The Girl Under the Olive Tree (43 page)

Suddenly someone was screaming with panic, ‘I need air, give me air.’

Penny banged on the heavy door. ‘For the love of Mercy, let us breathe in here. I am a Red Cross nurse, I will report this in Athens. This is a disgrace. You can’t treat people like animals.’ Her fists were banging on the door in fury, a futile gesture, but then to her amazement the door opened, a chink of light and a waft of air.

‘Penelope Georgiou . . . Red Cross nurse?’ a soldier yelled. ‘Come to the door.’ A mutter went round the crush of prisoners, jostling to breathe in the air, pushing her forward out of the door.

‘I am Nurse Georgiou,’ Penny said, pushing her way to the front. Turning to her friends, she shouted, ‘I will be back. I’ll make them see . . .’

‘Come!’ she was ordered, and she heard the groan as the door was shut behind her. Up the iron stairs, she was shoved with a gun in her back. What was going on? How did they know her real name? She clutched her false papers stuck down the front of her garments and fingered her badge, fearing the worst.

Then she found herself among the guards, who parted to make room in the crowded space. A man was groaning on the floor, bleeding, his arm at an angle with bone sticking out of his shirt.

‘You’ve given him morphia?’ she asked, but their Greek was poor.’ She mimed the action and they nodded.

There was no ship’s doctor on such a little ship but there would be a first-aid kit somewhere. She ordered one of the crew to find it. The man needed splints and a bandage. She set to the task in hand, knowing exactly what must be done. The man was drunk and thrashing about, which didn’t help.

‘Hold him!’ she snapped.

He’d fallen in his stupor, hit iron and cracked his arm badly. She felt nothing for him but for the job in hand and a chance to breathe in the cool air. She wondered how they had known she was on board. She sealed his wound, cleansed it carefully, strapped him up as best she could. Unfortunately he would live to fight another day.

‘Thank you,’ a voice said in English. ‘I know you will do a good repair.’

Penny turned round and saw Rainer Brecht standing smoking in the doorway. ‘Why are you on this ship?’ he asked. ‘It should not be so.’

‘No one down below should be on this ship,’ she replied, trying not to shake at being so closely observed by him. He looked thinner, drawn in the face, his hair bleached by the sun and greying at the temples. Why was
he
on this ship? She was just about to ask when there was a sudden and ear-splitting explosion from below deck. Immediately bells and alarms sounded, but then all power was lost, the engines died and the lights failed. Black smoke caused a roar of panic and confusion among the crew still standing. Penny was thrown backwards in the darkness, banging herself against the wall. They’d been hit mid-ship.

‘Up on deck!’ Brecht yelled.’ Life jackets!’ There was no time to search. Penny pulled the drunken guard to his feet, half dragging him, stunned by the noise.

The rest was a confusion of scrambling for jackets, gasping for air as men were trying to loosen the lifeboats before the ship went down.

‘Let them out, for God’s sake, let them out down below!’ Penny heard herself crying, not wanting to be pulled out of danger, but the ship was already listing. Then there was a terrible whirring noise as the ship exploded from another hit. ‘I must go and help!’

An arm grabbed hers. ‘No, Miss George, you stay on deck. You can do nothing now but get yourself killed.’

‘Let me go. We can’t leave them to drown,’ she spat at Rainer.

‘There is nothing we can do . . . come.’ His grip tightened on her arm.

Then came such a loud bang, right underneath them, throwing Penny into the cold black water as the ship was torn apart, dense black clouds of smoke and pieces of metal hurling into the water too. Arcs of burning fuel spurting out, people were screaming, men abandoning the ship as it broke up, sliding rapidly down into the deep.

Penny woke, stunned by the cold water over her body as the instinct to survive took over, her lungs bursting with the effort to stay afloat. Brecht was swimming close to her, urging her forward. They were swimming for their lives through a fog of smoke, swimming in the dark rippling Sea of Crete.

Penny felt nothing. She was strangely calm as if this were a dream she knew so very well. There had been no time to think anything but water and waves, the fear of being sucked under by the swell. A life raft bobbed out of reach, taunting her to catch it, pulling her further from the ship, from Maria and Angeliki, and Sara and Solomon Markos. She swam away from the burning oil and the debris of broken bodies blocking her way towards the escort ship,
Hera
, already rushing to the rescue.

She felt herself weakening, the panic rising that she was not going to make it, but when she sank, an arm was locking hold of her arm, guiding her until she was lifted up out of the murky waters where the
Tanais
had sunk down to the sea bed, pulled up the ladder onto deck alongside wounded, dying, burned men, survivors shivering, blackened faces, shocked beyond reach, who needed reviving.

They were mostly German guards, crew with clothes burned off in the blast, a few others sitting with blankets round their faces, weeping. She searched every face for one she recognized but she knew in her heart that none of the captives in the hold had a chance to escape the watery grave. She did what she could for the rescued crew but many were too far gone.

Opposite, sat Brecht, smoking a cigarette, trying not to shake. For a second a flicker of compassion sparked inside her for the man who had kept her afloat, but she doused it quickly with knowledge of all that she’d seen of his kind.

Penny couldn’t cry or feel anything. It was as if her whole body had shut down, pared back to the most basic instincts: to sleep, to drink, to stay alive and do her job. They found her a blanket and trousers and a battle shirt of sorts. No one questioned her presence when they docked briefly on the island of Santorini to report the incident. The
Hera
carried on to Piraeus port with the limping, stricken, silent passengers who’d been to hell and back.

A lady in black is sitting

At Maleme and crying

Holding in her arms

A lifeless body

Washing it with her tears and

Dressing it with rose petals

In lamentations she speaks

And utters a thousand curses.

Hitler, Never be born again.

‘Olympia’s Lament’, Olympia Kokotsaki-Mantonanaki, translated by Susana Kokotsaki

I woke seeing the sun burning through the slats in the shutters. The nightmare that never left me was very real tonight. I sipped the taste of salt water on my lips, saw the faces of the dead staring up at me accusingly from the deep. Why had I been rescued? Why me above all others? For years afterwards not a word was mentioned of that sinking or what happened to all the Jews of Crete; an ancient community wiped out in an instant.

Some will say a quick death by drowning was better than what was in store for them: cattle trucks from Athens in the heat of summer to the death camps in the north. I think not. Drowning, trapped in a hold, doesn’t bear thinking about, but it happened and should be remembered. Who sunk the ship? Who knows? Most probably a British submarine on a routine patrol. But deliberately? There are theories but I don’t know the truth of any of it. No one came forward to explain. It was just one more act of war among many.

How much of this should I tell them? How could I explain why I was favoured without telling the rest of it? I didn’t know but I’d have a damned good try. Keeping secrets had become a habit I wasn’t sure I could break, even now.

Don’t think about all that stuff on your day off. Just stay in the present, enjoy the holiday, forget all those nightmares. This is your holiday too. You’ll have plenty of time for tears later at the memorial service.

I was glad it was Mack parking up a narrow side lane leading to the Commonwealth War Cemetery, struggling to squeeze past coaches and police patrols on bikes to find a spot. It was a beautiful afternoon and the sun was hanging high over Souda Bay, still the largest inland harbour in Europe.

We had dressed for the occasion. Even Alex looked smart in his shirt and cargo shorts. Mack was in a blazer and chinos, and Lois all in white, which suited her dark looks. I had brought a black linen jacket and silk scarf, glad of dark glasses against the sun. We could hear a military band tuning up on the grass, that special sound made only by British soldiers in scarlet and gold.

There were veterans in berets and blazers, with medals jangling, holding poppy wreaths, calling out to each other. Cretan veterans took my eye in their black shirts and
breeches
, white knee boots, standing at the entrance alongside officials of every nationality and uniform: dress whites, air-force blues and army khakis and greys. The lump already in my throat swelled up, seeing so many people assembled. I suppose I hadn’t known what to expect.

I kept imagining this peaceful commercial port full of battleships and wrecks, belching smoke and fumes. Now there were warships trimmed up ready for a gun salute. Where were the craters from the screaming Stukas diving down onto the port? The hills were now covered in smart villas and buildings.

We made our way slowly down towards the central cross, to get a closer view, collecting a service sheet on the way. Lois and Alex followed behind among the throng of tourists and locals, and the ceremony eventually began. I smiled, knowing this was a British-organized event with a royal visitor, so it would run like clockwork.

A lone piper played a haunting lament as he led a parade of old veterans with their wreaths slowly down to the white cross and the clergymen waiting to greet them. I felt my eyes filling up behind my glasses.

The wreath-laying ceremony went on for ages. I was glad when I was offered a chair. There were hymns and blessings. We sang the national anthem in croaking voices. The gun salute from the warship was impressive. Who could not be moved?

I was glad to be anonymous, free to patrol down the aisles of pristine white gravestones, marvelling at the precision and neatness of the green grass, the borders of red roses and the names of so many men and women cut down before they had really lived.

A war cemetery has a strange quietude; it humbles even the most effervescent of youth as they stare at the ages on those stones, grateful not to have been tried and tested in such a way. It is a place of sadness and regret, guilt and reminiscence, so many emotions filling my heart. Why had I left it so long?

I paused at the gravestone of Captain John Pendlebury, who I’d met briefly before the war. His was a mythical martyrdom, another one-eyed hero, athlete, academic, curator of the British School at Knossos, vice consul at the embassy and soldier extraordinaire, who was executed while injured in the first days of occupation. He was still a legend for his bravery and his love of this island.

I moved away from the others quickly, wanting to make this a private viewing, a reunion and a moment to come to terms with long-forgotten memories of some of these names whose faces I had known.

Slowly down the rows I walked, reading each name until I came to one that took my breath away, the name that had meant the most to me in those years: Bruce Jardine.

I had not expected him to be here, but buried somewhere on a hillside in New Zealand. I had found out he was dead, only when I returned home. Evadne broke the news to me one morning in the garden at Stokencourt when they felt I was strong enough to take it in. I’ve always hated that rose walk ever since for reminding me of the utter desolation and futility I felt at the news. It was like a punch in the stomach, taking my breath away in its intensity. I walked away from her to the lake, shaking my head in despair. I think she thought I was going to jump into the water as she ran after me. How little they knew of me to think I’d take an easy way out of life. Better to live out my span in honour of all those who couldn’t.

I had waited so long for news that never came, but by then I was another person. So much had happened and I knew my feelings for him had altered irrevocably, but not to know he’d been lost to me even before I left the island . . . Like everything else, it was shoved in the suitcase in the attic of my mind, not to be disturbed.

Now, as I was touching the stone, bowing my head, I noticed, lying half-hidden on the manicured brown earth, a posy of mountain flowers and herbs wrapped in a black, red, gold ribbon: the colours of the Cretan flag. The inscription was in Cyrillic script from a poem: ‘Your blood spilled on our soil was not in vain. Thank you.’ That was all.

I stepped back, shocked to see Bruce honoured, looking round to see if there was anyone hovering, but there was no one else down the row. I wished I had something of my own to put there, suddenly ashamed at this careless oversight. We’d not brought even a rose or a poppy for remembrance. I was still trembling with the shock of seeing his name.

Who else was here who knew him? A wave of frustration and confusion flooded over me that all in my generation were so old and altered by time, unrecognizable to each other without labels. The veterans who marched so slowly, and some in wheelchairs, were mere shadows of the cocky bronzed men I’d the privilege of nursing. Who would recognize me now?

The posy was dry. Whoever had come to pay their respects preferred not to attend today for some reason . . . Curiouser and curiouser. A posy was a women’s touch, delicate, unlike the flamboyant foreign wreaths covered in national ribbon and palm fronds, piled high now on the cross steps where veterans posed for their photographs.

Yes, it was comforting to know he wasn’t forgotten or neglected, but unsettling. Someone who was still alive might have also been part of my life too, but I knew the special ones were long dead.

How could a little bunch of flowers suddenly throw all we’d done in the past weeks up in the air? Why hadn’t they put on their name? I had to know just who it was.