Corporal Cotton's Little War (7 page)

A sort of dread seemed to have settled over Iros. As the day advanced they began to hear the soft thud-thud of guns to the north and the distant hum of aircraft which never came close enough to be seen. Otherwise all was extraordinarily quiet, the islanders moving about in small silent groups as if in need of constant company. There were no voices, not even the voices of sea birds, and the women in the low fields by the shore seemed to speak in whispers, because it was impossible, even in the still air, to hear them.

Occasionally, groups of prune-eyed children or old men came down the jetty to look at
Claudia,
moored among the caiques and disguised with blankets over her guns; but no one asked about her, or the purpose of her voyage. It was obvious the islanders suspected that no good could come of her visit and they were all holding their breath, wondering when nemesis was going to arrive in the shape of a prowling German aeroplane.

Even the harbour wall was silent and deserted except for a man using a six-inch nail to splice an eye in a heavy wire hawser.

‘He’d do better with a spike,’ Shaw observed and Patullo smiled.

‘He’ll manage,’ he said. ‘It’s a habit of the Greeks to use things for multiple purposes. I once saw the fire brigade turn out in a suburb of Larisa, complete with engines and brass helmets, to water the flowers in the public gardens.’

Gully pulled his concertina from under the dreadful heap of rubbish in the brown-paper parcel that he called his gear and tried a few notes. ‘I’m a flying fish, sailor, just ‘ome from ‘Ong Kong,’ he began.

Docherty stopped him. ‘Gi’e us something proper,’ he said.

‘What sort of proper?’

‘Know”Ramona”?’

‘Oo’s she?’ Gully asked. ‘That bit that used to wait outside the docks at South Shields?’

But he started to play the tune and Docherty sang in a breathy tenor, doing dance steps round the forecastle. ‘These bloody navy jobs,’ he complained. ‘They get me chocker. No room to move. If I’d built this scow for meself I’d have had a bar and a big double bed for the bints,’

‘Your mind runs on rails,’ Bisset said.

Docherty grinned his mad grin. ‘It’s a short life, so you might as well make it a merry one. I was in Singapore before I come to the Med. The bints there were all right - one of coffee, two of milk, and red hot in bed.’

At midday Bisset managed to pick up the BBC news again, and they listened with hearts that seemed to be clutched by cold fingers. The Axis troops were active again in North Africa and Tobruk was still besieged, while to the north in Greece the British army was as hard pressed as it seemed to have been everywhere since the war had wakened up the previous year.

‘The situation is grave,’ the announcer said in the smooth, cool tones of someone sitting out of the way in London. ‘The Greek government has left Athens and the whereabouts of the king are at present unknown. Australian and New Zealand troops are taking up positions -’

‘On Crete,’ Bisset put in.

‘ - and a British fleet is in the Adriatic -’

‘Assembling for evacuation, I bet.’

‘ - Naval units, assault ships and A-lighters are being gathered.’

‘That
makes
it evacuation,’ Cotton said bluntly. ‘The assault ships are the Glen Line vessels and the A-lighters are tank landing craft. They carry a lot of blokes.’

‘And they’re bloody unhandy jobs into the bargain,’ Docherty observed, rolling a cigarette with his oil-stained fingers. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can stuff ‘em where the monkey stuffed its nuts.’

They’d all known that evacuation was inevitable but the news that it was now clearly a fact depressed them all a little, even Docherty.

Later Bisset picked up Berlin and crouched over the set, listening with his head cocked, his eyes thoughtful.

‘Where did you learn German?’ Cotton asked.

‘At school.’

‘Can you understand it?’

Bisset smiled.: ‘It was rather a good school,’ he said. ‘I even spent a year in Heidelberg - officially studying the German language, unofficially chasing the German girls - all at my father’s expense.’

Cotton’s family had never had enough to send him even for a week to Brighton, and he frowned. There was something about Bisset that puzzled him. With the world falling about their ears, he seemed quite unperturbed.

‘I never know when you’re pulling my leg,’ he growled.

Bisset beamed at him. ‘As a matter of fact, neither do I. And now I think you’d better fetch Patullo. They’re having a bit of a gloat about what they’re going to do and he might like to know.’

Patullo and Shaw arrived in a hurry and listened with grave faces. ‘They’re hoping to get Junkers 87s on the Salonika airfields,’ Bisset said. ‘Supported by transports. They’re beginning already to move through the Monastir Gap and the Rupel Pass. They say they intend to seize the Corinth Canal.’

He was about to say more when the harsh German voice started again. As it stopped, Bisset sat back. ‘They’re flying out to the offshore islands,’ he said. ‘They mentioned Aeos.’

Patullo frowned. ‘Probably won’t affect us,’ he decided, but he didn’t sound too sure. ‘Aeos is a big island and the airstrip’s up in the north near Kalani. They’ll probably not get around to Xiloparissia Bay for a couple of weeks. With luck, we ought to be able to pick up what we want and get out before they notice us.’

As the officers disappeared and Bisset switched off the receiver, Cotton studied him again. He’d met men like Bisset before - strange types from happy homes who’d decided on uniform and were content enough not to want to throw it off, indifferent to commissions or promotion.

‘Patullo’s a nut,’ he said. In front of a member of the idle rich like Bisset, Cotton was vaguely pleased to be associated with such a character and such wealth. ‘It was him got me into this. He once told me he took part in a Greek cavalry charge in some rebellion in the thirties and was allowed to keep his horse, saddle and sword as a reward. And I once heard the commander telling the captain that he’d interrupted a dinner at Shepheard’s by standing up at his table and reciting a Horatian ode in honour of a Cantacuzene princess who was one of his girlfriends.’ Cotton paused.’What’s a Horatian ode?’

‘An ode by Horace, I expect. He was an ancient Roman poet.’

‘And a thingy princess?’

‘A descendant of Cantacuzenus, I suppose.’

‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’

‘He became Emperor of Byzantium.’

Cotton frowned. ‘You seem to know a bit too,’ he said.

‘It’s been noticed,’ Bisset smiled.

‘Are you married?’

Bisset gazed at Cotton. The Marine was big and clumsy but there was something about him that impressed - if it were only his size.

‘Not much fun courting, getting engaged and all fixed up on Naafi notepaper,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not.’

Cotton was still feeling his way. Bisset’s speech was precise and devoid of service slang and was one more reason why Cotton needed to know more about him. He tried him with the eternal introductory question of all regulars.

‘Why’d you join?’

Bisset’s smile came again. ‘I got taken in by that poster of the blonde. My family said it was a waste of a good education, and I suppose it was. But, you know, a training in classics is no more use to a career in business than it is to the service.’

Cotton gestured. ‘Why didn’t you try for a pilot?’

‘It did occur to me.’ Bisset gave his wide smile again. ‘But it turned out there was a bit of a problem in telling brown from green. I’m colour blind.’

Cotton frowned. ‘It was the blonde that got me,’ he admitted. ‘I’d read all the stuff, of course. It was the Marines that captured Gibraltar. Gibraltar’s the only battle honour worn on
our
colours. No flag’s big enough to hold ‘em all.’

Bisset was watching him with mild, amused eyes. He came from a family which took everything for granted - even its own worth - and it was a change to meet a man who was naively proud to belong to something simply because of its record.

‘When they invaded Holland last year,’ Cotton went on, ‘they fell in two hundred of our lot at Chatham - cooks, clerks, barrack stanchions, the whole shebang. Within twelve hours they were defending the Hook of Holland. When they came out they brought Queen Wilhelmina with ‘em. Didn’t lose a man either. In fact they had an extra anti-tank rifle.’

‘Why didn’t you join the commandos?’

Cotton sniffed. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘We
are
commandos. We always have been.’

A wrinkled crone, covered in black against the heat like an Arab, came down the jetty, making the sign of the cross over them as she passed. She was riding on a mule that was decorated with a string of blue beads on its forehead, and they all leaned on the wheelhouse roof to watch her.

‘What’s them bead things for?’ Gully asked, addressing the question to no one in particular. ‘They’ve all got ‘em. ‘Ouses, babies, mules, carts, boats.’

‘To guard against the evil eye,’ Bisset said.

‘Whose evil eye?’

‘Nobody’s.’ Bisset smiled. ‘Just the evil eye. It’s responsible for all maladies in humans, the malfunctions of boat engines and the dropping dead of overloaded donkeys.’

In the heat of the early afternoon, Shaw allowed them ashore for a drink, leaving only Chief ERA Duff on board in command of the boat and Howard to do sentry-go with the tommy-gun.

Docherty was at his most intractable, staring at the signs outside the shops with a disgusted look, as if all Greeks were mad.

‘Bloody funny language,’ he said at the top of his voice. ‘Looks like a fly fell in the paint-pot and crawled all over it. It’s worse than that gyppo writing you see in Alexandria.’

The cafe was vine-covered and inside people were eating red mullet with retsina and white demestica wine. In the lee of the wall, sponge fishermen were slapping the sand out of their sponges, clipping away the dirt and stones, then soaking them and stuffing them into sacks. A flock of lambs came past, driven to the jetty for transport to the mainland which would probably now never want them, and the air was full of their bleating.

The sponge fishermen, a boy mending a net, and .an old man making a new one from thread, hooking and knotting with dexterity, looked up as they arrived. There was a buzz of chatter going on in the shade inside over the sound of the radio batting out a Greek Orthodox liturgy from the mainland, and their arrival stopped the conversation so that the radio said, ‘Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison!’ so loudly everybody looked round.

Docherty tasted the thin, pale, watery beer cautiously.

‘Tastes like horse-piss,’ he complained.

‘Shut up,’ Cotton said. ‘They might understand English.’

‘Who?’ Gully asked. ‘Wops?’

‘They might,’ Cotton said, faintly shamefaced but also slightly indignant that Docherty should regard Greeks as something less than human.

As they drank, the village priest went past, in his black robes and flat-topped hat, pushing back the sleeve of his robe, then an old man appeared from the cafe, holding a glass of raki, and stopped in front of them. He wore a beard, a fringed turban, elaborately embroidered waistcoat, cummerbund, tall black leather boots and a pair of voluminous knickerbockers with a baggy seat.

‘Known as crap-catchers,’ Patullo said to Shaw at the next table.

The old man grinned and waved his hand. ‘Welcome,’ he said in English. ‘Rooly Britannia. Goss-savey King.’ He gestured at the radio and lapsed into Greek. ‘That is the true liturgy,’ he said, and Cotton translated for the others. ‘We have the words of the Fathers. The true confession. We have the ikons and the blessed Eucharist to cleanse and unite us.’ He stopped and looked hard at Cotton. ‘You are Greek, my son?’ he asked. ‘You look Greek.’

‘No,’ Cotton said quickly. ‘I’m English.’

‘You have the Greek language. You speak it well.’

‘I learned it,’ Cotton said. ‘I learned it at school.’

‘You speak it like a Greek too. You have a good accent.’ The old man paused as Cotton grew more uncomfortable. ‘Where are the Germans now?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. North somewhere.’

‘They will come soon. We shall be prisoners. God grant that they will be haunted by the spirits of their victims. They no longer rest quiet in their graves.’ The old man sniffed. ‘The Italians -
po-po
-- ‘ he gestured contemptuously with his fingers ‘ - they are mere jackals. The Germans are vampires from hell. But a Greek is a man with a long memory.’ He looked hard at Cotton. ‘That boat of yours,’ he went on. ‘Panyioti, the millionaire, had one like that.’

‘It used to be Panyioti’s boat,’ Cotton explained.

The old man spat.
‘Aie!
That was no Greek. He only visited Aeos once a year, and he spent all the time throwing ten-drachma pieces to the poor from his shiny car. True Greeks believe in things. Every day the newspapers report how somebody has been chopped to the navel with a meat cleaver because somebody else didn’t agree with him.’

They went inside to have a meal because they suspected they’d be living on bully beef and biscuit before long. Patullo paid and it consisted largely of lamb, which Gully suspected and Cotton knew was goat. But with it there was fresh bread and young wine, light, sparkling and cool. Gully inevitably preferred the beer.

The food was brought by a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl with moist lips, big sticky eyes and a large bust. Gully eyed her gleefully, nudging Coward energetically. Docherty watched her with a hot, longing look in his eyes, as if he’d have liked to wrench the clothes from her back and fling her down across one of the tables.

‘Bit of all right,’ Gully said. ‘Look smashing with a feather in ‘er ‘at and no drawers.’

Cotton said nothing. He’d lost his virginity soon after joining the Marines but he’d never gone for lush dark-eyed women. Because of his rejection of his background, he’d always chosen blonde, blue-eyed English-looking girls, but they’d always seemed to lack the steam and passion to match his own. ‘Steady on, ducks,’ one of them had once told him during a bout of intense love-making on the settee with her mother asleep upstairs. ‘You don’t have to go at it as if you’re starving.’