Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure

by Artemis Cooper

  At the lectern Paddy had a carafe and a glass, from which he took repeated sips as he told the story. When it was nearly empty, he refilled it from the carafe. A roar of approval went up from the crowd as what remained in the glass turned milky-white – Paddy had been drinking neat ouzo. The lecture was a huge success, and from then on, Paddy talked no more about British culture. At a time when the Communist press was doing everything possible to stir up anti-British feeling, lecturing on the Kreipe Operation was the most useful thing he could do. As one American officer put it to Maurice Cardiff, ‘he’s the best bit of propaganda you’ve got.’18

  Everything became more comfortable and more fun once Paddy and Joan had met up with Xan Fielding in the Peloponnese. He had come to Greece as part of an international observation team, set up to oversee the revision of electoral registers and supervise the elections. With his work done, Xan was now on a spell of prolonged leave and had managed to borrow an army jeep.

  The three of them drove to Kalamata, where the summer heat was fierce, and found a table by the waterfront. ‘The stone flags of the water’s edge … flung back the heat like a casserole with the lid off. On a sudden, silent, decision we stepped down fully dressed into the sea carrying the iron table a few yards out and then our three chairs, on which, up to our waists in cool water, we sat round the neatly laid table-top, which now seemed by magic to be levitated three inches above the water.’19 Their waiter had no hesitation in wading into the sea to serve them their grilled fish, while the neighbouring diners, delighted by this spectacle, sent can after can of retsina to their table.

  When they reached Crete, they were treated like heroes. Paddy and Xan lectured first in Heraklion, then Chania. In both cities the cinemas they appeared in were packed, and everyone wanted to shake their hands. The most physically stressful part of the journey, however, was their triumphal cavalcade through the villages of the White Mountains and the Amari, as they made their way slowly back to Heraklion. Joan was a traveller who took heat, cold, discomfort, bad food and fleas in her stride, but she almost collapsed under the abundance of Cretan hospitality.

  We had had days and days of feasting and drinking, everyone in each village trying to give us a meal, so the moment we had finished coffee in one house we started with sikoudia again at the next, and as they had all killed their best lamb or chicken it was impossible to refuse. The families that we couldn’t go to stood on the road with trays of raki and meze (usually a bit of old goat’s head) and we had to have a drink from each one. No sleep, of course, lyras, dancing, singing and drinking all night, feux de joie and indeed whenever our cavalcade arrived in a new village, it sounded as though a battle was going on. It was the most glorious journey and so moving to see how much Paddy and Xan were loved …20

  The Communist papers did their worst. This lecture tour was just another propaganda exercise, to cover up the fact that Paddy and Xan were little better than spies. The death of Yanni Tzangarakis was dragged up again, only now the truth was out: he had not been killed by Germans but by Paddy, probably because Yanni knew ‘all the secrets of the English’. Paddy felt he had to see Kanaki again, to try and explain events once more. He arranged to meet Xan and Joan at the Villa Ariadne at Knossos, now safely back in the hands of the British School of Archaeology. Asking the taxi to wait on the Rethymno road, Paddy walked up to Photineou and Kanaki’s house, which was high on the mountainside. Paddy knocked and went in. ‘He stood up saying, “What do you seek here Mihali? We are not friends,” laying his two first fingers on the butt of the pistol in his sash. It was no good, so I left, very sad.’21

  After a few days on Santorini they went to Rhodes, where Lawrence Durrell was living with his second wife, Eve Cohen, in the Villa Cleobolus – a little house almost submerged in a tangled garden, within which was a Turkish graveyard. ‘It was an amazing sojourn, spent in talk and music and feasting,’ wrote Paddy. ‘Strange things always happened in his company and one afternoon, in the ruins of ancient Camirus, wine-sprung curiosity set the four of us crawling on hands and knees through the bat-infested warren of underground conduits. We climbed out covered in droppings and dust and cobwebs …’22

  With their clothes so torn and filthy, it seemed like a good idea to take them off. They walked on naked, and came across a stone that looked just like a sacrificial altar. A tableau was made, photographed by Joan: Paddy lay across the stone and Larry held the sacrificial victim’s penis, while beetle-browed Xan wielded an enormous knife. Then, still naked, they walked along the top of a high wall, which enclosed a series of twelve-foot Doric columns that once supported a ceiling. Someone dared Xan to jump on to the top of the nearest column, which stood two yards clear of the wall. Xan didn’t think twice. A tremendous leap and he was there, ‘while the [column] rocked frighteningly on its stylobate for several seconds’.23 He struck an Eros pose, immortalized in another photograph by Joan whom Durrell called ‘The Corn Goddess’. As for Paddy, he was described as ‘a wonderful mad Irishman … quite the most enchanting maniac I’ve ever met’.24

  They were back in Athens when, in early November, General Müller and General Bräuer were sent to stand trial. As they had commanded the forces of occupation in Crete Paddy was curious to see them, and he and Joan attended the initial proceedings in the public gallery. Here they were recognized by a journalist, who insisted that Paddy meet the two defendants. He was taken through to a lobby full of lawyers and officers of the court, where the two well-guarded generals sat on a bench.

  The journalist introduced Paddy as the English major who had kidnapped General Kreipe. General Müller, who had killed so many Cretans and who had been the original target of the operation, looked up. ‘Mich hätten sie nicht so leicht geschnappt,’ he said with a smile.25 ‘You would not have snatched me so easily.’ Considering that the generals were staring death in the face, they looked far more self-possessed than Paddy, who was overcome with nerves and embarrassment. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered them round, but had no matches. General Bräuer had, and as he lit Paddy’s cigarette, Paddy noticed that his hands were perfectly steady. The two generals were interested to meet him. They said they had known there were some British officers up in the mountains, and asked questions about SOE’s organization. When Paddy left, they said, ‘Come and visit us in prison.’ They were found guilty in December, were sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad in May the following year. Paddy was unhappy that Bräuer had suffered the same fate as Müller, for he was nowhere near as brutal or sadistic a commander.

  Paddy’s time at the British Council was almost over. He was summoned to Steven Runciman’s office. While acknowledging that the lecture tour had been successful propaganda, Runciman added that it had been a considerable expense to the Council. His services were no longer required. ‘I’m leaving in about a fortnight,’ Paddy wrote to Lawrence Durrell on 18 December, ‘feeling angry, fed up, and older than the rocks on which I sit. Fucking shits.’26

  By the end of 1946, no one was in any doubt that the Greek civil war was intensifying. The Communists, now rebranded as the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), had about 16,000 partisans, supported by Yugoslavia and Albania, though not the USSR: Stalin gave them no support at all, beyond some encouraging noises for the DSE in the press. He was happy to leave Greece to the British and Americans, and in return expected no interference in his takeovers of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, the Baltic States and Bulgaria.

  In one sense, Paddy lost his job with the British Council at just the right moment. While in Greece in 1946, he had seen the graffiti on the walls, the newspaper reports of atrocities committed by either side, the impassioned leaflets. Now the Greek army, supported by the British, were fighting the Communists in Epirus, Thessaly and the Peloponnese. Paddy’s departure, however painful to him, meant that he did not have to watch Greece tearing itself apart.

  12

  The Caribbean

  Back in London in early 1947, Paddy, Joan and Xan installed themselves
in a topsy-turvy flat immediately above Heywood Hill’s bookshop, not far from Paddy’s old stamping ground of Shepherd Market. In his mind this period came to resemble a ‘never-ending party’ at the Gargoyle Club, which acted as a second home for some of the most interesting people in London. Among those milling about in the cigarette smoke were Dylan Thomas, who was supposed to be working at his cottage in Wales; artists including Lucian Freud, John Minton and Ben Nicholson; Cyril Connolly, Peter Quennell, the philosopher Freddy Ayer and the poet Stephen Spender, whom Paddy had met through Costa; and Robert Kee, who was at that point working as a journalist for Picture Post.

  Another engaging friend from this period was Philip Toynbee, once a Communist but still a wild idealist, whose intellect was as prodigious as his intake of alcohol, and who like Paddy had been in the Intelligence Corps during the war. After one epic evening at the Gargoyle, he dossed down in the flat. ‘He woke up, utterly at sea as to where he was. It had been a late evening … He stayed two or three days, which we spent talking and pub-crawling …’ On another occasion, they had both Philip and Dylan Thomas tucked up on their sofa. ‘It was a marvellously exhilarating time: hangovers were drowned like kittens the following morning in a drink called either a Dog’s Nose or a Monkey’s Tail: a pint of beer with a large gin or vodka slipped into it, which worked wonders.’1

  That Easter Paddy and Joan took a bicycling holiday in the south of France, aiming for the great gathering of gypsies and the horse fair at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargue. The town was so crowded with horses, gypsies and tourists that at one point they thought they might have to sleep out in the open; in the end they slept head-to-toe with another couple in the only bed they managed to find. Paddy wandered among the gypsies, trying out his Rumanian with varying degrees of success and attempting, if not to learn, then at least to get to grips with the basic elements of Roma. For all that, the fair was a disappointment: the gypsies he saw in the Camargue were not as wild as those he had seen in Rumania before the war.

  Over the coming months, he began to get an idea of just how much Rumania had been weakened. Heavily backed by Moscow, the Rumanian Communists had taken power in 1945 and set about turning the country into a Soviet satellite. Its resources were stripped for the benefit of the Soviet Union while its people were infiltrated at every level by the secret police. Ci-devant aristocrats like the Cantacuzenes were described as ‘elements of putrid background’,2 to be ostracized and closely watched.

  Since Rumania was an enemy country during the war, Paddy and Balasha had been unable to exchange letters. The one he wrote to her in June 1947 was sent through Bill Bentinck, whose post as Ambassador to Poland was about to end in scandal.fn1 Paddy’s letter had reached Rumania in the diplomatic bag, addressed to Iris Springfield, a friend of Balasha’s who worked in the British Legation. For Balasha, this was the first direct news of Paddy since 1940. However, she had heard of his military achievements, and his medals, from Tony Kendall – with whom Paddy had spent Christmas 1934 in Burgas, recovering from malaria. She had no illusions that their pre-war affair would revive in the post-war world, and was happy that he had found Joan. She wrote him a long letter in July, telling him what had happened since they had parted in 1939.

  Balasha had survived the long, arid years since their parting living mostly in Bucharest, with her friend and cousin, Alexander Mourouzi, whose estate at Golásei was close to Băleni. A violent earthquake in 1940 had destroyed most of the lovely house that Paddy had known; but although it had been partially repaired, the estate was ruined. The Communists had confiscated all the Cantacuzene lands, supposedly for redistribution among the peasants, but the peasants were no better off; in fact they were starving. ‘This is the third bad crop,’ wrote Balasha. ‘The whole village is dying of hunger. They have been eating boiled acacia leaves at Băleni … There is absolutely no hope to live on [sic] the land now. Every day there is a new requisition, or arbitrary measure – we are forced to till the land, yet our horses, tractors, sowing and mowing machines have all been taken, the oxen also. Those who have sheep are forced to give up all the wool. There is no hope wherever you turn …’

  She and Mourouzi were doing everything they could to escape Rumania. ‘It will be extremely difficult,’ she continued, ‘not only when we get somewhere else, but to leave here at all. Sometimes, Paddy, I wake with such a burning, jumping in my stomach at the idea of getting out. We have tried so often. Now, building a small craft, we hope to leave in a month’s time. The expense is terrific, yet we’re ready to spend our last penny on it.’3 They hoped the boat would take them to the Turkish coast, after which they would make their way into Greece – although by then they would have nothing left to live on. Balasha begged Paddy to alert all her friends, so they could send whatever money they could spare to Athens.

  In the second week of August, Balasha and Alexander sailed out into the Black Sea from a place near Costineşti, south of Constanța. Accompanied by a sailor who had agreed to take them to Turkey, they had gone little more more than a few hundred metres when they saw a light, heard a motor boat approaching, and their hopes of escaping Rumania were dashed. They were arrested and imprisoned. Mourouzi was lucky not to have been sent to work on the Danube–Black Sea Canal, a useless trench in which over 100,000 ‘undesirables’ died. Balasha was held in a cell with ten other women, with little water and almost no food. She was released two weeks later without explanation, as was Mourouzi. ‘I’m still afraid of being taken again,’ she wrote to Paddy on 6 September. ‘Those two weeks were hell. We fathomed the horror of human nature at its worst.’ There was very little food outside prison too; and this, combined with the failure of their escape and her dread of incarceration, had left her in a state of profound anxiety and depression.

  No letters exist from Paddy to Balasha at this time – the earliest dates from 1948, and is addressed to Alexander Mourouzi, who evidently still hoped to escape with Balasha to Greece. Paddy told him that all Balasha’s friends were being mobilized and ‘together, we shall be able to scrape up something – but so horribly little compared to what is needed … I beg you not to think that, just because I am nicely established on this side, I lack the imagination to understand … the difficulties you face, and the humiliations and miseries that surround you.’4

  In London in the summer of 1947, Paddy was looking for a publisher who might give him an advance on the book he still planned to write on Greece. Peter Quennell introduced him to the Cornhill’s owner and publisher John Grey Murray, known to his friends as Jock. The firm of John Murray had been founded in 1768, Jock being the sixth to bear the name in direct descent. The second John Murray had published Jane Austen, Walter Scott and Byron; while the third had published Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. When Jock joined the firm it was famous for its scholarly Handbooks, indispensable for the serious traveller; but he soon developed a keen eye for up-and-coming authors. Freya Stark, Kenneth Clark and John Betjeman were all in the Murray stable, as was Osbert Lancaster. Jock was a man of great charm and humour; but the main reason he attracted and kept such talent was that he was the perfect publisher. In the age before the literary agent he did everything he could for his authors, being willing to act as banker, promoter, psychiatrist, pen-pal or editor as occasion demanded.

  On 27 August 1947, Jock Murray wrote himself the following memo:

  PLF called. I said that we would be very interested in the possibility of the book of his Greek travels, and that it seemed wise to intersperse his war experiences through a travel book rather than to write a book on War Exploits. He is going to work out a table of contents with a rough synopsis of what the chapters would contain, and an Introduction … There is no doubt that he can write though sometimes rather incoherently. The main problem will be to get such a book into some shape and to give it a sense of purpose.

  Soon after that, another opportunity emerged. The publisher Lindsay Drummond had commissioned Paddy’s friend Costa Achillopoulos to produce a book o
f photographs of the islands of the Caribbean. Costa was looking for a congenial travelling companion who would write the photo captions and text for the book, as well as spin-off articles to help finance the trip. He urged Paddy to join him and when he protested that he did not have the funds, Costa replied that he could have the whole of Lindsay Drummond’s advance – which came to £250. It was too good an opportunity to miss, especially since Joan decided to come too.

  On 30 September, Jock Murray saw Paddy again, now preparing for his journey to the Caribbean. ‘He has not had time to do the synopsis or any more writing on the [Greek] book before he leaves for South America. So it will have to hold over for the present.’5

  One other thing happened between the time he came back from Greece and left for the Caribbean: a catastrophe hardly comparable to what had happened to Balasha, but which could have been avoided altogether. It concerned the two trunks which he had left with Catherine d’Erlanger before the war. They had contained rolled-up paintings by Balasha, all the letters he had written to his mother between the Hook of Holland and Istanbul, sheaves of sketches that he had sent back to her for safekeeping, and possibly one or two of the diaries he had written at the time. But while Paddy was fighting with the resistance in occupied Crete, the Baroness had sold her house in London and moved to New York. She wrote to Paddy, telling him that the trunks had been sent for safekeeping to Harrods Depository in Hammersmith. He had never received the letter.