*****
*****
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| Illustration By Leo Rawlins |
Tom blew in like
the wild wind, as handsome, smart and full of fun as advertised. Ya-yah’s maids
practically swooned when they were presented to him. He had a bright smile, a
dashing forelock curl gone astray and a boyish way of flirting that won their hearts.
Digby’s
grandmother pinched Tom’s cheeks wagged her finger at him, warning him that
these were good girls whose hearts were not to be trifled with, but everyone
knew she was butter in Tom’s hands and would forgive him anything.
He was just so damned
nice, Lucky decided. Central Casting’s ideal to star in one of the old “boy’s
own” stories, like R.M. Ballantyne’s
“The Coral Island.” He proved this when he responded to an invitation to
his old alma mater, Terra Santa, where he was a legendary athlete and scholar.
During his visit the monks, teachers and boys swarmed around him, begging his
attention. He gave a short, but well thought out speech before a general
assembly, topped off by a spirited soccer match with Tom leading the younger
lads against the upper forms in what turned out to be an astounding 3-2 rout of
the seniors.
At home,
however, it was clear that Tom’s father was envious of his oldest son, but
proud of him at the same time. He sang his praises to visitors, but made biting
remarks to his son in private. The tension quickly built in a way with which
Lucky was thoroughly familiar. The pressure was building in his own home - for
some reason his father had started picking fights even when sober. One of his
father’s favorite topics of late was that Lucky didn’t know what hardship was,
that he didn’t appreciate what men like him had suffered and sacrificed in
WWII.
Lucky coaxed his
mother into inviting the Digby family to dinner, thinking such a gathering
might ease the tension on both households. Everyone attended, save Ya-yah who
was at an age where she didn’t like to leave her kitchen kingdom. Lucky’s
parents and the Digby’s hit it off famously. Helen and Mrs. Digby were soon
chatting up a storm, while the two men quickly got down to telling amusing
stories of the war. Tom, Keith and Lucky, meanwhile, made themselves scarce the
minute dinner was over and strolled down the hill to the taverna, where they
enjoyed a little retsina and the local trio that was playing dance music.
Tom was an
immediate hit with the women. He was not only handsome, but part Greek, so he
was swept up into the fun, dancing with one girl after another. Keith was
immediately taken tipsy and started a deep conversation with an old man who was
smoking a pipe and drinking all the retsina Keith would feed him, in turn
nodding wisely and trying to stay awake. Lucky danced a bit, but as he headed
back to the table to see if Keith was okay, a shadowy figure at the edge of the
dance floor gestured to him. It was Sandros.
Happy to see his
friend after such a long time, Lucky veered in his direction, a big smile
painted on his face. Sandros put a finger to his lips and Lucky nodded in
understanding. Sandros didn’t want to be seen. He’d probably messed with the
police chief’s car again. Sandros drew Lucky behind a tree that was thick
enough to shield them from general view.
“Sandros, my
friend,” Lucky exclaimed in Greek. “How goes the revolution?”
This was how
they usually greeted one another and both would laugh and make jokes about the
Turks and the English and other enemies of Enosis. But Lucky had barely gotten
the words out of his mouth when he saw that Sandros had a look of cold fury.
“You brought the
English here!” he accused.
Lucky was
bewildered. “English? What English?”
Sandros snorted.
“Are you saying my eyes are lying to me.” He pointed first at Keith at the
table, mumbling to the old man, then to Tom who was engaged in a kind of Greek
conga line. “Who are they?” he demanded. “They’re certainly not Greek.”
Lucky was
furious. “First of all, it is of no business of yours who I bring to this
taverna,” he said. “Secondly, as it happens, they are Greek.”
Sandros’ eyes
narrowed at the first part of Lucky’s speech – the part about it being none of
his business. But he was taken aback by the claim that Tom and Keith were
Greek. Then doubt vanished and he struck back. “Don’t lie,” he said, his eyes
glittering. “I can smell an Englishman for a mile.”
Lucky was so mad
that he nearly grabbed Sandros by the collar to shake him, then remembered that
Sandros would very likely react by sticking him with a switchblade. Even so, he
wasn’t about to put up with this. He wanted to tell Sandros that he was
smelling his own shitty behind, but that would only inflame the situation.
“Their mother is
Greek,” he said, voice shaking with emotion. He ached to punch Sandros – one of
his very best friends – right in the nose. Instead he kept control, saying,
“Not only is she Greek, but she is a Greek princess.” Then his best intentions
went out the window and he lost it. “So, go to bloody hell, Sandros,” he
gritted. “And don’t you ever call me a liar again or I’ll rip your Communist
head off and feed it to some Capitalist pigs.”
He had no idea
where that analogy came from. But, for a moment Sandros looked bewildered, as
if wondering if Lucky really could do such a thing. He lifted a hand, nearly
touching his throat. Then snatched it back, all anger again.
“What of their
father?” Sandros demanded.
Lucky felt
weaker. He almost admitted that their father was English. Then he took a
different tack. “He’s Welsh,” he lied.
Sandros sneered.
“Welsh, English – what’s the difference?”
Lucky managed
his own sneer. “No they’re not,” he said. “It’s a well-known fact that the
Welsh hate the English. If you had paid attention in school, you would have
learned that the Welsh were never defeated by the English. They retreated
across the swamps and the English soldiers drowned in the muck.”
Sandros’
eyebrows rose. “The swamp thing is a good trick,” he grudgingly admitted. He
turned to go, then said, “You threatened me. I didn’t like it.”
“I didn’t like
being called a liar,” Lucky said. Then added, “So we’re even, right?”
Sandros stared
at Lucky a moment. “We’ll see,” he said and vanished into the night.
Lucky was
rattled by the incident. He’d lost a friend in the blink of an angry eye and,
he supposed, it was just as much his fault as Sandros’. After all, the English
had not only been discouraging the independence movement of late, but they’d
been actively stirring up the Turks – going so far as to support them against
Mother Greece in the U.N. The whole thing seemed so stupid to Lucky – but what
did he know?
He was only a
boy in his teens. But if anyone would take a minute to listen, he’d tell them
that the Cypriots were the best friends Britain could ever have. A little
appeasement, in this instance, would go a long, long way. Like the American
Colonies. If the English had listened to Ben Franklin – a Royalist, until
forced by events and natural courage to stride to the other side – they would
have treated the colonists more like citizens, which they were, than barbarian
subjects, which they were most definitely not.
He said nothing
about the encounter to his friends, but after a suitable interval – if Sandros
was watching he didn’t want him to think that Lucky was afraid – he said they
ought to be getting home.
Lucky was
cautious as they went up the hill, feet crunching on the gravel road. He looked
left to right and even leaned down to tie a shoe so he could get a glance
behind them. He saw no one. But he had the definite feeling they were being
watched.
And then he
heard a jazzy, tenor voice, accompanied by a hot ukulele, burst out of the
night:
“…Where did Robinson Crusoe go
With Friday on Saturday night?
Every Saturday night
They would start in to roam…”
Keith laughed.
“That’s father. Takes his uke with him everywhere. Sounds like he’s in a good
mood, too.”
Keith’s father
continued singing:
“…And on Sunday morning
They'd come staggering home...”
Tom said, “Let’s
hope it stays that way.” He squared his shoulders and pushed ahead of Lucky to
enter the house first. In the main living room, a cheery fire was burning in
the hearth against the early November chill. Lucky’s mother and father and Mrs.
Digby were gathered around Mr. Digby as he strummed his ukulele. And they all
joined in the chorus as his voice lifted in an Eddie Cantor wail to sing:
“…Where did Robinson Crusoe go?
I won’t tell…
Where did Robin go-ho!”
Everyone
laughed, applauding with great enthusiasm. Mr. Digby’s face was flushed with
pleasure and drink. As was Lucky’s dad. Obviously, the two men had really hit
it off. Lucky’s mom and Mrs. Digby were sitting side-by-side as thick as
thieves. It made Lucky glad to his see mother in such high spirits. At the same
time, he studied his father carefully, to see just how far he had gone into the
cycle. He glanced at Tom and Keith and realized with a start that they were
studying their father in the same way.
Lucky and his
chums settled down as Mr. Digby sang on: “Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula,” “Somebody
Stole My Gal,” and finally, his personal favorite – “I Wish That I Had Been
Born in Borneo.” Which went something like this:
“I wish that I'd been born in Borneo…
…Say, can you picture me
Beneath a pepper tree?
I'd be so peppery
Among those wild women!
There's very little clothing worn-e-o
And no tight shoes to hurt your corn-e-o...”
While Mr. Digby
performed, Lucky found himself staring at his ukulele. It had an odd, slightly
ungainly look and was round, rather than being shaped like the usual figure
eight. At one point Keith leaned over and whispered to Lucky, “He carved it in
prison camp.”
With a start
Lucky realized that it was just so – a hand-carved instrument with knife marks
clearly shown. Also there were dark squiggles all over the wood – especially
noticeable when Mr. Digby rapped his knuckles or thumped his fingers on the
surface. Once he flipped the uke over on his lap and played the back like a
bongo drum and Lucky could see that the whole backside was filled with similar
squiggles.
After the
impromptu session was over and everyone had fussed over Mr. Digby and
replenished his drink, he turned to Lucky. “I noticed you were looking at my
ukulele,” he said.
Surprised at being
addressed by a man who had thus far coldly ignored his presence, Lucky was at
first taken aback. He blushed, feeling foolish. “I… uh… Digs… I mean Keith…
said you made it,” he finally got out.
Mr. Digby
nodded. “In the camp,” he said. He stretched a long arm out, offering the
ukulele to Lucky. “Take a look what’s on it,” he said.
Reluctantly,
Lucky accepted the instrument, handling it gingerly as if it were the most
delicate china.
“It won’t break,
lad,” Mr. Digby said. “Bang away all you like.”
With a start
Lucky realized the ukulele was incredibly sturdy – almost like a solid block of
wood. Yet, when it bumped against his knee the strings rang and the box hummed
with their sound for a very long time.
“Carved it from
one piece of wood,” Mr. Digby said proudly. “Had to do it that way. Couldn’t
get any decent glue in that damned camp.”
Lucky ran his
hands along the frets. Then he noticed they went completely around the neck.
“What are the frets made of?” he asked.
“Rat hide,” Mr.
Digby said with a grin. “Tie it on when its green and let it dry and it sets up
like iron.”
Lucky stomach
roiled at the thought, but when he examined the frets he could see that the
greenish-black material was as solid as anyone could wish for. Now he started
studying the squiggles. To his surprise he saw that they were all short-handed
names and ranks: Flt Lt Tm Jns… Cpt R Prce… Sgt H G Applby… The names
completely covered the back, the neck, the sides and then the front.
Lucky looked up
at Mr. Digby. “Your men?”
Mr. Digby nodded.
“I was second in command,” he said. “It was my duty to keep a roster of the
dead.”
Lucky was
stunned. He looked at all the names again. Turned the ukulele around and
around. “All dead?”
Mr. Digby only
nodded, then held out a hand. Lucky returned the instrument. Mr. Digby gave the
uke a mighty strum. He put his ear next to the instrument, closing his eyes,
listening to the reverberations. Then he lifted the uke over his head and shook
it. Lucky heard something bang against the sides. Mr. Digby looked straight at
Lucky, smiling an odd smile. And, holding the ukulele over his head and upside
down, he squeezed fingers beneath the strings. A moment later he withdrew a
tube of paper.
Lucky leaned
forward, feeling almost mesmerized. He heard Keith sigh and Tom snort in
derision. Obviously, they’d seen and heard all of this many times before. Mr.
Digby shucked a paper band from the tube, then slowly unrolled a long scroll
covered with images that Lucky couldn’t quite make out at first. He leaned in
and saw sketched figures of men, some mutilated, all in rags, walking along a
trail. The sketches at the beginning of the scroll were in pencil, with foliage
shaded in the background that was clearly tropical.
“That was the
first march,” Mr. Digby said. “When I still had a pencil.”
Lucky moved in
closer, as did his mother and father. Lucky half-noticed, however, that the
rest of the family moved away – however slightly. Mrs. Digby squeezed into a
corner of the couch. Keith and Tom, who were on the rug, scooted closer to the
fire.
“Here, let me
show you in order,” Mr. Digby said, rolling the paper up.
Then he started
unrolling it again, slowly revealing four years of horror captured by whatever
drawing materials that had been available to him at the time. As he’d said at
the beginning, the first pictures were in pencil. These were instantly and
graphically horrifying. Lines of crippled and wounded men marching – bodies
quick sketched in, but many of the faces carefully drawn. “I filled in the
faces later, so our people would know who they were,” Mr. Digby said.
The march was
followed by sketches of men stretched out on the road, being bayoneted by
Japanese soldiers. “Those poor sods were the ones who became ill,” Mr. Digby
said in an odd almost disinterested tone. “Anyone who fell was killed. Usually
the soldiers had to stick them several times before they died. They didn’t
shoot them, because they didn’t want to waste bullets.”
Following were
drawings that were smeared and not so finely drawn as the first. These showed a
man being beheaded – head flying off, frozen in space, black liquid spurting
from the neck, the body caught just as it was falling over. “I sold my pencil
to a Japanese private who wanted to write home to his girlfriend,” Mr. Digby
said. “So those were done with my finger and the black grease from the bottom
of a cooking pot.”
The tale went
on, one horror piled on the next. The scroll was constructed of many things:
regular army writing paper; super thin airmail paper Mr. Digby had traded
cigarettes for; toilet paper; rice paper; and even glued together strips of
pounded bark.
It was a strange
kind of a book without words that Mr. Digby had created that showed four years
of the most inhumane treatment and tormented human conditions imaginable. There
were pictures of skeletal creatures with bony arms and legs and huge skulls
waiting in a painful line before a hut, marked with a crude “infirmary” sign.
There were pictures of executions: A man being garroted by a Japanese guard,
both their faces twisted in agony – one fighting death, the other causing it; a
Japanese officer standing behind a kneeling man and shooting him in the back of
the head – brains and blood shattering out; sick and starving men squatting
over privy holes in the throes of dysentery; skeletal men fighting, striking
out with feeble arms, as Japanese guards cheered them on with their bayonets,
while others gambled on the outcome.
Mr. Digby came
to the end. Here, the material was thicker and more textured than the rest. “At
this point I was making my own paper, by weaving strips of bamboo together and
pounding the bloody hell out of it,” he
said.
Lucky’s father
laughed, but in sympathy. Mr. Digby gave him a look of appreciation that said,
“I knew you’d understand.”
The rest were
quiet. The Digby family had all heard this before, but Lucky could see on the
faces of the man’s sons that they were still
very much affected. And Mrs. Digby’s dark eyes were so liquid, that
small tears spilled over. There was no doubt that Mr. Digby had suffered more
than any human being should have to suffer. But he had no one to strike out at.
No one to revenge himself upon. And so it was his family that would have to
suffer for what his captors had done.
Lucky looked at
his father, half-drunk – terribly moved by what he had seen. He clumsily patted
Mr. Digby’s knee.
“We gave ‘em
hell,” he said, wiping tears. “Gave ‘em hell.”
The two men
toasted one another for giving the enemy a whole lot of hell, while their
families looked at each other, wondering what kind of hell awaited them when
the night ended.
And end it did
soon enough. Mr. Digby peacefully passed out and his sons and wife hauled him
away in the family car. The mood of Lucky’s father threatened to drift into a spell
of storm, but for a change instead of demanding the family’s presence while he
railed on about the indignities of the world, he sat alone by the fire,
drinking and muttering that they’d been fools not to bomb Tokyo as well as
Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Finally he fell
asleep and Lucky helped his mother get him to bed. He had to be back at the
base the following night, which lessened the chance that he’d go on a binge.
“Thank God for
small favors,” his mother said.
NEXT: THE ATTACKS BEGIN
*****
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
NEW: THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION OF
THE HATE PARALLAX
THE HATE PARALLAX: What if the Cold War never ended -- but continued for a thousand years? Best-selling authors Allan Cole (an American) and Nick Perumov (a Russian) spin a mesmerizing "what if?" tale set a thousand years in the future, as an American and a Russian super-soldier -- together with a beautiful American detective working for the United Worlds Police -- must combine forces to defeat a secret cabal ... and prevent a galactic disaster! This is the first - and only - collaboration between American and Russian novelists. Narrated by John Hough. Click the title links below for the trade paperback and kindle editions. (Also available at iTunes.)
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
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Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
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In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
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