“Forgive me, I was miles away,” she shrugged, registering the man’s concern and knowing it was more than just professional. If Staff Sergeant Jim Siddall had been the man who’d led the squad that arrested her little brother Joe on that December morning last year, he’d also been the man who’d kept her informed of his whereabouts and his wellbeing ever since. He’d had no part in Joe’s subsequent interrogation, or the beatings he had endured at the hands of the British. On the one occasion Marija had questioned him about that episode Staff Sergeant Siddall had become evasively monosyllabic. He’d been ashamed, and from that moment she’d ceased to treat him as her enemy. Another time she’d asked him to carry messages between her and her brother and on behalf of the relatives of other detainees but he’d refused. That would have been crossing an unwritten line and she’d not asked him to cross that line a second time. So far as she knew he’d told her no lies. Nor had he ever asked or expected anything remotely improper of her.
“I’ve been ordered to escort you to the Administration Office at HMS Phoenicia, Miss Calleja.”
Marija didn’t think this was good news.
“I do not wish to miss my visiting hour with my brother, Staff Sergeant Siddall.”
“I’m sorry,” the man apologised, his gaze sliding across the road to the group of women holding the banner with its quietly excoriating condemnation of everything that the uniform he wore and of which until the last year he’d been immensely proud to have worn all his adult life, represented to the protesters. “I can’t do anything about that. Look, I want to avoid a scene…”
“There will be no scene,” Marija sighed. It was a guiding principle of the protest that she and her sisters continued to treat individual British soldiers, sailors and airmen with personal respect. The men responsible for the crimes against the Maltese people were not the ones who manned the gates and barricades, or even those who carried out most of the arrests, spot searches, document checks or faced down the rioters in Senglea and Valetta with tear gas and rifle butts. One look into the eyes of a good man like Jim Siddall was enough to know that many among the hated British were disgusted by what was being done in their name. “I will come quietly.”
“It isn’t like that,” the man protested, softly. “You’re not being arrested, or anything.”
Marija straightened to her full height, attempting not to wince at the pain in her hips. The man was a full head taller and she raised her face to give him an oddly maternal quizzical appraisal.
“No? We both know that is not true,” she shrugged. “The reason I am here, that I and my sisters are here every day is because we are already under arrest, Staff Sergeant. All of us, every day.” A quirk of her lips impersonated a smile. “Malta is our prison and you — the British — are our jailers.”
Jim Siddall’s jaw worked, no sound emerged from his lips.
He shook his head.
“I’ve got a car waiting the other side of the gate. It is a bit of a climb up to the fort…”
“I am quite capable of walking,” Marija protested. Her protestation was somewhat undermined the next moment when her left foot twisted in a pothole. She’d been on her feet for several hours and she was stiff, clumsy. She would have fallen but for the soldier’s gentle, supporting hand.
“I know you are more than capable of doing anything that you set your mind to, Miss Calleja,” Jim Siddall grinned. “But I organised the car, anyway.”
Several women had crossed the road, scowling protectively.
“I’m fine,” Marija assured them, waving them back. “Somebody wants to talk to me in the fort. That’s all. Staff Sergeant Siddall has kindly ‘organised’ a car. I don’t even have to walk up the hill.”
The soldier stood back, not wanting to make eye contact or confront the other women. He watched them retreat, felt their eyes burning into him.
“We should go,” Marija declared. “They will only worry if we delay.”
The man nodded.
He took one last look back at the ten feet long banner.
IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT YOUR FRIENDS?
Chapter 5
Joseph Calleja was lying on his cot in the twelve man tent when the big Redcap appeared at the open flap. Most guards only moved around the camp in pairs, wielding night sticks; the newcomer was unarmed, remaining as much a loner now as he’d been before the war. Tent 17 was half-empty since the latest relocations. All six occupants had returned to it in case they were called to the visiting rooms, although only Joe actually expected a visit today. He had no idea what the time was and with a sinking feeling suspected that visiting hour was long over. When a guard entered the tent everybody stood to attention or the whole tent suffered the consequences. That was the rule. The six men in the tent began to sulkily roll to their feet.
“Stand easy!” The tall newcomer growled. He pointed at Joe, indicated for him to follow him out of the tent.
“Whatever you say, Tommy,” the unshaven young man with the mop of rebellious brown-black hair acknowledged. He’d always known the British were bastards. Before the war they’d been on their best behaviour — by their standards — after the war they’d taken off the kid gloves. They’d been on his case in the old days ever since he’d become an apprentice electrician at the Senglea Dockyard at the age of sixteen. If it hadn’t been for his father’s protection and his sister’s positively saintly notoriety, he’d have been locked up years ago. The British would probably have thrown away the key, in fact.
“Get your skates on, Calleja!” The soldier barked.
Despite his mile-wide streak of obstinacy — the one he’d been born with and had been working on ever since — Joseph Mario Calleja quickened his step as he passed the other man and emerged into the blustery, cold grey afternoon.
“Walk with me,” Staff Sergeant Jim Siddall demanded.
“You have seen my sister?”
“Yes, she’s…” The big man hesitated. “She’s fine. Still ruling the roost down at the gates when she’s not in Mdina.” As soon as they were out of earshot of the tent the big man’s voice lowered and his tone became awkwardly friendly, almost confidential. “Marija is well, I think. Although all the standing around at the gates isn’t good for her. Not that she’d admit it.”
Joe had begun to wonder why the soldier never asked him any questions about his alleged, or real, links with the communists, the Maltese Labour Party, the inner circles of the Dockyard unions, or about any of his supposedly subversive activities or alleged partners in crime.
“You know you’re wasting your time with my sister, Tommy?” He put to the older man as they walked towards the perimeter fence on the Lazaretto Creek side of the island. The superstructure of HMS Maidstone, the big depot ship, dominated the view towards across Lazaretto Creek towards Msida above the barbed wire topped fence lines. The ground beneath the two men’s feet was hard packed mud. No blade of grass remained from the base playing field this space had once been in kinder, different times. “She’s got that Admiral’s son she’s never met in her head all the time.”
“I know,” Jim Siddall chuckled. “But that’s not why I keep an eye on you, Joe.”
“Then why, Tommy?”
“That’s complicated.”
Joe had been painfully conflicted to be seen talking to the big man in the beginning. He had no intention of collaborating with the enemy. But then he’d discovered somebody had spread a rumour that the scary Staff Sergeant with the hard eyes who never, ever lost his temper, was sweet on Marija. Any man who was sweet on the heroin of Vittoriosa-Birgu couldn’t be all bad and the communal, herd consensus had concluded that Joe had no choice but to humour the Tommy. It was only later that Joe discovered that it had been Jim Siddall who’d stopped the security goons at the Empire Stadium beating him to death that awful cold January day. He’d been unconscious by then but the others said the big man had turned up with a squad of Redcaps — bayonets fixed to their SLRs — and started ‘kicking the crap’ out of the bastards running the place. They also said that men had been beaten to death in the rooms beneath the stands at the Empire Stadium. Joe didn’t know what to believe. All he knew was that it had been a bad place to be and the man who’d been in charge wasn’t British. That had confused them all. Why would a Yank be in charge of the clearing house for alleged subversives, terrorists and fifth columnists? He’d asked the big man once; he’d chuckled sourly and said nothing.