Judging by the comings and goings of staff cars and the number of launches plying the waters of Sliema Creek the British were having some kind of conference at HMS Phoenicia, the ancient fort at the far end of Manoel Island overlooking Marsamxett across the water from the massive ramparts of Valetta. Was that why the young officer had been sent across the road to request some kind of truce? The British were very odd. They had a capacity to be ruthless that shocked their friends and foes alike; yet sometimes they were almost childishly trusting, optimistic. Second Lieutenant Jackson seemed to think that the anguish of the women of Malta might be assuaged by old-fashioned reasonableness and civility. She ought not to be surprised anymore; time and again in her dealings with relatively senior British officers she’d discovered there was a fundamental disconnect between what she said to them and what they actually thought she’d said. Often they’d look at her with the bewilderment of a worried parent listening to the meaningless prattling of a small child.
As if the occupation and all its evils were in some way her fault!
It was one of those overcast autumnal days when the wind blew down Marsamxett Harbour and Sliema Creek from the south east until ranks of two foot high swells drove against the sea walls slowly rocking the big ships in the anchorage. All the women wore several layers of clothing, although their lower legs and sandaled feet were exposed to the chill of the wind. There was rain in the air and lonely flecks of moisture touched faces and blinked eyes. Before the war the waterfront — to the British ‘The Strand’ and in her native tongue the ‘Trix lx Xatt’ — would have been filled with traffic and with passersby at this hour approaching noon. However, petrol was virtually unobtainable for civilian use and even if people had had the money in their pockets to spend — which few had — there was hardly anything to buy in the shops and the waterfront was sparsely populated. The decline in living standards and the emptying of the shops had been a gradual process. When there had been runs on vital supplies — sugar, salt and flour — the British had re-imposed a version of the 1945 rationing system. Nobody was actually starving. Not yet but most Maltese who were not in the direct service of the British were hungry all the time. Many of the mothers who protested outside the gated bridge to Manoel Island were thin from feeding their children with their own rations.
“I should get into the queue,” Marija announced apologetically. She always felt guilty leaving the others because so few of her sisters had visiting rights. Many of her friends didn’t know where their loved ones — mostly, not exclusively men — were being held let alone possessed the precious authorities required to visit them, wherever they might be imprisoned. The first round ups had been just before Christmas last year and at least half Marija’s sisters outside the gates hadn’t seen their loved ones since then. At first Marija had tried taking in photographs of the missing, lists of names into the Manoel Island Detention Camp; the guards had stopped that after a month. Today she had cigarettes, a couple of packs of playing cards, two pads of writing paper and some pencils, and several photographs of children of the men she’d identified on previous visits in her brother’s old canvas knapsack. He’d carried it with him everywhere he went; and now she did likewise. “They take ages processing us but they always make us leave on time even if we’ve only been inside for a few minutes.”
Another woman took her corner of the banner.
Others murmured comforting words.
There were the normal hugs, kisses, a few tears. She was their leader — even if she’d never claimed or sought that leadership — and they never knew if the British would allow her return to them again later that afternoon, or ever, for that was what the British occupation of Malta had come to.
At a little before mid-day Marija carefully made her way across the road and took her place at the end of the queue of a score of men and women. The others chided her for her insistence on standing all day, every day that she was in the front line of the Manoel Island picket. She’d retort, good-naturedly that she was only on the ‘front line’ two or three days a week — the rest of the time she lived at the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina where she worked — while they were there all the time. Besides, she had no intention of displaying the tiniest chink of weakness in front of their oppressors. Nevertheless, when she crossed the road she limped a little and as she stood in the queue she ached from head to toe. Her remade broken childhood body was not fashioned to stand and walk long distances, or in any way countenance standing up for hours on end. She felt a little light headed from hunger, swayed; but would not allow herself to lean against the low stone parapet of the sea wall curving onto the bridge. From long habit she let her mind wander into daydreams that helped her to neglect the aching of her reconstructed bones. Near the bridge the harbour narrowed to the breadth of a brick arch supporting the road from Gzira onto the island at its closest point to land where Sliema and Lazaretto Creeks merged. Flotsam and stains of oil coloured the relatively tranquil surface of the water, cigarette filters and fragments of cork drifted with a faded red buoy from a lost fishing net, all washing against the sea wall. And as she always did when her spirit was being tested she thought about Peter Christopher.
Lately, his letters arrived more regularly, albeit a month delayed. She remembered receiving the first letter after the war in April, the tingling breathless excitement reading the big military postmark — 2 Feb 63 — and recognising the unmistakable flowing handwriting on the envelope addressed to Miss M.E. Calleja, 59 Triq St Julian, Sliema, Island of Malta. Of course, by then she’d moved out of the family home into the tiny first floor room at the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina. She’d received the letter nearly seven weeks after it was posted. The relief, the flood of bright, joyous hope had reduced her to a fit of uncontrollable sobbing.
Margo Seiffert, the Director of the Hospital and her long time mentor and friend, had believed she’d received bad news and that she was having some kind of hysterical attack until she’d explained, and tearfully shown her the letter.
Or rather, both letters; the one Peter had written as the fury of the nightmare seemed to be coming to an end, and the letter he’d penned a week later after HMS Talavera had returned to port. It was the conclusion of the first letter, the words that had emerged from the disaster like a shining beacon of hope lighting the way out of the darkness that she’d committed to memory, and carried in her heart ever since.
‘…it seems to me that no matter how bad things are we cannot afford to give in. If we despair then we are lost. While we survive, while Talavera and my crewmates survive we owe it to ourselves to be worthy of surviving. Everything has changed but some things remain the same. You have always been and will always remain my best friend in the world and the one person I trust above all others. As I write I am looking at your picture. While I look at your face I can still believe that there is hope. If we both live please wait for me because I am on my way to you.’
Marija blinked. Somebody was talking to her.
“Miss Calleja?” The tall, weather beaten man in his thirties in the crisp uniform of a staff sergeant of the Royal Military Police inquired solicitously, his expression a little anxious. His grey eyes were studying her face.