Corporal Cotton's Little War (22 page)

Docherty still seemed to want to argue but Cotton turned away and left him to it. During the morning, they removed everything from the deck and hid until the German caiques had passed the end of the bay. Cotton stared after them as they vanished. ‘What do’ you reckon they’re up to?’ he asked Bisset.

‘Looking for us, perhaps?’

‘I wondered if they’re doing a guard to stop anybody getting away from, here to Crete. Patullo said they were expecting them to invade.’ Cotton frowned. ‘Still, everybody knows
that.
Even me. Let’s get these rudders off.’

Tomorrow,’ Gully pleaded. ‘My ‘ead’s like a setpot.’

Cotton reached out with a big hand and, grasping Gully’s shirt, dragged him forward until their noses were inches apart.
‘Now,’
he said.

For a moment, Gully glared feebly but he was neither big enough nor in a fit enough state of health to argue. Docherty hadn’t waited for instructions and was already in the after hatch, throwing out rope and unlashing gear. As he removed the last bolt and whacked the end of the stock with a leather mallet, the starboard rudder began to slip downwards. As it dropped away, Cotton noticed with a certain amount of surprise that, contrary to what he’d expected and exactly as Docherty had predicted, the sea didn’t rush in and fill the after compartment.

At the end of the afternoon, Cotton again told Docherty that he was going to have to row the next drum of petrol round.

‘Why me?’ Docherty said. ‘I been at it all day and there’s work to be done in the engine room.’

‘Tell Kitcat what to do.
You’re
so bloody strong, it might do you good to row round to Kharasso Bay and back.’

While Docherty set off for the headland in the dinghy, Bisset and Kitcat took the donkey over the hill to bring back what they could. Cotton watched them go, wondering if Docherty would simply go on rowing to Kalani and give himself up. The previous night’s affair had brought a new problem -- how to organize his manpower so that whenever the girl was aboard, there was somebody reliable at hand in case it happened again. With Docherty and Gully his only two skilled men and the rest of his team having to make the journeys to Kharasso Bay, it wasn’t easy.

The night passed without incident, however. Rather to Cotton’s surprise, Docherty returned with another drum of petrol and more planks, and the following day they removed the surviving rudder from
Claudia.
Bringing it over the hill on the donkey’s back, Docherty built a fire in an attempt to straighten out the bend in the stock.

He wasn’t entirely successful but they decided it would work. The top of the stock had been narrowed and squared to take a tiller for hand operation in emergency, and there was a hole through it for the big split pin that held the nut which secured the rudder arm when it was connected to the main steering. Threading a long wire from one of the mast stays through the hole, they passed the other end under the boat and up through the rudder tube into the after compartment where Cotton, with an ugly soldier’s knot, bent on a heaving line to> give them a grip for pulling. Then, with the same arrangement of plank, lines and rope they’d used for the propeller, Docherty manoeuvred the rudder into position beneath the boat and pushed from beneath as Bisset and Kitcat hauled on the heaving line. As the stock was dragged up through the tube, they secured it in position and Docherty eyed it with a satisfaction that was only marred by the crooked look his bruised nose and eyes gave his face.

‘Right,’ Cotton decided. ‘Now we’ll dismantle the pump from
Claudia
and shove it aboard to give us double suction. There’s time to do it today.’

Docherty sighed. ‘I wish I was a millionaire’s bastard,’ he said.

Three days later, Dendras Varvara’s caique turned up again and they got him to bring round the last of the gear from Kharasso Bay, the heavy batteries from
Claudia’s
engine room and what was left of the drums of petrol. It was now the 18th, and since they had no idea what was happening to the north, it was essential to find out. Cotton had not forgotten the instructions that had been given to Patullo before they’d left Crete. In addition to rescuing
Loukia’s
survivors and her cargo of money and weapons -enough in all conscience, it seemed now - they had been ordered to find out what the Germans were up to. And in his heart of hearts, Cotton was also hoping that somehow he might get news that would counteract all the gloomy items he’d been hearing over the past few days. He drew Bisset and the Canadian to one side.

‘I’m going to Kalani with the girl,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to find out what’s happening. She says there’s a bus from Ay Yithion and I can speak the lingo.’

Since he had to rely on Docherty to carry on working while he was away, he also felt obliged to tell him what he intended. He was relieved to see Docherty grin his old grin again.

‘And this is a warning to the hearts and flowers kid to behave hisself, eh?’ he said.

It surprised Cotton that he was so good-humoured about it. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly.

Docherty did a few dance steps and looked up at Cotton. ‘Y’know,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t trying to rape her. It was just the old Docherty technique. Only this time it didn’t work. If she’d screamed I’d have stopped.’

‘She was probably too frightened to scream.’ Cotton was handing out nothing in the way of forgiveness.

‘Yeah -- well -- ‘ Docherty left what he was going to say unfinished ‘ -- you needn’t have clouted me like that. I thought my eyes was going to fall out and roll on the deck like ping-pong balls.’

‘Touch her again and they will.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Docherty raised his hands in submission. ‘Come to think of it, I’m not sure I like Greek bints anyway. Compared with what we’ve got on Tyneside, I wouldn’t give you a fly button for the lot of them. She’s all yours.’

Cotton’s head jerked round. ‘
I
’m not interested in Greek bints either,’ he said.

Docherty grinned. ‘Then why,’ he said, ‘are you always goggling at her like last week’s kippers?’

Between them they managed to equip Cotton in civilian clothes -- a pair of flannel trousers from Docherty, a ghastly pink pullover with holes in the elbows from Gully, a checked shirt from Bisset. It was significant that only Cotton himself, a Regular to his fingertips, had nothing civilian to contribute to his garb.

‘We need some more petrol,’ Docherty shouted down to him as he climbed ashore. ‘We’ll not get to’ Suda with what we’ve got.’

Cotton stared up at him. ‘I’ll buy some in Kalani,’ he said sarcastically. ‘There’s bound to be a Woolworth’s.’

They caught the bus where the road curved up from Ay Yithion. It was packed with people taking produce to the island capital. The rear portion was filled with fish boxes, while among the seats there were chickens in wicker cages, a trussed sheep, and baskets of fruit. The road wound through the marshes of the central plain where the island sank like the centre of a shallow plate, and they could see herons among the weeds and dozens of what looked like large versions of children’s windmills. The ground around them was white with camomile, the flame of genista, rock roses and patches of red poppies.

To their right they could see Cape Asigonia projecting out to sea between a curve of the steep hills that ran round the south of the island. At the junction of the road to Skoinia, another batch of people crammed more baskets and another sheep into the back of the bus. As they passed the airstrip at Yanitsa, Cotton sat up. There was a large wire compound near the road where impounded civilian vehicles were carrying jerricans of petrol to stacks that had already been built.

‘What do they want petrol for?’ he muttered. ‘Caiques run on diesel.’

There were half a dozen trimotored Junkers at the far end of the strip, three Messerschmitt 110s and what looked like a Junkers 88. There also seemed to be an enormous number of Germans, all wearing peaked caps and in their shirt sleeves, but no one stopped the bus and it was allowed to pass without incident. The end of the road from Kaessos produced more people. Then to the east of Kalani, as they passed a group of red-roofed buildings among the trees in the distance which Annoula identified as Panyioti’s holiday home, they saw German soldiers at the end of a lane. They were tormenting a couple of girls carrying baskets of vegetables. They had surrounded them and kept touching the girls’ breasts and behinds and were pretending to lift their skirts, and the girls were giving little screams of terror that were drowned by the deeper laughter of the soldiers.

The Germans were all young and they all looked remarkably tough. They wore the ordinary short-jacketed grey-green uniform of the Wehrmacht but all distinguishing badges had been removed and they had an air about them that seemed to indicate they were not the same as the rest of the German soldiers on the island. They had a look of capability and self-sufficiency and didn’t seem like men to be trifled with.

As the bus drew level with them, they left the girls and started to run towards it, shouting and waving their arms. The bus driver panicked, as though he feared there might be trouble if they managed to get aboard. His foot went down on the accelerator and the ancient vehicle began to labour, its engine roaring. The increased speed was slight but it was enough to put it beyond the reach of the running men, and one of them dragged a pistol from a holster and fired several shots into the air. A woman screamed and Annoula turned towards Cotton and hid her face against his chest.

Kalani was a small place, shabby for the most part, and the main road had been taken up for repairs so that the bus had to stop outside the centre of the town and they had to walk the rest of the way over a path made of planks and flat stones.

The weather was still unsettled, with a fluky wind threatening rain, The sea had risen and the waves were punching at the cliffs, and, as they approached the town centre, the rain finally came. The stones shone in the grey light as it pounded down. Everybody vanished from the streets into the shops and taverns, and the slanting alleys and the climbing steps among the tiers of white cube houses ran with water.

They found a cafe and ordered wine. Through the window they could see the jetty and the masts of the boats almost misted away by the rain. A giant acacia shaded the terrace but provided no shelter against the downpour that blew and spat and crackled against the windows. A dozen broad streams rushed down the steps and across the square, carrying pebbles and twigs and scraps of paper with them.

The cafe was jammed with people, talking or playing cards. The whitewashed walls were hung with prints of steamers and ferry-boats, and there was a gilt mirror and a picture of a girl in Edwardian dress alongside a photograph of the King of the Hellenes. Everybody seemed nervous and ill at ease, the wireless blaring out in a crackling drone that obscured the voices of the customers. The programme seemed to be one long news bulletin that appeared to consist only of a long list of military disasters. The centre of Belgrade had been destroyed by Nazi bombers which, unopposed and skimming the rooftops, had rained down their missiles on the stricken city for three days. Thousands of people had been’ killed. ‘Yugoslavia must be crushed,’ the Germans were declaring. Meanwhile the Greek army, which had successfully resisted the Italians for six months, was now on the brink of capitulation before the German might. For Britain, Greece had proved nothing but another Norway. Her expeditionary force of sixty thousand men had been overwhelmed by the sheer weight of metal and, with inadequate air cover, was disintegrating into a nightmare.

Cotton listened with a stony expression. He had come to find out what was happening and the news was shattering.

‘It’ll come right,’ he kept saying to himself, but however hard he searched for a tiny gleam of encouragement, it eluded him. Of a good church-going family, he felt that somewhere there should be divine retribution against the forces of darkness that were oppressing the world, but nowhere - nowhere - could he see any sign of God’s justice.

From where they sat, they looked over the harbour. But there seemed to be no unusual activity, no ships that could be used for an invasion of Crete or Malta or Egypt, nothing but a lot of caiques, small boats and one lost ferry. It puzzled Cotton, because he couldn’t understand why the Germans had pushed so far ahead of their main army to capture Aeos if they weren’t using it as a jumping-off spot.

As the rain stopped and the sun came out, they saw the two caiques they’d spotted off Kharasso Bay towing in another vessel with a charred black mark along its side. Its bows were pitted with bomb splinters and it was packed with khaki-clad men, British, Australian and New
Zealand
soldiers who had tried to escape from the mainland. Some of them were wounded and all of them were saturated.

Cotton watched them climb ashore, sullen and defeated under the laughter and jeers of the triumphant Germans standing on the jetty. His face wore the same set look it had worn as he had listened to the news, and he sat in grim silence, Annoula’s tragic eyes on his face.

They hung about Kalani all day. But the trip seemed to have been pointless. Whatever the Germans were up to on Aeos, they were keeping very quiet about it. There weren’t even any rumours and, apart from the sight of the British prisoners of war, the only untoward incident involved more of the tough-looking soldiers they had seen near Panyioti’s house, who had tried to stop the bus they were on. Occasionally they had seen some of them about the town, swaggering along the narrow streets and pushing the islanders into the gutter. Only one boy, hot-blooded enough to be defiant, had disputed their passage, and he was slammed against a wall and left huddled at its foot, his face bleeding, feebly spitting out teeth. Cotton’s great fist clenched but Annoula had dragged at his arm and pulled him away.

They ate bread and sausage in a bar as they waited for the bus back across the island, drinking a solitary thin beer between them. The German soldiers puzzled Cotton. They had learned there were about three hundred of them, billeted in Panyioti’s place, and Cotton couldn’t make out why an island the size of Aeos - which had already been subjugated - needed three hundred tough soldiers in addition to the Luftwaffe units, lines of supply troops and engineers.