“Agincourt,” the young man by her side reported numbly. He didn’t really believe he was seeing what he was seeing. They’d heard the raging of jet engines and the distant rolling drumbeat of huge explosions, run to the top of the citadel walls of the ancient city of Mdina-Rabat; and watched the rising flames and the mushrooms of dirty black and brown smoke rising into the clear balmy Mediterranean evening with horror and mounting incredulity
Even from several miles away it was apparent that the targets were the ships moored in Sliema Creek and Marsamxett on the northern side of Valetta, the British Headquarters on Manoel Island and the big air base at Luqa. The attacking aircraft had been tiny silver slivers in the distance and the sky had pocked with clouds of bursting shells interlaced with a vicious tracery of gunfire and the far away whooshing of missiles reaching for the heavens. Several of the attacking aircraft had been shot down; or the attackers might have shot down the RAF fighters that attempted to get off the ground. Nobody knew. Parachutes had been seen floating down over Hal Far and the Three Cities. The nightmare had flared for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes and ended as if a curtain had fallen on proceedings, not so much with a whimper but with sudden, crushing finality. The guns fell silent, no more missiles criss-crossed the azure of canopy of the sky between the high cloud; there was only the crackle and boom of exploding munitions, the oil fires, the columns of smoke rising from the sea and the ground like pillars of salt over Gomorrah. On the ground there was the rushing of troops, the clang and rattle of fire engines and ambulances, the urgent, angry tramping of booted feet, the screams, the shouts and a kind of awful, dreadful, shameless panic. All night the fires had raged as a frightened curfew had fallen over Malta.
Joe Calleja had wanted to walk through the night to his Sliema home.
Margo hadn’t forbidden it she’d simply taken hold of his arm and told him that he couldn’t help his family if he was shot. If he waited until the morning she’d come with him. She was a doctor after all and if he was with her he might actually survive the journey. Incidentally, they might actually be of some small service to people who desperately needed their help. They’d set off from St Catherine’s Hospital for Women — Joe carrying a heavy, bulging rucksack stuffed with medical supplies, dressings, antiseptics, sutures and needles — in the pre-dawn twilight and been walking ever since.
At every checkpoint Margo had declared: “I am an orthopaedic surgeon and this young man is my son. Let me through or I’ll report you to the Military Governor!”
The soldiers on the roads were twitchy, trigger happy and in a funny way, reassured to be confronted with somebody in authority who was trying to do something.
Margo and her companion were dust caked, footsore and hoarse from arguing with soldiers and talking to everybody they met. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. Or rather, anybody who did know what was going on wasn’t talking about it. One thing was palpable, shock.
There were bodies bobbing brokenly in the oil-fouled waters of Sliema Creek. Tarpaulins covered bodies along the waterfront. In places there were large, dark, congealed puddles of what could only have been blood on the roads and pavements. Houses had been shattered, there were bullet holes in walls here and there and as the couple picked their way east along Triq Ix Xatt towards the landing stage for the ferry across to Valetta the road was cratered and impassable other than on foot.
“Doctor Seiffert!” A man shouted from behind the couple.
The woman grabbed Joe Calleja’s arm
“Don’t even think about running,” she hissed, pulling the young man close. No British soldier was going to shoot the kid and risk shooting a woman. Or at least she hoped not. This morning she was a little afraid the old rules didn’t apply anymore.
“Doctor Seiffert!”
Margo Seiffert frowned, recognising the voice. She turned, retaining her steely hold on Joe Calleja’s sleeve.
Staff Sergeant Jim Siddall jogged towards the pair. He was as dusty as everybody else and his face was streaked with perspiration even in the cool morning air. He viewed Marija’s younger brother grimly.
“You shouldn’t be anywhere near here!”
“My family…” The younger man began to protest but broke off when Margo Seiffert kicked his left shin so hard he reeled away hopping with pain.
“I’m looking for your family!” The big Redcap roared in exasperation. “What are you doing here?” This he demanded of the woman, making a concerted effort to rein in his angst.
“The same as you, Sergeant Siddall!” Margo rasped back angrily.
The soldier raised his arms in mock surrender, pausing to gather his breath and his wits. Several other soldiers, each fingering long black L1A1 SLRs were approaching the small group.
Jim Siddall waved them to halt nearby.
“We’re trying to find everybody on the Emergency List,” he explained. “Key administrators and managers, doctors like yourself, and so on. After the attack we were afraid there’d be a repeat of the murders and assassinations after the October War. We don’t think that’s happening this time but we still need to find everybody on the list. Basically, so we can start to sort out the mess.” The Redcap looked around at the craters in the street, the demolished houses and down the length of Sliema Creek. “God, what a mess!”
“What happened, Sergeant?” Joe Calleja asked, gingerly testing his painful leg.
“Pearl Harbour in reverse,” the big man grunted, sourly.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened?” Jim Siddall mused aloud while stealing a lingering look in the direction of the wreck of HMS Agincourt. “What happened is that the bloody Yanks bombed us!”
Author’s Endnote
In case you were wondering ‘Love is Strange’ is a play on the title of the Stanley Kubrick film of 1964 entitled ‘D. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’.
‘Love is Strange’ is the second instalment of a history of the world after the Cuban Missiles War of late October 1962. I use the word ‘instalment’ very deliberately in the context of how this alternative history will develop in subsequent ‘instalments’; and I make no apology for leaving my readers contemplating the cliff hanger denouements at the close of ‘Love is Strange’. There will be more cliff hangers and the ride is going to be, at times, a very bumpy one.
The story of our lovers, their friends and their enemies and the perils that will confront them all in the coming years continues in the third verse of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ in which the story picks up the day after the traumatic events which concluded ‘Love is Strange’.
Without giving away the challenges facing our heroes and heroines in the ‘The Pillars of Hercules’, the third instalment of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series, suffice it to say that things are about to get a lot worse for the survivors of the October War. And then, just when they pause to draw breath, things get really bad.