The Palace of Strange Girls (16 page)

The rest of the visit passed off quietly until it was time for Jack to make tracks.

“Well, enjoy yourself in Blackpool, lad. Here’s a bit of something for the girls.”

“You don’t have to, Dad. I’d rather you kept the money.”

“No. Take it. I’ve nowt to spend it on here.”

“You’ll be going to the Pot Fair next week though, won’t you?”

“Oh aye, I’ll have a look around. But I’ve more sense than to buy owt from that bunch of rogues. You see these poor beggars
walking away with cardboard boxes packed up with tea sets and the like. It’s only when they get home and open the blessed
thing that they find out it’s full of chipped plates and cracked cups. And no way to get their money back. Bloomin’ fair has
already moved on. Still, it’s a sight to see, the fair, and I could listen to the salesmen’s patter all day. There were one
bloke there last year sellin’ glassware and he had folks rolling with laughter. You’ll tell me if it’s something serious?”

The abrupt change of subject had floored Jack for a moment. It was only when the old man pointed at the trouser pocket where
he’d hastily stuffed the letter that Jack had cottoned on. “It’ll be something and nothing, Dad. I made a few pals in Crete,
that’s all. I’d not have got out in one piece if I hadn’t.”

That was last Thursday and Jack hasn’t had a moment’s peace since. At first he’d been shocked that the letter had found him
at all. But that’s the Red Cross for you—or maybe it was the army that had handed out Jack’s prewar address. Either way, the
letter had found him. On the way home he’d taken a detour through Victoria Park, the letter burning a hole in his pocket and
his head full of memories of Crete. He stopped when he got to his favorite spot. Hidden behind a laurel hedge and sheltered
from sight by the curve of a rhododendron, he sat down on a bench. This was where he’d done most of his courting before the
war. He hadn’t been back there for the best part of twenty years. It was there that he’d ripped open the letter. He found
the photograph first and the shock had nearly killed him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. There she was, leaning against
the back of the taverna, a lacy sweater tight across her breasts and the curve of her hips dark against the whitewashed stone;
a broad sash belt round her waist and her hair spread in a black halo. Eleni; Eleni with her wide eyes and full lips; Eleni
whom he’d believed dead these last eighteen years. He jerked his eyes away in an attempt to pull himself together.

The park’s ornamental flower beds blurred out of focus. He wiped his eyes and looked again at the photograph. At the time
he barely registered the pale figure who stood beside her. All his attention was focused on Eleni and still, after all these
years, the familiar sensation, the way his breath stops short when he sees her face. In his memories she was always dancing—the
embroidered hem of her skirt in one hand and a cup of wine in the other. Or she was sitting with her back against the trunk
of the judas tree, laughing out loud and kissing his face as he tried to eat the picnic she had brought.

The news of her death had come the day after he’d been evacuated from Crete. He’d been sitting around with a bunch of soldiers
who’d come through the village on their way to the coast. They said that the taverna had taken a direct hit. One of them had
seen Eleni’s body laid out by the roadside. Jack had cried openly. Later he had lain on the deck while the ship took them
through to Egypt and willed himself to die of the pneumonia that was already sweeping through his lungs. To know that she
was alive now was almost beyond belief.

That was a week ago and since then the letter has exercised his mind every waking moment. Now, in the absence of his wife
and the relative anonymity of Blackpool beach, Jack runs his finger over the stamps and indecipherable postmarks and, setting
aside the photograph, pulls out a single sheet of paper from the thin faded envelope.

Kalivis

Hello to you my old friend Jack,

I send greetings to you and hopes for good health. It is a long time since you and Nibs were here. Taverna bombed the night
you left but walls and roof made good after war ended. My father died a few years back and now I run the taverna alone. Same
customers but all a little older than we were. We often remember good times we had when the British were here. I heard what
had happened to you from a soldier the monks were hiding at Preveli. Here is a photograph of me and my only child, Ioanis,
seventeen. If you ever come back to Crete we would be very happy to see you.

Yours with love and remembrance,

Eleni Korakis.

Jack runs his finger over her signature—as if it would bring her closer. Of course, the truth had only dawned on him in stages.
When he looks at the photograph now, however, it is glaringly obvious. The figure standing next to Eleni is her son… their
son. True, he’d barely believed it at first. It made no sense. If Eleni had found his address now, why hadn’t she found it
seventeen years ago when the child was born? The boy is looking away from the camera, one hand in his pocket and the other
holding a newly lit cigarette. An air of angry reluctance informs every muscle in his body. As if he would wish to be anywhere
other than caught in such close proximity to his mother. The closer Jack looks, the more the photo hides as much as it reveals.
The boy has pale hair that looks paler still against his obvious tan. His eyes, partially hidden under a heavy fringe, are
fixed on the ground at his feet. If Jack doubted the color of the boy’s hair on the black-and-white photo, the appearance
of his right hand is irrefutable evidence. Ioanis has the same broad hands and square fingers, the same shrug to his shoulders
that characterized Jack’s teenage years.

Even after examining the photo countless times, Jack is still in shock. He rereads the letter. His heart aches for Eleni.
As the last line of her letter reminds him, he had promised to return. A bitter smile passes across his face when he reads
this. He’d been on the last ship leaving the island. He was ferried on board by stretcher along with the other wounded. If
things had been different he might have stayed in Crete. Plenty had. Hundreds of Allied troops hadn’t made it to the beach
fast enough and the rescue ships were long gone by the time they’d arrived. Things could have been so different.

It is apparent from the photograph that Eleni hasn’t changed at all. She was little more than a girl back then and even now
she barely looks thirty. Jack tries to concentrate on Eleni’s smile, but his eyes are constantly drawn to the boy: Ioanis,
his son. Times when his thoughts should be with Ruth and the girls the image of the boy will rise in his mind and bring a
lump to his throat. Whether the emotion is one of pride or grief or even anger is unclear. Even now he cannot tell whether
what he feels is joy or regret. It is odd to ache for the loss of Eleni after all these years. The sadness he felt at the
time has now multiplied a hundredfold. He feels torn to shreds. When he is not elated that Eleni is still alive, still beautiful,
still remembers him, he yearns to see the son he has never known or even supported. Jack longs to tell someone. Anyone. He
longs to hear another person confirm the truth that he suspects—that the boy is indeed his son. He has tried in the long hours
of sleepless nights to reconstruct the last conversation he had with Eleni, the last words they exchanged before he kissed
her and left. But it is hopeless.

It is early morning when the Stukas come in. Jack and Nibs are queuing up for breakfast when they hear a restless, uneasy
buzz in the air which, within minutes, increases to a roar: wave after wave of enemy aircraft heading for the airport at Maleme,
five miles away. By the time Jack and Nibs have scrambled to their gun emplacements above Souda Bay, the sky has grown dark
with the concentration of enemy aircraft. There have been rumors for weeks about a German invasion, but still the sight of
that many bombers is overwhelming. In the distance Jack can hear the thump and boom of Allied heavy antiaircraft guns firing
greedily into the crowded skies above the airport. And so it continues, day after day without respite. Jack, still manning
one of the heavy antiaircraft guns on the escarpment above the beach, can only watch in amazement as hundreds of low-level
gliders come in like a plague of dragonflies. Each glider lands on the beach in a storm of sand and disgorges a dozen fully
armed troops, bent double and running for the shelter of the cliffs. And still the escarpment guns fire and reload and fire
again, striving to beat off the aerial invasion. Another four days of fighting follow in a desperate bid to hold Maleme, but
once the Germans have control of the airfield the battle for Crete is effectively lost.

After a week fighting, and now overwhelmed by the numbers of invading troops, the order comes through to withdraw beyond the
smoldering remains of Hania and Souda Bay into the cover of the daisy-strewn olive groves further inland. Jack, Nibs and three
other lads find shelter in an empty bomb crater. Here they wait out another day, firing their Bren guns intermittently but
mostly keeping their heads down as the Germans set up a series of creeping barrages on the slopes below them. Late on that
day a message comes through from headquarters. A fighting retreat is ordered to Sfakion on the south coast where ships are
stationed to take them off the island. Chaos sweeps through the ranks with some troops moving east to the apparent safety
of the garrison at Heraklion while others make directly for Sfakion via the White Mountains.

When Jack sets out on the road to Kalivis with the intention of seeing Eleni one last time, Nibs tags along. At the end of
the first day they are joined by Jonno and Tommy, two New Zealanders who have been cut off from their regiment. Together they
make their way slowly up the only road that runs south. They hear the strafing attack and catch the smell of burning flesh
on the wind long before they see the line of wrecked jeeps. The road is littered with the detritus of retreat: scattered documents,
steel helmets, ripped canvas, empty shells, brass buttons, odd boots and torn webbing. And still the bombing and strafing
continue, forcing them to desert the road and take the safer mountain tracks. A mile from Kalivis Jack skirts off from the
group, promising to catch them up later.

She has seen him coming. Eleni, her dark hair blowing in all directions and her face pale with concern, meets him at the edge
of the village carrying a rough sack filled with food and a flask of water. For the first time in over a week Jack relaxes.
They embrace, giddy with relief at each other’s survival. On this, their final picnic, they lie hidden in the shelter of an
outcrop of rock. Their conversation is conducted against a backdrop of strafing attacks along the line of retreating troops
on the road below. They part at sunset. Jack looks back at the last turn in the path, searches for her figure in the gathering
darkness. A glimpse of her, nothing more, her pale arm raised against the darkness, her face hidden in the shadows, and yet
still as close to him as his next step, his next breath.

They are waiting for him further up the valley. Jonno has built a meager fire and Tommy is doling out rations. Nibs has his
feet up, catching forty winks. They greet his return with relief. Jack, with his keen sense of direction and his constant
chivvying, is the best chance any of them has of reaching the rescue ships. They spend an uneasy night making their way up
the lower slopes of the White Mountains. Coming over a rise, they look down into a smoke-filled valley crowded with fires
and spend the rest of the night in the shelter of a cave watching for the yellow flares from enemy aircraft. Dawn comes up
to reveal the valley floor punctured with a smoldering orchard. The breeze lifts brief sparks that glitter crimson against
the devastation. The flare of blackened branches against the pall of smoke stays in Jack’s mind long after the details of
their retreat to Sfakion are lost.

They keep moving during the heat of the day and into the chill of the night until, an hour before dawn on the second day,
they stop and spend a fruitless hour trying to sleep. When the sun rises they slide down the side of a nearby creek in search
of water, only to come across a group of fellow soldiers. These lads had overtaken them earlier, intent upon sticking to the
road in the hope of finding a lift. Now they lie, their bodies crammed together like sardines, glistening in the thin dawn
light, uniforms and flesh ripped apart by machine-gun fire. The sight is greeted with numb acceptance rather than surprise.
Groups of retreating British troops are being hunted down all over the island. Invariably they try to evade capture by hiding
in caves, concealed gullies and isolated shepherds’ huts. Now that any form of organized resistance is in ruins, the German
battle for Crete has resolved itself into a race to prevent the Allied forces from escaping. There is no food, little water
and still the White Mountains surround them. Another day’s walking takes them up to the Askifou Plain—a wild, inhospitable
area covered by cypress forest. Purely by chance they come across an army dressing station at the head of the track. Jonno
throws in the towel and takes up the offer of shelter by a local shepherd. Tommy is finished, his ankle broken after a fall
during the previous night’s march. He sits down outside the dressing station and refuses to move. Only Jack and Nibs take
the track that leads down to the Imbros Gorge.

Back on Blackpool beach Jack tries to shake himself free from the nightmare of the Imbros Gorge. He attempts instead to reconstruct
in his mind’s eye a photo he used to have of Eleni. It was taken in happier times with a Box Brownie borrowed from Nibs. She
is sitting under the flowering judas tree, a flask of wine, bread and goat’s cheese in front of her. Her head tilted back
laughing and her arms raised towards him as he fiddles with the shutter of the unfamiliar camera. The photo was destroyed,
along with the better part of his pack, during the bombing of Tripoli. He had lain at number 4 Dressing Station, covered in
bandages, his eyes blurred with the loss. Jack shakes his head, as if to dislodge the memory, and returns the letter to its
hiding place in his back pocket. Why hadn’t Eleni told him she was pregnant before he left? But what does it matter now? He
is married to Ruth. He is father to two daughters who between them claim the greater part of his affection. He could, he recognizes,
lose a number of things in his life. But to lose his daughters? Jack is filled with panic by the thought.