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Since joining the PRU Ralph had added two to his tally: an Italian Cant seaplane in Taranto harbor and, just a few weeks ago, a 109 over Sicily, one of six fighters that had jumped him while he’d been making a study of the Catania plain. The Germans’ determination to bring down the Maryland made sense only the following day, when the photos taken on that sortie were developed. They showed new ground strips being built near Gerbini airfield—glider takeoff areas—confirmation that an airborne assault on Malta was imminent.
This grim news sat like a dark cloud over those in the know, but it failed to dampen Ralph’s spirits; he certainly wasn’t going to let it mess with his social calendar. He still traveled into Valetta to bend his elbow at the bar in the Union Club (or one of the city’s less salubrious establishments), and the invitations to dinner at the Xara Palace kept coming.
Rationing had reduced the quality of the food on offer there to the purely functional role of soaking up the booze, of which there was always plenty, thanks to Ralph’s deep pockets. His father had died when he was a boy, and a small fortune had been settled on him when he was twenty-one: “enough to keep me in snuff and absinthe,” he had once joked to Max. It was money he seemed quite happy to fritter away on his colleagues and friends.
That evening, he had somehow managed to get his hands on two cases of Chianti and six bottles of Johnnie Walker whisky. God only knew where he’d got them from (or what he’d paid for them)—contrary to official pronouncements, the black market was thriving—but the first toast of the evening, as always, was to the good health of his great-aunt Enid, for her generosity with the liquid refreshments.
“Enid,” the whole room bellowed before dropping back into their chairs, everyone except the Maltese orderlies, who returned to the kitchen clutching their tumblers of red wine and “a bottle of the brown stuff for the chef.”
Heavy drinking was just about the fastest route to an early grave for a fighter pilot, but given the shortage of serviceable aircraft on the island, almost everyone present could guarantee that they wouldn’t be flying the following day. And if by some miracle they did find themselves called to readiness, then a few minutes of raw oxygen through the mask while waiting to take off worked wonders when it came to clearing away the cobwebs.
The usual smattering of teetotalers and cautious newcomers abstained, but Hugh was happy to take up the slack.
“Rosamund’s arranged one of her women-only whist drives, so I’m good for a glass or five.”
Max and Freddie were happy to match him. For reasons that soon became clear, Ralph took longer to warm up. He was a painter—a watercolorist, primarily—and not a bad one, and he wasn’t going to let the minor inconvenience of a war keep him from his craft. That morning he had set off on his bicycle, as he often did, to record some little corner of the island. Chiaroscuro was his thing, light and shade, and he had found a subject that played to his strong suit: a small chapel in a sun-dappled glade near Verdala Palace. The proximity to the governor’s summer residence may well have played a part in what then happened.
Someone denounced him to the local police for suspicious behavior, and a small crowd of Maltese was present at the confiscation of his artist’s pad by two local constables. Not one of the grinning natives rose to his defense, even though a few of them knew him by sight. Almost tearful with frustration, he had watched some of his best work carried off.
“Toilet paper is running extremely scarce,” said Hugh.
Somehow, this set the tone for the evening. Serious subjects weren’t ignored, but they were treated with a light hand, which made a change from the synthetic gaiety that usually prevailed in the mess.
A South African flight lieutenant at their table mentioned that he’d also detected a shift in the attitude of the Maltese toward them, a souring of the relationship. The fighter pilots had always been regarded as the heroes of the garrison and were accustomed to being mobbed and cheered by young boys wherever they went. Lately, though, there had been something sneering in the cries of “Speetfire.”
Hugh was horrified to hear this. Ralph, on the other hand, was sympathetic to the Maltese.
“They’ve every bloody right to be browned off, in my book. They saw the new Spits fly in a few weeks ago, and what do they get? More planes in the sky? No. More pilots mooching around Valetta. Meanwhile, they’re dying in droves.”
He had nothing but praise for the gunners and the “poor bloody infantry.” The navy was beyond reproach, and the merchant seamen, well, they were the real heroes of the piece as far as he was concerned, gambling their lives away to feed, fuel, and arm the island. No, his own service—the RAF—was the one at fault. Air superiority was the key to Malta’s survival, but how could they hope to achieve it if the imbeciles back home continued to view Malta as a lost cause, little more than a convenient dumping ground for their shabbiest aircraft and least promising pilots?
“No offense intended, I’m sure,” said Max to a couple of ruddy-cheeked flight lieutenants listening in—new boys from 603 Squadron.
“But best to face the hard truth,” added Ralph. “You’ll last longer if you do. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here. My squadron CO at North Weald couldn’t wait to see the back of me. ‘Tindle,’ he said, ‘I’ve got just the thing for you….’”
“Ralph, you’re scaring them,” said Freddie.
“They’re already scared. And they’re right to be. They’re up against Hitler’s best. Those boys earned their spurs on the Russian front. They say Werner Mölders has bagged more than a hundred. What do you two have in your lockers? A couple of massed sweeps over France?”
At most, judging from their expressions.
Freddie raised his glass to the dejected pair. “Well, here’s hoping the new Spitfires never arrive.”
“They’re coming,” said the youngest of them. “They’ve got us building new blast pens like there’s no tomorrow.”
Ralph drained his glass. “And Kesselring knows it. He has his eyes and ears on this island.”
“You and your bloody fifth columnists,” said Hugh. “You see enemy agents under every rock.”
“Oh, they’re here, all right. For all I know, one of you is one of them.” His eyes made the tour of the table. “Well, are you?”
“Nein,” said Freddie, which set everyone off.
After dinner, the four friends retired upstairs to the terrace with a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Night was falling fast, and as they sat there in the gloaming, Ralph announced, “I didn’t want to say before, but they’ll be here on the ninth.”
“The Spitfires …?”
“Mark Vs is the word. Sixty or so this time. Enough to tip the scales in our favor.”
“Where did you hear this?” asked Hugh, who liked to think he had a jungle telephone attached to every brass hat.
“Elliott.”
“Elliott!”
“Don’t underestimate Elliott. He may be a bloody Yank, but he sees the big picture. And he’s got clout where it counts, which is more than can be said for the congenital idiots running our show.”
Ralph didn’t know for certain, but rumor had it that Elliott had played a significant role behind the scenes in the last reinforcement flight to reach the island. The Spitfires had been delivered deep into the Mediterranean by the U.S. aircraft carrier Wasp—a commitment that, in Ralph’s view, Britain’s new ally wouldn’t have made without the sanction of their man on the spot.
“I wish I could be somebody’s man on the spot,” said Hugh. “It sounds like fun.”
“Not when it all goes wrong. The last fly-in was a complete bloody disaster. And sixty more Spits count for nothing unless we can get them armed, fueled, and back in the air before Kesselring pounces.”
“Elliott should be here,” said Hugh. “When was the last time all five of us were together?”
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.
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