Cotton's War

by Cotton's War (retail) (epub)

  The girl crept forward. Her eyes dilated, she stared at the body, a look of sick horror on her face.

  ‘You have killed him,’ she said.

  Cotton nodded and wiped his big paws on his trousers. She gazed at him, pale and strained, then she turned away, her face buried in her hands.

  Cotton drew a deep breath. ‘Come on, Bisset,’ he said. ‘Let’s get rid of him. I bet he’s a deserter.’

  They hid the bicycle. Then they scraped a shallow hole under an overhanging tree and, shoving the body into it, kicked earth and stones over it. Finally they rolled heavy rocks on top. It was like shoving guilt out of sight.

  When they’d finished, without a word they picked up the weapons they’d dropped and set off down the hill again. Eventually they saw the dim shape of the boat by the light of the stars but there was no sign of Docherty, Gully or Kitcat, and as they stopped on the beach, over the hill, muffled by the height, they could still hear the mutter of guns.

  As they waited, there was a faint reedy pipe from the trees that sounded like an owl. Cotton waited and it came again. He whistled back and heard Docherty’s voice. As they moved forward, they saw dark figures move forward along the beach. Docherty was grinning. What Cotton had to say wiped the smile off his face at once.

  ‘A German? He didn’t come down here!’

  ‘He didn’t have to,’ Cotton growled. ‘He’d hidden what he was after up the hill. Did the other Jerries come?’

  Docherty nodded. ‘They had a caique and they pumped the petrol out into drums. It took ’em bloody hours.’

  There was a long silence. They were all a little afraid, and the death of the German deserter bothered Cotton. Kitcat was the first to throw off the feeling. It had taken some courage for him to live alone above Xiloparissia Bay for days, and, with all the others around him, he felt anything was bearable. He gestured towards the boat.

  ‘We’ve rigged up the forecastle,’ he said as they unloaded the donkey. ‘We’ve stopped up the holes and shaded the ports and Docherty’s fixed a light.’

  As he lifted his hand to drive the donkey away, Cotton caught his arm. ‘Moor her up,’ he said. ‘We might want her again. How’s the kid?’

  ‘No worse. Gully said he might even be better.’

  It was then that Docherty noticed the girl standing nearby in the shadows. ‘What’s she doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘She decided it was safer with us,’ Cotton said.

  Docherty grinned. ‘Who’re we to complain?’ he said. ‘Who’s she sleeping with?’

  They hoisted the sacks on board and Docherty began to check the contents with the engines. As he worked, Cotton drew Kitcat on to the foredeck. The sky was studded with stars, and they seemed to glow instead of glittering as they did at home.

  ‘Those guns Loukia was carrying?’ he said.

  Kitcat looked sideways at him. ‘What about ’em?’

  ‘There were a lot, weren’t there?’

  ‘Were there?’

  Cotton scowled. ‘You know damn well there were.’

  Kitcat hedged. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘One or two.’

  ‘I think there were more.’

  Kitcat looked up at him quickly. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was told. Before we left Crete. What sort were they?’ Kitcat studied him in the semi-darkness. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I heard ’em say they were old British issue.’

  ‘Did you see what happened to ’em?’

  ‘No. The Germans took ’em, I suppose. When they murdered Samways and the others. When I got back they were gone.’

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘I dunno. They had ’em stacked in the captain’s cabin, in the alleyway and under the floorboards. I saw ’em when we got Travers aboard and into a bunk. I should say there were four or five dozen rifles, some boxes of ammunition, a few grenades, and one or two Brens and tommy-guns.’

  ‘They were carrying something else as well, weren’t they? Money. And there was a lot of it, wasn’t there?’

  Kitcat frowned. He’d known about the money all right but he’d been told to hold his tongue and so far he had done. He decided that since Cotton seemed to be well in control there could be no harm in admitting something he already knew.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. There was. Samways got us to carry it up the cliff and hide it. As soon as we ran ashore. It was heavy, so there must have been a lot. We put it in a hole we scraped under a rock shaped like a toad and piled stones on it.’

  ‘Could you find it again?’

  ‘Easy.’

  Cotton drew a deep breath. ‘Then keep it to yourself. Nobody else knows about it.’ He thought of Gully and Docherty. ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ he ended.

  They made arrangements for the night and when the girl promised that a boat would be round in the morning from Ay Yithion, they decided to carry Howard down to the captain’s cabin aboard Claudia. By the time they’d installed him, Bisset had managed to set up the paraffin stove and he and the girl were organising a meal.

  ‘If we ’ad some ’am,’ Gully said gaily, his mouth splitting in a wide grin that showed his awful false teeth, ‘we could ’ave some ’am an’ eggs if we ’ad some eggs.’

  There was tea but only two washed-out tins to drink it from because every mug that hadn’t been broken in the initial disaster had been taken by the Germans. There was also bully beef, tinned peaches and biscuit, and though it was spartan enough they were all hungry and nobody argued, either about the food or the discomfort of the splintered forecastle. Docherty was in a cheerful mood and kept eyeing the girl with merry, lecherous, boot-button eyes, making suggestive remarks about her while she tried to avoid looking at him as he tormented her.

  As she finally rose to go, pink-faced and clearly understanding, Cotton rose with her. On deck she turned to him. ‘You must be careful,’ she warned. ‘Chrysostomos is a Cretan and Cretans are a savage people. They never forgive an injury, and you have made him look silly in front of Xilouris and Cesarides.’

  Cotton remembered what Patullo had said about the Greek sense of honour. ‘Philótimo,’ he said.

  She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry he took all those things, Cotton.’ She gave him a little smile. ‘But it is all over now, I think.’

  Cotton stared upwards at the dark path through the trees. ‘You’d be better staying here with us,’ he urged. ‘Suppose he’s up there.’

  She touched his hand in a curiously Greek gesture, as though to indicate all was well again between them and that she’d forgiven him for his brusqueness with her earlier.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps you’re right and tomorrow I will. But I must go back to Ay Yithion tonight, to bring the Varvaras round. I’ll take care and I’m not afraid, and there is plenty of darkness.’

  Then she was gone, melting quickly into the night, and Cotton heard her splashing along the fringe of the sea and the soft clatter of stones as she began to climb.

  Eight

  The signal was in code and began with the instruction that it was to be deciphered only by an officer of the rank of major or above. Baldamus’ eyebrows lifted and he vanished into his office, closed the door and started to work. When he’d finished, he reappeared and called for Ehrhardt.

  ‘What’s the state of our transport, Ehrhardt?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not very good,’ Ehrhardt said. ‘Consists mostly of cars.’

  ‘Lorries?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘We need sixteen.’

  Ehrhardt grinned. ‘I doubt if there are sixteen lorries on the whole island,’ he said.

  ‘There’d better be.’

  ‘What are they needed for?’

  ‘You’ll see when the time comes. Arrange for another eleven to be commandeered. I want them on the airfield by tomorrow evening.’

  Ehrhardt scratched his head. ‘Where the hell am I going to get another eleven serviceable lorries?’

  ‘You’d better seek divine guidance.’ Baldamus smiled. ‘Be
cause I’ve had instructions that they’re to be ready by first darkness tomorrow night. See to it, Ehrhardt. Send your men round the villages. I think we ought to be able to produce them if we look hard enough. After all, this island was being developed as a holiday area for exhausted Greek millionaires, and Panyioti owned that damned great museum of a place at Xinthos. I’ve had a look at it. It’s full of furniture, so there must have been lorries to carry it there.’ Baldamus’ voice was gentle but Ehrhardt knew that by hook or by crook he would somehow produce the eleven extra vehicles.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to guarantee that they’ll all be the same, Herr Major,’ he pointed out. ‘Some will be open. Some might even be pantechnicons.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone will argue,’ Baldamus said. ‘We have to move approximately two hundred and fifty men at great speed in the dark.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Never mind why. And since we’ve been talking about that residence of Panyioti’s, we’ll inspect it as billeting accommodation. Our two hundred and fifty men have to be housed.’

  ‘We could use tents.’

  ‘No tents.’

  ‘There are huts on the airfield.’

  ‘Not on the airfield.’

  ‘A hotel in Kalani?’

  ‘Not in Kalani, either.’ Baldamus’ voice grew a little firmer because he knew now what General Ritsicz had meant when he’d talked about the Panyioti residence. ‘I think Panyioti’s palace is handy both for the city and the airstrip. See to it, will you, Ehrhardt?’

  * * *

  It was Cotton who did the watch that night. Someone had to, because he didn’t want the Germans to return and catch them asleep, and despite the climb he’d made with Bisset and the girl, he didn’t feel tired and knew that the next few days were going to take a lot out of Docherty and the others. He had no skill with tools himself and it would be Docherty, helped by Kitcat, who would have to reassemble the engines; and Gully and Bisset – who claimed some skill as a carpenter – who would have to work on the hull. All Cotton could do would be tea boy, look-out and general dogsbody.

  He could hear them all arguing through the open hatch of the forecastle, the old boring forecastle argument he’d heard hundreds of times in HM ships.

  ‘She did,’ Docherty said.

  ‘She didn’t,’ Gully retorted.

  ‘She bloody did, you know.’

  ‘She bloody didn’t.’

  He wondered who they were talking about.

  ‘Disarmed, disrobed and de-bloody-flowered in one hour flat,’ Docherty insisted. ‘I was always good at it. Left ’and behind her back so that when you pushed her down it was underneath. Her right in your left and what have you got?’

  ‘Rape.’ Bisset’s voice sounded bored.

  Docherty chuckled. ‘Well, you’ve got one spare hand,’ he said. ‘And that’s a distinct advantage. You’d be surprised how many times it worked. Anyway, half the time they’re saying “no” when they mean “yes”.’

  ‘What happens when they mean “no”?’

  ‘Well, that’s bloody hard luck. Sometimes I used to ask ’em: “Do you rape easily?” I got a few clouts across the kisser, but I got a few rapes too.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever make a mistake?’ Kitcat asked.

  ‘Plenty of times. But I got a lot of birds as well.’

  Cotton couldn’t understand how they could be so indifferent with Howard probably dying, then he realised it was a sort of defence mechanism that allowed them to shut their minds to suffering and concentrate simply on being alive.

  ‘It’s them books,’ Gully was saying. ‘That No Orchids and that Fig Leaves Forbidden thing you got down there. They get you worked up. You go on the way you are, you’ll end up like the last rose of summer.’

  Cotton, who’d been brought up as a good church-goer with high moral beliefs, listened to them with disgust. Then, guiltily, he found himself thinking of a girl he’d been with the last time he’d been on leave in London. She’d had pale-blue veins in the porcelain whiteness of her breasts, he’d noticed, but her breath had smelled of whisky and there’d been a picture of a soldier in uniform on the mantelpiece.

  Gully and Docherty were talking now about their war experiences, each trying to horrify the other.

  ‘When they bombed Liverpool,’ Gully said, ‘you could scrape ’em off the walls.’

  ‘All the time I was in the drink,’ Docherty countered, ‘this foot in the grey sock kept bobbing against my bloody ’ead.’

  Bisset’s voice came, weary and bored. ‘This grisly ritual of shocking each other with horror stories takes some talent for lying, you know. And you two haven’t got it.’

  ‘Who’s a liar?’ Gully said.

  ‘I dare bet you are. And so bloody boring you give a chap a headache.’

  ‘You can chew my starboard nipple,’ Docherty said cheerfully, then, as the voices died, Cotton heard Gully’s battered concertina and his breathy voice singing in a low monotone.

  ‘Roses round the door, kids upon the floor—’

  Cotton sighed. For the first time in his service career, he began to see what command was all about. He’d often thought of ships’ captains as privileged people spoiled by too much attention and too much spare time, but suddenly he realised why. They needed their time for thinking. Cotton had become the leader of the little group of men struggling for survival, not by order of the Admiralty or by reason of superior intellect or training, but simply because he’d been the only one with any ideas about self-preservation. The others had accepted his leadership without question and now he was realising what a lonely position he’d created for himself. No wonder the navy revered Nelson like a saint. Slight, tough, strong-willed, yet emotional as an actress, he knew exactly what moved men to perform miracles. Cotton wished he did.

  Eventually, the muttering below died away and while the others slept he went to the captain’s cabin to check that Howard was all right. His breathing seemed to be quieter now, and Cotton began to think he might survive if they could only get him to where he could receive treatment. As he stared down at him, Howard opened his eyes. ‘Wotcher, Royal,’ he said.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Cotton said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Howard’s head nodded weakly. ‘Hurts a bit,’ he said. ‘What happened to Coward?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Cotton lied. ‘Tomorrow we’re going to try to get you to a quack.’

  ‘Right.’ Howard nodded and slid away again into a shallow sleep.

  Cotton sighed, wishing he hadn’t so much to think about. Climbing on deck, he drained the water tank into the empty rum jar the Germans had left and did anything else he could find to do. Then he completed the log, stating in simple terms – because he wasn’t capable of more – exactly what had happened to Loukia’s crew, how he had decided to take over Loukia in place of Claudia, and everything that had happened between him and Petrakis.

  It rained soon after midnight and for the rest of the night he sat in the shattered wheelhouse staring at the sky and nursing the tommy-gun as he listened to the bassooning of the frogs in the stream and the high creak of the cicadas. At the back of his mind there was a nagging worry. He wasn’t quite sure what it was but it remained there all night. It was like something he was trying to grasp but couldn’t quite find in the darkness.

  He was still sitting in the wheelhouse when he heard the first aircraft of the new day to the north. It sounded louder than before, as if it were not far from the island, and he noticed the muttering of guns from the mainland had begun again.

  It stopped raining as the first faint colours of the morning came in the east and, going below, he made tea for the others. Gully sipped it warily.

  ‘Tastes like it’s been made outa shellac,’ he said.

  He looked grubby and unwholesome and Cotton wondered why God had had it in for him so, to land him with a pair like Gully and Docherty.

  Docherty yawned. ‘I was just dreaming about my bird,’ he said. ‘I was making a bloo
dy good job of it too.’

  Tve forgotten what it’s like to have a bird,’ Gully observed. ‘I won’t know what to do next time.’

  ‘It’s like riding a bike,’ Docherty pointed out cheerfully. ‘It all comes back when you get on.’ He paused, scratching his head, his eyes far away. ‘My bird was the wife of a corporal of Marines.’ He looked pointedly at Cotton, his face full of malicious glee. ‘Dim bastard, like most Joeys. I met her in a pub. Had a big bed, she did.

  ‘The corporal bought it for himself, only she was more often in it with me than him, see. Welsh, she was, and she had the nicest tits and legs you ever see. She was sitting on the bed starkers, all white and pink with green eyes, just taking off her stockings and looking at me like they do. You know – with her tongue going over lips—’ He gave a shudder and groaned. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Why did I have to wake up?’

  The light was increasing as Cotton returned on deck, and the day was spreading from the sea in long pale fingers into the heavens like violet ink rising through the veins of a tulip. Then he realised that above the rumble of artillery to the north he could also hear the low thud of an engine.

  Terrified that they’d been caught, he dived below and got the others moving. They were still struggling to get Howard out of the captain’s cabin when a caique nosed round the headland. Standing on the bow was a small figure that was quite clearly Annoula Akoumianakis. Cotton climbed to the deck, Docherty just behind him, and as the others joined them another caique appeared. They were small vessels – one brilliant red, the other a blistering blue – sloop-rigged, low-waisted, with clipper bows and rounded sterns. There were fishing nets on the deck and they were both low in the water.

  As they edged between the rocks and nosed slowly towards Claudia, he saw there were several men on board, apparently led by the captain of the electric-blue vessel. The girl was waving, proud of herself, and, as she gave Cotton a special smile, he found he was pleased to see her and glad she’d forgotten the dislike she’d felt for him the previous day.

  This is Dendras Varvara,’ she said, indicating the captain of the blue caique, a stout, elderly man in a striped jersey. She pointed to a grave-faced, shock-haired young man on the other boat. This is Athanasios, his son. They have come to help. They will take your wounded man to Ay Yithion.’