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He nodded.
They both turned to the caretaker when he started speaking. Lili waited for Spiros to translate, taking in his words.
‘The caretaker’s mother used to work as a cleaner at the wealthy family’s villa. Alena went to stay with family friends in England for many months, supposedly to better her English. No one was fooled when she returned to the island with those friends who already had a son and now had a new-born child – a girl.’
Spiros listened to the caretaker for a while again and then continued to recount the old man’s story.
‘The English family visited the island often. The cleaner would take her own little boy, the old man standing before us, with her. He remembered the day the Germans invaded. He was playing with two children – a boy around his age and the girl, who must have been around three – when the German soldiers came to the house. They confiscated all the art hanging on the walls and their antique furniture. A few days later, they returned and took the family too, along with their Jewish friends. Nobody had expected they would invade the Ionian Islands, let alone round up all the Jews.
‘What happened to the children?’ Lili asked.
‘They were never heard from again.’
Lili stared at the old man.So, the Nazis took them. Lili couldn’t hide her shock. They had all perished in a concentration camp, which meant her resemblance to the young woman from the wealthy Greek family, Alena, was just a coincidence, and her theory that Alena’s illegitimate child was her grandmother was not true.
‘But,’ Spiros continued, translating something further, ‘his mother told him the children were safe.’
‘Safe? How was that possible?’ Lili wondered if that was what a mother would tell her child to spare him the horror of what would have happened to his friends. All the same, Lili could feel her heart racing. What if it were true? ‘Was it Zakynthos? Were they taken there?’
She saw the caretaker looking at her in surprise. He nodded.
Spiros was surprised too. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
Lili glanced across the cemetery toward her mother’s grave. They had meandered back through the gardens, making their way towards the entrance. Lili stopped by the table with the visitors’ book. She turned to look at her two companions. ‘Apparently, my mother had discovered a family secret. It sounds as though she had been seeking the truth about her family’s past, and whatever she had learned, it led her to the island of Zakynthos.’ Lili stared at the old man. ‘What would have happened to the children if they made it to that island?’
Spiros asked the caretaker and nodded at the answer. ‘He says that a family on the island would have taken them in.’
Lili frowned. Even if it were true, she knew she was grasping at straws. Her mother’s trip to Zakynthos and her own resemblance to a young woman from decades earlier may just be a coincidence – especially if Alena’s little girl had grown up in Greece. Lili’s mother was English. It didn’t make sense. Lili voiced her thoughts.
‘If Alena’s child was your grandmother, and she grew up in Greece, she might have met and married an Englishman and moved to England,’ Spiros said, before translating his answer for the caretaker.
Lili nodded. That was plausible. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the caretaker shaking his head. She turned to him. ‘What is it?’
She watched him turn toward her mother’s grave. His gaze shifted back to Lili as he spoke, this time in broken English. But she understood well enough. He told her he had been there when her mother was laid to rest.
‘You remember her funeral?’
He nodded, telling her that there had been many, many people at the funeral.
Lili swallowed. ‘Are you saying she had a big family?’
He smiled. ‘Many, many people.’
‘From England?’
‘No, no, not England. Israel.’
Lili stared at him. ‘Israel? I don’t understand.’
Spiros spoke to him in Greek. Lili couldn’t wait to hear what he said in response. When he stopped, Lili turned to him. ‘What is it – what did he say?’
‘He says he is sorry. He didn’t realise that you were looking for your family. At the funeral, he spoke with the mother of the young woman who had died.’
‘He talked to my grandmother?’
‘Yes. It sounds as though they talked at some length. That’s how he knew they came from Israel for her funeral.’
Lili recalled Connie saying something about her parents meeting on a kibbutz in Israel. This was all making sense now. Even so, Lili frowned. There was something she didn’t understand: if her mother had been from Israel, why hadn’t her family repatriated her? Why had she been buried in the British Cemetery?
