She turns her head at the sound of her husband’s singing. He is watering the melons and courgettes and she smiles. He loves hearing the children laughing, loves seeing them eat well, be happy and grow strong. ‘What if their parents never come back when the war is over?’ she asks him. ‘I keep telling the girls that they will stay with us until they return, but what if they don’t?’
Georgiou frowns. ‘Isaac and Perla made it clear to Doctor Batas that if they did not survive, we should make contact with their relatives in Athens. He has an address for them. They said they would write to him once they had settled into their new place of work, but I do not think it is wise just now to go looking for news. It is best we stay away from the villages and the town.’
Agata’s eyes fill with tears. She is growing to love the two little girls. And when she glances up and looks at Georgiou she can tell that he is affected as well. ‘They are Jewish,’ he says. ‘We have been elected to care for them for the time being, but it is right and proper that they should be reunited with their own people one day. They have their own heritage and that is what their parents want for them. We must respect that.’
And Agata knows that much as she can watch them, feed them and care for them, they can never be hers – one day, when it is safe, they must leave this place of peace and safety and leave her too.
Chapter Forty-One
March 2007
Amber
Inge didn’t smoke while we ate the cake and had our drinks, but she lit another cigarette as we talked later, drawing the deadly vapour deep into her sick lungs and closing her eyes. I wondered how much pain she was suffering; by this stage of her illness another cigarette could not harm her any more than she was hurt already. I finished the last crumbs of cake while she settled herself in an armchair near the wood-burning stove that had glowed all winter and which still warmed the house in those early days of spring.
After a couple of drags on her cigarette, she spoke in her rasping voice, ‘It’s a story of two halves, really. Their story and mine. Without them, mine would have no end.’ She shuffled in her chair, adjusting the cushions behind her back, and I could sense she was weighing up how to begin, then after a long pause, she spoke.
‘I imagine everyone despises their parents at some point when they are growing up. The trouble is, I never learnt to love them again. I don’t know exactly when it started, perhaps when I was about fifteen or so. It was the start of the sixties. Wasn’t that when life began for all Western teenagers? Our eyes and senses were awakened by the new music, by the freedom and the free-thinking. And that was when we began to ask the questions.’
‘What do you mean, questions?’
She laughed, a dry laugh that developed into a throaty cough. Once it had subsided, she drew on her cigarette again and shrugged. ‘It is funny, don’t you think? So funny that one little question can lead to so many more. Oh, so many questions, but never any answers. What did you do in the war, Daddy? And no one would ever tell us. Sometimes, they would simply say, Oh, it was very hard for us. We had such a hard time in those years. We don’t like to talk about it. And some of my friends had older relatives who even denied the camps and the atrocities.
‘So then my friends and I began to talk and ask more questions. We said they had been responsible. They had let it happen. It was their fault. And those of us who thought about it, who asked why, began to hate them for it. How could they not have known? How could they have destroyed their country and the respect in which it had once been held? How could we ever be proud of our nation? So we began to want a better way. And we felt they could not be allowed to have control again. We did not think they were capable.’
‘But surely you couldn’t think such terrible times could ever happen again? The worst culprits were either dead, disappeared or tried for war crimes, weren’t they?’ I was gripped by the thoughts she was stirring in my head, the images that her words provoked, and felt a cold prickling at the back of my neck. Any slights I had experienced so far in my life were as nothing compared to those committed in the years to which she was referring.
‘Ach so, that is true, but the rest had been complicit. Because of indolence perhaps, but mostly through fear, they had done nothing to stop it. So they could not be trusted with our future. We felt we had to make a stand. Make them take notice. We wanted to show the world that we were not like them, that we could create a better country.’
I thought as she spoke of how my grandparents and James’s all talked with pride of their role in the war. ‘I can see how difficult it must have been for you,’ I said. ‘Being British, I’ve only ever heard older people talk about us winning the war.’
Inge gave that feeble, sickly laugh again. ‘It wasn’t the losing we minded, it was the shame. Don’t you realise how ashamed we were? How very ashamed we were, when we were old enough to understand what they had allowed to happen?’ She closed her eyes for a second and I felt this emotional subject was tiring her too much.
Then she rallied again and said, ‘Why, we could not talk about it even to the smallest degree. You know, when I was at school I had an English penfriend – Anita, her name was. She came to stay with me one summer in Reutlingen, when I was about seventeen. Then one evening my friends and I met with her school friends, who also had pen friends in our town, and we were laughing and talking in English and one of them used the word “gentile”, I can’t remember why now. And I naively asked what that word meant. I had no idea that the answer would make me feel so uncomfortable. Without any trace of embarrassment, my innocent pen friend answered, in perfect German, “Das ist wenn man keine Jude ist.” “That’s when you’re not a Jew.” She had no hesitation in uttering these words, because she bore no guilt, but the rest of us, me and my friends, we all fell silent. A dark shadow we could never escape was cast over our happy little gathering.
‘With those few words, in the middle of our simple, happy group, we were reminded yet again of our country’s enormous sin. And we could not discuss the rights and wrongs, because we could not ever know precisely how our fathers, our mothers, our uncles, our aunts, our older cousins, our grandparents, our neighbours and even our teachers had acted during those times. We felt that their entire generation was tainted with guilt. That was how it started.’ She gave a great sigh, then leant forward to grind out her cigarette stub in an ashtray next to the fireplace.
‘How what started?’ I was totally mesmerised by her story. I had never before considered the feelings of post-war German youth.
‘How we began to think of making them wake up,’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘I don’t understand.’
She sighed, then coughed again and when she had caught her breath, she continued, ‘We all felt it was the only way we could make our parents see that we were different to them. We would not be like them and blindly accept the rules. We would not be unquestioning. We had to take a stand. We had to shock them.
‘I think it began when I was still at school. And then I went to university in Göttingen, which had a lot of radicalised students. That was when I met Günther – he made me see that mere disapproval of our parents was not enough. It was essential to act, and I agreed with him.’
‘And how did he persuade you?’
‘Oh, it was the oldest story in the world. I fell in love with him and I thought he loved me.’ She stopped for a moment and stirred the grey ash and the white stubs in the ashtray with her fingertip. ‘I think maybe he did love me for a while. I thought he was the most handsome boy I had ever seen. Like Paul McCartney but thinner, with bony wrists and a little beard.’ Inge’s finger whisked around the edge of her chin as she said this, then she reached for another cigarette. ‘But he didn’t really care for me as much as I cared for him. He used me.’
I could see how this faded grey woman with the gaunt face had once been a lithe, long-haired blonde, turning heads and said, ‘You mean used you because he just wanted you for sex?’
She nodded, a matter-of-fac
t nod. ‘That, but other things too. It was good for his image to have a pretty young girl by his side, adoring everything he said. And it was good later for him to have a devoted servant, washing his jeans, making his bed and cooking his food, when he decided to come back to our flat, that is.’
‘So he wasn’t faithful to you, then?’
Inge laughed and sounded so tired. ‘He was faithful to his principles, to his cause. When I became pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, he said that would not be very much use to him or to the movement. He said if I loved him and all he stood for, I would get rid of it. He wouldn’t even discuss it. He told me where to go for the abortion and that was that.’
I shook my head. ‘That must have made you very unhappy.’
‘The abortion? No, not particularly. I was only twenty. Why would I have wanted a child at that age? I only wanted Günther and I wanted him to love me and our child. But his response,’ she nodded to herself, ‘that was what made me unhappy. I think that was when I fully realised for the first time that I meant nothing at all to him, not in terms of love, that is. I had the termination in a dirty room with no one to hold my hand. That was what hurt, more than the pains in my womb. He didn’t even care about my health or my safety. And afterwards, I cried, not for the child, but for myself, and he simply didn’t want to know.’
‘But you could have been very ill. You could have even died.’
‘I know. I didn’t know that at the time, but I could have. There was a lot of blood afterwards. And then, while I was lying in my bed, in such pain with a blood-soaked towel between my legs, a friend came and told me that Günther had a new girlfriend. I challenged him when he came back and he just said, “Well, what do you expect? I need someone who is fit for duty, not an invalid.” And I told him I would not help him any more and that we were finished.’
‘How did he react to that?’
‘He said he was going to tell me to go anyway, even before my latest little problem, as he put it. He said his new girlfriend was more than capable of taking my place, because she was as committed to the cause as he was. She was prepared to take action, unlike me.’
‘Was that true? I thought you meant all you and your friends wanted to do was protest, take a stand.’
‘We did. But I never wanted to hurt or threaten anyone. I could not do that. And it seems she could. So he had what he wanted and I left.’
‘And is that when you left Germany and came to Greece?’
‘No, not straight away. I decided to finish my degree elsewhere and moved to Heidelberg, then when I graduated I started travelling. I worked for a time in England. I stayed with my penfriend and found a position in a school where I could teach a little, with conversation classes. I supplemented that with work in a bar, where I always pretended I was Swedish to avoid any embarrassment or questions.’
She looked exhausted, leaning back against the cushions and closing her eyes. And then I heard steps outside and Marian was there. Inge looked up at her with a smile and said, ‘Amber has been keeping me company this afternoon.’
‘I’ve been hearing all about Inge’s fascinating life.’
‘So she’s been boring you with tales of her revolutionary past, has she?’ Marian laughed and bent to kiss Inge’s head. ‘Quite the little rebel, wasn’t she?’
‘But there’s more,’ I said, turning back to Inge again. ‘You haven’t yet told me about Agata and Georgiou and where they fit into your story.’
Inge’s smile was weary as she gave me her hand. ‘Another time, liebchen. I will still be here another time. We will talk again soon.’
Chapter Forty-Two
15 June 1944
‘I don’t think you should go,’ Agata insists. ‘The soldiers might see you and stop you and ask questions. And if they follow you back, then they will know we are hidden away down here.’
‘Don’t worry so. I won’t be gone long. We need to know what is happening up there.’ Georgiou puts a flask of water and a wrap of fava in his sack. He doesn’t intend taking any longer than is absolutely necessary, but the booming noise they’ve heard from the other side of the headland is worrying. Could the Germans be creating an outpost so close to their home? And why now, facing Albania, when surely they must still be more concerned with the advance of the British from Italy, on the other side of the island?
‘I will go up as far as the main road and wait there for a while, hidden, in case there are troops or convoys. Then I’ll come back through the olive groves and keep undercover to get a better look at the headland.’
Agata knows he cannot be deterred. He has watered the vegetables, irrigated the melons and tethered the goats. She can manage till he returns and she watches him trudge up the steep narrow track as the first light glimmers through the trees before the full heat of the day. God willing, he should be back before sunset. And if he does not return, she knows the soil as well as he does and could provide enough for this little hidden family. She laughs to herself. She might not know how to cast a fishing net out on the open waters, but she could wade through the rock pools looking for octopuses, sea urchins and mussels. She and the children will not starve, no matter what today brings.
And then she hears childish laughter on the stairs. The girls wake early every day and are full of life from the moment they open their eyes. They are growing in both strength and confidence, with fewer tears and many more smiles.
‘Aggie,’ they call as they run to her, throwing their arms around her legs. She will not let them call her Mama or Yaya, as she is neither their mother nor their grandmother. She knows her role is only temporary. She is their protector and provider, but that cannot stop her loving them, as she washes their faces and brushes their tangled hair.
‘Georgy,’ giggles Anna. ‘Want Georgy.’
Agata laughs whenever she hears the little girl’s attempt to pronounce her husband’s name. ‘Georgiou has had to go away for a while today, but he’ll be back soon. And you can help me collect eggs and tomatoes. He’ll be very pleased to know you’ve been helping and made yourself useful.’
‘And me,’ says Matilde, hopping up and down beside her little sister. ‘I want to help too.’
‘Yes, you too, but first, we must all have breakfast. Then we’ll have the strength to work hard. And after we’ve done all our jobs, I am going to measure you each for a new dress with this material.’ Agata holds up a long white bedspread of heavy linen with rows of blue and red embroidery at either end. ‘You are both growing so fast we shall soon have nothing for you to wear.’
The girls pull the cloth from Agata’s hands, draping it over their heads, and dance around, laughing. Agata laughs too. The bedspread was stitched by her own mother, embroidered by her as a gift for her wedding chest. But as it has not helped her produce the children that she expected to have, she feels sure her mother would not object to her using it to clothe two little girls who may never see their parents and older sister again.
‘Here, let me take it,’ she says, pulling the cloth from the sisters’ hands. ‘We don’t want it to get dirty before I’ve even started. We want to make lovely white dresses for you both, so your Mama will be proud of you.’
Chapter Forty-Three
April 2007
Amber
‘How’s the restaurant coming along?’
Pam was the last person I’d expected to see that day, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. All the British ex-pats shopped in M&S in Corfu Town when they were missing home comforts. I’d dashed into the store for their pillows. They really are the best, and quite inexpensive. And suddenly, there was Greg’s wife, in the same department, browsing through the towels only a couple of yards away from me.
‘It’s all on schedule,’ I said. ‘We open for business at Easter. We’ve got our first bookings then.’
‘Lunch or dinner?’
‘For bed and breakfast.’ She looked perplexed. ‘We’re offering accommodation as well as the restaurant, but that will be open by then
too.’
‘Oh, really? I didn’t know that.’ She seemed to glaze over, and then turned her attention back to the towels. ‘What do you think? This charcoal or the cobalt blue?’ She pointed at both stacks on the display with a manicured hand adorned with large rings and red varnish.
‘I always prefer white, myself. But dark colours are very practical.’
‘That’s what I was thinking. Lavinia always leaves so much make-up all over the towels when she comes to stay with us.’
‘Is she coming here for Easter, with the children?’
‘Yes,’ Pam murmured, still hovering between the colour choices. ‘You know, I think the charcoal really would be best, don’t you? It won’t show the make-up stains so much. I’m always telling Lavinia she shouldn’t bother with foundation when she’s here, but she won’t listen, insists on using it, even when she’s starting to get a tan.’ Her eyes flicked across to me. ‘Not that you need to worry about that sort of thing, dear, with your lovely natural colour.’ I let the comment bounce off me, and was just about to leave with my pillows when she turned to me. ‘I’ll have to bring Lavinia and the boys up to see you. We could come over for lunch one day while they’re here. That would be such fun for them, before you get too busy.’
‘Do that. Let me know when you want to come. And let me know how many too. We’ve had quite a few enquiries already and I expect we’ll be very busy over the holiday, so we’ll have to make sure you’re booked in.’
Burning Island: Absolutely heartbreaking World War 2 historical fiction Page 15