Angus handed me the paper. “What do you think, Bronte? It sounds like Kieran. Tall, auburn hair. And he was confident on the hills; spent a lot of time as a young lad rambling on them, like most rural Scots. All right, it’s not a lot to go on, but it’s the best, most specific information I’ve ever come across.”
“There must have been lots of Scots in the Service Corps, and plenty with auburn hair,” I said.
“Yes, but you know, from the old pictures of Kieran, how thick and bonnie his auburn hair was. You’d remember it, wouldn’t you? Kieran’s father, Tom, said the men in the family, mostly, had that amazing hair. And remember my hair was similar when I was young, and you’ve got it too.”
“Well, it’s a funny thing for this Thomas to remember, in the midst of a terrifying escape, the colour of someone else’s hair,” I said.
Angus smiled. “Well, some of the accounts of veterans I’ve read are full of strange details, like one soldier remembered a guy in his battalion who carried gold nail scissors around with him like a lucky charm. There’s a heightened reality in times of war. It’s the odd little things people remember. Like Thomas also remembering the name of the village, Platanos, even though he spelt it wrong, but it has to be the same village in the mountains that Myrto came from, as do a lot of others in Marathousa. There’s no other village around here with that name.”
“If the guy that Thomas mentioned really was Kieran, do you think that he and the other soldier might have made it to this Platanos?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Och, I don’t know anything. Who knows? Maybe they set off and changed their minds, or got picked up by the Germans. We know from War Office records he was definitely in Kalamata during the battle, and if this guy in Thomas’s story is our Kieran then this narrows him down to a specific part of the Mani. That’s why I decided to move to Marathousa. I discussed this with an expat called Rupert, who knows the Mani well, and knows a lot about the battle. He agreed that Platanos would have been the ideal village in which to hide out because it’s right back in the mountains and only accessible by a mule track. There are a few other villages further into the mountains but they would have been too hard to reach quickly. But if you were to draw a rough line from the beach that Thomas mentioned, which must have been Santova beach – the one near the bottom of the lower road from Marathousa – and continue the line just west of the Rindomo Gorge, you would roughly come to the foothills of the mountain range. And if you managed to ascend, you would eventually come to Platanos.”
“Perhaps the two guys just hid out in Marathousa? That would be an irony,” I said.
“They may have passed through it, but I don’t think they would have hung around. There were Germans swarming all over the north Mani a few days after they occupied Kalamata. I’ve heard stories of how the locals in Marathousa were terrified of the Germans rounding them up, so they hid in the caves along the steep sides of the Rindomo gorge, which was a dangerous undertaking anyway.”
“Realistically though, the pair could have gone anywhere in the mountains,” I said, feeling light-headed at all the possibilities. I had seen a map of the region and knew that the spine of the Taygetos mountains ran the whole length of the Mani, petering out near the tip. In a cove there lies the fabled cave of Hades, doorway to the underworld. In 1941, the whole place must have felt like a portal to hell.
“Rupert also told me that there was a link between Platanos and Marathousa since many villagers had come down from the mountains to lower villages like ours from the early 19th century onwards after the Greeks won the War of Independence. They were looking for an easier life basically and the lower villages were suddenly more secure from interlopers and there was land for the taking. Rupert thought that villagers with the mountain link would probably be able to help me with my research. Ironically, the one old guy who might have been the most helpful was Yiorgos, who died recently. The fact that Kieran was here fighting for their country makes him a hero in their eyes, but the mountain people are often guarded, with foreigners, at any rate.”
“Have you told anyone there about Kieran?”
“No. I want to tread carefully. I’ve just mentioned the issue of allies possibly hiding out in the mountains. Nothing specific. But I get the feeling they don’t want to talk much about the war, not when they’ve got a crisis on their hands. I haven’t been to Platanos yet. That’s what I plan to do next. Go up and see if there’s anyone there who remembers war stories − not that there are many villagers left. I’ve gathered that much at least. Anyway, this is where you come in. With your sharp journalistic brain, I thought you’d be able to help me push my research further and solve the mystery of what happened to Kieran once and for all.”
“Oh, starting with the easy stuff then,” I said, sarcastically.
“Yeah, why not?” he said, twisting his ponytail around.
“I can try to help, but you’re the one who speaks Greek.”
“Sadly, my Greek might not be up to this challenge. But two minds on the job will be better.”
“What about Rupert. Can’t he help you a bit more? He seems to be the expert.”
He puffed air out through pursed lips. “Rupert is back in the UK. He isn’t very well.”
I had a sudden thought. “Is all this what you’ve been scribbling down in those notebooks in your study?”
“Oh, pet. You’ve been poking around on my desk!”
“I didn’t read anything but I noticed the books. And there’s the ‘pet’ word again.”
He ignored the reproach. “Okay, yes. I’ve been doing plenty of leg work these past months. Making notes.”
I was impressed. “So how do you propose to start this search?”
“I’ve started already. I’ve ordered a four-wheel drive for tomorrow, to drive up to the mountains.”
“That’s quick. When did you do that?”
“Today, while you were chatting with Leo.”
“I see. So, let me get this straight. You want us to drive up into the mountains and look around for some old guy of 90 who might remember a couple of British soldiers during the war? Some guy who might have hidden them in his wood shed?”
“Aye. Something like that,” he said with a wry smile.
“And you want to do this, despite being a possible heart attack victim?”
“Oh, fuck all that! The cardio doc will give me a load of tablets and I’ll be fine. The heart issue has been a wake-up call. I’m getting old. There will never be a better time to find out about Kieran. And now you’re here. I’ve got some moral support,” he said.
My faced flushed slightly with aggravation. Suddenly I had forgotten Kieran and the Battle of Kalamata. “You want my moral support, Angus? What moral support did you give me when you left and came to Greece? I was in my 20s, trying to crack into a bloody difficult profession.”
He rubbed his hands over his forehead and looked agonised. “Och, Bronte. I know what you’re feeling. I’ve been a right bam sometimes, but this is not the time to spear the donkey’s arse, as gran would say.”
“When is the time?” I hadn’t meant to snap but it amazed me how much rancour bubbled just below the surface. He just did that Greek thing with me: flicked his eyebrows up and half-closed his eyes. No comment.
“Tell me one thing. When you left 10 years ago, was it all about Kieran really, or was it other things?” I asked.
“Who knows, Bronte? But one day we’ll talk about it, I promise,” he said, evasively.
I let it go. I didn’t have the energy to bicker and, by the looks of him, neither did he.
“Let’s make tracks. The city’s beginning to empty now.”
Angus had parked his Fiat in a side street nearby. He knew what streets were good for half a day’s parking and, anyway, he said few cars ever got booked. It also didn’t bother him that he’d been drinking because there were few police patrols around. This was southern Greece, a place that even other Greeks called ‘wild’, where rule-breakers seemed to be abl
e to sleep at night.
As we drove back to the village, I mulled over this improbable mission, dodging heart attacks and perilous mountain roads. And there was I thinking that all I had to do here was escort him to heart specialists. How wrong I was. We bumped along the same route the taxi driver had taken me on, past the switchback bends but slower, the engine straining up the inclines. I had a longing suddenly for the line-up of saints.
“What I don’t understand, Angus, is why you didn’t tell me the truth when you wrote to me recently. Why did you turn it into a medical drama?”
He kept his eyes on the road and didn’t answer straight away.
“I thought … if I told you the whole truth, you wouldn’t want to come. You’d think it was useless and that I was a daft old bastard.”
“Yep, I’d have thought that. Thinking it right now.”
“And you’d think, ‘Why should I help him after all this time?’ Right?”
“Yeah. I’ll admit I’m wresting with that too,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, feeling grizzly as we took a few more bends on the road. The car engine sounded asthmatic. At one severe bend with no guard rail, I noticed a small shrine with a lighted candle inside. He saw me staring.
“That’s where a collision happened last year. Some poor guy got incinerated in his car.”
“Oh, that fills me with confidence. Thanks.”
Angus’s Fiat was in fact better than some of the cars I’d seen around the village, which looked like they’d survived a wrecking ball. He told me people didn’t have money any more for MOT or tax and they just drove these heaps to and from their farms, as few police ever bothered to go to Maniot villages unless they really had to. I knew how they felt!
I was relieved when we pulled up outside Villa Anemos. As soon as we got inside, Angus made coffee and we sat outside on the balcony. It was quiet in the late afternoon while everyone slept. Only the cicadas kept up a shrill reminder of summer’s heat and sweat. As we drank our coffee, Angus handed me a book.
“It’s one of the best books, in my opinion, about the battle, just to refresh your memory, and gives a bit more background on how the allies escaped.”
The book was simply titled The Forgotten Allies: Stories from the Battle of Kalamata, with a photo on the front that I took to be an old one of Kalamata beach. Unlike the vista of today, with its cafes and apartment blocks, this one had thick olive groves running down close to the shore. I assumed he thought the book would inspire me on this mad mission.
“Okay, I’ll read it, but I’m still not sure how we can get to grips with this search when I only have a couple of weeks left. Just thought I’d mention that.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin. “I agree it’s not long, but we can make a start and see how we get on. Luck may be on our side. I might talk to Leo about our mission. I haven’t so far, but it would be good to pick his brains, since his family originally came from Platanos as well, though he was born here.”
“Did you call him today when I was in the ladies’ toilet?”
He nodded. “But not to blether on about heart disease − to kind of set the scene, to work our way into his good books, with the mission in mind.”
Set the scene? He was shrewder than I thought.
“It was generous of him to come – busy doctor and all that,” I said.
“He’s been a lot more attentive since you arrived. I think he’s quite taken with you, Bronte.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Really? Aren’t you forgetting his dentist girlfriend, the tooth fairy?”
He sniggered. “Ach, don’t worry! No-one could possibly be in love with a woman who gawps at molars all day long.” I laughed at his totally inane comment.
“Don’t be too sure! And anyway, have you turned into a matchmaker now?”
He looked shocked at that. “I might tease you about Leo, but I wouldn’t dare match you up with anyone, Bronte. As I’ve said, you’re married to your career.”
“And you would know, of course!” I snapped back.
He winced and held his hands up. “Okay, I deserved that. I’m sorry. But just tell me: are you on board with this mission, or not?”
I sighed. “Is there a choice? It’s just the degree of difficulty in solving this … mystery.”
“But you’re a journalist. You do this all the time, unpick mysteries, track down people for comments.”
“The people are usually alive though. It makes things easier.”
“Good. I’ll away then and have a wee siesta. I’m knackered.”
I was relieved when he went downstairs. We hadn’t had the big rammy that I feared was coming. I was stung by his words though. I knew he’d followed my career at times and referred to my stories in some of his rare letters, but my love life was something he knew nothing about. I wasn’t wed to my career but it eclipsed everything else in terms of its success. A few years earlier I’d won a couple of journalism awards for feature writing, but I wouldn’t be receiving plaudits for my love life.
My last love affair was with a sexy guy called Rory, who played bass guitar in a Scottish rock band. I’d interviewed him for a feature and it was love at first sight. Rory was dark-haired and swarthy. Irish heritage. And he had an Irish temperament as well. Brilliant and quixotic. I went to as many of his gigs as my job allowed, put up with temporary hearing loss and passive smoking in badly ventilated venues. We were unofficially engaged when he gave me a hastily-bought ring with a moonstone until he had time to get me the real thing with a big “muckle diamond” as he put it. Then he went on a tour of Australia. Two weeks into it, a text arrived: “Sorry, sorry, I’m a complete toerag but I think I’m not ready for commitment after all. And I don’t deserve you.” I sent him a text back, saying simply: “Well fuck off then!”
My friend Sybil told me I was blinded by Rory’s bass guitar and his blarney. She said she saw the apocalypse coming long before I did. I’d never been great at relationships. They didn’t last because I picked the wrong men, obviously. A psychologist would say I did that because I expected them to let me down − just as Angus had. I tend to think some people aren’t fated to meet their soul mate. I believed I was becoming one of those people, at 37. One day at work, I confessed my fear about finding the right partner to a male journo friend, who was older and wiser. “There’s no such thing as the right partner. All there is are people walking past you, day in and day out. You’ve already passed ‘the perfect man’ − you just haven’t looked at him properly. You’ve got to be open to love. It’s not always going to be obvious; the grand moment. It can come from the most unlikely direction. It’s whether you recognise it or not. Or whether you let it walk past you.”
I didn’t know what he was blethering on about, to be honest, but one day I might, perhaps. In the meantime, I gripped at the concept of fated love, only because it didn’t require anything of me at all.
I took the book Angus had given me and went off for my own siesta and to think some more about Mission Kieran. How could I refuse to help? I had grown up seeing pictures of young Kieran, with his thick wavy hair, his hazel eyes, like mine. When I thought of the Taygetos mountains that we lived in the shadow of, I felt overwhelmed. If Kieran had made it up there, how terrifying the last days or weeks of his life must have been. He was just 25. I had probably not given enough thought over the years to Kieran’s disappearance. It was so long ago, and it happened overseas. But to be here now with the possibility, slim though it was, of finding his final resting place would be immense. It would give everyone closure.
Chapter 8
Ascent to Platanos
On the mountain road, the small four-wheel drive slithered and bumped over heavy scree, spitting stones out behind the vehicle. To the left was a craggy rock wall, to the right a sheer drop to a wooded gorge below, with no guard rail. Beyond that, the Messinian gulf sparkled and winked in the bright morning sun. I began to wish I was swimming in it, instead of being half-way up a mountain with a man suffering from do
dgy arteries and probably delusions as well. Angus slowed the vehicle over the bumps, inching forward until we were away from the rock shower. I could see sweat beading on his forehead and I asked if he was okay.
“I will be when we get past this feckin’ bit of road. There was a storm up here in the summer, and it obviously loosened some of the earth banks. It looks like no-one has bothered to clear the road.”
The journey had started well after we picked up the four-wheel early from Kalamata. The weather was hot but not unbearable, the sky an indelible blue with a long scattering of fluffy clouds, as if they’d been rolled out like dice. It promised to be a good day, until we started to ascend the western flank of the Taygetos mountains, leading to Platanos. The hairpin bends were stacking up against us and occasionally a roadside shrine clung to the edge in honour of some poor devil who’d perished.
Finally, the tarmac road became a dirt track, winding deeper into the mountains. Angus was silent with concentration. He looked like he was ready for a rock concert rather than an ascent on Everest, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, denim jacket and baseball cap with Ellada (Greece) written across the front, his ponytail hanging out of the cut-out in the back. He was wearing an old pair of black Ray-Bans.
After one last bend, we reached a high plateau, where the road straightened out. The land was rocky, scrubby, with flowering bushes. We passed a battered metal sign for Platanos, but the village wasn’t in sight yet. There was a small fresh water spring at the side of the road, with a tap dripping into a marble bowl. We got out to stretch our legs. Angus filled his water bottle and splashed his face. It was pleasant in the sun and the air was fragrant and cool.
It felt like old times, hillwalking in Scotland. Angus, Shona and I had done a lot of walking from our childhood, like Kieran. When Shona went to university, it was just Angus and me out tramping the hills around central Scotland. We took backpacks with food and water and often sheltered in small bothies when the weather was poor. When I went to university, I came home every few months and for holidays and we still walked, but much less as time passed. Perhaps Angus had started then to lose enthusiasm for his old pursuits, just as he lost the urge to teach.
A Saint for the Summer Page 8