The Information Officer (27 page)

She drew him silently inside, easing the door shut behind him. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”

They stood close, the way they used to stand. And in the deep darkness of the entrance hall he could feel the heat coming off her.

“Where’s Lionel?”

“Gzira. He’s spending the night in one of the officers’ rest flats.”

Gzira sat on the slope right across from the sub base, and ever since the transport infrastructure on the island had all but collapsed, the navy had taken on a number of flats there where officers could overnight.

Max reached into his hip pocket, then placed his hand in hers.

“An egg? I’m lost for words.”

“There are more where that one came from, if you play your cards right.”

“Well, let’s see, shall we?”

He hadn’t meant it that way, and when she dropped to her knees in front of him, her fingers groping for the buttons of his shorts, he protested.

“Mitzi, don’t …”

He heard the egg rolling away across the tiled floor, discarded.

“Mitzi …,” he pleaded.

“Ssshhh …”

“I can’t.”

“If memory serves, you most certainly can.”

The shorts dropped to his ankles, and her long fingers closed around him.

“This isn’t right.”

“Of course it isn’t. That’s the point. It never has been.”

“Mitzi …” He took her by her bare shoulders and raised her to her feet, proud of his resolve. “I don’t want to.”

“So why are you getting harder in my hand?”

Did she really think him so powerless in the face of her desire?

He was on the point of posing the question when she dropped once more to her knees, and all thoughts of resistance were swept aside by the warm embrace of her mouth. His hands went instinctively to her head, his fingers entwining themselves in her soft hair.

It always surprised him that she appeared to derive so much enjoyment from having him in her mouth. Her pleasure seemed almost to equal his own, if the low moans she emitted every so often were anything to go by.

Breaking off, she peered up at him. “You see, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rising slowly to her feet, she added, “You don’t have to follow me. I’ll quite understand if you let yourself out.”

With that, she made off down the corridor, a dim form fading into the gloom.

His thoughts turned to Lilian. He imagined her standing there in the darkness beside him, observing him, waiting to see what he did, and yet he still stepped out of the shorts gathered around his ankles, leaving them where they lay.

Mitzi was waiting for him on the bed. He couldn’t see her, but he could hear the faint squeak of the springs as she adjusted her position. He removed his shirt and laid it carefully on the floor, aware of the eggs, two in each of the breast pockets.

“I should warn you, I’m very wet.”

He shed his desert boots and his socks and lay down beside her, naked.

“I’ve been wet for hours, thinking about you.”

She liked to talk, and she liked to take her time, he knew that, just as he knew that her lovemaking with Lionel had always been a rushed and entirely silent affair.

“Are you sure you didn’t start without me?”

“I might have, just a bit,” she admitted coquettishly. Reaching for his wrist, she drew his hand down her body, guiding his fingers between her legs. She could have raised the hem of the negligee, but chose not to, preferring that he first feel her through the material.

“You see? I wasn’t lying.”

He slowly worked a finger inside of her, as far as the restraining
tension of the moist satin would permit. Her mouth reached for his, her tongue edging between his lips, mimicking the movement of his finger.

Apart from the first time, when he had gone to her room at the Riviera Hotel and found her naked beneath the sheet on the mattress on the floor, underwear of some kind or another had always played a role in their lovemaking. Underwear lent an illicit frisson to their trysts, a whiff of the forbidden, its flimsy barrier a token gesture to Victorian prudishness.

Max didn’t mind; it cost him nothing to play along. It was also an excuse to draw out their few precious moments alone.

On this occasion, though, Mitzi’s characteristic restraint seemed to desert her suddenly. Straddling him in one swift movement, she guided him into her.

“I’m sorry, I need to feel you inside me. Just for a moment. Just for a moment …”

The moment was heralded by the eldritch scream of the air-raid siren, its sickening cadence somehow all the more ominous for the fact that it had gone unheard for so long.

“Oh God …,” Max breathed.

It wasn’t the siren. For all he cared, two hundred German bombers could have been closing in on Malta with instructions to obliterate Number 18 Windmill Street. They were nothing when set alongside the sensation of Mitzi lowering herself onto him.

“I’ll stop if you want,” she teased. “We probably should.”

He placed his hands on her hips and drew her down the rest of the way. She winced, adjusting her position to accommodate him.

“My God, you’re a good fit. Any more would be too much.”

His hands climbed to her small firm breasts, the nipples hard beneath the satin. She placed her hands over his, holding them there.

“We’ve still got time to make the shelter,” she said, almost drunkenly.

“Oh, I think I’ve already found safe harbor.”

It was a terrible joke, a childish
jeu de mots
, but she laughed, recognizing it for what it was—a cheap swipe at Lionel and his submariner chums. He already knew from her how they liked to talk in
such terms when it came to women. Expressions such as “raising the periscope” and “arming the torpedo” figured large in their schoolboy innuendo.

“Well, as long as you don’t blow the tanks too early.”

That was one he hadn’t heard before, and they giggled like two naughty schoolchildren.

“I can feel it when you laugh,” said Max.

“And when I do this …?”

She started to move, a slow, rhythmic roll of the hips, a reminder that they weren’t in fact welded together, one being.

The distant bark of a heavy battery suggested that the searchlights had picked out the first of the raiders.

“There’s no hurry,” she whispered.

“Tell that to our German friends.”

“Let them do their worst. We’re untouchable.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I. If I’m going to die, I want it to be like this, with you inside me.”

And that’s where he stayed. Long after it had become clear that Valetta was the target, long after the whistle and crump of the first bombs had drowned out the dirge of the siren, he was still there, inside her. And as the heavens outside pitched and rolled in one vast, undying thunderclap of sound, they twisted and turned together on the bed, at one with the holocaust, somehow a part of it, immune to it. Terrific concussions tossed the building, but the tremors seemed only to resonate with the febrile tension of their bodies. And as the raid built in ferocity, so did their own exertions, rising to a crescendo, almost in defiance now, looking to drive back the deadly storm, to outlast it.

This they did, their wild cries of release rending the air as the last of the bombers headed for home, chased back to Sicily by a few hopeful shell bursts.

They lay damp and spent in each other’s arms for a long while, lacquered together in the eerie silence, the acrid smell of cordite leaking into the room through the shutters.

“That was … well, like nothing else I’ve ever known,” said Max.

“Did the earth move for you too?”

They laughed weakly and kissed and held each other tighter.

“I told you they couldn’t touch us.”

“They came pretty damned close.”

An enormous explosion had shaken the building to its foundations during the height of the raid
—Brr-ummmph!
—probably a parachute mine, picked off by one of the Bofors crews before it could land.

Outside, the “Raiders Passed” siren sounded its single note.

“They’ll be back,” said Max.

They all knew the pattern by now. Kesselring would keep the planes coming, varying his targets throughout the night. It was unlikely that Valetta would suffer another assault, but you couldn’t bank on it.

“Maybe you should go now,” said Mitzi.

“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to know why you summoned me here.”

“You know the reason. I know you know, because Lionel told me this afternoon. Apparently he bumped into you at the submarine base the other day.”

“That’s right.”

“And was a jolly time had by all?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How long have you known? Three days? Four? A week? Longer?”

“Hugh told me at the party.”

“And you didn’t think to share it with me?”

“He only mentioned it later, after you and I had talked.”

Mitzi lay silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. It just seems like I’m the last person to hear that I’m leaving the island.”

“You should be glad. Things aren’t going to get any better here for a long while.”

“Alexandria sounds ghastly.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

He had rather enjoyed his time in Alexandria, although his appreciation of the place might well have had something to do with the
fact that he’d arrived there directly from Atbara, a desolate, flyblown corner of the Sudan, where he’d spent a miserable couple of months on an intelligence course.

“The bar at the Windsor Palace is worth a visit,” said Max. “Their cocktails are second to none.”

“My God, a bright future beckons with Baedeker’s.”

“I’m just saying there are worse places to be. At least you won’t be pounded to pieces on a daily basis.”

“Lionel’s convinced Alexandria will fall.”

“Then he should have a word with Elliott.”

“Elliott? What does Elliott know about anything?”

“Considerably more than he likes to let on.”

She kissed him tenderly on the lips. “You’re so sweet and trusting.”

A part of him bristled at her condescending tone, and normally he would have reacted. He didn’t because he wanted to steer the conversation back to the question of her imminent departure, and for reasons that showed him to be neither sweet nor trusting.

“Did Lionel say exactly when he’s leaving?”

“Monday. They’re still making repairs to the
Upstanding
. She’ll be the last sub to leave.”

Four days was nothing. He was going to have to move fast, push things along.

“He said you’ll be staying on for a bit, maybe moving in with the Reynolds in Saint Julian’s.”

“Not anymore. The sea transport officer has booked me on a seaplane from Kalafrana the next day.”

“So what’s this, then? Goodbye?”

“I suppose. And I couldn’t leave without telling you.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“Oh, it’s more than that.”

She lapsed into an unnerving silence.

“Mitzi
…?”

She took his hand and placed it gently on her belly. The negligee had long since been discarded, and his palm was rough against the soft skin around her navel.

He was about to speak when it dawned on him.

“I’m thinking something.” He twisted onto his side to face her. “Am I wrong?”

“No. It’s yours.”

“Are you sure?”

“It can’t be his.”

“He was away on patrol?”

“Even if he’d been here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s very simple.”

They had tried and tried to have a child, Mitzi explained, but it hadn’t worked. Leaping to the assumption that she must be to blame for their fruitless efforts, Lionel had dispatched her to a doctor in London just before the war, unaware that she’d already visited two Harley Street specialists, both of whom had given her a clean bill of health. The third was of exactly the same opinion: that everything was in fine working order, and that the fault most likely lay with her husband. She still wasn’t sure why she had lied to Lionel, presumably to protect his over-heightened sense of masculinity, but that’s what she had done, casting herself as the barren wife to spare him the shame.

Conveniently, the war had come along soon after, allowing them to ignore the issue. Neither of them wished to bring a child into a turbulent world. But that, it seemed, was exactly what was about to happen.

“It’s early days still, but it’s the real thing. I know it is.”

Max struggled to find the words. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to have a child, Max.”

“My child? Or any child?”

“It’s probably my only chance.”

“Not if you take another lover.”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t set out to get pregnant by you.”

“An unfortunate slip, then?”

“Rationing.”

“Rationing?” he scoffed.

“Malnutrition. It messes with our menstrual cycles. If you don’t believe me, ask Lilian.”

He had never heard Mitzi mention Lilian’s name before. In fact, he’d had no idea she was even aware of Lilian’s existence.

“From what I hear, you know her well enough to ask,” Mitzi added archly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means please don’t play the saint with me. For all I know, you were seeing her at the same time as me.”

“Well, I wasn’t. And I’m not ‘seeing her.’”

“Call it what you will, I don’t blame you, not after the way I treated you. I hurt you, I know that, but I was confused.”

“And now?” he asked.

“Now? Now I’m wishing I hadn’t told you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you didn’t need to know.”

He lay beside her in silence, absorbing the meaning of her words.

“I’m not ready to throw my family, my friends, and my reputation to the wind.”

“You might find you have no choice.”

“That depends on you.”

“Mitzi, it’s going to look like me.”

“Not if it’s lucky.”

“I’m being serious. I’m dark. Lionel’s fair, and so are you. Two blonds can only produce a blond child—remember your biology lessons?”

“Yes, I remember my biology lessons.”

“So what happens when it pops out with a mop of black hair?”

“Your father’s fair-haired.”