Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  She said unsteadily, ‘That was a very long half-hour.’

  ‘Half an hour?’ His eyes smiled into hers in a way he had never allowed them to do before. ‘It felt like half a day.’

  ‘If you’re looking for Nikoleta, she’s gone back to Knossos.’

  ‘I’m not looking for Nikoleta. The person I most wanted to see, when I stepped back into the sunlight, wasn’t Nikoleta. It was you.’

  She drew in her breath and he said, with a different expression in his eyes now, an expression she couldn’t possibly mistake, ‘There’s a lot I want to say to you, Kate, and it can’t be said in front of an audience. Let’s go back to Kalamata – that is, if you don’t mind being trapped in the truck’s cab with someone in my filthy condition?’

  ‘No.’ Colour was edging fast into her face. ‘No, I don’t mind.’

  Both of them were aware that something profound and irrevocable was changing between them.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and as they turned to walk together towards the truck, he slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close against him.

  There was a brief second when he felt her almost stop breathing and then she leaned into him, sliding her arm around his waist.

  It was a good feeling.

  It was the most stunningly good feeling he’d had for a long, long time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was early morning on the third of September and Kate’s thoughts, like that of every other British subject, were on whatever messages were being passed between Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. In May, Hitler and Mussolini had signed what was being called a ‘Pact of Steel’. The Italian army had occupied Greece’s next-door neighbour, Albania. Despite Britain and France’s pledge to defend Poland if Germany attacked her, Hitler had continued to threaten Poland.

  Two days earlier he had acted, his armies storming across the Polish frontier, his air force destroying the Polish railway system and shooting the Polish air force out of the sky.

  If Britain was to honour its pledge to defend Poland – and it was unthinkable that it wouldn’t – then they were living through the last few hours of peace. Determined to make the most of them, Lewis had suggested that he and Kate take a picnic and their swimming things and drive westwards along the coast road in the direction of Canea and Kastelli.

  ‘I’d like to have a second look at the ground around Suda Bay and the airfield at Maleme,’ he’d said, ‘and this may be my last chance before leaving for Cairo.’

  Cairo was where he had been ordered to report for a crash course in Special Operations training, the minute war was declared. After that, he would return to Crete, without the Greek authorities having known he’d left. Where Germany and Italy were concerned, Greece was struggling to remain neutral, and Lewis’s cover – his being an archaeologist with legitimate business in Crete – was essential if he was to successfully carry out his task of secretly organizing resistance groups in case of a German, or Italian, invasion.

  They had been lying in bed in the house in Kalamata village that Lewis had, at one time, shared with Christos and Helmut. Since Christos and Ella had moved into their own home in Archanes, and since Helmut had agreed to help Dimitri and Aminta Mamalakis financially by moving in with them as a lodger, the house was one Kate often visited. When she did, she did so discreetly, knowing how unhappy any gossip about her would make Andre and Agata.

  Her own moral standards hadn’t changed. She was twenty-six and losing her virginity had seemed quite reasonable to her, especially when it was to a man she was so seriously in love with, and whom she had known for more than three years.

  She’d dropped a kiss on to his naked shoulder. ‘When do you want to leave for Suda Bay and Maleme?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Now,’ he’d said decisively. ‘Don’t bother making the picnic. We’ll buy bread, cheese and wine en route.’

  The road to Suda Bay was narrow, full of potholes and frequently clogged by sheep and donkeys – the donkeys being ridden by peasant women sitting sideways, feet dangling. West of Réthymnon wasn’t a part of Crete that Kate knew well, and with the windows of the truck as far down as they would go, she enjoyed the views as the road first hugged the coast, then deviated inland for several miles, giving spectacular views of the fabled White Mountains, and then dipped back to the coast to run along the side of the gigantic bay. Longer than it was wide, the bay was overlooked on all three sides by gentle hills.

  It was the hills that interested Lewis – the hills and the access points to them and the cover they gave. The truck was used to rough country, and Kate was used to being bucketed about in it. There were stops for photographs; stops while Lewis took notes. Then it was on to Maleme, where Lewis unobtrusively took another sheaf of photographs, both of the airfield itself and of the ground surrounding it.

  At last he said, with the smile that used to be so rare, but was now, when he was with Kate, so frequent: ‘Duty done, I think.’ He rested his hand on her bare leg. ‘Let’s find a beach.’

  It didn’t take them long. Akrotiri, the peninsula that formed the north side of the bay, was full of secluded coves of glistening white sand, and hand-in-hand they scrambled down to one of them. As they swam, picnicked and made love, it seemed impossible to believe that twenty-five years after the outbreak of what had been believed to be the war to end all wars – and thanks to Hitler – Europe was poised once again on the edge of chaos and horror.

  As they lay, their bodies entwined on the sand, Lewis looked at his watch. By now Hitler must either have acceded to the ultimatums Chamberlain would have sent over the last forty-eight hours, demanding that he cease hostilities against Poland, or ignored them. And if he’d ignored them, then Britain could now be at war with Germany.

  In the curve of his arm, Kate was asleep. He looked down at her, knowing he loved her in a way he had never come close to loving Nikoleta. It was Nikoleta’s physical likeness to Sophie that had mesmerized him and been the reason he had so enjoyed being with her. A brother-and-sister relationship had not, though, been what Nikoleta had wanted; and there had been a time when Lewis, too, had thought romance a reasonable next step in their friendship. By the time he realized it wasn’t, her family and village had all assumed he was going to marry her. Cretan honour had been at stake and, knowing he was responsible, his own sense of honour had come into play. Only the relationship that Nikoleta had struck up with Kit had saved him from making what would have been the biggest mistake of his life.

  He wasn’t making a mistake now. For the first time in long years, his personal life was as rewarding and as uncomplicated as his professional life. What had annoyed him when they had first met – the way Kate had capitalized on being Kit’s sister, in order to get herself a position on a Minoan dig – now amused him. He was honest enough to admit that if he’d been in her position, he would have done exactly the same thing. As well as her ambition, he loved lots of other things about her. He loved the beauty of her high-cheekboned face; the heavy, shiny swing of her hair; the intelligence in her eyes. He loved her innate self-confidence; her generous nature; her caring heart.

  It had been her caring heart that had been the defining moment for him: her reaction when Tinker was barking frantically from the bottom of the hole, compared to Nikoleta’s reaction. It had been then that he’d known Nikoleta would never again remind him of Sophie. Sophie would have been as incapable of Nikoleta’s fatalistic reaction as Kate had been.

  Now he shook Kate’s shoulder gently, saying, ‘Wake up, Kate. We need to be back at Villa Ariadne, listening in to the BBC.’

  Accepting the inevitable, she rose to her feet, knowing they were lucky. War would part hundreds of thousands of couples, but although Lewis would leave immediately for Cairo, he would soon be back in Crete. The same couldn’t be said for Helmut and Kit. Goodbyes would have to be said, and saying them wouldn’t be easy.

  The drawing room at the Villa Ariadne was full of tense, silent people. The f
ocus of attention for all of them was the room’s wireless. The announcement they were waiting for wasn’t long in coming.

  ‘The Prime Minister will now broadcast to the nation. Please stand by.’

  Kit shot a look towards the Squire. He was standing in front of one of the room’s glass-fronted bookcases, his arms folded, face grave.

  Mrs Hutchinson, who had been knitting as they had waited, laid down her knitting and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. Some of the archaeologists from the British School who were crowding the room put out their cigarettes; others lit them. All of them were between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. All of them would find themselves fighting in one capacity or another, if war was declared.

  Intermittent reception ratcheted up the tension. There was a lot of static. Then, as it mercifully cleared, Mr Chamberlain’s voice came clearly over the airwaves: ‘This morning,’ he said slowly, his voice heavy with the burden of his message, ‘the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war exists between us.’

  The pause that followed seemed, to Kit, to go on forever.

  The finger of history lay heavy on the room.

  ‘I have to tell you now,’ Mr Chamberlain continued sombrely, ‘that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

  Mrs Hutchinson gave an anguished cry.

  ‘About bloody time, too!’ someone said explosively.

  ‘Shut up and listen to what else he has to say,’ someone from the British School snapped, their nerves raw.

  ‘We and France,’ Mr Chamberlain continued, ‘are today, in fulfilment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace . . .’

  Kit didn’t wait to hear any more. He’d heard all he needed to hear, and he wanted to be on his own. Leaving the room, he made his way up to the Villa Ariadne’s flat roof and lit a cigarette. The die was cast. The world had changed. Nothing would be quite the same ever again.

  He leaned over the balustrade, occasionally flicking ash onto the terrace below. He would do what he had told Lewis he would do. He would return to England and apply for officers’ training. The thought made the muscles in the pit of his stomach clench. He wasn’t a coward, but the thought of killing another human being was so abhorrent to him that he couldn’t imagine ever doing it.

  And then there was Nikoleta. Once he left Crete to serve his country, there was no telling when he would see her again. Would she marry him, if he asked her? With her hopes of marrying Lewis now at an end, he rather thought she would. Until now he had always thought it was what he wanted, but in a moment of blinding clarity he knew Nikoleta would never be the right sort of wife for the kind of marriage he needed. No matter how hard he tried, she would physically want from him far more than he could give. She would be unhappy – and so would he.

  Now that push had come to shove, and he had to either marry in haste or not marry at all, he knew with utter certainty what it was he must do – or rather, what it was he must not do.

  He ground out his cigarette and glanced down at his watch. Kate, Ella, Lewis, Christos and Helmut had all been conspicuously absent from the gathering in the drawing room – Helmut, for obvious reasons. Kit didn’t know where he would find Kate and Lewis, but he rather thought he’d find Helmut at Ella and Christos’s little house in Archanes. The house didn’t possess a wireless and so someone needed to tell them all the news; and that someone might just as well be him.

  ‘Für die Liebe Christus!’ Helmut brought his fist down so hard on Ella’s wooden kitchen table that crockery on the dresser behind him rattled. ‘It needn’t have come to this. And now, because Hitler doesn’t know when to stop, Germany is at war with Britain and France.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Helmut’s eyes met Kit’s. ‘Do?’ he demanded, despair in his voice. ‘I will do what you will no doubt do. My country is now at war, and I shall return to it in order to fight in its defence.’

  ‘Against Britain and France?’

  ‘Yes. Jesus Gott, Kit! It is Britain and France who have declared war on Germany. It is not the other way around. What else can I do but fight for my country?’

  Kit wanted to shout at him that he could be a pacifist; that as he was living and working in a neutral country, Helmut could remain living and working in a neutral country. He didn’t, because he knew such suggestions would fall on deaf ears. Helmut was not the stuff that pacifists were made of, and neither was he the kind of man to sit a war out in safety.

  Christos put a bottle of raki and glasses on the table. Pouring the raki into the glasses, he said with a gravitas that sat oddly on him, ‘Friends cannot become enemies just because their countries are enemies. Between us – and between us and Kate and Lewis – there will always be friendship. If it were not so, it would be a crime against heaven.’

  It was something they all – even Ella – affirmed by knocking the fiery spirit straight back. Ella said, her eyes watering from its effects, ‘I don’t know where Kate and Lewis are, but I’m certain they’ll be with us soon. I’ll make something to eat while we wait for them.’

  They were halfway through a meal of lamb rissoles flavoured with herbs and served with rice when there came the sound of the truck rumbling to a halt outside.

  Helmut pushed his chair away from the table. Facing Lewis when, because of Hitler’s invasion of a peaceful Poland, Britain had had no alternative but to go to war was going to be one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to do. He felt ashamed – not of his country, he could never be that – but of the Nazi dictatorship governing it.

  The first thing Lewis said when he walked with Kate into the house was, ‘We’ve just left Villa Ariadne. We’ve heard the news.’

  Helmut rose to his feet.

  Christos set another two glasses on the table and poured more raki.

  Kit took off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Then you’ll know it’s goodbye time. There’s no telling for how long travel across Europe is going to be possible and so I’m not going to waste any time. We’ll be leaving for England tomorrow.’

  ‘We?’ Lewis looked at him questioningly. ‘You’re taking Nikoleta with you?’

  Kit flushed. ‘No.’ He avoided looking in Christos’s direction. ‘But at a time like this, Kate will want to be in England . . .’

  ‘But I don’t.’ When they had entered the room, Kate had walked over to Ella and they were standing in front of the room’s stone sink, their arms linked. ‘I’m going to remain in Crete.’ As she saw her brother about to object, she added firmly, ‘Greece isn’t at war. I’m safe here, and as the Luftwaffe will soon be dropping bombs on London and on towns near to the coast, such as Canterbury, it makes sense for me to remain here. The parents won’t expect me to return and will have far fewer anxieties about me if I don’t.’

  The image she had conjured up of bombing raids on civilian targets was so nightmarish that for a long moment no one spoke. Then Helmut said tautly, the skin tight across his cheekbones, ‘And the RAF will soon be dropping bombs on German towns.’

  Kit pushed his chair sharply away from the table and rose to his feet. ‘I can’t stand this any longer. I’m going to say my goodbyes now. Keep safe, Helmut. Technically you may now be an enemy, but that is never how I will think of you.’

  Visibly moved, Helmut said thickly, ‘Nor I you, Kit.’

  To Christos, Kit said, ‘That I am not taking Nikoleta with me is for the best, Christos. I wouldn’t have been able to make her happy. I’ll be telling her so myself, before I board the ferry to Piraeus.’

  He said goodbye to Ella and kissed Kate on her temple, a mark of brotherly affection that she could never reme
mber him having shown before. ‘I’ll give your love to the parents,’ he said gruffly. ‘Look after Tinker for me.’

  To Lewis he said simply, ‘Look after Kate.’

  And then, without looking back, he walked out of the house.

  Helmut broke the silence that followed. ‘I, too, must now leave.’ Turning to Christos, he said, ‘Don’t get into trouble in my absence, you rascal.’

  Inches taller than Christos, he ruffled the Cretan’s hair, gave both Ella and Kate a goodbye kiss on the cheek and finally turned to Lewis.

  ‘And so it is goodbye to you as well, mein Freund. By this time tomorrow I will be halfway to Italy and a train back to Germany.’

  Overcome with emotion, they hugged each other hard.

  ‘Till we meet again,’ Lewis said as they broke apart. ‘Good luck, Helmut. Stay safe.’

  ‘And you, too, Lewis. Auf Wiedersehen.’

  And then, as Kit had done, he walked out of the house without looking back.

  There was a long silence.

  It was Kate who broke it. ‘Tomorrow night?’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘So soon?’

  Lewis nodded.

  She intertwined her fingers in his. Until now, because she hadn’t wanted Andre and Agata to be made unhappy by gossip, she had never spent the entire night at the house Lewis rented from the former mayor. As his fingers tightened on hers, she knew that tonight was going to be different, just as so much else was going to be different. Village gossip no longer mattered. What mattered now was her parents remaining safe until the world was at peace again, and Kit and Helmut remaining safe. What mattered was Greece remaining out of the war, and the resistance groups Lewis was forming never seeing action. And what mattered was believing implicitly that right would prevail. Any other outcome was beyond imagination.