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

by Kate Hewitt

  “We are moving again?” she said, struggling to sit up. Her shawls crackled as she moved; the wet wool had frozen.

  “No.” Alex shook her head. “You will stay here with Baba Niko and wait for our return. It is too dangerous for you.”

  Sophia stared at him, his words penetrating the tired fog of her brain. “What are you going to do?” She saw Alex shake his head, and she grabbed his arm. “I know you are going to attack the bridge, blow it up—but you, Alex. What are you going to do?”

  Alex hesitated, then bent his head close to hers so his lips nearly grazed her ear. “Just my job, Sophia,” he said softly. “I’ll place the explosives on the viaduct and then I’ll get out of there. Trust me.” He smiled, but it lacked the endearing crookedness Sophia had come to know, to need. Her fingers tightened on his arm.

  “I’m afraid for you.”

  “I’m afraid for me too,” he said, his tone light even though she knew he meant it. He reached out and brushed a tendril of hair away from her cheek. “But you will be safe here, and for that I am glad.”

  Tears stung Sophia’s eyes. She had not prepared herself for this moment, for how much she would feel. “God go with you,” she managed, hardly able to speak. Alex’s fingers lingered on her cheek.

  “Sophia…” His voice had turned hoarse and his eyes seemed to blaze. Sophia waited, hope and fear filling her right up to overflowing.

  Someone shouted an order, and the men began to move once more, shouldering their packs. A mule brayed piteously. Still Alex just stared at her, and then, almost desperately, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  His lips were cold, and felt hard and soft at the same time. His whiskers, for he hadn’t shaved in weeks, scraped her cheeks. She breathed in the scent of him, her arms coming round him, her fingers brushing the cold metal of his rifle.

  She loved him, she realized then. She loved him, even after such a short time, but could he possibly love her? Or was this simply the kiss of a man who knew he might die that very night, in the next few hours?

  “Come on!” Someone beckoned to Alex, and slowly, reluctantly, he released her. He fished a scrap of paper from inside his jacket and handed it to her.

  Sophia looked down at the scrawled English and shook her head. “What—”

  “It’s where I live in England. Just in case… in case I don’t see you again. When this war is over…” He took a breath. “You could find me. Or I will try to find you. I want to. I… love you, Sophia. I know it hasn’t been very long, but…” He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Do you love me?”

  Sophia clutched the scrap of paper in one hand, the other held tightly by Alex. “Yes,” she whispered. “S’agapao.”

  He smiled, squeezed her hand one last time, and then let go. Sophia watched him walk out of the camp, the memory of his kiss still imprinted on her lips, his words in her heart. She stood there watching until the snow swallowed him up and the camp was empty except for her and Baba Niko.

  Now it truly had begun—and soon, Mother of God, soon it would all end.

  26

  Now

  Ava’s phone rang just as she was getting ready for bed. She snatched it up, her heart beating wildly, only to feel a tiny flicker of disappointment when she saw it wasn’t Simon.

  “Eleni…?”

  “My mother is finally able to speak, praise God,” Eleni said, her voice rough with emotion.

  “Oh, I’m so glad—”

  “And,” Eleni continued, “she’s asking for you.”

  Ava blinked. “Me?”

  “Yes, she said she has something she must tell you. And this time I will let her speak. Perhaps then we will find some peace. Can you come?”

  “Now?”

  “I know it is late, but she is distressed and won’t settle. Whatever it is, it must be spoken.”

  Ava nodded, already reaching for her shoes. “Of course.”

  Half an hour later Ava was at the hospital in Lamia, being ushered by the ward sister to Parthenope’s room. Ava was shocked at the sight of the older woman; in just a few days she already seemed slighter, more fragile, barely making a bump under the starchy hospital sheet.

  “Hello, Parthenope,” Ava said softly as she sat next to the bed. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” Even though Ava knew she didn’t understand English, she thought Parthenope grasped her meaning.

  She managed a smile and reached for Ava’s hand. Her skin felt like tissue paper, yet her grip was surprisingly strong. She spoke in Greek. Ava shook her head helplessly, glancing at Eleni. “I’m sorry; my Greek isn’t good enough—”

  “I will translate.” Eleni stepped forward. Parthenope spoke again, and Ava looked expectantly at Eleni. “‘When I saw you,’” Eleni translated for Parthenope, “‘I thought you were Sophia. It shocked me because for so long I have tried to forget.’” Parthenope broke off, her eyes bright with unshed tears, and Ava patted her hand encouragingly.

  “It’s all right now,” she said. “Whatever it is, it’s all right now.”

  Parthenope, seeming to gather the gist of what Ava had said, shook her head with vehemence. She started speaking again, hesitantly at first, yet with growing determination, and Eleni translated once more, her own expression shadowed with apprehension. “‘I did not know Sophia very well, or her sister, Angelika, although I knew Angelika had always liked my brother Dimitrios. She flirted with him terribly, at least terribly for those days. But one night I saw Sophia on the road. It was late, and she should not have been out. I should not have been out.’”

  Parthenope, quite suddenly, dropped her head into her hands and wept with the kind of deep desperate grief that Ava knew only too well.

  “Mama,” Eleni exclaimed brokenly, and she sat on the edge of the bed to take Parthenope into her arms. Parthenope wept against her daughter’s chest, her thin shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.

  “Thimamai,” she said over and over. I remember.

  All that grief, Ava thought, her eyes stinging with tears of her own. All that grief kept in for so long, and it was only now finding its way out.

  “What do you remember, Mama?” Eleni asked once Parthenope’s sobs had subsided a little.

  “I am ashamed to say this,” she said in Greek, and Eleni translated for Ava, her voice wobbly with emotion. “‘I am ashamed, and so I have never spoken of it. Of the war, and what I did.’”

  Parthenope leaned back against the pillows, her eyes closed, her cheeks sunken. She spoke with a slow, weary resignation now, and Eleni translated. “‘I was a foolish, stupid girl once, Ava. I made such selfish choices, such stupid mistakes.’”

  Eleni broke off, her face pale, and impulsively Ava leaned forward. “Don’t translate, Eleni. Not if you don’t want to.”

  “But it is you she is telling this to,” Eleni answered. Her voice was choked, her eyes bright with tears. “It’s you whom she wants to know.”

  Parthenope continued speaking, and resolutely Eleni resumed her translation, her voice halting as she struggled to find the right words in English. “‘I cared more for pretty things back then. Dresses and trinkets and nonsense. And so I did a terrible, foolish thing. I took a lover.’” Parthenope took a deep breath, and then spoke a word that needed no translation. “A Nazi.”

  Eleni let out a little cry and pressed her fist to her lips. Parthenope opened her eyes, tears trickling down her wrinkled cheeks as she gazed at her daughter. “Me sighorite,” she whispered. “Me sighorite.”

  Eleni shook her head, still shocked, and Ava squeezed the older woman’s hand. After a long moment, her voice heavy with unspoken sorrow and regret, Parthenope resumed her story and with effort Eleni continued to translate.

  “‘He was in Athens, but he came to Lamia once in a while. I caught his eye during a patrol, and he invited me to a party. I was so excited at the thought. He bought me a lipstick, and silk stockings, and sometimes—sometimes he asked me questions.’” Parthenope closed her eyes again,
her breathing labored and ragged. “‘I was such a stupid girl. I thought nothing of his questions. I felt clever, for knowing things, and I was happy to please him. The war was so distant to me then. People spoke of terrible things, but I hadn’t seen them.’” She opened her eyes, clutching at Ava’s sleeve, her eyes wide with remembered horror. “‘I hadn’t seen them yet.’”

  “What happened?” Ava whispered.

  “‘I told him—the Nazi, my lover—that I’d seen Sophia, late at night, coming back from the forest. It was right before the andartes blew up the bridge.’” Eleni translated as Parthenope dabbed at her eyes. “‘I told him my brother had a gun. I thought he was a kind man. He gave me things.’” She let out another choked cry, then shook her head and forced herself to continue, speaking quickly. Eleni lapsed into silence as she listened, her eyes wide and dark. Ava longed to know what Parthenope was saying but waited until she’d reached the end and sank back against the pillows once more.

  Eleni let out a shuddering breath and turned to Ava. “After the bridge was blown up,” she began, “my mother says the Nazis marched through Iousidous. They took people out of their homes and shot them like dogs. They shot Sophia’s sister.”

  “No—”

  “And my own uncle, my mother’s brother, Dimitrios. Sophia was never seen again.”

  “She made it out alive,” Ava whispered.

  “Yes… but as for the others…”

  Parthenope struggled to sit up, her hands stretched out to Ava imploringly. “Me sighorite…”

  Ava clasped the older woman’s hands and tried to smile. She knew the guilt the older woman felt could never be truly erased, yet she hoped the sharing of it gave her some peace. Parthenope had finally been able to grieve for her own losses, her own terrible choices.

  “My grandmother survived the war,” Ava said, “and lived a long, happy life in England. She only died recently, as Eleni told you before.”

  Eleni translated, and Ava watched as Parthenope smiled through her tears and nodded, seeming finally to understand and accept.

  Afterwards Parthenope fell into a doze, and Eleni turned to Ava, her expression grave. “I think I was afraid of something like this.”

  “How did you know?”

  Eleni shook her head. “I don’t know. It was just a feeling. A burden I sensed she carried, all these years. A guilt. And as for your family, Ava… I am so sorry. As sorry as my mother.”

  “It was a long time ago, and I never even knew I had an aunt.” Ava squeezed Eleni’s hand. “I hope you are able to find some peace, along with your mother.”

  “I hope so, too.” Eleni brushed at her eyes, a smile trembling on her lips although she still looked grieved. “It is good she spoke of it, yes? It helps.”

  By the time she returned to Iousidous, Ava was exhausted both emotionally and physically. Her mind had spun with Parthenope’s revelations for the entire drive from Lamia. She tried to imagine her great-aunt, the poor butterfly, being pulled out of her house, shot in the street. And her own grandmother fleeing the Nazis, in fear of her life. She’d been so brave, so strong, and Ava had never known. Sophia had never said.

  And Ava had never asked, not about anything, not about Greece or the war. She wondered how her grandmother had escaped after the explosion, how she’d managed to get all the way to England.

  “She must have been so brave,” she said aloud. She felt a lump of emotion rise in her throat. “I wish I’d had a chance to tell you that,” she said softly. “I wish you’d had a chance to tell me.”

  All of her emotions were still close to the surface as she pulled up in front of her grandmother’s house. There were no streetlights, but by the light of the moon she could see that someone was standing on her doorstep, and she felt a flicker of alarm. Who would be waiting there at this hour?

  Cautiously she climbed out of her car, the closing of the door as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the sleepy village.

  The person on the doorstep turned towards her, a man. Ava still couldn’t recognize his features, but she knew that voice.

  “Hello, Ava.”

  It was Simon.

  27

  November 1942

  The snow continued to fall all night, cloaking the world in whiteness and obliterating any signs that the SOE agents had even been at the camp. Sophia tried to busy herself tidying away the remnants of the meal that the SOE agents and andartes had eaten, but that didn’t take very long and it left her mind still free to wander—and fear.

  She touched her lips, as if she could still feel the imprint of Alex’s kiss. Her first kiss, perhaps her only kiss. He loved her—loved her! And yet the future had never been so uncertain. She knew Alex would be laying the explosives along the viaduct. She pictured him crouched in the cold and snow, his hands full of danger and death, and her heart seemed to freeze right in her chest. What good was his love if he died tonight?

  And if he did not…

  Sophia could not bear to dream of a future they could have. Hope was as seductive as a siren, and just as dangerous. How on earth could she marry an Englishman? And after the excitement of a single night when he’d skirted so close to death, perhaps he would not want her anyway.

  And so she waited, and tried to keep herself busy—and not to think.

  The snow had made everything eerily quiet and still. The night was moonless, and Sophia could hardly see anything at all as she moved around the remnants of the camp. It was hard to believe that just a kilometer away, men were about to lead an attack—or had it happened already? Baba Niko had told her, after the men had all gone, that they were hoping to secure the Gorgopotamos garrison in an hour or less; the placing of the explosives would take only ten minutes. It was a quick operation, by necessity. It would not take long for the enemy to mobilize once they realized they had been attacked.

  “Shh!” Baba Niko stopped in the middle of slicing onions for the grand meal he was preparing for the men’s return, a feast for the victors—should they be victorious. “Listen,” he whispered, and frozen with both shock and terror, Sophia heard it—a sound like thunder, ominous and unrelenting, but she knew it was not merely thunder. It was gunfire.

  “They’re taking the garrison,” she whispered back, and Baba Niko nodded and crossed himself.

  “God be with them.”

  Sophia nodded fervently. The SOE agents and andartes were surely in need of divine protection now. The gunfire seemed to go on forever, an endless, distant, awful thunder. Sophia and Baba Niko continued chopping and peeling, pausing every now and then to listen to the staccato sounds that told of death and destruction.

  And then, finally, the gunfire stopped, and Sophia sagged in relief even though she didn’t know what had happened, or if Alex was still alive. Perhaps they’d been captured or killed.

  “They will place the explosives now,” Baba Niko said, his wrinkled face creasing into a smile. “In just a few minutes we shall see it, I know!”

  They both hurried to the edge of the camp, their feet cold and wet in the freezing snow, and waited for the reddening of the horizon that would indicate that the explosives had been successfully placed and set off, and the bridge would be blown up.

  Except nothing happened. Sophia stamped her feet and blew on her hands as the icy cold penetrated to her very marrow. Next to her she could hear Baba Niko’s breath rattle in his chest and he craned his neck, as if by just trying a bit harder he would able to see the reddening sky, the proof of their success.

  The sky remained dark and still, the night’s silence turning ominous, perhaps deadly.

  “Something’s wrong,” Sophia whispered. “It must be. It’s been too long. They should have laid the bombs and got away already…” She stopped abruptly, biting hard on her lip to keep the panic and terror from spilling over. They’d failed. They must have…

  Baba Niko nodded and sucked his teeth. “Something has gone wrong,” he agreed somberly. “But it is in God’s hands now. Come.” He pulled gently on
her shoulder, leading her back to the camp. “Let us continue our own work. We shall make a feast… for whoever comes back.”

  Sophia nodded, knowing that keeping busy was best. Yet her hands shook as she reached for an onion, and her heart thundered inside her. Something had gone wrong with the explosives—which meant something had gone wrong with Alex.

  And then they heard it. First it just sounded like a few pops, and then louder booms that Sophia felt reverberate right through her chest. The sky glowed red on the horizon, a violent sunset in the middle of the night. Baba Niko nodded in satisfaction.

  “There it is.”

  But it was at least twenty minutes later than the soldiers and andartes had planned, and as they continued to prepare the meal, Sophia wondered bleakly just who would be eating it—and who would not.

  Another hour passed, cold and endless. The sky was just beginning to lighten with dawn when the first men returned. Sophia hurried to the edge of the camp, watching as the andartes strode through the snow, exhausted yet jubilant. Their faces were streaked with dirt, their eyes bright, and Sophia could hear them exchanging jests, clapping each other hard on the back or shoulder.

  The mission had clearly been a success, but Sophia knew better than to ask questions. The men would not give details to the girl who warmed their soup.

  Baba Niko hugged and kissed them all, and then began to dish out the stew that had been bubbling over the fire. Sophia heard snatches of conversation: the battle for the garrison, the problem with the explosives. They’d been nailed to boards in the wrong shape, an L instead of a U, and the engineers had had to rip them apart with their bare hands and reassemble them right there on the bridge.