Summer in Greece

by Patricia Wilson

  Silence fell just as suddenly, faces turned away from the propeller. Someone wept. Everyone closed their eyes, or turned them towards the centre of our boat. Nobody wanted to look upon the carnage that floated around us. Most were shivering in spite of the bright sun. The groaning and complaining that resonated from the ship in its battle to stay afloat also changed its tune. A great whoosh came from the open portholes, as if the Britannic expelled her final breath. The gale-like draught was so strong it pushed us away from the vessel. Anything small enough to fly out through the eighteen-inch portholes did so, scattering gauze, bandages, paper dishes, gloves, caps, and cotton wool over the water like confetti.

  ‘What’s happening, another explosion?’ I asked.

  The priest shook his head. ‘The air’s being forced out as the ship fills with water – that air would have kept her afloat if only it had been trapped inside. Now she’s doomed for sure.’

  ‘You mean if the portholes weren’t open, she would have stayed afloat?’

  ‘Exactly. Didn’t you notice that all the doors opened inward. Those heavy, watertight doors are built to keep not only the water from coming up through the ship but for keeping the air inside too. The air keeps her afloat.’ He shook his head forlornly. ‘Now, some fool has opened some of the portholes and all is lost. Countless lives wasted because the ship that was destined to save them, is sinking.’ He crossed himself. ‘God have mercy on our poor boys. Most will die, not because of our enemy, Kaiser Bill, but because of some incompetent on board who can’t obey orders.’ He peered at the water. ‘If only HMHS Britannic could have stayed afloat long enough to reach land. She could have been repaired and returned to duty.’ He shook his head forlornly.

  ‘But, Father, those portholes are usually many feet above sea level, who would ever have imagined they’d end up on the waterline?’ I said.

  ‘That’s why we have a captain, miss. A man capable of foreseeing every scenario, who gives orders for that reason. Like God, he must be obeyed, without question, under every circumstance. If he gave orders for the portholes to remain closed, and somebody who knew of his order still opened them, that person alone is guilty of this catastrophe, and the massive loss of life that will follow the ship’s demise.’

  It was me . . . me!

  The horrible truth came home to haunt me for the rest of my life. I was responsible for the ship sinking. Me, showing off in front of six recuperating soldiers, had caused this great catastrophe. Now what would happen to the thousands of wounded soldiers, waiting for us to rescue them? I knew what would happen. They would die! All because of me and my stupid vanity!

  Wave after wave of remorse ran through me, but remorse wouldn’t save lives. Nor would it ease the pain of the dying, or those who writhed in agony while they waited for a ship that would never arrive.

  Our men rowed furiously. ‘Why don’t we head for the island, instead of going around it?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re trying, but the current is so strong in this channel, it’s pulling us past,’ the cook said.

  ‘What is that place, the island?’ I asked the priest.

  ‘I believe it’s the Greek island of Kea,’ he replied.

  Another lifeboat full of uniformed staff rowed away from the Britannic. Their boat rocked violently as sudden turbulence burst through the calm sea. The oarsmen heaved away, and I sensed their urgency. The Britannic was so low in the water now, I wondered how she was still afloat. The ship’s bell clattered musically from the crow’s nest, breaking a moment of unnatural silence, then two long blasts of the whistle sounded above the clamour. I remembered the drill, it meant abandon ship immediately. A final lifeboat pushed away.

  My sadness ballooned inside me. Nobody spoke, silence reigned in our lifeboat. Everyone gazed at the final seconds of that most majestic ship, paying homage to her like the great goddess of the sea that she was. We all knew these moments would stay clear in our memory until the day we ourselves died. The air was heavy with the most wretched grief.

  ‘Look! They’re leaving,’ I whispered, reluctant to break the silence. ‘But somebody’s still up there, on the bridge, look!’ Wet, shaking, and clutching my bruised belly with one arm, I lifted the other and pointed.

  ‘Your hand’s bleeding,’ the priest said. ‘You must have caught some of that broken glass.’

  I looked down and noticed the rip in my sodden apron bib. In a flash of clarity, I remembered the sharp stab as I had tried to grasp the lifesaver tapes. ‘No, it was Sissy’s watch pin,’ I said while imagining my dear sister’s silver timepiece descending through the turquoise Aegean. Only God could know how deep the water was at that point? Perhaps the watch was still spinning slowly towards the seabed. Perhaps it was the glint of silver that had attracted the dolphin’s attention in the first place. Could my mother’s gift have inadvertently saved my life? So overwhelmed by this glorious thought, I trembled and started to cry silently.

  The baker put his arm around my shoulders. ‘You’re in shock,’ he said. ‘But try and stay calm, you’re safe as can be, and we’ll soon be on dry land.’

  The sea had drawn level with the Britannic’s control centre. Staring at the vessel, the chaplain crossed himself again. ‘Look, that’s our brave captain, still in his pyjamas. May God save his soul. If he doesn’t get away now, he’ll be sucked under with the ship.’

  The men, one in uniform, one in pyjamas, walked off the deck at the side of the bridge, straight into the water. They swam to a raft, we all watched, willing them on, as they pulled themselves to safety. The sinking ship groaned and gasped in its dying moments. A lifeboat picked up the two men and rowed clear, while HMHS Britannic seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  A series of deafening detonations rose from below. I guessed the ship’s boilers had exploded. Not that I knew anything except what I had read in the broadsheets about the Titanic’s demise. I had found the personal accounts of surviving passengers fascinating, but never dreamed I would, one day, find myself in a similar situation.

  The massive ship slowly rolled to one side and with a thunderous toll the four funnels snapped off in succession, each hitting the water in a great, metallic belly-flop that made our lifeboat bob violently. ‘Hold tight, everyone!’ one of the oarsmen yelled. The chimneys hissed and wheezed and their final breaths rose like steaming ghosts in a display of exhausted power.

  Our mighty vessel slipped beneath obscenely calm water, its great bell tolling once, then silenced forever.

  Moments later, the sea bubbled and heaved, agitated, as if trying to swallow something too big for its gullet. Cork-filled lifesavers belched to the surface and jets of seawater spumed into the air as Davy Jones made room in his locker for the damned ship.

  Less than an hour had passed since I had been ordered to use my initiative – and the bedpans had toppled.

  The sun beat down, blinding flashes bounced off undulating water, stinging my eyes. My face prickled with the salt from my weeping – or from the sea – I couldn’t say. Perhaps they were one and the same. An ocean of tears wept for drowned sailors, sunken ships, and Sissy’s lost watch. The balding priest knotted the corners of a large handkerchief. Somewhere, I had lost my uniform cap. I stared at the flotsam, hoping to spot it when, to my horror, I saw a body near us. A man floated on his back, limbs outstretch like a starfish.

  ‘There’s a person in the water!’ I shouted, pointing at his white canvas lifesaver. The oarsmen rowed in the direction of my finger. ‘I know him. It’s Corporal Perkins!’ I shouted.

  As they dragged Perkins over the side, the boat rocked violently and took on a great wave. We found ourselves almost calf-deep in sloshing seawater. We hauled bags of valuables onto our knees and someone screeched. ‘We’re sinking!’

  ‘There’re bailers under the seats, use them!’ our skipper ordered.

  With some clumsiness, Perkins was manhandled into the back of the packed lifeboat and laid across our knees. The mechanic had a terrific gash across his forehead, so deep
it exposed his skull. I pressed two fingers under the curve of his jawbone and barely felt the flutter of a pulse. ‘He’s alive, Matron, just! Hardly a pulse. What shall I do?’ I shouted towards the front of the boat.

  ‘Compress the wound to stop the bleeding!’ she called back.

  With the Corporal’s head in my lap, I said, ‘Excuse me,’ to the priest, took the handkerchief off his head, and pressed it against the wound.

  A male voice came up from the other end of the bench. ‘His foot’s gone!’

  Horrified, I leaned forward to peer down the row. They were holding the soldier’s limb up, the end of his trouser leg flapped for a moment, then concertinaed towards his knee exposing a mashed stump where his left ankle and foot should have been. I bit down on a scream before it escaped. It had started. The terrible injuries I would be expected to deal with, calmly, in my career as a nurse. Someone clutching a brown leather bag scrambled through the boat, which rocked violently again. When the man looked up, I recognised the surgeon.

  ‘Give me your belt, sailor,’ he said to one of the crew. ‘Keep the limb elevated while I stop the bleeding.’ He fastened the belt tightly around Perkins’s thigh, then he scrambled up to sit next to the priest. He thrust his fingers under the Corporal’s jaw and closed his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. ‘He’s lost too much blood, I’m afraid he won’t make it to shore.’

  After all we had been through and given what I had done, I could not accept that my patient was going to die. Outraged, I yelled, ‘No! Surely there’s something we can do? We can’t just let him die like this!’

  ‘He needs blood, miss, and he needs it right this minute.’

  Right now, I would do anything to save the life of our poor Corporal Perkins.

  ‘Then give him my blood, I’m O, it does for everyone, doesn’t it, sir?’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s very noble, but I don’t have the intravenous transfer equipment with me, miss.’

  I remembered the two wide-bore needles, the glass tube and the rubber hose connecting everything together from my training days. ‘Please, there must be another way. What’s to stop you using a hypodermic syringe? Please try!’ I started rolling my sleeve up. ‘Please, sir, if he was your son . . . he is somebody’s son, we should at least try! My brother Arthur, if he’d had blood, perhaps he wouldn’t have died, sir. Don’t you see? Somebody could have saved him if only they had been brave enough. If only . . . oh, sir, you don’t know what that would have meant to my mother.’

  He stared into my eyes for a moment, then he shouted, ‘Stop rowing!’

  CHAPTER 15

  SHELLY

  Greek island of Kea, present day.

  THE TAVERNA OWNER BROKE INTO her thoughts. ‘Hello, lady. What you want, café? Where you from?’ He asked brusquely. His eyes swept over her dark hair, pale skin, and long legs.

  ‘England.’

  ‘Ah, is good, I am Makris. You like, frappé, Nes?’

  ‘Greek coffee, sweet, please.’ A strong coffee would set her up for a swim.

  ‘Kafé, glykó!’ Makris yelled towards a woman in the open kitchen. ‘You alone? Married? Why you here? Holidays?’

  ‘I’m tracing my family tree,’ she said. ‘Look, the ferry’s leaving already.’

  ‘Yes, is going to Syros. Is near here. Tree? What tree?’ He glanced up at the heart-shaped mulberry leaves.

  ‘No, no, I’m tracing my roots.’ She stifled a giggle as his eyes travelled down to the base of the trunk. ‘My great-grandmother was an English woman, Gertie Smith. She was on a boat and stayed here for a while after it sunk.’

  ‘Ah, the Britannic?’

  Surprised, Shelly nodded.

  ‘My grandfather say it hit a mine, or it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. There is still much talk. Was it a ship for the sick, or a secret carrier of guns and soldiers to help the forces near Gallipoli?’

  He crossed himself, then his eyes lit up.

  ‘My cousin have the best dive school. If you like, I get you a good price, yes? You no have worries with Aries and his boys. The father of Aries helped the famous Jacques Cousteau, he found the ship, you know? He dived down to the Britannic many, many times. So, you want to dive?’

  ‘Yes, I want to dive,’ Shelly murmured, gazing out over the flat water, wondering just how far away the magnificent turtle was at that moment. She imagined it, buoyant in the blue Aegean, joyously rolling in ribbons of reflected light; frolicking, free of its eggs and weightless in the water. Could that crusty Caretta be cavorting over HMHS Britannic’s wreck? She peered past the lighthouse and tried to visualise how the hospital ship looked now, the oval shadow of her turtle sliding silently over the coral-encrusted hull.

  *

  Shelly approached the dive centre. A guy who looked as though he needed a good night’s sleep was loading diving gear into a trailer.

  ‘Anyone in there?’ she asked, nodding at the open door of a square, stone building. ‘I’m looking for Aries?’

  ‘Oh, Harry. He’s inside, but there’s no snorkelling trips today, madam,’ he said. ‘Harry’s just back from Athens.’

  Shelly smiled. ‘Thanks.’ She headed into the shop. The thrum of a compressor filling dive tanks vibrated through the open doorway. A shaft of brilliant light pierced the room, illuminating a table cluttered with water and beer bottles and throwing everything else into deep shade. Two young men, both breathtakingly handsome, studied their iPhones at the table. The room smelled of damp clothes, sweat, and beer.

  ‘Hi, who do I speak to about a dive?’ she asked brightly.

  They glanced at each other, then the older one said, ‘Sorry, there’s nothing available until next week. Where did you want to dive, love?’

  ‘The Britannic.’ She nodded over her shoulder towards the sea.

  ‘Ha! Sorry, no chance. To start with, you have to be a very experienced diver, love. We don’t just take anyone. Secondly, you need permissions.’ He stood, at least six-two, fit, early twenties. ‘Best to book an easier dive, or perhaps a snorkel trip.’

  Condescending prick!

  She dropped the smile and stared into his face.

  ‘Have you dived before, love?’ He took a step towards her.

  ‘MS Zenobia – Cyprus, Cirkewwa – Malta, Fortunal – Croatia; Thistlegorm – the Red Sea, and,’ she paused for effect, ‘the Lusitania. Also, at least fifty more hundred-metre-plus wrecks . . . love.’

  She narrowed her eyes, picked up a beer bottle and studied the alcohol content. ‘Is this the only dive outfit on the island? I was hoping for something a little more professional, love.’

  The smirk fell from his face. She glanced at the older guy and was surprised to see him grinning as she spun on her heels and stormed out.

  *

  On her walk back to the port, she kicked herself for being unfairly abrupt and judgemental with the diver. She sat on one of the benches that ran along the edge of the beach, closed her eyes and listened. The sea forged its own unique sounds, rich with dormant strength and whispers of endless secrets. She needed to go in, allow the harmonious murmuring of each gentle wave bathe her spirit and dilute her tension. If she allowed her imagination free rein, she could hear the echoing sounds of dolphins and whales, the plaintive mewl of high-flying seagulls drifting over the oceans, the laughter of children as they decorated sandcastles with cockleshells. The roar of an approaching motorbike shattered her musing.

  She would never see the Britannic if she alienated herself from the dive outfit. Why couldn’t she be as patient with men as she was with cats and dogs? The motorbike stopped behind her.

  ‘Need a lift?’ She turned and saw the older guy on a quadbike. ‘I’m going round to the port,’ he called.

  She hesitated, wanting to sit a while and enjoy the peace, but here was a fresh opportunity to get on friendly terms with a diver. ‘Great, thanks,’ she called.

  He was early-to-mid-forties; strong physique and deeply tanned. Tight curly hair with the f
irst signs of grey, eyes hidden behind shades. She climbed onto the quadbike beside him.

  He turned off the engine, used a forefinger to drag his glasses down the bridge of his nose, then gazed over them with piercing brown eyes. ‘Can I say, I’m sorry about before? That was my son, Elias. It was his twenty-first yesterday and, well, everyone’s a little hungover this morning. Perhaps we all sounded a little patronising.’

  She shook her head, stared at the sea rushing towards them, then dashing away – like a dog chasing something that scared it. ‘Yes, a bit, but to be fair I’m a little tense from lack of sleep. Let’s forget it, shall we?’

  He nodded and started the engine.

  ‘Can I make amends . . . buy you a coffee?’ They pulled up outside a pavement café near the ferry terminal. ‘Harry Dennis, owner of Dive-Den.’ He thrust his hand towards her. ‘The locals call me Aries.’

  She shook it firmly. ‘Shelly Summer.’

  ‘Where’re you from then, Shelly Summer?’ he asked while they waited for their drinks.

  ‘Near Dover, England. You? Dennis doesn’t sound very Greek.’

  ‘Born here, but my grandparents were English, from Portsmouth. My grandfather started the business just after the last war. Needless to say, I’ve been diving since I was a kid. You’re clearly qualified, but there’s a lot of rigmarole getting the permissions for that dive. It’s listed as a British war grave. Also, the Greeks control the deep dives because of antiquities, even though the wreck’s owned by an Englishman, Simon Mills. All in all, it’s a paperwork nightmare.’

  He stared out across the water, as people who love the sea always do. Calm, content, at peace with himself and the world. She smiled, understanding exactly where he was at.

  He returned from his daydream and continued. ‘On top of that, there has to be a remotely operated vehicle, and a Greek official watching and recording everything that goes on with regard to the wreck.’

  ‘I see, sounds complicated. I should have done some research before I came over. To be honest, it was a last-minute trip.’ She peered across the bay at a lighthouse on the rocky promontory that led into the harbour. He followed her eyes.