Tom walks until the sun comes up, heading towards the sea, avoiding open ground, expecting to find other lost soldiers. But there are none. A large flight of German planes goes over at daybreak, heading for the Peloponnese. He is climbing a gentle hill, and from the top he sees the coast spread out in front of him. Smoke is rising from the east, with the sound of bombs. The beaches have been cut off. He looks in the other direction, and there is the sweep of Piraeus Harbour. If I could just hide until it gets dark, he thinks, maybe I could steal a boat. The navy would pick me up. It isn’t much of an idea, and the only boat he has ever had all to himself has been on the Serpentine, but what else can he do? He is alone and everyone here is a stranger.

But he looks down at the harbour again, at the low, damaged streets leading down to the waterfront, and a thought – more of a sensation than a thought – begins to form. There is one person down there who isn’t quite a stranger. The woman from the strafed car, with her perfect English and her nanny. Her hazel eyes. I wanted to see her again, he says to himself, but don’t be ridiculous. I’ll never find her. But somehow the world feels a little less vast.

He is never quite sure, later, how long it took to find the narrow street with its trailing wires and pieces of white timber propped against the walls. He walked for what seemed like hours, slipping from street to street, hiding behind an embankment and watching the first German patrol roll down Syngrou Avenue: two half tracks in convoy, trailed by three motorcycles with sidecars. The men inside were all smoking and laughing. My troop would have had the lot of them, he thought, and smiled at the absurdity of it all. Before climbing back out of his ditch, he decided that his cap made him too conspicuous, and shoved it into the mouth of a drainage pipe. But then he took it out again, pulled off the badge with its little bronze cannon and dropped it into a pocket. Sentimentality, perhaps. Or the thought of his father. All right, you bastard, he thought grimly. All right.

At last he turns down a narrow lane littered with discarded British packs, helmets, gas masks, rations. He steps over a shattered crate, its contents of light blue tubes spilling out over the cobbles. On an impulse he bends over to pick one up. English Toffees, says the wrapper. As he straightens he happens to glance to his right. There is a half-familiar door, and above it a sign, black letters on white. TO KOPΔEΛIO.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN