Burning Island: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction

by Suzanne Goldring

  Ben said he had made sure all his villas had notices banning barbecues, but when the holidaymakers arrive and see the purpose-built brick grills on the terrace, they think a few chargrilled kebabs can’t possibly hurt. His staff had already dealt with a couple of scorched gardens that season, but luckily the careless fires did little more than singe the nearby shrubs. If the flames had reached the oil-rich olive trees and spread to the undergrowth, the fires could have rapidly spread through the groves and then become impossible to douse without firefighters.

  I leant against the window frame wondering if I tucked the mosquito net tight around the bed, whether I could sleep with the windows open, the night air cooling me instead of the noisy fan. But I knew that if the insects invaded the room I would become a swollen, bitten mass, with bites in places I couldn’t even reach to scratch. I closed the shutters tight then heaved myself onto the bed, and lay down with a pillow supporting my ungainly, lumpen belly. The baby was kicking and I was suffering from heartburn again.

  Despite James’s misgivings, and although the heat had made me slower, I was still able to make a contribution to the business. That day I had arranged tall stems of blue agapanthus in vases in the restaurant, folded napkins and polished glasses, then checked bookings for both lunch and dinner. I answered emails and responded to enquiries for the following year; I phoned suppliers and took calls from diners wanting to eat with us in the coming weeks. But I had to lie down on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, swollen ankles raised on pillows, so I could smile and greet guests in the evenings as they arrived for the wonderful dinners that were gaining such a wide reputation.

  I could no longer rush into town so easily if James was disappointed with a delivery of fish or a vital ingredient was missing, but I could still supervise the running of the restaurant and our accommodation, with help. Adrianna and Ariadne arrived early every day and took it in turns to stay until the dinner service was finished. They worked alternate afternoons, so whoever was doing the evening shift didn’t have to work right the way through the day. They were reliable friendly girls, and both lived in villages at the coastal end of the mountain road, several miles away.

  I remember how one day, around that time, Adrianna very kindly asked me if I would like her to stay behind at night. ‘For when your time comes,’ she said with a small smile. I wasn’t sure why she was saying that at first, then realised she meant when I went into labour. ‘It is no trouble for me,’ she insisted, when I declined her offer.

  I didn’t think she knew that James left me there alone most nights, but now I wonder. One day, he hadn’t yet come back when she arrived to help make the breakfasts for our guests. ‘Mr James is always in the kitchen in the morning, but not today,’ she said. ‘He has gone out early?’ She had knocked at my bedroom door and brought me tea and a fresh croissant, which had just been delivered with the bread and rolls we ordered each morning. James was usually downstairs early every day, prepping the lunch dishes and checking what supplies were left over from the day before.

  ‘Oh, he had to see someone urgently,’ I’d said, knowing that he had probably been drinking till late with Greg. ‘He said you’d be able to manage this morning.’ I’d thanked her for the tray she left on my bedside table and hoped she did not notice that his pillow was uncreased. The rest of the bed linen was crumpled, but his pillow bore no impression of his head, so I pulled it across to my side and propped myself up to eat.

  Marian also offered to drive up to Mountain Thyme if I needed company, even though both her shops were busy till late during the hectic summer months. She visited me now and then, as I preferred not to drive too far on my own in late pregnancy, and I hadn’t been to either of the Mill shops for a few weeks. I didn’t like to tell her that James wasn’t always by my side overnight. She was so attentive in her care of Inge that I felt sure she would look at me with an accusation of neglect, if I told her he couldn’t bear to sleep with me any more.

  That night, as I tossed uncomfortably in my hot bed, then propped myself up again on the pillows, I wondered how James would behave when the baby finally arrived. It would have to sleep in our room until the holiday season petered out as we couldn’t be guaranteed spare bedrooms every night until October at the earliest. And although by then I hoped I’d be sleeping soundly, when I could, I imagined he wouldn’t take kindly to waking to a hungry baby’s cries in the middle of the night. I planned to put it down to sleep in a basket on the floor, on my side of the bed. I didn’t have a cradle or a cot, nor a pram or a buggy – I only had a basket padded with folded linen and half a drawer in my wardrobe, filled with little vests and nappies. No knitted layettes or poppered Babygros for this baby, as it would arrive in the high temperatures of summer and be quite warm enough.

  I closed my eyes, and once again imagined floating in cool water, as I did every night to lull myself to sleep. I was floating in a pool and the baby was floating inside me.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  July 2008

  James

  The guest rooms were all empty that particular night, but I still didn’t want to stay at Mountain Thyme. I’d been cooking all day and talking to diners who wanted to meet me. After hours on my feet, hours of chatting and hours of working hard, I needed to relax. It was midnight and I knew Amber wouldn’t miss me. She’d gone to bed at ten and I was always back by seven in the morning. She understood. Her job was to carry on doing whatever tasks she could still manage and look after herself so this pregnancy didn’t turn into even more of an inconvenience than it was already. My job was to grow the business and make sure we built on the reputation we had acquired in our first year. I told myself I was doing it for her and the baby and that she understood that, or at least she would eventually.

  It was quiet when I finally left and quiet when I reached Greg’s place. I pulled over into my usual parking spot and noticed that as well as Greg’s jeep and Pam’s white Mercedes, there was a third car parked under the trees. Please don’t let that stupid woman still be here, I thought.

  Lavinia had arrived the previous week for a girls’ holiday, to cheer herself up over her separation from her Russian husband, Vladimir. When I’d come over a couple of days previously for a peaceful night’s sleep and a matey chat with Greg, she’d been larking around in the pool with a couple of drunken friends, shrieking and splashing, all three of them vying for attention in their skimpy costumes.

  She’d sauntered across to the terrace and stood there, hand on hip, blonde hair dripping over tanned shoulders, sunburnt flesh dark against the clinging white fabric of her tiny bikini. Pouting, she’d said, ‘Don’t be so boring, James. Come on down for a late-night swim. You’d like to cool off with all of us girls, wouldn’t you?’

  The water was tempting, but she and her beautiful but vacuous friends weren’t. She soon lost interest when she saw I wasn’t coming out to play, and Greg and I had resumed our conversation. We hadn’t walked the trail or fired missiles that night, preferring to creep away early to our beds.

  I decided that if she was there again, I’d go straight up to my room and catch up on my sleep. But then I realised it wasn’t her car, although I was sure I recognised it. Then I saw a man coming towards me, walking up the gravel path. At first I could only see a white shirt and light trousers, luminous against dark skin, but as he came closer, I saw it was Dimitri. ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ I called out. ‘You’re not usually here this late.’

  ‘Mr Richards has many big worries,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Much on his mind, I think you say.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve been able to help him sort them out. He’s always saying how much he relies on you.’

  Dimitri gave a small nod, a gesture that was almost a token bow. ‘I do my best, Mr James, I always do my best.’ He turned to go, then looked back over his shoulder. ‘He is waiting for you on the terrace.’

  ‘Yes, I mustn’t keep him. Good night.’

  Dimitri saluted, ‘Kalispera,’ he said an
d turned away, his distant steps crunching the gravel as I approached the house, where Greg was sitting in his usual chair, examining his phone and cursing.

  ‘Effing thing,’ he swore, slamming it down on the table. ‘These arsey fairies don’t design these gadgets for real men’s fingers.’

  I laughed. ‘You haven’t gone and got yourself a smartphone at last, have you?’

  ‘Pam made us both get one. Wants to keep track of me, I reckon. But she’s got smaller fingers. I can’t get the sodding thing to work for me.’

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it. It took my dad a while but he swears by it now.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m swearing at it right now.’ Greg laughed, then grabbed the yellow-labelled bottle on the table and poured us both a cold glass of Kourtaki retsina. ‘Here, have some of the local crap. Pam says it’s better for me than my usual stuff. Tastes like disinfectant, but hey, it’s still alcohol.’

  I sipped. I actually liked retsina anyway, but then I always did have cheap tastes. ‘Do you want me to show you how to set your phone up?’

  He tossed it over to me, saying, ‘It’s set up all right, but I buggered up the text I was sending Dimitri. I’ve probably told him to go and get lost now.’

  I found Greg’s messages and then the text to Dimitri. I shook my head as I tried to interpret it. Ill Ave to yu, it read. ‘What?’ I showed it to Greg, who picked up his glasses and peered at it, then exploded in laughter.

  ‘At least I didn’t tell him to go fuck himself.’

  ‘Do you want me to rewrite it?’

  ‘No, doesn’t matter. He’s got the picture anyway.’

  ‘New project?’

  ‘No, he’s still dealing with the ins and outs of the land up near you. These old sites are a tangled mess of transactions going back years.’ He yawned, as if the day had been exhausting for him too. ‘But I think we’re nearly there.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. We’re getting enough customers as it is, but more quality business would be very welcome.’ I leant back, holding my glass, and put my feet up on the opposite chair. ‘I’m sick of these cheapskate tourists, dropping by and expecting a cut-price meal. It’s not what we’re about.’

  ‘Stick to your guns, mate. You’ve got a vision, you should hang onto it.’

  I finished my wine and Greg topped up my glass. ‘I’m hoping we’ll get more of the Brits in due course,’ I said. ‘They still seem to mostly stick with their old favourites down in Agios and Kalami, but a lot more of them have taken the trouble to drive up to us this year, and I think they’ll gradually spread the word around.’

  ‘What about the Russians? They’re splashing the cash this year, aren’t they?’

  I nodded. ‘They sure are. We had another group in for lunch the other day. Very ostentatious, all ordering champagne and handing out big tips for the staff. When they’re having fun, they want everyone else to have fun too. But they can be very loud and rude. Not the sort we really want around the Brits we’re hoping to attract.’

  Greg sighed. ‘They don’t get it, do they? No finesse. Once a peasant, always a peasant. It’s the same with Lavinia’s ex. Told her when she met him, it wouldn’t last.’ He stared into his glass, swilling the wine around, looking morose. ‘Always after the latest, flashiest model, that lot.’

  ‘Are they still married?’

  ‘Just. They’ll be divorced once the money’s all worked out. Got my bloke in London onto it, but that bastard Vladi’s tight as a cat’s arse. They all are.’ He reached for the bottle again and held it up in disbelief. It was empty. ‘Till then, Daddy’s footing the bills, so I could do with a few good deals right now.’

  I really didn’t want to have to share another whole bottle with Greg, so I said, ‘You need to take your mind off it. Come on, let’s see who’s the best shot this time.’

  We walked down the garden in silence to the hidden platform. As we approached, we heard splashing and giggling. ‘Sounds like we’ve got company tonight,’ Greg whispered.

  We climbed up and stood there, looking down on the brightly lit pool. On previous occasions this area of the hotel grounds had always been totally empty after dark, but that evening the pool’s calm surface rippled as two figures, a man and a woman, cavorted in the water. They swam side by side to the end nearest to us and as they stood up in the shallows we could see they were both quite naked.

  Greg nudged me and we loaded our weapons with stinking ammunition and fired simultaneously. The pellets landed about a yard away from the kissing couple, but there was no reaction.

  Then Greg’s next shot skimmed the girl’s hair, piled up in a loose mass of tendrils on the top of her head. She must have felt the lightest of touches, like a large flying insect, as she broke away from her boyfriend and brushed her hair with her hand. She looked down at the water and, puzzled, held her hand under one of the little floating cat turds, looking just like a small pine cone or seed pod. She scooped it into her palm and stared then suddenly jerked back in disgust, throwing it far away from her into the water. She took a couple of steps back, then looked around.

  Greg and I were choking back our laughter, trying not to give ourselves away as she clambered out of the pool, grabbing her abandoned dress from a nearby lounger. The man followed, stumbling into his shorts, tripping in his flip flops as he tried to run after her.

  ‘Good idea of yours,’ Greg laughed, when the couple had gone. ‘Other people’s misfortunes always cheer me up.’

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  16 June 1944

  ‘How much further do you think it is?’ Agata asks her husband. The steep winding trek from their home to the main road has already taken over an hour with their heavily laden cart. The girls have slept, despite the bumping of the wheels on the rough path, but the sure-footed goats and donkey have walked with a steady pace over the uneven stones.

  Georgiou hushes his wife and makes her wait behind the roadside shack while he listens and checks the road is clear. ‘We can cross over here – with luck we shall reach the farmhouse by the end of tomorrow,’ he says on his return.

  He has been familiar with all the paths to the mountains ever since childhood, when he would often take fresh fish up to the family farm. As a boy, unburdened by luggage, livestock and children, he could run there in a few hours. The tracks are rarely walked by men, more usually by nimble sheep and goats, so he is confident soldiers will not come their way. The Germans prefer to take the easy roads with their motorbikes, cars and tanks. Obscure trails twisting through thickets of juniper, myrtle and carob are not at all to their liking, and might hide the Resistance and resentful peasants.

  They pause to listen again before crossing and Agata turns to the roadside shrine of Saint Spyridon. She holds two fingers to her lips and transfers the kiss to the chipped and peeling plaster effigy. She would have liked to light a candle, but daren’t leave a sign that they were here recently. Instead, she whispers a hurried prayer, ‘I pray you will bless us, my saint, and keep us all safe from harm, as you have done many times before.’

  They cross the tarmacked road and are soon shielded by the dense growth of shrubs and trees. Then Agata pauses and turns back to the verge, where huge prickly pears grow like sculptures, small fruits bursting from their branches. She slips a knife from her pocket and, holding a basket underneath the towering plant, quickly slices off the ripe juicy pears, carefully avoiding the sharp spines. If their journey is long or they have to hide for a time, she will peel the spiky cacti to quench their thirst. And if we are lucky, she thinks, we may also find a strawberry tree bearing ripe fruit.

  ‘Come on,’ calls Georgiou, anxious to continue their trek. He understands her wish to gather whatever provisions they may need, but he is keen to move on and disappear, away from the danger of the open road and into the safety of the thickly wooded foothills, as soon as they can.

  After two more hours, the girls are fully awake and keen to walk. Agata gives them each a sweet peach to eat as they follow the cart
. The sun has been up for a while and although there is shade under the trees, it will soon be very hot. Their progress is slow on the rutted path, then Anna stumbles and cries, so Agata lifts her back onto the cart.

  ‘We shall stop and rest at noon,’ Georgiou says. ‘We must conserve our energy and stay alert.’ He leads on for another couple of hours, holding the donkey’s halter until they reach another grove of neglected olive trees, where gnarled branches form a canopy of shade over crackling beds of dry leaves. Tiny fallen olives are scattered all around, ungathered and unwanted, but the children begin scooping them up, competing with each other to see who can find the most.

  Agata spreads a blanket over the leafy floor and sets out a sparse picnic of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs and cucumber. Georgiou gulps water from his flask and the girls run over to show him the handfuls of wizened black olives they have found. He laughs and helps them count the withered fruit, then leans back against the tree trunk and looks up through the twisted branches. A bird is circling far overhead. ‘Look,’ he says to the girls, ‘that’s a kite searching for food.’ Both children look up and shade their eyes as they watch the bird gliding, wings outspread.

  ‘What does it eat?’ Matilde asks.

  ‘Rats and naughty little mice,’ Georgiou says, tickling her under her arms, making her shriek with delight.

  Agata looks up too, and then she points to the high mountain they can see, towering over the wooded slopes. ‘And there is Mount Pantokrator,’ she says. ‘Can you see the monastery at its very top?’ The children peer at the white building they can just about see on the peak, and Anna says, ‘Why is it there?’

  ‘It’s watching over us,’ Agata replies. ‘There has been a church there for hundreds of years. From that height it can see the whole of Corfu.’