Beyond the Olive Grove: An absolutely gripping and heartbreaking WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  “I’m sorry, but I should get back to Iousidous,” she finally said. “I don’t want the shopping to spoil.”

  “Of course,” Andreas said. “I’m sorry to have delayed you.”

  They were just climbing back into his truck when Ava’s mobile phone trilled tinnily. Surprised, she dug it out of her handbag and flipped it open.

  “I didn’t think there was reception here—” she said, only to stop, her heart seeming to freeze in her chest, as she looked at the number on the luminous little screen. It was Simon.

  Andreas glanced across at Ava as he started the engine of his truck. “Ava? Are you all right? You look as if—what is the expression?—you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “It’s nothing.” The screen of her mobile had darkened as the call went to her voicemail. Ava slipped her phone back into her handbag. Her fingers were shaking. Simon.

  Undoubtedly he’d rung to check whether she’d arrived safely. Typical Simon. He would have expected her to run into trouble—and even if she had, it still annoyed and touched her all at once. Ava knew she was being contrary to feel even the slightest bit irritated by his solicitude. Some part of her would have rather he was too hurt or angry to call; his concern bordered, absurdly perhaps, on indifference, just a man doing his tedious duty. It made her wonder if he’d ever loved her at all. The breakdown of their marriage had left him so unruffled, so utterly unaffected. Ringing her—speaking to her—was not a torment, the way it would be for her. It was just something to tick off on his to-do list.

  “It should only take a few minutes to drive to Iousidous,” Andreas said, pulling Ava back into the present. “I don’t think your shopping will spoil.”

  “Oh… good.” With effort she made herself think about everyday things, about her shopping in the back of Andreas’s truck and the bright blue sky stretching out ahead of them. “Thank you,” she added belatedly. “This is really very kind of you.”

  Andreas lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “It is nothing,” he said, a phrase Ava was beginning to recognize—and slightly resent.

  It is something, she wanted to say. It means something to me. She didn’t want it to be nothing. She really needed to get a handle on her emotions. She knew Andreas was being nothing but kind.

  “I am happy to welcome you to our small corner of the world,” he added. “Perhaps we will see more of each other.”

  He gave her a tentative, sideways smile that, after a second’s hesitation, Ava returned. She supposed, in such a small place, they would see more of each other, although she did not know whether Andreas meant that they might see each other intentionally.

  Back in Iousidous, Andreas helped Ava unload her shopping into the house. Under a stranger’s scrutiny Ava was acutely conscious of just how dilapidated the place really was. She thought of Andreas’s villa, with its sweeping views and airy spaciousness, and gave a self-conscious laugh. “It’s not much, I know. And it needs a good clean.”

  “It was your grandmother’s house?”

  “Yes, but she left right after the war.”

  “As did many people. At least she survived it.”

  “Your family was here then?” Ava asked, remembering he’d said something about his olive grove being in his family’s possession for a hundred years. Andreas nodded.

  “My father was just a boy at the time.”

  “I wonder if he knew my grandmother.”

  “I would ask him, but he died five years ago,” Andreas replied with a small, sad smile. “And he never spoke of the war. No one does.”

  Just as Eleni had said. Clearly finding anything out about her grandmother was going to be very difficult indeed. People were friendly and open here, but not about the past.

  “It was an awful time,” Ava offered hesitantly, for she was keenly aware that she had absolutely no idea of what she was talking about.

  “Yes, and we Greeks prefer to act as if it didn’t happen. If we don’t like it, it does not exist.” He smiled faintly, and Ava smiled back, her heart twisting inside her. If only that could be true. “If you need any furniture,” he continued, “we might have some pieces—”

  “I’m having a few things delivered,” Ava said quickly. She felt reluctant to accept any more of Andreas’s generosity. “Any moment now, actually. And in any case, I don’t know how long I’ll be here.” It sounded like a warning.

  Andreas raised his eyebrows. “You did not buy a return ticket?”

  “No, but I’ll have to go back at some point.” Ava tried to keep her voice light. “You always do, don’t you?”

  “I hope so.” Andreas glanced away. “I hope you can always go back.”

  Curiosity flared inside her. He sounded so wistful, and even sad. Still she did not press. She wasn’t about to ask for more personal details. She knew how excruciating it could be to have them prised from you.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, awkwardly, for it sounded like a dismissal, which she supposed it was.

  “I am happy to help,” Andreas said. “I will change your tire, yes? And perhaps drive you back out to collect it.”

  “Oh, right…” In a welter of embarrassment Ava realized she’d forgotten about the car. “That would be fantastic.”

  “I’ll be back in a little while?” he said, eyebrows raised expectantly, and Ava nodded.

  “Brilliant. Thank you.”

  What, she wondered as Andreas left the house, would she have done without these people? By this time she’d probably have been on a plane back to Manchester Airport.

  She sank on top of a cardboard box that held her new dishes, and let out a long, slow sigh. She was utterly grateful for the help Andreas and Eleni had given her, but it still somehow made her feel miserable. Pathetic. She slipped her mobile out of her bag and stared at the screen. No messages. Before she could even consider whether to ring Simon back now or not, a quick knock sounded at the door and Eleni poked her head in.

  “Was that Andreas Lethikos here?” she asked, eyes bright with shrewd curiosity.

  “Yes—”

  “How do you know him already?”

  Quickly Ava explained about her car. Eleni looked both interested and impressed. “He is a good man, Andreas. Sad about his wife.” Ava didn’t ask about that; surely Andreas’s widowed status was none of her business. Eleni must have sensed her reluctance, for she put her hands on her hips and glanced around at the piles of boxes and bags. “You buy everything you need?”

  “And then some. Lamia was lovely. I’m having a bunch of things delivered—”

  “Spiro turned the power on while you were gone.” Smiling triumphantly, Eleni flicked the switch and the living room was bathed in electric light.

  Ava blinked, heartened by this small sign of modern life. “Oh, Eleni, thank you. That’s wonderful.” She smiled, awkward again with the sense of beholden gratitude. “You’ve done so much for me already.”

  Eleni shrugged. “It is good to have more young people here. For however long.” She gave Ava an openly speculative look that Ava chose to ignore. She knew Eleni was curious about her marriage, and why she was in Greece alone, but she also knew she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  “There is a picnic up at the church, after services on Sunday. It is an important day—Greek Independence Day. You know it?”

  Ava shook her head, realizing that she knew very little about Greek history.

  “We celebrate our freedom from the Turks. The Ottoman. And it is also the feast day of the…” Eleni paused, clearly searching for a word. “The Annunciation of the Theotokos.” Ava stared at her blankly, and for a second Eleni looked both amused and just a tiny bit annoyed. “The Virgin? The Mother of God?”

  “Oh, right.” She did not know about any special days in the church calendar except Christmas and Easter. But maybe the Church of England didn’t celebrate the Annunciation.

  “You come?” Eleni prompted. “To the picnic? Everyone from the village will be there.”

  “Oh…” Ava he
sitated. Of course, she could hardly say no, not after all Eleni had done for her. And she did want to meet people in the village and become a part of things. She really did—it was just the prospect of all those introductions, and explaining who she was and how she’d got here, and enduring all the speculative looks and silences, perhaps even some pointed questions from the more blunt villagers… Ava smiled tiredly. “Yes, of course, I’d love to come.”

  “Good,” Eleni said approvingly. “And now—we clean.” She rolled up the sleeves of her old cardigan and headed to the kitchen for soap and water.

  Two hours later Ava was even more exhausted than before, and the downstairs of the house was, if not sparkling, then certainly habitable.

  “The walls need more whitewash,” Eleni said. “I’ll bring some next time. And you leave the upstairs for now—too dangerous. I’ll get someone to repair the stairs.”

  By the time Eleni had left, the sun was sinking towards the ragged fringe of pines on the horizon. She’d invited Ava to dinner, but Ava had refused.

  “Thank you so much for the offer, but I’m shattered and I think I’ll just eat here.”

  Eleni wrinkled her forehead. “Shattered? You mean, broken?”

  Laughing a little, Ava had explained. “No—just tired. Really, really tired.”

  “Ah. Yes. You rest.” She patted Ava’s arm with maternal concern. “That is good. I will bring you some souvlaki, yes? And perhaps some soup?”

  Ava wanted to refuse, because at this point she just wanted to be alone. Yet looking at Eleni’s kindly but determined expression, she had a feeling refusing would cause offense, so she smiled instead.

  “Thank you. You’re so kind.”

  With Eleni gone the house felt very quiet. Very empty. Outside, darkness fell quickly, like a cloak, and with it came a chill in the mountain air, reminding Ava that her grandmother’s house might possess a few modern conveniences, but central heating was not one of them. She gazed around the main room with its fireplace and two rickety chairs and wondered just what she had taken on. This didn’t feel remotely like a home. All the things she’d bought in Lamia, including the delivered furniture, were piled in various boxes and bags in the center of the room. She felt too tired to unpack them now. An hour ago all she’d wanted was space and solitude, and now she had both, she felt as if she could scream.

  “Hello?” Andreas poked his head round the door, thankfully startling Ava out of her melancholy thoughts. “I’ve changed the tire on your car. Shall I drive you there now?”

  “Oh, wonderful. Yes, please. I’ll just leave a note for Eleni.” Fifteen minutes alone in her new house and she couldn’t wait to leave.

  Outside Ava slid into the passenger’s side of Andreas’s truck, conscious of the strange intimacy of the two of them alone in the truck, in the darkness. As they drove out of Iousidous, the endless night seemed to swallow them up.

  “It looks better,” Andreas said, clearing his throat. “The house.”

  “Oh, yes. I had help. Eleni—do you know her?” Ava realized she didn’t even know Eleni’s last name.

  “Eleni Kefalas? Yes. I know her.”

  “I suppose everyone knows everyone else in a place like this.”

  “It is a small place, yes. A community, you know?”

  “Yes.”

  He gave her a sympathetic sideways glance. “You might become a part of it, yes? Like your grandmother.”

  “If I stay long enough.”

  “You are thinking of leaving already?” He gave a little laugh, but Ava heard a certain sharpness in it that she didn’t expect or understand.

  “No, not really, but I didn’t expect the house to be in such a state. I should have, I know that. I knew it had been abandoned. But…” She let out a long, low breath and shook her head.

  “It needs much work.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ll do it? And then?” Andreas lifted his shoulders in a smiling shrug. “It will be good. It will all be good.”

  Ava let out a rather shaky laugh. “I hope so,” she said quietly, and wondered whether Andreas heard the waver of doubt and sadness she felt in her voice.

  6

  July 1942

  Two days after Sophia had come home to see Angelika’s bed unmade and unslept in, she decided to pay a visit to her father’s sister, her aunt Andra.

  Such a visit required a certain level of formality; although they were kin, the ties had never been close because of Evangelos’s marriage to a town girl, and in any case Sophia knew this visit would be both unexpected and important. She waited until her daily tasks were finished, the bread made, the house swept, the water fetched, the corn ground, and the tomatoes picked. She put on her clothes for church, a navy-blue-and-white striped skirt of scratchy wool and a white blouse embroidered with blue thread. She wrapped a clean kerchief around her hair, put a basket containing freshly made psomi and six fresh eggs on her arm, and set off.

  Although Sophia walked alone to the coffeehouse three nights a week, and often enough to the fountain in the village square that supplied everyone’s water, she still felt conspicuous. She was wearing her best clothes, and that could only mean she was on an errand of some importance. Women stopped their scrubbing and baking in their front yards and stared at her in open speculation as she marched past, her head held high. Some called out a greeting, and Sophia replied with dignity, although she felt her face flush. By mid-afternoon everyone would know what she was doing, or at least be able to guess.

  She was after a husband.

  Taking a deep breath, she came to her aunt’s house, similar to her own although without the second story. Her two cousins, plain-faced girls in their mid-teens, stared at her in open curiosity, taking in her formal dress, the basket on her arm.

  “I’ll get Mama,” one of them said, and the other, Talia, ushered Sophia into the yard with all the requisite expressions of delighted hospitality.

  A few minutes later Andra, tall and spare with red cheeks and a hooked nose, bustled forward, kissing both of Sophia’s cheeks before drawing her into the house. Sophia laid her gifts on the table, and her aunt and cousins dutifully exclaimed in delight over each offering: fresh psomi! You make it so light! And eggs! Look at the size of them! So nice and brown! A few minutes later the gifts were whisked away and Sophia was bid to sit down in the most comfortable chair and plied with bread, cheese, and coffee from her aunt’s kitchen. Sophia knew she must eat a little of each, even though, like her own, her aunt’s kitchen was sparsely supplied. After the tax levied by the Italians, there was little food left to go around, although at least no one in Iousidous was starving yet.

  They ate for a while and chatted rather awkwardly about village matters: the wheat, the weather, the death of a neighbor’s mule. Andra touched darkly on the war, the famine, and the cruel soldiers who had raped a girl in the next village.

  “Animals,” she said, spitting on the ground, and Sophia held her tongue. She did not want to talk about soldiers or rape. Eventually an anticipatory silence fell, and Andra shooed her daughters away. Sophia took a breath.

  “It is time,” she began, “to find a husband.”

  “Hah!” Andra sucked her teeth. “If only it were so easy.”

  “I know there are not many men—”

  Andra shook her head firmly. “This is your father’s duty, Sophia. Not yours. For a young girl to beg for her own husband!” Her face tightened in familiar lines of disapproval; Andra had always suspected her and Angelika of being too like their mother, with aspirations for more, even though Sophia had never harbored any. “It’s a sad world we live in now, for it to come to this.”

  “I’m not asking for myself,” Sophia said, both startled and stung. She realized she should have expected her aunt to assume such a thing. She was four years older than her sister, after all, but she would never go begging for her own husband.

  “Not you?” Andra’s heavy eyebrows rose towards her widow’s peak of coarse black hair. �
��Then Angelika?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, Angelika. I thought perhaps you could ask—”

  “She is only eighteen. She has years yet. This wretched war might be over before you have to think of seeing her safely married.”

  Sophia had expected such an objection. Most girls in the village did not marry until they were in their mid-twenties; they needed to help their mothers until then. “She is not needed at home,” she said carefully. “I can manage.”

  “Hah!” Andra sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her thin bosom. “Just as you have managed all these years,” she observed rather slyly, and Sophia said nothing. She would not admit to her sister’s failings in her duties, even if they were evident to every woman in the village. “Your sister is your mother’s daughter, for certain,” Andra added, and Sophia determinedly did not rise to the bait. Andra had never liked Katerina, with her elegant ways and second floor, the animals kept in a shed instead of the great room. She’d been too good for village life, Sophia knew, and in the end it had killed her.

  She took a deep, calming breath. “I thought, perhaps, you could think on it. Consider who might be suitable—”

  Andra sighed and shook her head, cutting short Sophia’s hesitant suggestion, phrased with such painful care. “I cannot.”