The Information Officer (20 page)

They calculated that it had been back in late March at the Union Club.

“It would have been the other day if you’d bothered to show up at our drinks party,” Hugh remarked to Ralph.

“Sorry about that. Prior engagement in Naples.”

“How’s the old girl looking?”

“Not too bad from twenty-five thousand feet.”

It seemed unlikely. Ralph was known for flying in foolishly low in search of the perfect picture.

They sat out on the terrace for a good long while, trading stories and other inanities, the darkness coiling around them, the whisky working its silent way through their systems. At a certain point, Ralph declared that he would henceforth be referring to Freddie as “Mr. Ten Degrees,” this being the angle at which Ralph estimated his right foot now stuck out to the side since Freddie had bolted his lower leg back together.

“Believe me,” said Freddie, “others would have saved themselves the trouble and lopped it off at the knee.”

“Well, it’s shoddy work all the same.”

“Ten degrees doesn’t sound like much,” said Hugh.

“Yes,” said Max, turning the screw. “I hardly even notice anymore.”

“Although it looks more like twenty to me,” Hugh said.

“Anything under twenty is deemed acceptable,” said Freddie.

Ralph was looking aghast, raising his lower leg to examine it in the candlelight.

“Come on, old man. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Yes, Freddie saved your life.”

Freddie spread his hands to Ralph. “That’s what I’m telling everyone, and they seem to be listening.”

“Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“That’s because we know how you don’t like to feel beholden to others.”

“Yes,” said Max, concurring with Hugh. “We knew it would wrong-foot you.”

After the laughter had died away, it was Max’s turn to be victimized. That was the way things generally went when they were together: everyone would have the sights turned on them at one time or another. Hugh kicked it off.

“So, Odysseus, how is the fair Calypso?”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t know the story? It’s from Homer.”

“Pray tell,” said Ralph, eager for revenge.

Legend held that the island of Gozo, just off the north coast, was Ogygia, home to the sea nymph Calypso, who ensnared Odysseus in her web of feminine wiles, holding him hostage for seven years.

It was the first time Max had been ribbed about Lilian, and he wasn’t quite sure how to react. He decided to adopt an air of amused tolerance while they went at him.

“She’s certainly got her claws into him,” said Ralph. “I saw her aunt in the street the other day, and she wanted the lowdown on our friend here.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That he’s an upstanding young man with a fine future ahead of him.”

“It can’t be right to lie to the natives.”

“No, I hear the definite clangor of wedding bells.”

“It’ll mean converting to the Roman Church.”

“Absolutely. They have no truck with our watered-down faith.”

“Well, he could do far worse,” said Freddie. “She’s a beauty.”

“That’s the truth. I’d happily play hide the sausage with her.”

“Ah, but we all know what happens to these Maltese girls when middle age sets in. Suddenly they’re sidestepping through doorways.”

“Less sea nymph than sea cow.”

They talked around him, over him, anything but to him. And as he listened to the imaginary life they were mapping out for him—the meddlesome Maltese relatives, the early-morning masses, his olive-skinned progeny—it dawned on him that Freddie was right: he could do far worse for himself. After all, he almost had.

His thoughts strayed to Lilian, probably in bed by now, just a few streets away, a hop, skip, and jump across the rooftops. He saw her jet-black hair spread across the pillow, and the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the sheet.

Strangely, he had never stopped to think what she really thought of him. What did a kiss in a darkened garden mean to her? Was it loaded with significance? Maybe all she wanted was a pleasing flirtation, a little diversion from the grim realities of life. If so, it was no more than many girls of her social class were looking for. Mdina was home to a number of noble families whose daughters weren’t averse to the odd romantic dalliance. Maybe Lilian was no different. This, after all, was the world she inhabited.

Somehow, he couldn’t see it, though. She was older, too much of
her own person to follow the flock simply for the sake of it. He knew immediately that this conclusion flattered him by lending weight to her feelings. It came to him more slowly that they were feelings he was quite happy for her to have.

Or maybe it was the whisky speaking. He had a tendency to turn dewy-eyed under its influence.

Hugh, meanwhile, was growing downright maudlin. He could just as well have been speaking about the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, so stirring was his account of the destruction by an enemy bomb of the premises of the Malta Amateur Dramatic Club.

No one had been in the building on South Street at the time, but Hugh had been there since and had picked over the rubble, pulling out props and costumes from the plays they’d put on over the years, each one unleashing a memory, many of which he now felt obliged to share with his friends.

The friends, meanwhile, did their best not to laugh. This wasn’t easy, especially when Hugh started to recite lines.

“Do you remember
Return to Sender?”

Ralph leaned forward in his chair. “How could we forget, old man?”

This was said for Max and Freddie’s benefit, Hugh being too caught up in the moment to detect the irony.

“‘I say, Margaret, wasn’t that the doorbell? Or could it be that my ears are still ringing from our little contretemps earlier?’”

He gave a smile that said,
Step aside, Shakespeare. You’ve had your day
.

“Didn’t Olive Bratby play Margaret?” said Freddie.

“She certainly did. And with great authority. Margaret’s not an easy character to play. Remember when her poodle goes missing? That requires a deft touch.”

“Oooo,” said Max, “that’s a horrible moment.”

“It is, it is, and an actress of lesser ability would have over-egged the pudding. Far better, though, that Margaret is seen
not
to react. She buries the pain away. It’s what she does, you see? As with the poodle, so with life.”

This last line was a tough one to hold out against. They all managed it, though, rising to the challenge of the unspoken game: which
one of them would crack first? Freddie, annoyingly, was the master of the poker face and the little glances designed to send you over the edge. Max’s only real chance lay in lighting Ralph’s fuse.

“Maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t I hear that Lord Mountbatten once attended one of your shows?”

“Absolutely. Just before my time, sadly. It was
On Approval
by Frederick Lonsdale, and he was extremely complimentary.”

Max already knew the story because he had heard it from Ralph, who had heard it from Hugh, who could, apparently, quote by heart from the letter Mountbatten subsequently wrote to the MADC.

He most certainly could. Verbatim.

Ralph had his mouth buried in his glass to hide his smile when Hugh leaned back, staring at the stars, and declared wistfully, “Lord Louis loved us.”

The whisky went everywhere, much of it up Ralph’s nose. The dam then burst for Freddie and Max.

Hugh’s bewildered expression took on a steely edge of realization before softening to one of grudging amusement.

“Bloody Philistines.”

Max was fairly accomplished at riding his motorcycle when drunk, and he knew from his little jaunt with Pemberton and Vitorin Zammit that it was just possible to squeeze three grown men onto the machine. He had never attempted to do both things at the same time.

Fortunately, it was a short trip across the valley to Mtarfa Hospital, where Freddie dismounted and stumbled off in search of his digs. Unfortunately, Hugh was growing more voluble by the minute. As they came down off the ridge onto the plain, he started to recite lines from Tennyson at the top of his lungs while slapping Max on the thigh and exhorting him to go faster.

“‘Forward, the Light Brigade! / Charge for the guns!’ … Faster, faster! …‘Storm’d at with shot and shell, / Boldly they rode and well, / Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / Rode the six hundred.’”

“Shut up, Hugh.”

“‘Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die.’”

They didn’t die, although a gaping bomb crater on the outskirts of Attard tried its best to oblige, swallowing them up before spitting them out again.

“Now
that’s
more like it!” trumpeted Hugh, clinging on for dear life.

On the outskirts of Floriana, they bore left through Pieta and Msida, taking the road that wound its way around Marsamxett Harbour, but as they approached Sliema, Hugh suggested that they carry on past to Fort Tigne’.

“No point in going home just yet,” he called into Max’s ear. “The coven will still be at their cards.”

Fort Tigne’ felt like the end of the known world, stuck out on its promontory at the harbor mouth. To the east lay almost a thousand miles of clear water and the low horizon where the sun rose every morning. It was a wild and lonely spot, and the gun emplacements there had taken a beating in the past few weeks, targeted attacks intended to annihilate them. A visit by a high-ranking officer from Royal Artillery HQ, albeit at such a late hour, was a timely and welcome thing.

Maybe it was the actor in him, but Hugh did a fine job of concealing his waterlogged state from the battery commander, seemingly sobering up at will. His handling of the gunners when he insisted on making a tour of the gun pits was even more impressive. There was nothing remote or routine about his handling of the men. He was relaxed, familiar, and amusing.

In one of the pits, a jug-eared young corporal was playing a mournful tune on a harmonica for his downcast comrades. A backfire had blown out the breech the day before and killed two men.

Taking the harmonica from the corporal, Hugh tapped it against his hand to clear it.

“There goes tomorrow’s water ration,” he joked, which got a big laugh.

Max experienced a flush of pride in his friend as Hugh proceeded to play a heartfelt rendition of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.” He
then shook the hand of every man present, wishing them well in the fight ahead and assuring them that victory would be theirs.

Max and he wandered down to the slender strip of sand at the water’s edge for a smoke.

“I didn’t know you played the harmonica.”

“Don’t tell Rosamund. She thinks it’s an uncouth instrument.”

They stood in silence for a moment, the dark Mediterranean stretching out before them.

“‘What from the cape can you discern at sea?’”

“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that,” said Max.

“Nothing at all: it is a highwrought flood;
I cannot, ’twixt the heaven and the main,
Descry a sail.”

“You’ve got me there.”

“Othello
. Montano is searching for the Turkish fleet with some gentlemen of Cyprus. It turns out the fleet’s gone down in a storm.”

“We should be so lucky.”

Hugh shrugged. “We don’t need luck; we need determination. History’s on our side.”

Hugh had always been taken with the idea that the siege in which they were caught up was not so very different from that endured by Malta in 1565, when Suleiman the Magnificent had dispatched forty thousand men to take the island. Malta had held out against the Ottomans on that occasion, saving Europe in the process, and the little seagirt sentinel of the Mediterranean was now engaged in a similar showdown against the Nazi scourge.

It was a romantic notion, and one that Max was quite happy to go along with in his capacity as the information officer. Hugh, on the other hand, embraced it with an almost mystical fervor, latching on to the parallels and ignoring the differences. It was true that in both instances there was much more at stake than a dust-blown lump of limestone in the middle of the Mediterranean. It was also true that in 1565 the defense of the island had been coordinated by outsiders, men from the north of Europe.

Hugh revered the Knights of Saint John and knew their story intimately. They were a relic from the crusading era, when the order had provided lodging and security to pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. When forced to repair to Rhodes, they effectively ruled that island for two centuries before being driven out by Suleiman. Malta became their next home—a grant from the Emperor Charles V—but it wasn’t long before Suleiman pursued them there and the stage was set for one of the bloodiest and most brutal sieges in history.

At one point, soon after Fort Saint Elmo had fallen to the Ottomans, the defenders began using the severed heads of their prisoners as cannonballs. This wasn’t because they lacked for ammunition. It was a ghoulish gesture of defiance by the knights, a response to the sight of their headless comrades from Fort Saint Elmo floating toward them across Grand Harbour, lashed to wooden crosses.

Against impossible odds, the besieged towns of Senglea and Birgu (now known as Vittoriosa) held out against the Ottoman Turks for a further two months. Continuously bombarded day and night from the heights around Grand Harbour, their defensive walls breached on numerous occasions, they stood firm under the resolute leadership of Jean de Valette, Grand Master of the order, a man more than willing to snatch up a pike and step into the fray like a common foot soldier.

Many thousands died on both sides in any number of gruesome ways before the Ottoman army finally withdrew from the island, taking to their galleys, their tails between their legs. It was a setback from which their territorial ambitions never fully recovered. Malta had stemmed the Turkish tide; Europe could rest easy once more.

“How bad do you think things will get if they invade?”

“Not as bad as last time,” quipped Hugh. “But you might actually have to get that service revolver out of its holster.”