Second-Lieutenant Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart winced as the jeep threw him into the air again, and he landed unerringly on the same bruise.
'Slow down, Corporal! No, better still, stop! Time for a brew-up.'
'There's a couple of cups left in the flask, sir,' answered the corporal, as he pulled up at the side of the lane.
Climbing stiffly out, Lethbridge-Stewart picked up his clip-board. 'How fast were we going?'
'Just about twenty-five, I'd reckon.'
'Better make that twenty.'
Finding the little side turning on the scruffy pre-war road map of the island, the lieutenant made a note: Jeepable at 20 mph.
'Did you have a good war, Clarke?'
'Ended up in Palestine with this little lot. That was okay, but I must admit the desert wasn't so hot.'
The corporal cocked an eye to see if his terrible joke had registered.
'Oh, very funny, Corporal... Mmm. Good drop of coffee. Best black market. The Navy always did do itself well.'
The corporal grinned and took an appreciative sip.
'All that sand... Worth it in the end, though - just to give old Rommel a boot up the arse.'
Know what he means, thought Lethbridge-Stewart, remembering the almost guilty buzz he'd had from the intense fighting when they kicked the Jerries out of Crete.
'Come on, Corporal. It'll be getting dark soon. I think we've done quite enough for our first day. Let's find somewhere to pitch camp. I'm starving.'
So off down the lane they bumped, somewhat more gingerly, quite missing the faded notice hidden in the undergrowth with an inscription in Greek - in any case, Alistair didn't even know the letters - but, underneath, the German words PRIVAT! EINTRETEN VERBOTEN!! which even the language-deprived second-lieutenant, limited to his sparse schoolboy French would surely have been able to interpret as PRIVATE! ENTRY FORBIDDEN!!
His supper, conjured out of their large supply of tins by the corporal, was sauced by his hunger well enough to make the dram of raw Greek brandy which accompanied it taste almost as good as his grandfather's twenty-year-old malt.
'Have another, Clarke.'
'I won't say no, sir,' said the corporal, and poured himself half a tumblerful.
They had found a clearing on the edge of an olive grove, and had built a crackling wood fire in front of their tents. It could have been a pre-war camping holiday if it weren't for the service revolvers lying near at hand.
Hardly what he'd expected when he volunteered to be transferred to Intelligence. The prospect of sitting primly in Athens under the eye of old McGregor, who had already shown signs of returning to the stuffy traditions of peacetime, had appalled the young officer.
For a while it had seemed that the regiment would be involved in fighting the communist rebels in the north, but domestic politics back home had put paid to that.
Coming from a long line of soldiers, Alistair had been brought up with tales of daring and heroism in battle as part of his life - as familiar to him as his breakfast porridge.
And now, he thought gloomily, it had been a choice between the life of a glorified policeman, as part of the occupying force, punctuated by the rigidity of peace-time regimental etiquette, and this aimless chore of checking maps.
'Look at it this way,' went on Lethbridge-Stewart. 'Anybody would spend a fortune to have a holiday swanning round a Greek island. Right?
'Right.'
'And here we are, all expenses paid, a luxurious four-wheel-drive tin bucket to drive around in, and an unlimited supply of triangular soya sausages and sloppy tinned tomatoes at our beck and call, and yet we grumble.'
'Not me, sir. Rather enjoying it.'
'Mm... To be honest, I suppose I am too, in a way. In a masochistic sort of way. It's just that...'
He paused and surveyed the scene, in the dim light of a capricious moon, playing peep-bo with the clouds.
In front of them, he could just make out an open field, bounded by a rocky outcrop in the middle distance. Lit by the flickering of the camp fire, the gnarled branches of the ancient olive trees behind the camp seemed to move, like miniature versions of those that grabbed Snow White and so agreeably scared the young Alistair, some ten years before.
He gave a little laugh.
'It's just that I wish something exciting would happen, I suppose.'
Be careful what you wish for...
A blinding flash; the boom of a massive explosion.
At once the two were on their feet, their revolvers in their hands.
But this was clearly not a communist guerilla attack. Even before their eyes recovered, they could hear the hammering of heavy hooves on the sun-baked earth; a scream of panic.
An unearthly light let them see a terrified man pelting towards them trying to escape from a gargantuan black bull. In vain, for the great horns reached out and tossed him in the air, only to crash to the ground to be gored and trampled to death.
As they started forward to try to help him, another flash of light momentarily blinded them; and when they recovered their sight, all was dark.
There was no sign of the bull - and when they ventured out into the field, there was no bloody corpse to be found.
'Hande hoch!'
There was no denying the threat in the barked command. Corporal Clarke immediately lifted his hands in the air; and as Lethbridge-Stewart raised his revolver, the voice rapped out, 'Oiche! Nein!'
He reluctantly followed his corporal's lead. And then he saw that they were surrounded, with three shot-guns aimed squarely at them. A fourth man, the swarthy leader of the group, moved forward.
'What the devil do you think you're doing?'
All the authority of generations of Empire was in Lethbridge-Stewart's voice.
'Ah! Eng-land! You come!'
As two of the men removed their captives' guns and torches, the leader gestured with the Luger in his hand, and the two soldiers, the flower of His Majesty's Intelligence Corps, stumbled ahead (with the aid of a mortifying shove) into the darkness of the olive grove.
***
'Minesweeping? Rather you than me!'
Lieutenant George Spawton RNVR turned at the remark and grinned. 'You have a point, Lethbridge-Stewart,' he said. 'Not exactly a spin on the Round Pond. But nowadays I'll only take the flotilla out when it's broad daylight, and in a flat calm. Not so funny when it's blowing up to a Force Six in the middle of the night, and you've got a flotilla of landing craft astern of you.'
It was the day before. The little bridge of His Majesty's
Motor Launch 951 was crowded. Spawton, the Skipper - officially the Commanding Officer - who was only a few years older than Lethbridge-Stewart, was sitting on his perch in the starboard corner, with the Cox'n, a grizzled mahogany-skinned veteran in his forties, at the wheel next to him; the First Lieutenant, whose pale face proclaimed his recent arrival in the Med, was checking a bearing at the compass in the centre, before diving down
into the chart-house; a couple of lookouts were looking out; Joe Snaith, the signalman, was keeping half a hungover eye open for a flashing Aldis lamp from any of the boats making up the rest of the flotilla, which were following them in line ahead; and lastly, there was Second-Lieutenant Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, honoured guest on passage from Corinth to the island of Zante, which sat waiting for them in the impossibly blue sea.
'Anyway, that's all behind us, now that we've cleared the mine-fields round the islands south of Athens. On the way to Malta to pay off and then it's hey-ho for England, Home and Beauty. My demob number's forty-five. What about you?'
'Oh, I'm a regular for my sins. And it's Alistair, by the way.'
As he spoke, he noticed Spawton's eye flicking up and down, obviously puzzled by Lethbridge-Stewart's civvies.
'Only fair to tell you why I'm in mufti,' said Alistair, moving closer and dropping his voice.
'None of my business. Spot of leave, I suppose.'
'That's what everybody's supposed to think - especially our hosts. It's a nationwide operation. Our maps haven't been updated for over six years. And you never know when they might come in useful again, the way the commies are carrying on.'
'You mean - for the Russian war?'
Alistair shrugged.
'Now there's a cheerful thought,' said Spawton. 'Port ten, Cox'n. We don't want to to pick up this fellow's nets.'
'Port ten... ten of port wheel on, sir.'
As they altered course to avoid the fishing boat, Alistair wandered away to the back of the bridge, and took another look at the line of boats astern, with their funnels (purely decorative, he gathered; the engines ran on high-octane aviation fuel) and their elegant light-blue hulls. Motor Launches... Sounded like something from the Henley Regatta. But these were real little ships, part of Coastal Forces. And indeed, they actually looked more like miniature ships than like their cousins, the Motor Torpedo Boats with their speedy lines.
Suddenly, the MLs seemed familiar.
'Didn't I see you at Crete?'
'Could be,' said Spawton. 'Or one of the other flotillas. Sicily, Anzio, Crete, you name it. We only draw a fathom - six feet - so we can go close inshore, where the Fleet Minesweepers would go aground. I'm George. And the jack-in-the-box behind you is Bill. Bill Johnson.'
The other officer looked up from the binnacle and said in a worried tone, 'South seventy-two west...' and once more disappeared below.
'Relax, Billyboy!' called out George. 'That's Zante over there.
If the Cox'n's not careful, he'll bump into it. Right Cox'n?'
'That's right, sir,' said the Cox'n with a grin.
Bill's serious young face appeared briefly in the hatchway. 'Better safe than sorry, sir' he said, and vanished.
'I dunno,' said George, tilting back the scruffy old Panama which had replaced his smart white cap as soon as the boat left Corinth harbour, 'Soon get his knees brown, I suppose.'
'Knows his job backwards, this chap,' thought Alistair. The jeep had been secured to the foredeck in double-quick time that morning (partly obscuring the giant white star which had identified the boat as part of the Allied forces). And the quite tricky business of leaving the quayside had proceeded with a minimum of fuss - six boats, each over a hundred foot from stem to stern, in strict order of seniority, from George Spawton's boat in the lead to the tail-arse charlie bringing up the rear, clearing the crowded harbour with hardly an order from Spawton. A good man to have with you in a scrap.
Oh, well. Since VJ day, that was all over. Better make the most of the blue skies. Picnic time.
***
Corporal Clarke, having seen all the blue skies he ever hoped to see in the rest of his life, was sitting at a messdeck table below, trying to quell the lurches of his stomach by swigs of ouzo, the aniseed aperitif that could take the skin off your throat.
'Aren't you having one?'
'Not at sea, mate. The Old Man would go spare. Any case, I've got to keep an eye on my fairy cakes.'
'Fairy cakes!'
Tiny Rowbotham looked hurt. His huge slab of a hand closed round the ouzo bottle. 'For the party. I'll have you know my fairy cakes are famous right through the Andrew. Even more than my spotted dog.' He took a swig from the bottle.
'Your what?!'
'Plum duff. Suet pud.' He took another gulp of ouzo. 'Just a taste,' he said.
'Andrew who?' said the corporal, out of his depth.
'The Navy. Don't you know nothing, mate? Anyway, Smudger Clagg on 954 had a go at fairy cakes after he'd tasted mine. Most of his ended up in the 'oggin.'
Corporal Clarke thought it best to let it go.
'What's all this about a party?' he said.
'In honour of Mrs Demeter,' said George.
Alistair raised a questioning eyebrow.
George laughed. 'You don't know what company you're keeping, old boy. Represent the entire Royal Navy, we do. "Take your time," they said - or rather Sam Steadman, the NOIC said. Mm? Naval Officer In Charge. NOIC. Commander Steadman.'
'Ah,' said Alistair.
'Anyway, that's what he said. "Take your time and show the flag. Let 'em know the British Navy's keeping an eye on things. Give the commies something to think about." And so we've hopped round the Peloponnese in slow motion, popping into all the little fishing villages and seaside places, and staying for a while.'
'Sounds more like a pleasure cruise,' said Lethbridge-Stewart, 'give or take the odd swimming pool and orchestra.'
The Cox'n joined in. 'Young Clancy - he's the leading stoker, runs the engine-room - he's a dab hand at the harmonica, sir,'
'And if you haven't dived off the deck into thirty fathoms of Med, you haven't lived,' added George.
'So who's Mrs Demeter?'
'The Grande Dame of the island. The last British Ambassador's best friend, according to Soapy Sam. Suggested we buttered her up a bit. I didn't know whether to make it a tea party or a cocktail party, though. So we've compromised. Tea and fairy cakes, with gin for them wot wants it.'
'Sounds like a typical Naval do,' said Alistair.
'Sir!'
'What is it, Bill?'
The First Lieutenant ran an anxious hand through his tousled hair and peered at the island looming up ahead.
'It's okay. You were quite right. That is Zante.'
'Thank you, Number One,' said George, 'I was starting to get worried.'
