by Alan Evans
Mark answered, “Yes. Thank you.” So he wasn’t being hauled off to some internment camp straight away.
The doctor left then and Mark sat on the single chair beside the bunk. Tim said he was better. “My ankle doesn’t hurt. I think I could walk. I’m just so bloody tired.” He dozed off again a few minutes afterwards. Mark reflected wrily that Tim had been dragged, concussed, from a smashed Swordfish, carted around the island like a sack of old clothes and then survived two days in an open boat. It was hardly surprising that he felt tired.
The consul arrived an hour later in a great hurry and out of breath, the army officer puffing along behind. The consul was stocky, neat in a dark grey suit. His thinning hair was carefully parted and brushed. He carried a trilby hat in his left hand, shook Mark’s hand with the other. “Hello there. Ferrers. I’m in business here but I also act as consul on the side. Never had anything like this before! However —” he took a breath, “— there’s an ambulance waiting on the quay to take your friend to hospital. You’ve been released to me, in my custody. for the time being — that is, until they decide what to do about you.”
Mark saw a ray of hope. “You mean we might not be interned?”
“Ah!” Ferrers winked. “Not sure, old chap, but I’ll explain dater. Here’s the stretcher.”
Two uniformed men carried Tim ashore and Mark followed them down the gangway. He leaned into the ambulance and gripped Tim’s hand. “Take it easy, old cock. I’ll be seeing you.”
Tim returned the grip. “Thanks. If it wasn’t for you I’d be a prisoner or burned up in Ethel.”
“Not you — born to be hung.”
Tim, embarrassed, looked across at the doctor sitting opposite him in the ambulance, then back to Mark. “Listen. What I said about you and Katy before we took off on this raid — I’m sorry — shouldn’t have said it.”
But he had thought it. And now? Mark said, “I don’t blame you. I tried to make a joke of it, and it was a bad one. The truth is that Katy’s going back to the States and we both decided it would be sensible to make a clean break.” Not the whole truth, but enough. And what had happened over Maltezana showed he’d made the right decision. His life wasn’t worth a damn. No airman’s was.
Tim said, “Pity. I thought you two might —”
But the doctor was peering impatiently at his watch and Mark wanted no more of this conversation. He stepped back and grinned, “Don’t get them to let you navigate this thing or you’ll never reach the hospital.” The doors closed and the ambulance drove away. He watched until it reached the end of the quay, turned around the corner of a warehouse and was lost to sight.
The Englishman, Ferrers, broke in on his thoughts: “He’s a close friend?”
Mark shrugged, “He’s a good bloke; one of the best.”
He stooped to climb into the consul’s car as Ferrers shook hands with the army officer then got in behind the wheel and drove away. As they left the quay and wound through the streets of the town he said, “I can’t tell you anything definite about internment. By rights the Greeks should hold you but they’re friendly to us and not friendly towards the Italians. Mussolini has been making threatening noises for some time and the feeling here, the fear, is that there could be a war, and soon. But as far as you are concerned we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve telephoned Athens and told our people there that you’re here. Meanwhile, if there’s anything I can do — well, just say the word.”
“Thanks. That’s very good of you.” Mark paused, then said deliberately casually, “I was friendly with a couple of people in Alex, an American war correspondent, Bert Keller, and his photographer. I understand they’re in Greece now. Is there any way of tracing them?”
“You mean you want to see them?”
Mark shook his head quickly, “No, I’d just like to know how they are. That’s all.”
Ferrers glanced at him, puzzled. This young man had been plucked from the sea, was bedraggled, unkempt, but he had not asked for a drink, a meal, a cigarette — only wanted news of two friends. Well — “I’ll telephone the U.S. embassy in Athens. I should imagine they’ll have the answer.”
The consul lived in a cool, whitewashed old house inside a walled garden on the outskirts of the town. His wife was Greek, a dark, handsome woman in her forties. Her English was careful but good. Ferrers explained casually to Mark that it was her family’s business in which he worked, and Mark gathered he was a director or partner. Mark had a bath and they gave him some clean clothes of Ferrers that were very short in the arms and legs so that Mrs. Ferrers gurgled with suppressed laughter and the consul grinned openly. “We’ll buy you some hand-me-downs tomorrow that will be a better fit.”
Then he said, “I spoke to the American embassy about your friends. They said Mr. Keller and the young lady went north about a week ago and should be back in Athens any day now.” He waited, quizzically.
But Mark only said, “Thanks. I just wanted to know they were all right.”
They sat down to a meal then, and later, over the coffee, and brandy that Mark suspected was brought out in his honour, Ferrers asked, “Well, can you —” he corrected “— are you allowed to tell us what happened?”
Mark grinned. He was relaxed now. This was like dinner with his parents or in other houses of the Ward clan, a long way removed from the open boat or the flight-deck of Eagle. “Don’t see why not.” He told them about the raid, the smash, and the escape. He lived through it all again vividly in his mind, but told it in short, arid sentences of understatement. Nevertheless, they read between the lines and he saw it in their faces. He was afraid they might consider him some sort of hero — he knew where the real heroes were and they weren’t sitting around a table like this. He felt an impostor.
He asked casually, “Has there been any news of other operations?”
There had, and Ferrers told him about them, but none had been an attack on Taranto. Mark wondered if it had been a complete fiasco, a failure at the outset, and so kept quiet by the Navy? He could not believe that. So it had not after all been launched — yet.
Ferrers said, “Harking back to your American friends: I hope they are on their way back to Athens. The weather has broken in the north and there’s heavy rain. It started yesterday, on the twenty-sixth, and it’s still falling. The roads up there are terrible.”
So this was the twenty-seventh of October. Mark had lost count of the days.
Katy. Soon to be in Athens, which was only thirty miles away.
When he went to his bed and turned over to sleep he thought about her.
The car was an old Ford, shabby inside, but it ran well and did not let in the rain. It lurched and slid on the road, greasy with mud washed down from the hills. Twice it skidded off, bumping along the shoulder until the driver wrestled it back onto the road. Bert Keller sat in the front beside the driver and Katy shared the back of the car with their stacked valises. At the beginning of their trip, when they left Athens, the luggage had been strapped to the grid on the back of the car, but when the rain started yesterday they had shifted it inside.
The frontier with Albania lay a mile or so behind. In the last week they had driven along the frontier from east to west. They found it thinly guarded everywhere and had to look ten, fifteen or even twenty miles back into the Greek countryside before they found troops in strength. Bert had explained the situation: “They’ve pulled back from the border and manned defensive positions in the mountains. If it comes to war the Greeks are going to fight on their own ground, where it suits them. I think they’re right. And those Greek soldiers look good.” They did, bronzed and tough, confident.
Now Katy stared out through the scratched glass of the Ford’s side window and saw the land dropping away from the road to a choppy, white-flecked, grey sea. Out there, twenty miles away and hidden by the veil of falling rain, lay the island of Corfu. The legs of her khaki drill slacks were damp from their last exposure to the rain, when Bert and she had got out to look at the fronti
er post, but her sweater an open-necked khaki shirt were dry. The trenchcoat that had saved them lay on top of the valises and dripped water on the floor. Her boots were caked with mud but at least she had greased them well beforehand, so her feet inside them were dry.
She asked, “Do you still think there might be war?” She wanted to go home, away from it all, and soon she would.
Bert shook his head and when the sodden brown and grey hair flopped across his brow he pushed at it impatiently with one hand. “Not on your life. The weather’s broken and Mussolini has lost his chance. He’ll have to wait until it clears, maybe till the spring. Nobody is going to mount an attack in this.”
The driver nodded agreement and Bert chuckled. “See? Kristos goes along with that.”
Kristos was a young officer in the Greek army, assigned to them as guide, interpreter — and to steer them away from areas the Greeks did not want them to see. He had been given the job because his English was good. Before joining the army he had lived with an uncle in London for a year. He was handsome and dark with a thin Clark Gable moustache. He turned to smile at Katy. “No war now.”
He swung back quickly to the road as the Ford slid again, skating on mud. It bumped and skittered along on the verge while he spun the wheel frantically and pedalled the brake. Bert and Katy grabbed at handholds and clung on. Then the car stopped dead with a shuddering crash that shook the teeth in their heads. Kristos was thrown onto the wheel, Bert against the dash but his forearm cushioned his face from the blow. Katy banged into the back of Bert’s seat and ended on one knee in the well between rear and front seats.
She said, “For God’s sake!”
The engine had died. Kristos pushed himself back from the wheel, rubbed at his bruised chest and opened the door. It let in a cold draught and driven rain that fell on Katy’s face. Bert got out on his side and the two men splashed to the front of the car and stooped to examine the damage. Katy watched them, hopeful but apprehensive. There was something not right about the nose-down attitude of the car.
Bert came splashing back to confirm her fears. “Busted front suspension. This baby goes nowhere, except on the tail of a truck.”
“Oh, hell!” Katy stared out at the empty darkening countryside.
Bert said, “I could put it stronger than that but I’ll wait till you’re not around.”
Kristos straightened and stood looking around him.
Katy picked out the map from where it was slotted between two of the valises and bent her head over it, peering, then called, “We look to be miles from anywhere!”
Kristos came round to them. “Yes. Long way. But there is a light, a house.” He turned, pointed and they saw the yellow glow about a quarter-mile from the road, could just make out a building at the head of a shallow valley. “There might be a telephone.”
“It’ll be a roof over our heads, anyway,” said Bert. He opened Katy’s door and one corner of his mouth twitched up in wry humour. “And it’s a nice night for a walk in the rain. Pass the luggage out.”
They unloaded the valises and Kristos locked up the car. They spent some minutes first pulling on trenchcoats and then casting up and down the road until they found a track that seemed to lead towards the light. They started along it, Kristos in the lead and carrying Katy’s valise easily besides his own. A stream rushed down the valley floor only yards below the track, to plunge into a culvert under the road. The track was just wide enough for a cart, flattened rocks under a skin of mud. They struggled up it until the light was revealed as a small, uncurtained window in a low, square house. When they were close Kristos shouted and the door was opened, letting out a pathway of light as they trudged up to it.
There was an old man called Constantine and his wife, but no telephone. After Kristos explained the situation there was a welcome and a fire, oil lamps for light, a small room for Katy, another for Bert and Kristos. Constantine told Kristos he had four sons but all were away, three married and with their own places now, the youngest doing his military service. The old man’s wife served a meal of thick soup or a stew, it fell between the two, and strong cheese with coarse bread and retsina from a stone jar.
After that they all went to bed; Constantine took it for granted, expecting to be up with the dawn. Katy was in bed, her torch tucked handily under it and her lamp turned out, when Bert tapped at the door and called, “Are you decent?”
“Since when did you care? Come on in.”
He leaned in at the door. “Just checking that you’re O.K.” He always did when they were in the field.
“I’m fine.”
Bert nodded, “Seasoned campaigner now. Look, tomorrow we’ll beg or borrow a car and head for Athens. Are you still going home?”
Katy answered definitely, “Yes.”
“Uh-uh! Well, this place is a wash-out, in every sense of the word — there’ll be no action till maybe the spring. So I’ll make for Alex again because something might break there before too long. Talking of Alex —” He was only a silhouette against the firelight from the kitchen but she knew he was watching her, “— what’s with you and that Navy flyer, that Ward guy with the hard look?”
Hard? She remembered Mark’s body on hers and answered shortly, “Nothing. There’s nothing between us.”
Bert started slowly, “I kinda thought —”
She cut him off abruptly, “You thought wrong.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“No, we didn’t.” They had talked like civilised, sensible people, hadn’t they? “Look, Bert, it was just one of those things. We had some fun, I liked him and I — think he liked me but he went back to sea, I came to Greece and I’m on my way home. End of story. Don’t make it sound so serious!”
Bert scowled at her. “That so? I’m too serious? Listen, kid, when I wasn’t much more than your age I met this girl but she had to go to the West Coast with her family; it was 1917 and I was shipping out to France to cover the action there. So we said good-bye. Finish? End of story? No. Because I met her in 1939. And she said she’d never stopped thinking about me but now — well, she was twenty years older and it was just too late. She said, ‘We’ve been such fools.’” He choked, broke off and put a hand to his face.
Katy said softly, “Oh, Bert, I’m sorry.”
He lowered the hand. “Aw, hell, that’s a pack of lies I dreamed up because you said I was too serious. She married a feller owned a drugstore chain and wound up happy as Larry. But suppose —”
He saw the blur of the boot she threw and caught it two-handed against his chest. “O.K.! But remember, just suppose —” He tossed the boot back to fall beside her bed. “G’night.”
“Good-night, Bert.” She smiled and shook her head as he closed the door and left her in the darkness. Then the smile faded. What had happened to the girl photographer who’d crossed the Atlantic to seek a handsome army officer who up to then had hardly given her the time of day? The answer to that was: plenty. She had found that the man she was looking for did not exist, had been created by distance, time and her —own imagination. She had seen the real man’s notebook and a scrap of his shirt, all that was left of him after a mortar bomb. She had seen Mark too, that time he had come back from the raid on Bomba. She had seen too much and she was going home.
Or she had backed off, frightened of getting out of her depth?
No. She had taken a rational decision, done the right thing, for her sake and for Mark. She believed that. So she turned over, but it was a long time before she slept and then it was restlessly, waking now and then to hear the drumming of the rain.
In the south the sky was clear above Athens, with a sprinkling of stars. In the city a government aide woke Metaxas, the Greek dictator, and told him the Italian minister wanted to see him. It was close to three in the morning.
Metaxas was a small man. He pulled on a dressing-gown and slowly descended the stairs. He was ill, but mentally alert, apprehensive. The Italian minister, Grazzi, handed him the ultimatum Metaxas had be
en fearing for some time. It demanded that Italian troops be allowed to occupy several strategic installations in Greece and it would expire at six a.m., just three hours away.
The demands were, intentionally, impossible to accept. Metaxas said heavily, “So it is war.”
Mark woke to knocking on his bedroom door and lifted himself onto one elbow. “Yes? Come in.”
Ferrers entered and switched on the light. “Sorry, old chap.” Mark was squinting against the glare. “But I thought you’d want to know. The embassy at Athens just phoned. About an hour ago —” he glanced at his watch, “— at three a.m., the Italians handed the Greeks an ultimatum that runs out at six. The Greeks say it means war.”
The consul wore pyjamas, was bare-footed. Although in his forties lie looked old now, his face haggard. He saw Mark staring at him and said, “It’s a terrible shock. Like this, in the middle of the night. We were expecting it, of course, dreading it — sooner or later, but —” He shook his head, scanty hair untidy. “My wife — very upset, of course.”
Mark asked, “Is there anything I can do? If you need any help —”
Ferrers said, “No. I have some phone calls to make, that’s all. It was just that we thought you’d want to know — and I wanted to talk to someone.” He smiled faintly. “I’m feeling better already.” There was something reassuring about the calm, black-haired young pilot.
Ferrers turned to go, then paused. “Oh, I remembered to ask about you. They said you’d have no problems now and they’ll probably have you back in Alexandria in no time. Now I’ll let you get to sleep. Good-night.”
The light went out and the door closed. Mark stared up at the ceiling. Katy would be on her way back to Athens now. Maybe in a day or two he would have to go there to the embassy. So what? He knew she was all right and that was all there was to it.
