Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  She drove over the rough ground and through the narrow village streets and by the time she drew up outside the cafeneion there was not only the usual horde of children streaming after her, but every able-bodied villager as well.

  ‘What news? What news?’ Andre shouted, running to greet her before she had even turned off the truck’s engine.

  ‘Yesterday late afternoon, large planes dropped an army of paratroopers at Heraklion and now the city is being bombed. That is all the news I have, Andre.’

  She jumped down from the truck and the women clustered around her.

  ‘Why have the Germans fallen from the sky to fight us?’ old Zenobia asked, wringing arthritic hands in agitation. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

  Other questions came from every side.

  ‘What harm have we done to the Germans?’

  ‘Why do they want Crete? Of what use is our island to them? All we have are olive trees and sheep and goats. Of what use are olive trees, sheep and goats to Germans?’

  ‘Have you news of my daughter? She lives in Yiamalakis Street? She is lame and will not be able to run.’

  ‘Will the Germans come here? Here will they come?’

  ‘Dimitri,’ Aminta Mamalakis said, her lustrous dark eyes full of anxiety. ‘He is with Kyrie Sinclair. Have you news, Ella? Have you news?’

  All the questions were unanswerable. Lifting the orange box from the truck, Ella said, ‘Christos is also with Lewis, and I have no news, Aminta.’

  Aminta gave a sound of anguish and Apollonia, tall for a Cretan and raw-boned, removed the orange box and its sleeping occupant from Ella’s arms, saying, ‘Have you come to leave the baby here, Ella? Are you going back to Archanes?’

  ‘Yes. Agata will look after Kostas Alfred and Tinker for me, and at Archanes I will be near enough to the fighting to be useful.’

  ‘Useful? In what way can you be useful?’ Beneath her canary-coloured head-kerchief, Apollonia’s long, bony face was doubtful. ‘I could fight, but you are not built for fighting.’

  As Agata finally succeeded in barrelling a way through the crush and proprietorially lifted Kostas Alfred into her arms, Ella said, ‘No, I’m not, but I can do basic first aid and the news in Archanes is that the Villa Ariadne at Knossos is being turned into a hospital. I can be useful there – and maybe there I will hear news of Christos.’

  ‘Then may I come with you? I am a very good nurse. Good I am. And I have no family to think about. Rhea will care for my goats. Being as bad-tempered as they are, she gets on well with them, and perhaps at Knossos I may hear news of Pericles.’

  The little house at Archanes was exactly as Ella had left it. There was no note from Christos lying on the table. Archanes itself was crowded with people who had fled the bombing in Heraklion, and on both sides of the road from Archanes to Knossos were streams of people still heading for safety, bundles of possessions piled high on donkeys and mules.

  There was so much frantic activity going on at the Villa Ariadne that Ella scarcely recognized it. The garden, once filled only with antique statuary, palms and large flowering shrubs in giant pots, was now crammed with wounded men.

  Two men in the uniform of the Royal Army Medical Corps were carrying an unconscious Greek soldier on a stretcher into the house, and doing so at a run. Breaking into a trot to keep up with them, Ella said breathlessly, ‘My friend and I are here to help with the nursing. Who do I need to speak to?’

  ‘Anyone in nursing uniform,’ one of the RAMC men said. ‘A nun, a QA, the St John Ambulance woman. Absolutely anyone at all.’

  With Apollonia close beside her, Ella was now in the house. It was even less recognizable than the garden had been. A nun, busy dressing an ashen-faced civilian’s wound, pointed out a Queen Alexandra Corps nursing sister. ‘Speak to her,’ she said as the man she was treating coughed up a great spout of blood.

  The QA sister, equally busy, said brusquely, ‘The St John Ambulance woman will tell you who needs you most.’

  When she was located, the St John Ambulance woman had her back to them and was in urgent conversation with an army surgeon, his gown heavily blood-stained, his operating mask pulled down from his face. She was wearing a bibbed apron over a short-sleeved white shirt and black skirt and, although Ella couldn’t see the front of the apron, she knew it would have an eight-pointed Maltese Cross emblazoned on it. Beneath a nursing cap, the woman’s hair was hidden.

  The second her conversation with the surgeon had come to an end, Ella cleared her throat, about to ask what she and Apollonia could best be doing. Instead, as the woman turned towards her, Ella’s jaw dropped. ‘Daphne! What on earth are you doing here? I thought you were with Kate in Cairo.’

  ‘Well, I’m not in Cairo. And neither is Kate. I’ve had a message from Lewis, saying she’s at Brigade Headquarters. Where is Kostas Alfred?’

  ‘Kalamata, with Agata. Did Lewis have any news of Christos?’

  ‘No. The message came via one of the walking wounded. There was no mention of Christos, and there would have been if anything had happened to him.’

  As she was talking, she was rapidly taking sheets and red Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps blankets from a box of supplies. ‘Other news we’ve had from men being brought in is that the Germans entered the town via the Canea Gate yesterday evening and that overnight they were driven back out – which is why the town is now being bombed. As they can’t get in and take it, they’re trying to destroy it. Here. Take these.’

  She thrust sheets and blankets into Ella’s and Apollonia’s arms. ‘Make up a giant Red Cross flag and put it on the roof. We need to indicate we’re a field hospital and off-limits for mortar and air attacks, and when you’ve done that, go down to the basement. A couple of the bedrooms have been turned into an operating theatre, and other bedrooms are serving as a post-operative ward. You’ll be able to be useful there.’

  And with that Daphne – a totally different Daphne from the carefree, heedless Daphne whom Ella had known for the last ten years – marched off into the melee, to greet a new ambulance load of injured men and decide which should join the throngs of walking wounded and which needed immediate surgical help if their lives were to be saved.

  ‘The flag has to be made up where it’s going to be positioned,’ Ella said to Apollonia and, thankful she knew where the stairs to the roof were, without having to waste time finding out, she led the way to them, her ears ringing with the cries and groans of the injured and her nose assaulted by the hideous smell of blood.

  Up on the roof there was a clear view of a bombing raid in progress over Heraklion and of a plane breaking free from the pack and heading inland towards Knossos.

  ‘Ignore it!’ Ella shouted to Apollonia over the growing roar of its engine. ‘Let’s make up this flag, fast.’

  Apollonia didn’t waste time with speech, but, nodding her agreement, began stretching out sheets in a giant white square.

  In happier days the roof had occasionally been used for sunbathing and there was a scattering of small terracotta tubs on it. As Ella began arranging red blankets in a giant cross on the sheeting, Apollonia anchored each corner of the sheeting with one of the tubs.

  The plane came in so low above them that they both threw themselves flat, their hands over their ears.

  There came the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. It raked the roof, sending spits of concrete high into the air. As it rained down on them one of the pots was hit, exploding into smithereens.

  The whole experience could only have lasted for seconds, but as the plane roared away, heading back out to sea, Ella felt as if those brief seconds had been hours.

  As she shakily rose to her feet there came the sound of someone pelting up the stairs. ‘Ella!’ the person in question shouted. ‘Ella! Are you okay?’

  It was a voice very familiar to her.

  A voice she hadn’t heard in more than three years.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as its owner erupted from the stairs onto the roof. ‘I’m fine, Sa
m. And so is my friend.’

  ‘Thank God!’ His still-boyish face was ashen beneath his RAMC beret. ‘I saw you on the roof, and then that plane came over and some bastard in it began machine-gunning . . .’ He hugged her tight, his voice cracking and breaking. ‘I thought I was going to find you and your friend dead. I’ve never been so scared in all my life, Ella love. Never, ever.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Five days after the landings both Heraklion and its airfield were at a stalemate. Since first gaining the town and then being driven from it, the Germans had made no attempt to retake it. They were only a few miles away, though, in fields and hills to the south and south-west. Along the coast road an entire parachute battalion had dug in at Perivolia, a small village a couple of miles east of Réthymnon, ensuring that Heraklion was completely cut off, not only from Réthymnon, but also from Canea, the next and final city along the coast road – as was all news from Suda Bay and the main airfield at Maleme.

  For the last three days Lewis and Christos had been in the foothills of the mountains, coordinating already-formed bands of partisans in preparation for an all-out effort to help an Australian battalion dislodge the Germans. Leaving Christos to organize the partisan bands higher up in the mountains and avoiding several parties of paratroopers, Lewis was again in Heraklion. There were people he needed to speak to: Brigadier Chappel, for one; and Sholto, for another. He hadn’t seen sight or sound of Sholto since the fighting had begun, and as Sholto hadn’t made for the Canea Gate when the paratroopers had begun landing, Lewis could only assume that he’d headed to help defend the harbour, where fighting had also been prolonged and brutal.

  The bombing that had taken place in his three days’ absence had left swathes of the town in ruins, but by a miracle the museum was still standing and the Morosini fountain was – although battered – still triumphantly intact.

  When Lewis had left to meet the Kapetans of his resistance groups, Pericles and Adonis had been helping soldiers of the Black Watch guard hundreds of Germans who, during the street fighting, had been taken prisoner. The town’s jail was totally inadequate for such numbers and they had been penned into a couple of sealed-off streets.

  The officer in charge of the Black Watch guard gave Lewis a nod and allowed him into the street that Pericles and Adonis were helping to guard. Pericles, his rifle slung over his shoulder, a cigarette in his hand, strode across to him, Adonis in his wake.

  ‘This is old men’s work,’ he said to Lewis bluntly. ‘Both Adonis and I have had enough of it.’

  ‘You won’t be doing it for much longer. I need to make contact with Brigade Headquarters and with Sholto Hertford, if I can track him down. I’ll take Adonis with me and come back for you, then we’ll leave the city and join up with the resistance groups. Where are Dimitri, Angelos and Yanni?’

  ‘They are helping to bury our dead. Earlier Yanni went out on the Knossos road to the Villa Ariadne. Ella is there, and her friend, Daphne. Yanni told Ella that Christos had left the city with you. Nikoleta and Apollonia are also at the Villa.’

  ‘Apollonia?’ Lewis raised an eyebrow questioningly. ‘How on earth . . . ?’

  ‘Ella took the baby to Kalamata and when she returned she had Apollonia with her.’ He dropped his cigarette, grinding it out beneath a booted foot. ‘The Villa is a field hospital and Apollonia is a good nurse.’

  Lewis didn’t doubt it. Despite Apollonia being at least fifteen years older than Pericles, he – like everyone else who knew them – was unsure what their relationship was. Was it still that of landlady and lodger? Was it friendship? Or was it something more? No one knew, and Pericles was obviously not about to clarify it now.

  Lewis shifted his rifle a little more comfortably on his shoulder. ‘If anyone by the name of Hertford comes looking for me, tell him I’ve gone to Brigade Headquarters and he’s to leave word of where I can find him.’

  Pericles nodded and, together with Adonis, Lewis strode back to where he’d left the truck, hoping the road to Brigade Headquarters was going to be as clear of Germans as the road to Knossos apparently was.

  At the Villa Ariadne – and helped greatly by army nurses and Daphne – order had replaced chaos. Although there had been a couple of mortar attacks on the Villa, no serious damage had been caused and no lives lost and, thanks to the blanket and sheet flag on the roof, the Villa hadn’t been strafed again and neither had it been bombed.

  Daphne’s gravest anxiety was that medical supplies – especially anaesthetics – were running dangerously low. It had been expected that by now the RAF would have been able to drop supplies, but the Luftwaffe still had mastery of the skies above Crete and supplies couldn’t be obtained from the larger field hospitals at Réthymnon and Canea, because the only road west was cut off by the German battalion at Perivolia.

  ‘We’ll be down to pentothal sodium and Greek brandy before very long,’ she’d said to Ella, as together they lifted a patient fresh from the Plaster Room onto his bed. ‘What I don’t understand is that if the Germans are at a standstill at Heraklion, how come it isn’t the same situation at Réthymnon and Canea?’

  ‘I reckon it is the same at Réthymnon,’ their patient, a private in the Yorks and Lancs, suddenly said. ‘That’s why there’s such a large battalion of Huns holed up on this side of Réthymnon. Even if they’d taken the town, as they did here, they’ve been driven out, just as they have been at Heraklion; and just like here, they’re on the outskirts, biding their time, waiting until they have access to at least one airfield – and as Maleme is the biggest airfield, my bet is that they’re concentrating on taking Maleme. Once they’ve succeeded, they can then fly fresh troops and artillery in non-stop, around the clock. And once they can do that, the island is theirs.’

  Across the plaster of Paris covering two-thirds of his body, Ella’s and Daphne’s eyes met in horrified understanding. It was simply that the Germans didn’t choose to lose any more men in another attempt to take Heraklion when, once Maleme was taken, the battle for the island would be over.

  Later, when she and Ella again had a few minutes together in which to talk, Daphne said, ‘If our Yorks and Lancs private’s opinion is right – and I have a horrible feeling it is – it means that a gigantic battle is still taking place in and around Maleme.’ She fumbled beneath her apron for the pocket in her skirt and withdrew a packet of cigarettes, which were no longer Sobranies, but Woodbines given to her by a patient. Lighting up, she said in a voice fraught with anxiety, ‘And there’s still no news of Sholto. He knows I’m here. Surely, if he was all right, he would have got word to me saying so? And if he wasn’t all right – if he’d been wounded – then he would have been brought here, wouldn’t he? And as he hasn’t been brought here . . .’

  Before she could express her worst fear and say that perhaps he was dead, Ella said swiftly, ‘I expect, like Christos, he’s left the town. There’s far more going on in the areas around it now than in it.’

  ‘Even though Sam has never met Sholto, if their paths were to cross, his name would ring a bell with him, wouldn’t it? Especially as Sholto’s now wearing Military Intelligence uniform. Next time you see Sam, ask him to ask around for me, Ella.’ There was a break in her voice as she added, her eyes overly bright, ‘Sholto can be a complete bastard at times, but he isn’t so much of a bastard that I want him dead.’

  ‘Of course I’ll ask, but as things are running comparatively smoothly here and as the dressing station at the airfield is still inundated with wounded men – German as well as British, Australian and Greek – I’ve no idea when I’ll see him again.’

  As Daphne went off wearily to relieve a nun in the postoperative ward, Ella, who’d had as little sleep as Daphne over the last week, went back into a room that, once a basement bedroom, was now a frantically busy Plaster Room.

  As she applied stockinette over the upper arm and shoulder of an officer who had been injured in the fight for the Canea Gate, her thoughts were on Sam. On the day he’d raced p
anic-stricken up to the roof, he’d been unable to stay with her long enough for them to have any meaningful conversation. That hadn’t happened until two days later, when he’d had cause to be at the Villa again.

  ‘I’ve half an hour,’ he’d said. ‘Where can we talk without being interrupted?’

  ‘Nowhere here,’ she’d said, ‘but we could go to the palace.’

  ‘The palace?’ His face had been comically blank. ‘What palace?’

  ‘The Palace of Minos.’ Her voice had been thick with amusement. ‘You’re at Knossos, Sam. One of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the world is merely a few hundred yards away.’

  Ella had told the QA nurse she was working with that she wouldn’t be available for half an hour and then had led the way out of the Villa and up the road, into the vast deserted remains of the palace Sir Arthur Evans had discovered nearly half a century ago.

  ‘Crikey!’ Sam had pushed his beret back on his head in astonishment. ‘I’d no idea it covered such a huge area.’

  ‘Six acres, all told,’ she’d said. ‘A good place for an overall view is from the Horns of Consecration, just to the left of the South Propylaeum.’

  ‘Propylaeum? Sorry, Ella love. I’m a doctor, not an archaeologist. What in the name of Glory is a Propylaeum?’

  ‘It’s a grand entranceway.’ She’d shot him a wide smile, amazed at how easy and natural it felt being with him again.

  Companionably they had made their way along the reconstructed foundations of the West Porch and into the gypsum-paved Processional Corridor. As more and more of the labyrinthine remains of the palace – and of Sir Arthur Evans’s reconstructions – came into view, Sam was as awed as she had hoped he would be.