The Girl Under the Olive Tree (50 page)

He came back with fresh rolls and fruit. ‘Where shall we go today, into the hills or to the coast?’

‘This isn’t a holiday,’ she replied.

‘It is for me. Soon I leave Athens. You will find work but first you must rest. You are not fit yet. Did you sleep last night?’

She nodded and picked at her food.

They spent the day out of the city, strolling around, and visited the Archaeological Museum to escape the heat of the day. As they walked around the exhibits, he talked of his visit to Knossos and the excavations. ‘Nothing is harmed, everything is as it was.’

She couldn’t bear to listen. He was polite, respectful and oh, so cunning, giving her what she really needed: clothes, food, intelligent conversation, pretending that there was no war between them. He was biding his time, waiting for the moment. There was an organ recital in a church still standing, a young German organist playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. They sat among the officers listening to the intensity of the soaring music. If she closed her eyes she could be in Gloucester Cathedral.

She slept alone that night, and the night after. He found a train to the coast and an open beach cleared of mines where he swam while she sat watching him racing down into the water. His body was beautiful but the ugly scar puckered his thigh. She had nursed that wound, fingered his leg, taken his pulse, bathed his limbs. She felt a pull inside her she’d not felt before, not since her time alone with Bruce, as if something were coming alive within her, an instinct she didn’t want to disturb. That night she hardly slept for the ache, and the fear she was being watched, the restless tossing and turning, the images of his body diving into the sea, the heat of the bedroom, the whirr of the ceiling fan. She felt her mind’s resolve spinning out of control.

He was always staring at her, his head tilted to one side when she spoke, the flashing warmth in those iris-blue eyes, and there was a scent on him too, of youth and vigour, a dangerous aroma when she’d been starved of comfort for so long.

How could she look with lust on the enemy? Why was she assessing his broad shoulders and slim hips, the solid muscle of his thighs? What would it be like to be crushed between them?

He was aroused by her, she could sniff it like smoke on the breeze, and it terrified her that there was such unspoken fire growing between them.

‘Perhaps you’d prefer to spend today by yourself?’ he offered as they sat having real coffee in the square. ‘Do be careful, there are parts of the city now where it’s not safe for girls or strangers.’

‘I’m not a girl and I’m not a stranger. I lived here for years. I worked here. This is my city,’ she snapped.

‘Not any more, this is a jungle. You could visit your old School of Archaeology?’

Penny shook her head. ‘No, too many memories. What are your plans?’ She realized suddenly she didn’t want him to leave her.

‘Nothing much. I have letters to write. It’s been such a long time since I saw my family, I am worried.’ He told her about Katerina and her accident. She told him about Evadne and Zander and her father’s visit. She told him how she ran away to Athens to get out of Mother’s plans for a debutante season and how she’d defied them in staying on in Athens, living a life she could never have achieved at home.

He laughed. ‘I ran away too but into the army to get away from my father’s demands that I run the estate and become a farmer.’ He sighed and looked at her, saying, ‘Perhaps a farmer would’ve been a better choice?’

She did not reply but stared out at the buildings still intact and the bustle of the city.

They walked, and talked all day on anything but Crete and the war. Each day grew closer to the end of his leave. He told her of his decision to go back into active service and the uncertainty of his future, and suddenly she felt afraid for him. Suddenly she knew she cared what happened to Brecht and it terrified her.

That night they ate at Zonar’s, as she had so many times before the war, and walked back to the hotel, side by side, talking about excavations and technical drawing, museums and all their mutual interests, and as they drew closer to the hotel she suddenly knew he was not going to ask for payment in kind. He wouldn’t demand anything other than her company because deep down he was as afraid as she was of the feelings growing between them. This was territory neither of them had trodden before and there were hidden minefields.

That night she couldn’t stand the itchiness in her scalp any longer. ‘I must wash my hair . . .’ but hard as she tried to soap off the lather, it wouldn’t come clean.

‘You need something stronger. I’ll ask at reception.’ Brecht came back with a bottle of detergent.

‘It looks like turps,’ she cried. ‘I shall have to cut all my hair off’

‘Over my dead body,’ he said. ‘Here, let me help you. Dip your head in the sink and I’ll rinse it off for you. I used to do this for my little sister.’

She ducked her head down and let him soap it again and rub the lather slowly around her head, rinsing it. ‘Does it squeak yet?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she replied, searching blindly for a towel with soap in her eyes. Then she wrapped her hair in the towel.

‘You need a comb . . . we didn’t buy one?’

‘It will have to dry out.’

‘My mother used to section off each side and comb it out. Katerina used to scream. She has hair like you, golden silk.’

Slowly he untangled the strands until it fell down straight. ‘You dyed it, I see.’

‘I had my reasons.’

‘I know, blonde Cretans are thin on the ground.’

Penny turned round and unwrapped the towel to reveal her nakedness. ‘Is this what you really want from me?’ She had to know.

‘No, it is not,’ he croaked, turning away. ‘I won’t take what’s not given freely. There’s been enough of that. I want no payment from you. Who do you take me for?’ he snapped, angered and shocked by her action.

‘You are a man with needs. It will have been a long time without a clean woman. You bought me everything I have, fed me, sheltered me. How else can I pay you back?’ she replied.

‘I will find another room,’ he said, gathering up his clothes in a hurry.

‘Don’t leave me. I have no other currency to give you. I’m sorry,’ she cried, shocked by her own brazen need of him now.

He paused at the door, turning round. ‘I won’t touch you even though I find you beautiful and brave and the most wonderful woman I’ve ever desired. I’d never dishonour you like that. I was brought up to respect women.’ He sighed. ‘It is late and you are tired. Sleep and I will sit in the chair again.’

‘I’m cold, my hair is wet – how can I sleep?’ She searched his face, seeing the hurt as he tried to look away from her body. Without thinking what she was doing, she walked towards him and touched his face, his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw as she felt her breath quicken. ‘Brecht . . . I don’t even know your Christian name . . .’

‘Rainer,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d never ask that of me . . . I’ve called you Penelope in my mind for many years.’ He was standing over her now. ‘Thank you for your offer but I can’t do this if . . . you fill my thoughts but . . .’ He was looking at her with such longing, like a man who is in love with a woman. She felt a surge of desire rising from her limbs, from her arms, her heart thudding like nothing she’d ever felt before. She could no longer deny such feeling.

She took his hand and sat on the bed. ‘I have no experience of this.’

‘All the more reason why I should leave now,’ he said, pulling away from her.

‘No, please stay. I need you. I want to thank you. You saved my life, saved me so many times, why I don’t know. Why me?’ The tears began to flow and with them such a desire to be held and comforted, to be kissed, and when she found his lips nothing mattered but the taste of wine on them.

He held her and his lips touched her throat, her ears, giving her a jolt of desire. His breath warmed her as he whispered into her ear. His hands felt for her tiny breasts, cupping them as if they were precious china. She smelled the spicy soap on his skin as she buried her face in his chest. They fell down and she let his hands slowly explore her body, stroking her, soothing her loneliness. He fingered her, gently waiting until she responded; the ache inside growing into such a powerful surge of longing and excitement. He slowly slid his body so close to hers and there was no stopping their bodies joining together.

In those never-to-be-forgotten moments when his tenderness met her passion, she knew the power of being a woman. Her body was satisfied even if her mind was emptied of all consequences of this seduction.

In this moment Bruce was forgotten, her pain deadened. She knew in her heart that this had always been going to happen the moment she stepped into the hotel room, but not as she expected in sullen passive resignation. Without her signals and persuasion Rainer wouldn’t have forced himself upon her. This was her doing and hers only.

They didn’t leave the hotel the next day but lay in a cocoon of cotton sheets, exploring their bodies, finding the pleasure places she hadn’t known existed, giving and receiving. Here there was no war, no uniforms, no past or future, just the sensual delights of lovemaking. She was drunk with sensations, nakedness, relaxing in a far-off place where nothing mattered but the now.

I had sat many nights reliving these memories. Logic accused me of sleeping with the enemy, giving into base instincts, betraying Bruce’s memory. When his leave was over, Rainer left me, promising we would be together one day when the war was over, and I believed him. I waited for the letter that never came.

That was when I woke up to the cold reality of this brief wartime affair. I cut off my hair as was done to all female collaborators, claiming it was infested. I applied to become a nurse but no one wanted me. I was destitute and begged for help from the Swiss embassy, which sheltered me and eventually shipped me back home where I collapsed. My father had died and Bruce was dead.

Evadne told me the news one day as we walked through the rose garden. By then I was a living ghost with no feelings or tears, drifting in a nothingness state like a rudderless boat in a sea haar. I don’t care to recall much of that dark place.

Now, sitting under the olive tree, I felt a strange sense of calm as if waking from a long dream with a sigh. I wasn’t a mad woman. My lips would stay sealed. There are some things so private you can never share them. You carry them alone all your life. Suddenly I understood that grief is a lonely journey but sometimes needs a physical outlet. Ours was a passionate coming-together. I was not coerced. I sought my comfort and gave it too. There was tenderness in our passion, not degradation.

He too was wounded by his time on the island. Rainer was my crime and my punishment, for I have thought of him all my life, wondering if he survived and found his own form of forgiveness. It’s hard to be in love when you’re on opposite sides. We were two of a kind, and perhaps in another age, had we found each other, who knows? Love has its own landscape and it was in Athens that ours blossomed and withered. That was all.

There comes a moment in your life when you can forgive yourself for your weakness. It came for me when I realized there was more to me than two weeks in Athens with Rainer Brecht. I could forgive myself for not being the perfect upright nurse. I sleepwalked into an affair, exhausted, fragile, in need of protection. The shell I’d grown round myself was torn away, exposed by war. I could’ve died, but didn’t, because of him. I was alive when so many were not. This had to serve some purpose.

I took flight from all of the memories by good works, to compensate, to pay back, to punish myself, even. I felt I didn’t deserve a normal family life. I had given into baser instincts. I had let my self-imposed standards down. Yet I was human, no better or worse than others. What happened between Rainer and me wasn’t a tawdry affair. It was beautiful and loving, shortlived, and I would not deny it ever again.

Suddenly I felt cleansed. I’d been given the chance of reconciliation in coming back here and the renewal of friendship. I’d been given a gift to go back and see my younger self as others might see me.

I was not always faithless, impatient, childless, ‘flaky’, as Lois calls people sometimes. The life I had found in Africa was useful and gave me a sense of proportion, for who cannot see such poverty and need, and not despise the current rat race? So no more agonizing, enjoy these precious days left.

It was Lois and Alex’s last night and I was staying on. Sarika insisted everyone came for a final barbecue to celebrate the reunion and finding Bruce’s tin. We hadn’t worked out how to open it safely, having even soaked it in olive oil to release the rust, but the lid was fixed solid.

It was a warm night and the full scents of the thyme and rosemary and mountain herbs filled the air. A table was spread under the pergola, lit with citronella candles. Lois arrived and Mack, all with long sleeves and laced with insect repellent. Across the valley the flickering lights of the villages below us made a marvellous backdrop. Somewhere out beyond lay the wine-dark sea of Crete.

The women had cooked up a feast of dishes: pork steaks sizzling on the grill, long village sausages, lamb pieces, baskets of thick bread, jugs of oak-barrelled village wine, salads, a chicken and rice pilafiand then ice creams and fruit; enough food to feed an army. I did my best to do it justice and Alex mopped up what I was leaving so as not to offend.

The music was playing in the background, the music of Crete, and the young ones got up to dance the
pentozali
steps and try the faster dances. Yolanda and I made a valiant attempt to join in but ended up just swaying in time to the rhythms.

Just for one night our families were joined together, laughing, joking, toasting each other, ‘
Yamas
’. Their generosity knew no bounds, but why be surprised? Had I not received such a welcome in the midst of danger and starvation?

It was Sarika’s husband who brought me the little tin. ‘We have to cut it, I’m afraid, with a can opener. It should be airtight after all these years. Or will you keep it as it is?’