked a gun. ‘We got things to do,’ he said. ‘Get Gully.’

Docherty turned. ‘Gully!’ he yelled.

Cotton grabbed him by the arm. ‘You want the whole bloody German army to hear you?’ he snapped. ‘You give me the bloody pip, Docherty! You do, straight up!’

Docherty grinned. ‘I’m bleeding internally.’

Gully appeared to claim the planks and as Cotton turned away he heard him speak to Docherty.

‘What’s up with
‘im?’
he demanded.

Cotton scowled. Though it took some doing to admit it to himself, he knew very well what the matter was. He was jealous that Docherty could make Annoula laugh whenever he wanted while he, Cotton, who could even speak her language, could only talk to her of the most mundane things, dead serious as they discussed her future or the hatred her cousin bore for them. Neither of them, he realized, were subjects which were likely to raise a song in her heart.

Cotton slept outside the wheelhouse for the rest of the night because Docherty was still in a lively mood and he was afraid he might find the bottle of raki he’d hidden in the bilges under the captain’s cabin. The discomfort didn’t improve his temper and when they started on the propellers the next morning, Docherty seemed to enjoy tormenting him. He had the girl in the well-deck, holding one of the lines by which he transmitted his instructions to those on deck, and he was constantly chaffing her, making her laugh and adding lewd comments to Cotton as they splashed around in the water out of earshot.

With the experience they’d gained from removing
Claudia’s
propeller, it was easier to remove
Loukia’s.
Getting
Claudia’s
undamaged one back in its place was more difficult.

‘We’ll need a staging of some sort for it,’ Docherty pointed out. ‘You can’t tread water with fifty pounds of copper-bronze in your arms.’

It took Gully only half an hour to attach wooden blocks to a plank to hold the propeller upright. Then, standing on the stern with heaving lines tied to the ends of the plank, they manoeuvred it beneath the boat. The weight of the propeller prevented the plank from floating and, with directions from Docherty in the water in the diving gear, they began to pull on the ropes to lift it to the end of the shaft.

Docherty’s head appeared. ‘Only needs a shove now,’ he grinned. ‘As the actress said to the bishop when he jollied her into a shop doorway.’

Holding the key, he ducked beneath the water, emerging a minute later, with the goggles slipped and his eyeballs red. ‘It’s on,’ he panted. ‘Gi’e us the nut.’

They had the propeller in place and secured in surprisingly quick time, and Cotton allowed them all a swallow of raki.

‘Will it work?’ he asked.

‘Anything I fix,’ Docherty said, ‘stays fixed. Ask any bird I’ve been with.’

Cotton scowled. Docherty seemed to be deliberately goading him. ‘What about the bent blade on the other one?’

‘I’ll do it tomorrow. Get it off, shove it on a stone and tap out the kink. Ought to be just what the doctor ordered. So long as all the blades are the same, they’ll be okay.’

‘What about the rudder?’

‘What about it?’

A dreadful thought had occurred to Cotton. ‘When we let it go, won’t the water come in through the hole and sink her?’

Docherty looked at him pityingly. ‘Christ, trust a bloody Boot-neck to ask a stupid question like that. The stock of the rudder goes up through a tube inside the boat and the top of the tube’s above water level.’

Cotton wasn’t really sure what he meant and he stared at Docherty, faintly ashamed of his lack of technical knowledge. He decided to persevere.

‘But will the water come in?’ he asked.

‘No, you stupid twit.’ Cotton nodded, satisfied. ‘And will it get us home?’

‘If we’re careful.’

‘Suppose we have to use full speed.’

Docherty shrugged. ‘Well, the stern can only drop off,’ he said.

The bent propeller took less time than they’d expected and by evening they had it on the other shaft. But the day for Cotton seemed full of tensions. The girl even appeared to enjoy Docherty’s company and he went out of his way to make her smile, singing snatches of popular song to her whenever he saw her, clutching his chest with one hand like an opera singer and gesturing with the other so that she couldn’t help laughing, doing tricky little dance steps round her as he passed her on the deck in a way Cotton with his big feet could never hope to. By dusk, Cotton was actually looking forward to rowing round the point for the next drum of petrol.