In any event there had been a lot of ‘Lady Patricia’ this, and ‘Sir Peter’ that, and superfluous ‘Lady Marija-ing’ before Peter had put his foot down and said: ‘Look, I’m Peter, my wife is Marija.’
‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ their grey-haired, willow-thin greying visitor had groaned with relief. ‘I am Pat,’ she had smiled momentarily. ‘Especially, to my friends and now that I’ve met you both I think that’s exactly what we’ll all be when we get to know each other a little bit better.’
It had not taken very long for the Foreign Secretary’s wife to become worryingly serious.
‘Let’s all sit down. I’m afraid I have some very bad news.’
The aircraft which had crashed at RAF Cheltenham was one of the aircraft returning from Malta ahead of Peter and Marija’s flight. Onboard had been the First Sea Lord, Sir David Luce and a number of badly wounded service men and civilians, a flight crew of six, and several nurses. There had been no survivors.
A little earlier on Monday afternoon an American Air Force jet carrying senior officers to take up posts in England and the Mediterranean had crashed, like the De Havilland Comet at Cheltenham, while making its final landing approach to RAF Brize Norton. However, whereas the Cheltenham crash had happened short of the airfield, at Brize Norton, upon crashing the aircraft had disintegrated and ploughed into the middle of the awaiting reception committee. Mrs Thatcher, the Prime Minister, had sustained a dislocated shoulder, numerous minor abrasions and bruises and a twisted spine; Her Majesty the Queen had been severely concussed, broken her left ankle and upper left arm somewhere between being picked up by her bodyguards, her literally being thrown into the protection of her armoured Rolls-Royce, and that vehicle being violently overturned after being struck by a large piece of wreckage.
The Prime Minister, the Queen and some thirty other casualties from Brize Norton had been taken — many by helicopter — to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. At that time although it was not known how many people had died in the crash, either onboard the US Air Force DC-8 jetliner or on the ground, or at Cheltenham, the assumption was that the death toll would eventually approach around two hundred.
‘You’ll be pleased to learn that Her Majesty was sitting up and taking nourishment this morning,’ Pat Harding-Grayson had reassured the younger couple.
‘Two aircraft don’t just crash?’ Marija’s husband had queried.
‘No, the RAF and the Security Service, MI5, think that both aircraft were shot down by Irish Republican Army terrorists armed with modern American-made shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.’
The older woman had hesitated before moving on to news that — even in comparison to news of the atrocities at Brize Norton and Cheltenham — was so bad that at the first telling it hardly sank in. Both Marija and her husband had stared at the Foreign Secretary’s wife as if she was mad.
Pat Harding-Grayson, having anticipated the young couple’s entirely understandable incredulity had patiently reiterated what she had just said; breaking the news that in some small part of her conscious mind Marija had always suspected — ever since the rumours first circulated about her missing elder brother Samuel after the sabotaging of HMS Torquay — might contain more than a germ of truth.
By then Sam had become distant, estranged from everybody in the family except perhaps, her father. Lately, she had got to know Sam’s wife, her sister Rosa well, they had talked endlessly and the unhappiness of Rosa’s cold married life to her brother had become evident, adding substance to Marija’s fears. In retrospect they had all known that something was wrong; just not what was wrong with Sam. And now she knew; now they all knew what had been so unspeakably wrong these last few years with Sam.
And it was too…incredible.
She refused to believe it at first.
‘I’m sorry. There is no doubt about any of this.’ Pat Harding-Grayson had warned the young couple. She had viewed Marija maternally, wanting to hug her and to make the evil go away. ‘I wish there was an easy way to say this. But there isn’t. I am sorry. I am so sorry.’ She had quirked her lips apologetically and dropped the mind-numbing, shattering bombshell. ‘Your elder brother, Samuel, was arrested at the Citadel in Mdina on the afternoon of the assault on Malta. At the time of his arrest he was in the company of a Soviet spy — whom you knew as Arkady Pavlovich Rykov — he was wearing a Soviet paratrooper’s fatigues and carrying a Red Army hand gun, which at that time he was holding to Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s head. My information is that Sir Julian had already sustained a fatal injury by that time. Your brother was apprehended by a woman you know as Sarah Pullman; a woman who is in fact a long-time, trusted agent of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Subsequently, when he was interviewed your brother confessed to have been in the employ of the Soviet intelligence services — the KGB — for many years. Furthermore, during this interview he admitted complicity in numerous terroristic attacks and assassinations in the Maltese Archipelago and to have been a trusted associate of the Soviet agent Rykov for many years. Since Malta is currently under a state of Martial Law the C-in-C, Air Vice-Marshall French, has summary powers over the treatment and disposal of enemy spies and persons against whom there are prima facie grounds to suspect of involvement in gross acts of treachery, or in the commission of war crimes against the civilian population. Air-Vice Marshall French, having reviewed Samuel’s Security Service file and his freely given confession, found your brother guilty of participation in war crimes against the civil population and of treachery on grounds of his activities aiding and abetting an enemy spy.’
Tears had been welling in the Foreign Secretary’s wife’s eyes.
‘Yesterday,’ she went on, ‘at dawn, Samuel was executed by firing squad in the exercise yard of Paola Royal Military Prison.’
Marija had cried all the way from Cheltenham to Oxford, she had been inconsolable. At some stage after their arrival in the city somebody had tried to call Peter away; he had told whoever it was to: ‘Go to hell!’ In a tone of voice she had never heard him use, nor ever imagined him capable of. It was this which had slowly, hurtfully broken her out of the first circle of her grief.
Did her Mama and Papa know yet?
Had anybody told her little brother Joe?
The hero of the Battle of Malta had been taken to the local hospital in Cheltenham for observation overnight. He had almost had to be poured out of the aircraft the previous evening, a little delirious.
Before the disasters of Monday afternoon the arrangements for a big, victory-type parade through Oxford had been well advanced. Wednesday had been the day originally nominated for the event, at the conclusion of which there would be an investiture at Christ Church College.
Peter was to be awarded the Victoria Cross.
Joe was to be awarded the George Cross.
But all that had been delayed, put on hold.
Marija had offered her services as a nurse at the Churchill Hospital; and initially, been turned down. Nobody in Oxford took her ‘Maltese’ nursing certification seriously. She had asked to speak to her ‘new friend’ Iain Macleod, explained the situation and the next day started work — as a ‘volunteer nursing assistant’ — on one of the children’s wards at the hospital.
It had been a mercy to be busy, to be in some small way herself again for a few hours last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. Albeit as a glorified ‘nanny’ rather than as a ‘proper’ nurse.