by Leah Fleming
‘We’re not in uniform now.’
‘If you say so,’ she sighed. Her face registered no reaction.
This was hopeless but he wasn’t going to give up on her. He couldn’t let her wander the streets in this state. She’d not last the night.
Why did he feel such an overwhelming instinct to protect her? She’d lost that brittle shell of competence and he feared for her sanity. Penelope had seen and suffered too much. He’d seen that look on the stunned faces of his stricken paratroopers on that first descent. It was the face of war.
June 2001
I sat in the back of the car trying to breathe. My heart was thumping with anticipation. Would she be there? Would she remember me? What if they were out? I’d tried to rationalize all the scenarios and obstacles.
Finding Yolanda was easy, once I returned to Etz Hayyim and apologized for my rudeness. Yolanda had never come back into Chania, not since the roundup. She lived in a village in the Apokoronas district on her son’s farm. Yes, she was still alive. That was all the guide could glean.
‘I think she gave an interview, many years ago, but I’ve never seen it. You could ask our director here, Nikos Stavroulakis, but he is on holiday.’
Then Victoria from the hotel rang, true to her word, with information about Cyclops and his wife. Her uncle knew the village. No one can disappear in northwest Crete, everyone knows someone who knows, and cities are made up of little villages too.
I dressed with care, knowing how traditional Cretan families like formality on big occasions, smart in my best silk dress and sunhat. We set off mid-morning and as we snaked over the newly cut roads I marvelled how I’d roamed these hills, lean, tough-limbed, thinking nothing of a steep climb. I had indeed been a mountain goat.
The mountains were strangers to me now and I wondered if I had passed anywhere close to where Bruce had fought or died? Now they all looked the same, browning in the dry heat, just a few of the higher peaks covered in snow. This was my home for so many years – how could I have forgotten the majesty of these high peaks?
Lois and Alex were in charge of the map. Alex had his camera at the ready on the lookout for more shrines and crosses for me to translate. I only hoped Yolanda would be able to understand my now faltering Greek.
What if she was forgetful and losing her marbles? No more forgetful than you, I chided myself for such an ungracious thought, but I was nervous, nervous. Was it right to be intruding on her life after all this time? What if she didn’t want reminding of the past?
I’d been content to put it all behind me. It was only Lois’s pushing that got me back here and now I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to soak in all the beauty and majesty as if for the first time. We were so busy keeping our heads down, there wasn’t time for much star-gazing during the occupation.
‘This is the village.’ Alex pointed to the sign. ‘We have to look for a track to the left. Stop! Up there . . .’
I could see in the distance a familiar outline of a whitewashed cube house with a flat roof, but by its side was a tall three-storey modern villa, painted a golden ochre hue. The drive up to it was rough and we crunched and bumped our way to a cacophony of barking dogs heralding our arrival. I could hardly move for excitement and nerves. ‘Oh, please God, she’s at home.’
Yolanda was bending over the last of her globe artichokes in the vegetable patch she’d carved out of a side field on the farm. It was protected from marauding sheep and goats by a stone wall and wire fencing. There were roses planted round the borders for colour and scent. She gave them plenty of manure and they rewarded her with blooms the size of dinner plates.
Young Andreas, her grandson, had fixed a hose-piped irrigation system that kept things surviving the worst of droughts. Here she could lose herself, weeding, hoeing, checking the tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis and the potato crop. There were always jobs to do in her garden, even if she was getting slower and slower at finishing them.
She stood up, hearing the dogs barking. It wasn’t the day for the fish van. Perhaps someone was here to see her son-in-law or one of the builders coming to finish off the paving round their new villa. Her eyes weren’t so good now and she couldn’t see why the dogs were making such a racket.
Yolanda rubbed her gnarled hands on her old apron, wiped her brow and tucked wispy bits of white hair under her headscarf. She was not in a fit state to receive visitors, not that she had many, since most of her old village cronies were waiting for her in the cemetery.
She secured the gate to her garden and made her way to the parked car, not a truck but a town vehicle. A woman was standing staring at her, tall, thin, in a dress the colour of ripe aubergines, a sunhat covered her face. She was clutching the hand of a young boy as if unsure of her footing.
‘Is this the house of Kyria Androulaki, Kyria Yolanda?’ the older woman said in halting Greek. She stepped forward and took off her sunglasses and hat. ‘Yassou, Yolanda.’
‘Yassas,’ she replied politely. There was something in the way this woman pronounced her name, not in a Greek way but in the way she’d heard so long ago. Her heart began to race. She looked closely into the dark eyes. Surely not . . . It couldn’t be . . . ‘Penelope? Is that you?’
They stared at each other, smiling, their bodies had shrunk and aged but the smile, the voice, the eyes, those never changed.
‘You came back. I thought, you had died.’ Yolanda screamed, her hands flung into the air.
‘I thought you were gone too . . .’ Suddenly they were clinging to each other, tears, hugs, both trying to speak at the same time. Such a momentous unexpected reunion after all this time.
How long we sat there just holding hands and smiling, I’ve no idea. So much to say and yet so much left unsaid. We were taken round to a shady pergola dripping with vines and budding grapes where Yolanda sat us down, brought a jug of the most refreshing lemonade and a plate of almond biscuits that Alex wolfed down.
I introduced my family, and Yolanda’s daughter arrived with her daughter to greet us.
This is Sarika and Dimitra. I have another daughter in America. She lives in Chicago, a doctor married to a doctor. She’s called Penelope.’
I was shocked that she had named her daughter after me. I felt honoured and ashamed at the same time. ‘You have photographs of them?’
She smiled. ‘Of course, and of my grandsons, Toni and Andreas. My husband died in 1948 in the troubles . . . a widow for many years, but the land has been good to us. And my children too.’ She turned to smile at them, then turned back to me. ‘And you, you married?’
Lois was quick to come to my rescue. ‘My aunt nursed in Africa until she was seventy, didn’t you?’ Her Greek was basic but she was making herself understood.
‘You and I will talk together. There is much to say, I think, and you must all stay and eat tonight . . .’
Lois shook her head. ‘Alex and I must go out this evening, but I can pick Pen up later.’
‘Tomorrow, then, you will all dine with us.’ It was an order.
‘Of course, that will be wonderful.’
‘My son will drive her back tonight then,’ Yolanda declared.
I sat in a stupor of heat and daze, soaking in the view from the farm that now I remembered as if it were yesterday; being a reluctant guest at that joyous party in such dark times; dancing at the wedding that I had been able to attend, tables spread with bright cloths, the music players in the corner, everyone in national costumes and that wonderful moment discovering that Yolanda was the bride. How strange to be reunited once again in the very same place.
Sarika took the others off to see her new villa, leaving Yolanda and me alone at last. We stared at each other.
‘Where do we start? I have so many things to tell you,’ I offered. ‘But they are not easy to say after all these years.’
‘And I have things to tell you,’ she replied. ‘Sad things, you may not want to hear.’
‘One thing first, Yolanda,’ I blurted. My curiosity couldn’t
wait a moment longer. ‘Was it you who left the flowers on Bruce’s grave?’
She smiled. ‘You saw them. Sarika takes them every year on his anniversary but this time we put special ones for the anniversary. Was it that . . . ?’
I nodded. ‘I knew it had to be someone who knew him. I never dared hope that it was you. I thought you’d been taken in the roundup. I have to tell you . . .’
She reached out for my hand. ‘Not now, not yet. Let’s enjoy just sitting a while before we dip into those dark waters. You disappeared and I heard you were deported too. I waited for a letter that never came and I thought you’d forgotten us here.’
‘Never. I was ill after the war, a breakdown, not myself. I just wanted to forget everything but if I had thought for one minute you’d survived . . .’
‘I didn’t know what happened to my parents for a long time. I had to put it to the back of my mind, and when the truth came out, how the ship was sunk . . .’
‘I was there on the ship . . . I escaped. It’s a terrible thing to survive when your friends don’t.’ There was no holding this back from her now but I was floundering, knowing everything I told her would be painful. But Yolanda was tough and took control.
‘Come and see my garden, see what you think of my little paradise. When I am sad or tired of being a widow I sit out there and look out onto the hills that never change. They feed my soul. You must try my thyme honey, the best in the Apokoronas.’
We strolled across, linking arms in friendship, drinking in the joy of this reunion, this reward for me risking the journey back.
How could I translate into Greek that old adage that women of a certain age turn to God or their garden and some to both, I suspect?
We kept to safe ground, talking around gardening, the little victories and disasters that plagued our efforts, the olive harvest, good ones and bad, locust attacks, drought and too much rain at the wrong time. I marvelled at how much she could grow outdoors that I had to grow under glass in England. Both of us were aware that we were tiptoeing around the edges of a murky pool of memories, unsure how much to share, not wanting to break the spell of being together again. What remained of our friendship into old age? I was bursting to hear how she had survived and she was curious as to what I had made of my life.
We talked about her visits to the States to see her daughter. She returned to Salonika, where she was born, only once but she was now as rooted to this place as I now was to Stokencourt. Funny how there were no men in our lives apart from family ties. I talked about my brother and sister and their children, about Athene’s early death from leukaemia and how her daughter, Lois, had become so important in my life. How I’d returned to England in bad shape after the war before I pulled myself together and forged a career abroad.
Later, after a delicious lunch from her garden plot, we sat in the shade, exhausted by all the talking.
Lois and Alex made their way home to Kalyves and I was happy just to be sharing this precious time together under the olive tree. I wondered when to confess what I knew, knowing the only way to begin was to dive right in the deep end and get it over with.
‘I met your parents. I went to visit them. I just wanted them to know you were well. I hope I did right.’
She didn’t look at me but kept staring ahead. ‘How did it go? Did they ask after me?’
‘They missed you very much. It was hard for them to accept your decision but they were relieved to know you were safe and happy in your marriage.’
What else could I say to comfort her? I didn’t lie. I just stretched the truth a little.
‘I did come down to Chania but it was too late,’ she said. ‘They were already looting the Jewish quarter. I lost my baby at five months, a little boy. They hid me in the Red Cross clinic. There was a list of Jews living outside Chania, even those converted to Christianity, and I think they took them all. They came here and ransacked the place, stole the flock, burned the crops.’ Yolanda paused. ‘Bad, bad times . . . but why were you on that ship?’
‘I made a scene. I had false papers. I was deported, but when someone was injured, they sent for me and I was on deck when the torpedoes hit the Tanais. We were flung off the ship into the water and picked up by the escort vessel. I thought you were in the hold.’ I found myself crying, not wanting to speak further of that night or why I had been spared.
Yolanda fingered her wedding band with a sigh. ‘It was a better fate than the ovens of Auschwitz. That is my only comfort – that they were spared such terror. I have only one photo of them, nothing of us together. I’ve tried to tell my children about them but the young aren’t interested, only Penny in Chicago. Would you believe she married back into the faith, to Lionel, so the circle of life goes on? I hope my parents would be blessed by that.’
‘You have not seen Etz Hayyim then?’ I asked. ‘It is beautifully restored.’
‘No, I won’t go back ever. I prefer to remember it all as it once was. I have no faith now, not in that way.’
I felt the shutters go down. The pain of these memories was too much to share.
‘Come, let’s go and tell the news to the bees in the field,’ she said. ‘It’s time they knew our story. I’ll find you a veil and cover up. We’ve all the time in the world to share our news.’
Yolanda couldn’t take her eyes off Penny. She looked so elegant, straight-backed and lean. Four children had taken their toll on her own figure; her skin was leathered by the sun. When Andreas was shot in the civil war she went into mourning and had never come out of grey or black, as was the custom. She saved colour for flowers and ornaments, the bright woven rugs and furnishings of her room.
Penny looked so bright, and much younger than she did, but they had lived in different times and climates. There was so much Yolanda wanted to know about Penny’s life in England, where it rained and was always green, but first she must tell her about Panayotis. She must dig deep into her past and pull out those bits that would give her comfort in the same way she guessed Penny had shielded her from the horrors of her parents’ deaths.
So many sorrows and disappointments were soothed by children and family ties. She hoped Penny had a good supply of this too. She kept touching her hand to check she was real and not some ghost that was tricking her mind. She had known old people close to their end who see all their relatives long gone as if they were still living.
They were sitting under the olive tree with the lantern, watching moths flickering to the light, listening to the last of the cicadas as the day cooled. Her son, Toni, and Sarika’s husband came to pay their respects, then disappeared to watch football on the television.
Perhaps now it was time to speak of the old days and that visit to Andreas’ camp before the ambush. ‘Andreas was so angry with me for coming alone and we rowed. I left at first light but the “black cattle”, as we called the enemy, were coming up the hill and I hid. I didn’t know there were two groups. Andreas’s band got the worst of the attack and fled, but the second group caught the enemy by surprise. It was a shoot out and men were wounded in the crossfire. One of them was their leader, Panayotis.’
Yolanda paused. ‘I knew who he was and what he meant to you. I was with him and made him comfortable. There was no hope of moving him so I sat with him and tried to speak a little English and he had good Greek. He knew I was your friend. “How is she?” he asked. “Penny?” I told him you were safe with friends. “Ah, Ike and Katrina, I have stayed there, in the hole near Clarence . . . ” he said. He was delirious, in and out of consciousness, but suddenly he woke and clutched my hand. “Tell Penny, Bruce’s box with Clarence . . .” That is what he said, but it made no sense. He was beginning to struggle for breath and I made him comfortable. He died with your name on his lips, as I pray Andreas died knowing he was in my heart for ever.’
Penny gripped her chair and then put her hands to her head. ‘Thank you. I didn’t know where he died or that he was killed until I got home to Britain. Though I had a feeling there would never be a
ny future for us.’
‘I left the flowers because I knew you would have wanted me to do this. It was the least we could do. He was a good man, full of life, a brave leader. His kind will never be forgotten here.’
‘But I forgot him. I was so angry and mixed up. I didn’t want to think about him. I didn’t even know he was buried here. I am so ashamed, but what did he mean about Clarence? Are you sure that’s what he said?’
Yolanda nodded. ‘I wrote it down so I would never forget in case you returned. It’s not a name we know, not a saint’s name.’
‘It was my uncle’s name, my mother’s oldest brother. He was round and jolly and spent his life on horseback. His skin was like creased leather. Good Lord! He meant the olive tree. Clarence, the old olive tree. I was thinking about that only the other day.’
Penny was not making any sense as she stood up. ‘When I lived with Ike and Katrina, there was this huge old tree with a face in its bark. I called it Clarence. Bruce and I . . . He left a box?’ She turned to Yolanda. ‘Could it possibly be there after sixty years? I’ve no idea where the house was.’
‘I do. Ike’s house was burned to the ground like all the others in the district when the enemy retreated into Chania, before the end. They scorched all the surrounding villages so the partisans couldn’t find refuge there, but I can take you there tomorrow. You will stay here tonight, no point in going back. We have a phone: you can ring your niece. Tell her to come back too so we can all go and see what may be hiding there.’
Penny was too tired to protest. She was lost in thought for her lover.
‘I never got to say goodbye to him and now you tell me these things. It’s hard to take all this in. We’re two of a kind, you and I, our lives so entwined by all these terrible things.’
‘And good things, too. We had some wonderful parties. Come, it’s late and tomorrow we’ll rise early. Sarika will drive us to where I think you need to go and we’ll take a spade, just in case. He said a box – I’m sure something will be there still.’
