Corporal Cotton's Little War

by John Harris

  Watching them, he’d sworn that his home wasn’t going to be like that; and that, although most of the London Greeks he knew ended up in restaurants, he wasn’t going to – certainly not like his father, short of money and married to another wop with wop relatives and blessed with a brood of kids all yelling in a foreign language. He’d been halfway out of the cage even before he’d joined, in fact, because he’d become a Catholic, which was near enough to Greek Orthodox and seemed safer and better, and everybody at the bus depot where he’d worked as a clerk had called him ‘Mick’ and thought him an Ulsterman.

  Briskly, efficiently, his mind devoid of doubts, he finished checking the guns, then went in search of the RASC men. He found Howard in the galley between the wheelhouse and the forecastle brewing tea.

  ‘I’ve fixed the guns,’ Cotton said stolidly. ‘It’s your job to make sure yours is kept all right.’

  Howard looked round. ‘You an expert on guns, Corp?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit.’

  Howard grinned. ‘I’m glad you’re on our side,’ he said. ‘I like to have the experts on my side. Giz a kiss, Royal.’

  Cotton sniffed. Coward and Howard, he’d found already, were a bit too big for their boots for RASC wallahs. After all, the bloody RASC hadn’t got its knees brown yet, while the Marines had been founded in 1664 by Charles the Second when it was the Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot. Cotton had had the corps history drilled into him so much he didn’t even have to think. He knew every campaign through Belle Isle, Egypt, the Sudan, the Boxer Rising, Gallipoli, Jutland and Zeebrugge. The RASC existed only to keep better men supplied with beer and fags when they hadn’t time while holding off the king’s enemies to go and get them themselves. Besides, Coward and Howard didn’t look old enough to have been in more than a month or two, anyway, and were only there, he suspected, because better men were busy on the mainland repelling aggression with not much more than their teeth and bare hands.

  ‘When do we get there?’ Howard asked.

  ‘We reach Iros tomorrow,’ Cotton said. ‘We lay up during the day and leave for Aeos tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I suppose the captain told you, did he?’

  ‘No,’ Cotton said. ‘Patullo did.’

  Howard pulled a face to indicate that he thought Cotton was an arsehole creeper, toffee-nosed, slow on the uptake, and a bit regimental. It didn’t worry Cotton. Even in a jersey, his cap badge was polished and his trousers were pressed, while Coward looked as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. He moved aft to check the 20mm. An idle Marine was an inefficient Marine. It had been drummed into him so many times, he believed it himself. Keep them occupied. Keep their thoughts away from home and women and comfort. They had to be moulded. The lower deck always said that Marines came in batches of a dozen while sailors were always different, and he supposed that was true enough. But sailors’ jobs were more varied than Marines’, and being a Marine demanded stolidity rather than the flashy independence of the navy. Although he was barely aware of it, Cotton had an enormous pride in his corps and, for that matter, in himself, too.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Howard said when he returned to the forecastle.

  ‘Thanks.’ Cotton accepted the tea and sipped at it. ‘Very nice,’ he said and he saw Howard grin.

  When he went on deck again, it was already dark. Not far away he could see a rocky shore with low cliffs and a low hillside, and he assumed it was one of the smaller islets to the north of Crete. The sky was clear and filled with stars, and the night hung about them like cool velvet because the wind had died away so that only the breeze that came from their own speed blew into his face.

  He did his spell on the wheel, watching the RAF-type compass with which the boat had been fitted, listening to Shaw talking quietly to Patullo at the back of the wheelhouse as he filled in the log.

  ‘We should arrive at Iros at daylight,’ he was saying. ‘Refuel and hide ourselves among the caiques and wait there all day. There’ll probably be aircraft over.’

  ‘Got your watches sorted out?’

  Shaw grunted. ‘Fat lot of watches there’ll be with only three deck crew,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged for one man to be on the wheel, one on look-out and one below, the man below to be responsible for cooking and brewing up.’

  ‘What about those two RASC chaps?’

  ‘They know their stuff.’ Cotton was surprised to hear it. ‘They crewed a lighter over from Alex.’

  ‘And the chippy?’

  ‘I can hardly fit him into the pattern, can I? He’s a civvy. He’ll probably go on strike. We’ll just have to see.’

  When Cotton was relieved at the wheel by Howard, he went below to find Gully at the galley stove. He grinned at Cotton and spooned a mixture of rice and bully-beef on to a plate for him and slammed a mug of tea down on the table.

  ‘Thanks – er–’ Cotton said. ‘What do we call you, anyway?’ The ghastly false teeth flashed. ‘Same as all carpenters: Chippy’ll do. They christened me Frederick ’Oratio but nobody never called me nowt but Chippy.’

  It was after midnight when Cotton got his head down on one of the bunks. Gully, curled up in a ball, lay on the other. When Coward shook Cotton’s shoulder it was light enough to see the sea through the scuttle. Howard was asleep on the other bunk.

  ‘Who’s on the wheel?’

  Coward handed him a mug of tea. ‘Chippy.’

  ‘Can he handle a boat?’

  ‘Says he can. Seems to be doing all right. At least, it makes one more to work and no passengers. You relieve him.’

  As it happened, however, Cotton didn’t. When he went on deck, it was raining in a thin, drizzling grey mist that wavered down from an unexpectedly dark sky. Through it, he could see an island just ahead and a bay with greyish cube-like fishermen’s houses round it. Faded gardens lay on the slopes behind, where misty mulberry trees grew in profusion, bamboo hedging them against the wind. Beyond them, the bony soil on the gentle rise of the hill lifted up darkly, ending in a violet early-morning sky.

  The harbour was crowded with caiques and rowing boats, and large dinghies with lateen sails for the inspection of shellfish baskets and inshore fishing; on the wharves donkeys and mules were waiting to carry away their loads.

  ‘Iros,’ Shaw was saying.

  The place looked gloomy and forbidding, but the rain stopped as they entered the harbour and the sun came out strongly. As the clouds parted, the wet concrete of the mole began to steam at once and the place was transformed immediately, the greyish houses becoming dazzling white, the dulled colours of the flowers beginning to glow once more.

  ‘There’s nothing here but bloody rock,’ Docherty observed from the gangway near the bridge.

  Patullo heard him and smiled. ‘I suspect this part of the world was some of God’s early work,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to do the best we can with it.’

  Three

  As Claudia entered Iros Harbour, a thin ragged figure on the jetty began to wave its arms at them, indicating they should moor where it was standing. There were other figures on the jetty – fishermen, women in black and a few children – but none of them moved, and they knew very well why.

  Bisset had tuned the radio in to the BBC that morning, and it had made no bones about the extent of the disaster on the mainland. The German mechanised divisions were heading for the Rupel Pass and the Monastir Gap from Yugoslavian Macedonia and everyone knew that if they succeeded in getting through, the British forces, outnumbered and faced with fierce air attacks, would have to fall back because an outflanking German thrust towards Salonika would compel a further withdrawal; while the Greek army, weakened by their five months’ struggle against the Italians, would be unable to withstand the tempo of the German bombing. It was already on its last legs, and the evacuation of the British looked inevitable, so that the islanders, viewing the possibility of the Germans’ arrival in the Cyclades with alarm, were waiting in a nervous, hostile crowd, afraid that any sign of thei
r having helped the British would be dangerous.

  ‘They look as if the cook’s spat in the soup and thrown the ladle at the mess cat,’ Gully said.

  ‘Don’t look exactly welcoming,’ Patullo agreed. ‘Cotton and I’ll have to entertain ’em with verses from Sophocles.’

  ‘Who’s Sophocles, sir?’ Goaded, Cotton decided to find out once and for all, but it was Duff who answered.

  ‘Played full back for Fulham,’ he said in an unexpected burst of humour. ‘Took the penalty that knocked Arsenal out of the Cup.’

  Shaw placed them neatly alongside the stone mole. The sky was a piercing blue by this time and against it the white houses stood out with the bareness of old bones. As the engines were cut, Patullo climbed with Cotton on to the jetty. Behind him, Shaw was detailing Howard, who was now carrying a tommy-gun, to act as sentry. Patullo was already arguing in swift incisive Greek with the crowd, trying to make himself heard over the excited shouting.

  ‘Discussion among Greeks can’t ever be conducted quietly,’ he observed over his shoulder to Shaw. ‘They’re intensely patriotic, of course, and think we’re being too flippant about losing the war here. I suppose you’d say we consider they’re taking it too dismally.’

  As he plunged once more into the argument, Shaw pushed Cotton forward and indicated the ragged figure who had waved to them. ‘Okay, Corporal,’ he said. ‘Get on with it. Let’s see what you can do. The mayor’s supposed to have drums of 100-octane fuel waiting here for us. Ask him where he lives. He looks as though he might know.’

  Cotton couldn’t see why they couldn’t wait until Patullo was finished but he didn’t argue.

  ‘Good morning,’ he tried in Greek and the scarecrow figure on the jetty smiled at him and said ‘Good morning’ back.

  ‘You from the mayor?’

  ‘Yes.’ Their guide was only a boy. ‘I am to take you to him. I have everything – petrol, donkey, a stick to hit it with. Would you like to follow me? I know the way exactly.’

  He reminded Cotton of the urchin who used to stand outside the Marine barracks in Alex calling, ‘Chocolates, cigarettes, French letters. Would you like my sister? She is very clean and white inside, like Queen Victoria.’

  He passed on the message to Shaw who nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Off you go, Corporal. Lieutenant Patullo’s better here.’

  Cotton wondered how much Shaw was influenced by the free-masonry that existed among officers and the thought that if anybody was going to disappear down a dark alley and have his throat cut, it might as well be Cotton and not Patullo who would then remain available to help Shaw to get away to safety.

  Cotton didn’t think much of the situation but he hitched at his trousers and prepared to do his best. Gully climbed after him with Private Coward and Chief ERA Duff. Gully had lit a cigarette but Shaw barked at him about fire and he stubbed it out and stuck it behind his ear.

  ‘No peace for the wicked,’ he said in his thick north-country accent. ‘Off we go, boys, sixpence round the bleedin’ lighthouse.’

  The boy who had met them was curly-haired and dressed in ragged trousers and shirt with rope sandals on his feet. Cotton regarded him with disdain. The boy looked as though he hadn’t had a decent meal for a week, and this, Cotton realised, was the very thing he’d fought against all his life – this image of the Greeks everybody had in England. It was this which had persuaded him to change his name when he’d joined the Royal Marines so there’d be no questions asked – something that still made him feel a little guilty.

  The boy’s donkey was moored to one of the ring-bolts in the quay. It looked hardly bigger than a rat and not in the best state of health into the bargain. Gully gazed at it with contempt.

  ‘What’s he expect to do with that?’ he demanded.

  Patullo, occupied with the shouting men, heard him and turned. ‘Greeks regard their donkeys as Americans regard their cars,’ he said helpfully. ‘And there’s no limit to what they’re expected to carry. If it collapses it’ll get no sympathy. It’ll just get dragged to its feet and beaten for being difficult. I’m sure it’s aware of the conditions. It’ll make it, don’t worry.’

  They followed the boy between two lines of tiny houses, each one joined to the next; but with its door, patio, balcony with flowers and outside stair leading to the square flat roof, all differently spaced and placed from its neighbour’s, as though in an effort to preserve individuality even in poverty. There were a few flowering trees behind them which threw bars of brilliant colour across the road, and at every turn they could see the dark water of the harbour sparkling between the white walls.

  They climbed a set of wide, shallow steps and found themselves in a narrow alley with high, almost Moorish walls running up to dark windows, and foliage spilling over from an array of flower pots. The boy stopped at a door carved with arabesques, that clearly belonged to someone of greater importance than those who inhabited the smaller houses they’d just passed. The courtyard was leafy and shadowed by climbing roses, geraniums, wisteria and the magenta of a Judas tree. After the rain there was a smell of thyme in the air.

  The boy banged on the door with his fist and after a while it was opened by a small plump woman dressed in black, with a grey shawl on her head. She looked like Cotton’s mother. Behind her was an old man, equally plump and with a large black moustache. He was tall, however, with square, strong shoulders and still looked powerful. He seemed nervous.

  ‘Ask him if he’s the mayor, Cotton,’ Duff said.

  Cotton did as he was told and the big man nodded, so that Cotton decided he’d been elected chiefly because his size enabled him to quell any disagreement among the islanders under his authority.

  ‘Komis, Konstantine,’ he announced. ‘At your service.’

  ‘Tell him we’ve come for our petrol,’ Duff said.

  Cotton translated and the mayor’s eyes flickered from one side to the other.

  ‘I have it hidden,’ he said. ‘It’s best that way. There are a few on this island who don’t like me and they might well tell the Germans that I have helped you, when they come. Enter, please.’

  They pushed into the house, which, despite its more imposing exterior, was sparsely furnished. The hall was empty except for a single cane chair, a small table bearing a wine glass with a solitary flower in it and, above it on the wall, an ikon. Beyond, the back of the house was very different. They could see a dirt yard and chickens wandering in and out, and even as they watched, a goat relieved itself on the doorstep.

  Komis showed them into a room with bare plaster walls and a wooden floor, which was clearly his office. It contained a woven rug, a desk, a dowry chest, an assortment of plants and calendars, a wooden filing cabinet and four chairs in a line with embroidered antimacassars over their high wooden backs, clearly there for those seeking Komis’ favours. The men stood in a group, five of them with the boy, filling the small room with their bulk, all a little awkward and ill-at-ease. The shutters were closed and the room was dark and smelled of the damp which had peeled the tinfoil decoration from the frame of a gaudy religious painting of an agonised Christ facing a paternal-looking God through a circle of heavenly clouds. Komis sat down and gestured at the chairs, but they all remained standing. The woman brought a tray and offered them loukoumi, tsipero and Turkish coffee.

  ‘I shall not come with you,’ Komis said.

  ‘Why not?’ Cotton asked.

  ‘Because it’s not safe to do so. There will be fighting in these islands when the British have gone. There are a few Fascists, and a lot of ELAS who are willing to kill Germans but are also anxious that their own unlovely Communist creed should be brought here.’

  Cotton guessed that the mayor was a Fascist and might even welcome the Germans, but that he was afraid of the Communists and was hedging his bets by offering help.

  ‘They shot up the square of Mandalani on Siphos,’ he went on. ‘They came over and machine-gunned the people. There were seven dead.’

  Whether t
he mayor was a Fascist or a Communist, he seemed concerned, at least, that no Nazi frightfulness should be visited on Iros, and he was not unhelpful.

  ‘Nico will show you where the petrol is,’ he went on, indicating the boy. ‘It’s in a shed behind the town. There are six drums.’

  ‘I was told eight,’ Duff said. ‘I’ll bet the corrupt bastard’s hidden two for himself.’

  They followed the boy up the narrow street and down white steps between more flat-roofed buildings. Against one of them was a wooden lean-to, timbers and old tyres piled against it. The boy gestured and began to move the tyres until eventually they saw a padlocked door. The boy took a key and unlocked it. Inside the shed, there were seven drums and several new tyres. The boy banged the drums; one of them sounded empty.

  ‘How do we get them to the boat?’ Duff demanded. ‘The bloody moke can’t carry ’em.’

  Cotton asked the boy, who vanished, leaving them awkward and uneasy because they were aware of the hostility on the island towards them and didn’t know where the Germans were. After a while the boy returned pushing a small cart. It looked little bigger than a child’s barrow but he began to hitch it to the donkey.

  ‘Let’s have a ramp of some sort rigged up,’ Duff said and they managed, with the timbers that had been leaning against the shed, to build a sloping platform against which the boy backed the cart. Manhandling the drums up, they loaded three of them into the cart and the boy locked the door again and began to pile the timbers up against it.

  ‘We will come back,’ he said.

  The weight of the drums in the cart seemed almost to have lifted the donkey off the ground and Gully eyed it speculatively.

  ‘It’s never going to be able to pull those things,’ he said.

  But, with the wheels wobbling and screeching on the axles, the minute beast tottered off, its hoofs click-clacking on the cobbles.