The Girl Under the Olive Tree (27 page)

When he offered to drive us up to Lappa village on his day off, I took this as a sign of his genuine interest in Lois, who’d been through enough last year to make her wary of any man’s attentions. Perhaps a little holiday romance would do wonders for her confidence.

The villas in the cobbled streets of Lappa were a revelation. It was like stepping back in time. I kept wondering how they fared during the occupation. The buildings had been untouched by bombs and burnings. How many jackboots had strolled along these streets as we were doing, admiring the columns, the architecture and the view to the coast from the ramparts? Whoever was stationed here among the fruit groves must have felt very secure, I mused.

As we drove though the winding roads banked with flowers and gorse, climbing ever higher to another of the nearby villages, the landscape became even more familiar. I thought of that first journey made there in the winter of 1941, that fateful foray out of the city in disguise.

As winter approached, the nuns of St Joseph’s and the Orthodox convents in the districts prepared to stock up supplies, sending Penny and other helpers out into surrounding villages to scrounge vegetables, fruit, and grains to help feed their growing school of orphans who needed clothing and shelter. They were also searching for kin to take these children into the relative safety of the nearby villages. Who was to guess that this was part of a ruse, and that this innocent-looking young woman had other motives? The convent had continued to be her home. It made a useful part of the front she now presented to the world.

Riding their trusty mule, Penny was learning the bridle paths and tracks, river beds and bridge crossings, resting under olive groves, finding the
kafenions
to avoid and the hospitality of courageous priests. They became familiar sights in the foothills of the Apokoronas, regular visitors at checkpoints, showing their identity papers to guards and policemen, passing through unnoticed. Who was to know that Penny’s cloak was lined with medical supplies or that she carried vital letters strapped to her chest? There was even a parcel of dental instruments that Andreas requested to be left near Vafes for future use.

She alone took the risk, hiding loaves, cigarettes, anything portable in her stocking tops and shoes, for use by the growing number of British escapees and freedom fighters.

Yolanda had asked her to help her lover, and once Penny had met the spirited young doctor she promised that he could count on her to make deliveries to designated drops, which were changed regularly to stop poaching from other groups.

She soon discovered that the special Cretan bush telegraph was more efficient than any GPO. Why was it that on delivery day there was always a friendly police chief patrolling the checkpoint, waving her through unsearched, or a door was left unlocked and barking dogs were silent in the shepherd’s hut?

One night, Yolanda had crept through her window with a bottle of walnut juice, which she painted onto Penny’s hair with a comb to darken it, tying it in a headscarf until it had dried. That fancy English rollover style was replaced by a severe plait. They darkened her eyebrows and she marvelled at herself in the mirror; she really did look convincing. With her heavy scarf hiding her features, stooping in black overalls and thick stockings, she was unrecognizable as the tall blonde nurse. It was a good disguise.

The winds were chilly now and she spent many evenings learning to spin wool and knit stockings, mittens and scarves with her pupils. The nuns laughed at her clumsy fingers and frequent mistakes, and teased that she had no home-making skills. Penny wondered what her own mother would make of her appearance now, her coarse hands and leathery skin. England seemed a lifetime ago, another world, not that she had any regrets for choosing to stay.

The more she travelled round the countryside, the more she loved the people. They accepted she was an Athenian nurse, unmarried and religious. She was introduced to mothers
, yiayias
, young girls who brought their ailments into their conversations, discussing them over mountain teas and
glyka
, little spoonsful of jam, forced on her from their precious and dwindling stores. Everyone wanted news of relatives in Chania. What was in the shops and market? How were the soldiers treating them? Who had died or been shot, and when were the British coming back to free them?

What could she say but that she lived in a cloister and knew nothing much. It was the perfect cover for her secret activities. Everywhere there were complaints about shortages, looting, sabotage and reprisals. Every village had heroes, villains, traitors, gossips. Some were on the make and take, but at the heart were men like Father Gregorio whose passive resistance to oppression gave his parishioners the courage to defy the ban on sheltering the evading troops.

Often the distances were too far for one journey and Penny, alongside Sister Martine, an older nun who had become a good friend, would stay the night with the local teacher, doctor or priest and his family. She knew their every movement was watched when they entered a village. Could she be a spy or a German agent? Dr Androulakis’s reputation went before him, and the secret grapevine let it be known the Athenian nurse could be trusted. Her papers called her ‘Athina Papadopouli’. She knew never to ask family names. The less you knew, the less you could give away, should the worst happen.

Just before Christmas 1941, they made one last trek into hills, which were already covered in snow. There had been a trawl through the White Mountains by German alpine troops searching for escaped soldiers. The conical stone shepherds’ refuges were full of escapees, some in need of medical treatment, and the local doctor had run out of supplies.

Andreas had been spotted too many times for him to risk delivering more, and there was news of British officers hiding in the hills with instructions to set up a wireless link with Cairo. Penny and Sister Martine volunteered to make one last trip.

Laden with panniers of supplies, the old mule stumbled up the rugged track and Penny walked behind, glad of her nurse’s cloak and patched-up boots. The medical supplies were strapped like a corset under her shift, making her body plumper and weighing her down. Poor Sister Martine had no head for heights and felt sick, but together they forged a path through falling snow towards the first of the villages, which seemed to be carved out of the very rock. It was good to be out in the mountain air, striding out as she had done in Scotland all those years ago, her lungs bursting with exertion, but her companion was no mountain goat and stumbled on the uneven ground. They had to find shelter, and soon. The icy flakes stung her cheeks as the storm grew. Thank the Lord, the old mule knew its path and got them safely to the edge of the village, where they took shelter under the olive trees before one last hike to the square and the café close to the church. There, Kyria Tassoula ushered them in and proceeded to sit them down and wash their frozen feet, massaging them in oil, making Penny want to cry with gratitude at such an act of welcome.

‘
Po . . . po. . . po
.’ It is too dangerous to send you so far but you are God’s angels of mercy,’ Tassoula cried, shoving cups of warmed goat’s milk into their hands.

Sister Martine coughed and sneezed, her cheeks reddened from exertion and a hint of fever, Penny suspected. ‘I must say my daily prayers,’ she croaked, then stood and promptly fainted on to the earthen floor.

Tassoula helped carry her to the family bed where she began to moan, tossing and turning. ‘This is no cold, Sister,’ she sighed, and Penny knew they would not be making the return journey when Martine was so sick and the weather was closing in.

Tassi’s two young daughters, Maria and Eleni, were helping in the kitchen preparing the food for the evening
glendi
.

‘You will meet all our guests later,’ Tassi smiled, revealing only three front teeth left. ‘They’ll come when the night covers them, come for something warm. You will see.’

While Martine fought her fever, Penny worked with the girls to prepare the meagre dinner of roots and dried beans. All the cooking was done on the fire while the smell of the very last of their roasted coffee beans scented the air.

Tassi’s husband, Yiannis, sat watching them, silent, flicking his amber beads. Men in the mountains, or in the town for that matter, did no food preparation, no laundry, dairy or housework or child rearing. That was women’s work, as was tending the vegetable plot, spinning and weaving, sewing, praying. Penny had observed this over the past months on her travels. Women ripened early in the sun and aged quickly with the toughness of their daily lives. It seemed so unfair.

Tassi was an energetic and loving spirit. ‘You are a guest, you do nothing,’ she insisted, pointing to a stool, but Penny was ready with a firm reply.

‘When the night comes and the snow traps us, we will be your lodgers and a lodger must pay. I have no money so therefore I must work. It is my orders from the convent. You do not want me to get into trouble; Sister Martine will say I am lazy.’

‘
Po, po, po
. . .’ Tassi threw her hands up in despair. First round to Penny.

Later, when the beans were bubbling in the pot, men sidled into the café one by one, unshaven, stinking to high heaven, old uniforms disguised as country rags, feet wrapped in cloths or wooden-soled sandals. A few were clearly fair-haired Brits and Antipodeans trying to pass themselves off as locals.

Penny eyed them from the corner of the room. No one must recognize this dowdy, dark-headed spinster in black as Nurse Penelope George. No one must know she was here in the hills on a mission, that she too was a British escapee.

The girls brought out the stew and hunks of bread. The men tried not to wolf down their portions, savouring every last drop. How pinched and tired they all looked, these weary remnants of a once-proud army, dependent on the charity of these mountain folk for some warmth and succour on such a cold, snowy night.

As the local
krassi,
tasting of liquorice, flowed, so tongues loosened and then the songs of home began: ‘Roll out the Barrel’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, ‘Good King Wenceslas’, and Penny felt a wave of nostalgia washing over her for Stokencourt, for Evadne, for childhood memories of Christmas Eve when the church choir sang carols in the hall under their tall Christmas tree. She wanted to weep for these poor men, stranded. Here they were far from home, in a foreign country, at the mercy of strangers, though for tonight all was well.

The café filled up and there were rumours of ships waiting to take them off the island to Egypt, if only they could dodge enemy patrols and reach the south coast.

Penny wanted to warn them to shut their mouths in case there were quislings. Andreas had warned that not every Cretan welcomed this raggle-taggle invasion of soldiers on the scrounge, especially those who had seen their houses blown up, villages burned and relatives shot in reprisal for sheltering Allied soldiers.

As in all Cretan parties, someone had a lute, and music was struck. The old men danced the
syrtos
dances, round and round in circles, pulling the boys into the ring, and a young shepherd boy jumped and turned in the air like a gazelle. Everyone was clapping and whistling as the music grew faster and wilder.

Maria and Eleni sat in the shadows under their mother’s watchful eye. Then the outer door opened and a flurry of snow and chill cooled the air. For a second everyone froze as the snowman shook the flakes off his shepherd’s
kapota.

‘Panayotis! Come, sit down, warm yourself, my friend. How is it out there?’ shouted Yiannis, giving him a bear hug.

‘Like the Arctic,’ the man said in perfect English before replying in Greek. There was something familiar about the accent, a hint of a New Zealand twang. Penny watched the tall man in Cretan costume unravel his scarf to reveal his beard. She felt herself go cold and shrank back into the dark recess to compose herself. Oh good heavens, it was Bruce Jardine, in shepherd’s clothes! She couldn’t believe that he was still here on the island after all this time. What a shock, and what a relief that he was still free. She felt a surge of joy that he was safe, mixed with exasperation that he kept turning up at the most inconvenient moments.

Unaware of her presence, he sat down to warm himself, winking at the two girls in the corner. ‘Maria, Eleni, my beautiful maids of the mountains.’ They rushed to find him food and wine and he tucked into it with relish. He glanced round the room, clocking faces, smiling and acknowledging each of them before he turned his attention to Penny, eyeing her with interest while two old men stood and sang a defiant mantinada about how they would take their guns and go into town to kill the enemy. It was a sad, mournful tune and the mood was sombre, but then, as if to lighten the gloom, Bruce was on his feet, urging any of them with Scots ancestry to show them some Highland dances.

They took two shepherds crooks, placed them in a cross on the floor as one man found his mouth organ and started up a bright tune and Bruce attempted a Highland fling. There were cheers and chatter, more wine and raki as the
glendi
got into full swing.

It would go on all night, for the evaders must hide out during daylight, return to their caves and huts, and hole up well out of the sight of villages. Any journeys must be made by moonlight with shepherd guides who were as sure-footed as the goats on the scree.

No one would be going anywhere tonight in this blizzard. They were trapped. Snow left tracks to hiding places, snow brought frostbite, hardship, hunger, danger and boredom, but it mercifully kept the Germans in their barracks too.

All Penny could think of was escaping before her cover was blown. She crept up the wooden ladder to where Martine was sleeping. Her fever had worsened and she would not be fit to leave any time soon. Their cover story was that they were searching for the relatives of orphan Elefteria Mataki, thought to be in the area. The chances of finding her relatives were slim now the weather had closed in. Soon their own travel papers would expire and questions would be asked why they were still here.