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MARK MILLS
For Caroline, Gus and Rosie
You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you.
Much Ado About Nothing William Shakespeare
Contents
Title Page Epigraph London May Malta April Day One He lay stretched Day Two High overhead Day Three It wasn't a diary Day Four The message was short Day Five He usually wrote Day Six Tacitus contacted Day Seven It was perfect Day Eight Carmela Cassar had sobbed Day Nine London May 1951 The fly-in of new Spitfires Acknowledgements By The Same Author About the Author Copyright About the Publisher
LONDON May 1951
Mario was in a good mood.
This wasn’t saying much; he was often in a good mood. It was a legacy from his father—a simple, hardworking man who had drilled into his children the value of giving daily thanks for those things which most took for granted.
Mario cast an approving eye around the restaurant. A prime site a stone’s throw from the Ritz, and after just four short years, a reputation to match the very best in town. Not bad for the son of a shoemaker from a small village in northern Italy. Not bad at all.
The place was empty, just one lone customer at the bar, but it would be heaving within the hour, even in these austere times. He checked over the reservations book, memorizing the names and the table allocations. He prided himself on not having to refer to it once the first diners had arrived. There was the usual smattering of household names with strong views about where they sat. Juggling their wishes was about as hard as his job got.
Table 7 was the first to show. His face wasn’t well-known to Mario—one of the birthdays-andanniversaries-only crowd—but he remembered him as a generous tipper. He wore a good quality suit, its looser cut suggesting one of the new tailors just off Savile Row. He informed Mario that his wife would be arriving separately and requested a Dry Martini to keep him company in the meantime.
The wife was obviously a romantic because a special order had been placed earlier in the day for a bottle of wine to be brought to the table as a surprise. It was a white wine from a small French house and it had arrived by taxi along with written instructions and a generous contribution towards corkage.
It was already on ice, ready and waiting behind the bar. Mario tipped Gregory the wink before taking up a discreet position behind a bushy palmetto to observe the reaction.
The man smiled at the appearance of the ice bucket, but the moment Gregory revealed the bottle to him he fell absolutely still, the blood draining from his face. He looked up at Gregory, speechless, and then his eyes darted wildly around the restaurant. They came to settle on the only other customer—the gentleman seated at the bar. His back was turned to Table 7, but he now swivelled round on his stool.
It was impossible to read the look that passed between the two men, but it crackled with a strange intensity. Poor Gregory was flummoxed. He offered to pour the wine, was ignored, then wisely chose to retire as the gentleman at the bar made his way over, clutching his cocktail. He was tall and balding and walked with a lazy grace.
Another thing Mario prided himself on was his absolute discretion, but this was a conversation he wanted to hear. He drifted towards Table 10, out of sight behind the high banquette but just within earshot, he calculated. He arrived as the balding man was taking a seat.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
There was a soft but unmistakable American lilt to his accent.
‘Where’s my wife?’ said the other man.
‘Don’t worry, she’s just fine.’
‘Where is she?’
‘At home. She thought we should talk.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true. Call her if you like. Cigarette?’
‘I have my own.’
‘Try one of these—they’re Russian.’
Mario heard the cigarettes being lit and then the balding man say, ‘What’s your secret?’
‘My secret?’
‘You’ve barely aged in ten years.’
‘Nine.’
‘It feels longer.’
‘Does it?’
‘I miss Malta.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me.’
‘What did you expect? The last time I saw you, you tried to kill me.’
Mario almost toppled a wine glass on Table 10.
‘Is that what they told you?’ asked the balding man.
‘They didn’t have to. I was there, remember?’
‘You’re wrong. I could have killed you. Maybe I should have. I chose not to.’
The other man gave a short snort of derision.
Mario was well out of his depth now and regretting his decision to eavesdrop. Help came in the form of a large party of diners who blew in through the door on a gale of laughter. Mario couldn’t see them from where he was lurking.
‘Isn’t that the actor everyone’s talking about?’ said the balding man.
‘I think so.’
‘I’m not sure a Fedora and a cloak suit a fellow that short. He looks like a kid playing at Zorro.’
Definitely Table 2, thought Mario, swooping from his hiding place to greet the new arrivals.
MALTA April 1942
She knew the cemetery well; not every gravestone, tomb and mausoleum, but most. She certainly knew it well enough to tread its twisting pathways with confidence, even on a moonless night such as this. Before the blackout restrictions, she would have been assisted on her way by a constellation of flickering candles, but with the deep darkness as her only companion she still walked with confidence and purpose.
The mellow scent of pine sap came at her clear on the warm night breeze. Tonight, however, it did battle with the rank odour of decay, of putrefaction. Two wayward German bombs—or possibly Italian, now that the cicci macaroni were back—had smacked into the hillside the previous night during a raid, reducing family tombs to rubble and wrenching coffins from the thin soil. Corpses in various states of decomposition had been scattered in all directions, their rude awakening like some dress rehearsal for the Day of Judgement.
It was Father Debono who had drawn this parallel for their benefit at early-morning Mass, and while it was the sort of observation for which he was known, and which endeared him to the younger members of his flock, his willingness to flirt with irreverence was a source of ongoing distrust among the more elderly. Many had furrowed their brows; some had even tut-tutted from their pews.
She knew where her sympathies lay, though. She knew that it was Father Debono, not old Grech and his wizened, holier-than-thou sister, who had spent that day in the thick of it, toiling through the pitiless heat and the inhuman stench to ensure that all the corpses were recovered and reburied with all the proper rites.
Judging from the smell, Father Debono and his small band of helpers had not been able to complete their grim task before nightfall, and she picked up her pace a little at the thought of the rats feasting on flesh nearby. She had always hated rats, even before the war, before the stories of what went on beneath the rubble of the bombed-out buildings had begun to circulate.
That’s when she saw the light up ahead: a flickering flame…the vague contours of a face…a man lighting a cigarette. Then darkness once more.
She slowed, more from respect than fear. With the cemetery doing a roaring trade, it was not the first time she had come across some grieving soul while making her way home from work in the early hours of the morning. She had once heard deep male sobs in the darkness and had removed her shoes so that the unfortunate person would not be disturbed by her footfalls on the paved pathway.
‘Good evening,’ she said quietly in Maltese as she drew level.
He was seated on the low stone wall to the right of the path, and he responded in English.
‘I think you’ll find it’s morning, Carmela.’
She didn’t know the voice, or if she did, she couldn’t place it.
‘Did you make good money tonight?’
He not only knew her, he knew what she did, and she was happy he couldn’t see the colour rising in her cheeks.
‘Yes, not bad.’
‘Oh, but you are, and you know it.’
It wasn’t so much the words as the slow, easy drawl with which they were delivered that set her heart racing.
His small laugh did something to soothe her building apprehension.
‘I was only joking.’
He drew long and hard on his cigarette. In the dim glow of burning tobacco, she could just discern that he was wearing khaki battle-dress: shirt and shorts. This didn’t help much. All the services had adopted it recently, and she was unable to make out the shoulder flashes.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Ah, now I’m insulted.’
It could have been Harry, or Bernard, or even young Bill, the one they all called ‘little Willy’ (before invariably erupting in laughter). But she didn’t feel like laughing, because it could have been almost any one of the officers who passed through the Blue Parrot on a typical night, and this man remained silent, enjoying her confusion, her discomfort, which was cruel and uncalled for.
‘I must go.’
He was off the wall and seizing her arm before she had taken two paces.
‘What’s the hurry?’
She tried to pull free, but his grip was firm, vice-like, painful. She let out a small cry and attempted to twist away. The manoeuvre failed miserably and she found herself trapped against him, her back pressed into his chest.
He clamped his free hand over her mouth. ‘Ssshhhh…’ he soothed.
He spat the cigarette away and put his mouth to her ear.
‘You want to know who I am? I’m the last living soul you’ll ever set eyes on.’
She didn’t need to know all of the words, she understood their meaning. And now she began to struggle in earnest, her thoughts turning to her home, her parents, her brothers, her dog, all so close, just a short way up the hill.
He repaid her efforts by twisting her left arm up behind her until something gave in her shoulder. The pain ripped through her, carrying her to the brink of unconsciousness, her knees starting to give. In desperation she tried to bite the hand gagging her cries but he cupped his fingers away from her teeth. His other hand released her now useless arm and jammed itself between her legs, into the fork of her thighs, pulling her back against him.
His breathing was strangely calm and measured, and there was something in the sound of it that suggested he was smiling.
When she felt him hardening against her, she began to weep.
Day One
‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Which do you recommend?’
‘Well, the first tastes like dishwater, the second like slurry run-off.’
‘I’ll try the slurry run-off.’
Max summoned the attention of the waiter hovering nearby. He was new—squat and toad-like—some member of the kitchen staff drafted in to replace Ugo, whose wife had been wounded in a strafing attack at the weekend while out strolling with friends near Rabat. Gratifyingly, the pilot of the Messerschmitt 109 had paid for this outrage with his life, a Spitfire from Ta’ Qali dropping on to his tail moments later and bringing him down in the drink off the Dingli Cliffs.
‘How’s Ugo’s wife?’ Max enquired of the waiter.
‘She dead.’
‘Oh.’
In case there was any doubt, the waiter tilted his head to one side and let a fat tongue roll out his mouth. The eyes remained open, staring.
‘Two coffees, please.’
‘Two coffee.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Max’s eyes tracked the waiter as he waddled off, but his thoughts were elsewhere, with Ugo, and wondering how long it would be before he smiled his crooked smile again.
He forced his attention back to the young man sitting across from him. Edward Pemberton was taking in his surroundings—the tall windows, the elaborately painted walls and the high, beamed ceiling—apparently immune to the mention of death.
‘What a beautiful place.’
‘It’s the old Auberge de Provence.’
Once home to the Knights of St John, the grand Baroque edifice now housed the Union Club, a welcome haven from the hard realities of war for the officer classes. The building seemed to bear a charmed life, standing remarkably unscathed among the ruins and rubble of Kingsway, Valletta’s principle street. With its reassuring whiff of a St James’s gentleman’s club, there was no better place to break the news to young Pemberton. It might help soften the blow.
‘Who’s Ugo?’
So he had been listening, after all.
‘The head waiter.’
‘How did his wife die?’
Max hesitated then told him the story. No point in pretending that things hadn’t turned nasty of late. In fact, it might fire his sense of outrage, winning him over to the cause, although, when it came to it, Pemberton would have very little say in the matter. He wouldn’t be leaving Malta any time soon; he just didn’t know it yet. Another bird of passage ensnared by the beleaguered garrison. Poor bastard.
Max spelled it out as gently as he could. The Lieutenant-Governor’s office had already been in touch with the brass in Gibraltar, who appreciated that Malta’s back was up against the wall. If Pemberton’s services were required on the island, then so be it. Needs must, and all that. Force majeure. First dibs to the downtrodden. You get the picture.
‘I understand,’ said Pemberton.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely, sir. No objections.’
Max wanted to ask him if he had any notion of what lay in store for him: the breathless heat and the choking dust, the mosquitoes, sandflies and man-eating fleas, the sleepless nights and the starvation rations. Oh, and the Luftwaffe, who, together with the Regia Aeronautica, were intent on wiping the island off the map, on bombing it into oblivion.
‘I never wanted to go to Gib,’ Pemberton went on. ‘It never appealed…as a place, I mean.’
War as tourism, thought Max. Well, that’s one way of coming at it, and probably no better or worse than any other.
‘Malta has a lot to offer,’ said Max. ‘When the history of the war comes to be written, this little lump of rock in the middle of the Med will figure large.’
‘If you’re appealing to my vanity, it might just work.’
Max gave a short loud laugh which drew glances from a couple of artillery types at a nearby table. Pemberton was smiling coyly, faultless teeth flashing in his wide, strong mouth. Matinee idol looks and a sense of humour. Perfect fodder for Rosamund, Max mused. She’ll never forgive me if I don’t offer her right of first refusal.
Pemberton explained (with a degree of candour he would soon learn to curb) that he was sick of being shunted from pillar to post under the protective tutelage of his uncle, a big-wig in the War Office.
‘I should warn you, he won’t be best pleased.’
‘Then you can tell him that Malta has already saved your life. The seaplane you should have flown out on last night is missing.’
‘Missing?’
‘Brought down near Pantelleria, we think. They have Radio Direction Finding and a squadron of 109s stationed there. We won’t know for sure until we hear what Rome Radio has to say on the matter. They talk a lot of rubbish, of course, but we’ve grown pretty adept at panning for the small truths that matter to us.’
Pemberton stared forlornly at his cup of coffee before looking up. ‘I had lunch with the pilot yesterday. Douglas. I knew him from Alex. Douglas Pitt.’
Max had never heard of Pitt, but then the seaplane boys at Kalafrana Bay rarely mingled, not even with the other pilots. They were always on the go, running the two thousand-mile gauntlet between Alexandria and Gibraltar at opposite ends of the Mediterranean, breaking the journey in Malta—the lone Allied outpost in a hostile, Nazi-controlled sea.
‘You’ll get used to it.’
Pemberton’s eyes locked on to Max, demanding an explanation.
‘Look, I’d be lying if I said casualty rates weren’t running pretty high right now. People, they…well, they’re here one day, gone the next.’
When Pemberton spoke, there was a mild note of irritation in his tone. ‘That doesn’t mean you have to stop remembering them.’
Well actually it does, thought Max. Because if you spent your time thinking about the ones who’d copped it, you wouldn’t be able to function. In his first year he had written four heartfelt letters to the families of the three men and one woman he had known well enough to care for. He hadn’t written any such letters in the past year.
‘No, you’re right, of course,’ he said.
Pemberton would find his own path through it, assuming he survived long enough to navigate one.
‘So, tell me, what do you know about Malta?’
‘I know about Faith, Hope and Charity.’
Everyone knew about Faith, Hope and Charity; the newspapers back home had made sure of that, enshrining the names of the three Gloster Gladiators in the popular imagination. The story had courage-in-the-face-of-adversity written all over it, just what the home readership had required back in the summer of 1940. While Hitler skipped across northern Europe as though it were his private playground, on a small island in the Mediterranean three obsolescent bi-planes were bravely pitting themselves against the full might of Italy’s Regia Aeronautica, wrenched around the heavens by pilots barely qualified to fly them.
And so the myth was born. With a little assistance.
‘Actually, there were six of them.’
‘Six?’
‘Gloster Gladiators. And a bunch more held back for spares.’
Pemberton frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Three makes for a better story, and there were never more than three in the air at any one time, the others being unserviceable.’
The names had been coined then quietly disseminated by Max’s predecessor, their biblical source designed to chime with the fervent Catholicism of the Maltese.
‘It’s part of what we do at the Information Office.’
‘You mean propaganda?’
‘That’s not a word we like to use.’
‘I was told you were independent.’
‘We are. Ostensibly.’
Max detected a worrying flicker of youthful righteousness in the other man’s gaze. Six months back, he might have retreated and allowed Pemberton to figure it out for himself, but with Malta’s fortunes now hanging by a thread, there was no place for such luxuries. He needed Pemberton firmly in the saddle from day one.
‘Look, none of us is in the business of dragging people’s spirits down. The Huns and the Eyeties have cornered that market.’
He manufactured a smile, which Pemberton politely mirrored.
‘You’re evidently a bright young man, so I’m going to save you some time and tell you the way it is.’
He opened with a history lesson, partly because Pemberton’s file made mention of a respectable second-class degree in that subject from Worcester College, Oxford.
It was best, Max explained, to take the stuff in the newspapers back home about ‘loyal little Malta’ with a pinch of circumspection. At the outbreak of hostilities with Italy in June 1940, when that sawdust caesar Mussolini threw in his hand with Hitler, Malta was a far more divided island than the British press had ever acknowledged. The Maltese might have offered themselves up to the British Empire back in 1800, but almost a century and a half on there were many who wanted out of the relationship, their hearts set on independence from the mother country. Seated across the table from these Nationalists in the Council of Government were the Constitutionalists, defenders of the colonial cross. Not only were they superior in number, but they had the backing of the Strickland family, who effectively controlled the Maltese press, putting out two dailies: The Times of Malta and its vernacular sister paper, Il-Berqa.
The war had played into the hands of the Strickland loyalists, the first Italian bombs to rain down on the island severely denting the affinity felt by many of the Maltese for their nearest neighbours, a short hop to the north across the blue waters of the Mediterranean. But neither were the Maltese fools—far from it—they could spot a lie at a hundred paces, and many were wary of the Strickland rags, which they knew to be slanted towards the British Establishment.
Hence the Information Office, whose Daily Situation Report and Weekly Bulletin offered up for public consumption a cocktail of cold, factual and apparently unbiased news. In essence, the Daily Situation Report was a scorecard. How many of their bombs had found their mark? And how many planes had both they and we lost in the course of that day’s raids? There were grey areas, of course, not least of all, the often conflicting claims made by the RAF and the Artillery. In the wild confusion of a heavy raid on Grand Harbour, who could say with absolute certainty that a diving Stuka had been brought down by ack-ack fire and not the Hurricane on its tail?
Mediating such disputes had ruined many a pleasant evening for Max, all thanks to the Late Situation Report—an update to the Five O’clock Report which he was expected to put out at 10.45 p.m. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been summoned to the phone in the middle of an enjoyable dinner party to listen to the tedious bleatings of HQ Royal Artillery and RAF Intelligence, each so eager to stake their claim to another precious scalp.
He thought it best to hold this information back from Pemberton. He certainly didn’t explain that the main reason he’d lobbied the Lieutenant-Governor’s office for an assistant to take over the editorship of the Daily Situation Report was so that his own evenings might remain uncluttered by such irritations.
Instead, he played up his own onerous workload, spelling out in some detail the other activities of the Information Office: the monitoring of enemy radio stations in the Mediterranean; the translation of BBC broadcasts and speeches by the Governor into Maltese; and the production of light entertainments, which, along with the relentless stream of news items, were put out over the island’s Rediffusion system.
‘Gilding the pill,’ said Pemberton distractedly, when Max was finished.
‘Nicely put.’
‘But not propaganda.’
‘Perish the thought.’
‘Well, not ostensibly.’
‘Never ostensibly. Before the week’s out, I’ll be up in front of the Finance Committee fighting to justify the additional expense to the department of one Edward Pemberton.’
No lie there. He would have to make his case, then the Maltese representatives would haul him over the coals, and then they would agree to his demands. In its own small way, this predictable little theatre, played out with tedious regularity, laid bare one of the grander themes of colonial administration: Allow them a voice, then tell them what to say.
‘I think I get the picture.’
‘Excellent. Now, where are you staying?’
‘The Osbourne.’
‘We’ll have to find you more permanent digs. There’s a drinks party later. It would pay you to show your face. We might be able to rustle up something for you.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘If you don’t mind riding pillion, I can pick you up around five.’
‘You have a motorcycle?’
‘Technically, it’s three motorcycles, held together with wire and will-power.’