Medusa

'Manuela has a good idea, no?' a voice shouted in my ear. It was the Commander of the Naval Base. 'Why does nobody think to use this place before? It is magnificent, eh?'

The music stopped abruptly, the dancers coming to a halt. Floodlights either side of the cavern entrance were switched on, spotlighting white-capped cooks and the charcoal fires with their steaming pans of soup and steaks sizzling and flaming on the coals. Lloyd Jones had stopped quite near us and I hailed him over. 'I'd like you to meet Fernando Perez,' I said. 'He's Jefeof the Navy here.' I introduced him as Lieutenant Lloyd Jones of the Royal Navy, adding, 'That's right, isn't it?'

I sensed a moment's hesitancy. 'In fact, I'm now a Lieutenant Commander.' He laughed, a little embarrassed. 'I've just been promoted.'

We offered him our congratulations and Perez asked him what he was doing in Menorca. 'You are on leave per'aps?' He had a good command of English, particularly sea terminology, having had a short exchange posting to an RN carrier, though quite why they sent him to an aircraft carrier when he was a gunnery officer I don't know.

'Yes, on leave,' Lloyd Jones said.

'You have a ship, or are you posting ashore, like me?' And Fernando Perez gave a deprecatory little smile.

'No, I'm very lucky,' Lloyd Jones replied. 'With the promotion I've been offered a ship.'

'And where is that?' % 'I'll be joining at Gibraltar as soon as my leave is up.'

Fernando turned down the corners of his mouth. 'You are indeed fortunate. Except for the Americans, who have so many ships, like the Russians, all our navies are in the same boat, eh?' He smiled, looking pleased at having achieved a touch of humour in a foreign language. 'Myself, I do not have a ship since five, no six years now. Already I have been 'ere three, stuck on a little island where nothing ever happen.'

'But at least you have the biggest guns in the Mediterranean,' I said.

'That is true. But what use are they, those big guns? They belong to another age and we have so few ammunition… Well, you know yourself. We fire them once a year and everybody complain because windows are shaken all over Mahon, some broken.'

'Are these the guns out on the northern arm of the Mahon entrance?' Lloyd Jones asked.

'On La Mola, yes. If you wish I take you to look at them. It is a Zona Militar,a prohibited area, but there is nothing secret about those guns, they 'ave been there too long. Everybody know about them.'

They started talking then about the problems of island defence and after a while I left them to see that the girls were being looked after, Soo in particular. I didn't want her standing in the queue and maybe getting jostled. In any case, she was becoming a little self-conscious about her figure, I think because all our friends knew very well she had lost the first. But she was no longer at our table. She was at Manuela's. Petra, too, and they had already finished their soup and were tucking into steak and mashed potato, Gonzalez Renato sitting between them and everybody at the table flushed with wine and talking animatedly.

I went to get myself some food then and Miguel joined me in the line-up for the barbecue. He had his cousin with him, both of them in dark suits, their hair oiled and their faces so scrubbed and clean I hardly recognised them. They hadn't booked a table so I took them to mine. They had their wives with them, Miguel's a large, very vivacious woman with beautiful skin and eyes, Antoni's a small, youngish girl with plump breasts and enormous dark eyes that seemed to watch me all the time. I think she was nervous. I danced with her once. She moved most beautifully, very light on her feet, but she never said a word.

It was as I took her back to the table that I saw Soo dancing with Lloyd [ones. She shouldn't really have been dancing at all, but by then I'd had a lot to drink and I didn't care. Petra joined me and we danced together for the rest of the evening, and whenever I saw Soo she was with the Navy, looking flushed and happy, and talking hard.

At midnight the band stopped playing and Manuela lit the train that set the fireworks crackling. It was a short display and afterwards everybody began to drift off home. That was when Petra announced that I was going to drive her over to Cales Coves.

I should have refused, but the moon was high, the night so beautiful, and I was curious. I did make some effort to discourage her. 'It's almost midnight,' I said. Too late to go messing around in those caves in the dark. And you're not dressed for it.'

'That's soon remedied,' she said. 'Oh, come on. You promised.'

'I did no such thing,' I told her, but she had already turned to Soo, who was standing there with Lloyd Jones close beside her. 'Why don't you come, too — both of you?' And she added, 'It'll be fun, going there now. The moon's almost full. It'll be quite light. Anyway, it won't matter in the cave itself. If it were broad daylight we'd still need torches.'

I thought Soo would be furious, but instead, she seemed to accept it. Maybe the two of them had already talked about it when they had gone off together to the girls' latrine at the end of the meal. At any rate, she didn't say anything. She had hold of Lloyd Jones's arm and seemed in a much happier frame of mind, humming to herself as we walked down the grass-grown track to the road where I'd left the car.

There was no wind, the sky clear and the moon a white eye high in the sky as I turned the car off the Villa Carlos road on to the steep descent to Cala Figuera. 'Have you ever seen anything so beautiful!' Petra exclaimed. 'I love it when it's still, like this, nothing stirring on the water, and Mahon a white sprawl above it. Sometimes I wake up in the night and pull back the tent flap. It looks like an Arab town then, so white, and everything reflected in the water. It's so beautiful.'

'Malta is better,' Soo cut in. 'What do you think, Gareth? You've just come from there.' She was sitting in the back with him. The buildings are so much more impressive, so solid. You haven't seen Malta, have you, Petra? Compared with Valetta and Grand Harbour- well, you can't compare them, can you, Gareth? Mahon is just a little provincial port.'

'But still beautiful.' Petra's tone, though insistent, was quite relaxed. 'And from Bloody Island I can see the whole sweep of it.'

'I don't think beautiful is the right word for a port,' Lloyd tones said. 'Not for Malta anyway.' Out of the comer of my eye I saw him turn to Soo. 'Impressive now. I think impressive is the word. Those old strongholds, the great castles of the Knights that withstood the Turks and the German bombs.' And he added, 'But Gozo — Gozo is different somehow. I took a boat out to Gozo. That really is beautiful.'

I looked at them in the mirror. They were sitting very close together and she nodded, smiling happily. I think it was her smile that prompted him to say, 'I've been thinking, you know, about this visit to Cales Coves.' He leant forward suddenly, speaking to Petra and myself. 'I saw the inlets this afternoon, but I was only there a short while.

It would be nice to see them by moonlight. And it's not far off my way back to Fornells, so I'll join you if I may.'

We had reached the end of the road and I turned the car on to the raw gravel of our new car park. We were facing the water then, close beside his little Fiat, and there was a yacht coming in under motor, her mains'l a white triangle in the moonlight as she moved steadily across the crouched outline of the hospital ruins.

'If Gareth is going,' Soo said suddenly, 'then I'm going too.'

'It's your bedtime,' I told her. 'Remember what the doctor said. You shouldn't have been dancing really.'

'Well, I'm not going to be left behind on my own, that's definite.' And then, as Lloyd Jones helped her out, she was asking Petra whether she could lend her anything. But she had come ashore with all the clothes she needed. 'You never know,' she said as she retrieved her holdall from under the trestle table in the chandlery. 'It can blow up pretty fast here and you only get caught out at a party once with a full gale blowing and nothing to change into. I've never forgotten it. I got soaked to the skin and so cold…' She went with Soo up the stairs and into the bedroom.