It transpired that ‘the Fascisti’ had taken to the hills, and that for the rest of the island’s population this was ‘liberation day’.
It took a few minutes for this to be reported by radio in the clear to the Flagship. At a little after ten, Captain David Penberthy went ashore to liaise with the Royal Marine contingent in Porto Pantelleria, leaving Peter Christopher in command of HMS Talavera.
By then the Mayor of Pantelleria, Signore Mario Simonelli, had regaled him with the history of his home. The Carthaginians had seized the island in the seventh century before Christ; the Romans had briefly conquered it in 255 BC, lost it the next year and not finally incorporated it into the Empire until 217 BC. Nine hundred years later — give or take a decade or two — the Moors had gained suzerainty and clung onto it for four centuries before a fellow called Roger of Sicily, a Norman freebooter by all accounts, had eventually supplanted Moorish rule. But… No dynasty survived forever. In 1311 an Aragonese fleet under a certain Lluis de Requesens had taken Pantelleria; whereupon the victorious admiral had installed himself as a Prince. Ah, those were the days… In the sixteenth century — quite recently in Mediterranean history, just yesterday really — the Turks had sacked Porto Pantelleria. Peter Christopher had been a little disappointed that there had been no mention of Barbary Pirates. Eventually, the Mayor had collapsed in an exhausted, hoarse heap at the Wardroom table and his hosts had had to pour a brace of stiff drinks down his throat to revive him. The poor fellow had been waiting for somebody to invade his little fiefdom for several months and when the evil day finally arrived, he’d expected the women to be ravished and the men massacred. Today’s events had been so ‘civilised’ that he was very nearly swooning with relief.
“Rape? Massacres? No, no, no,” Peter Christopher had reassured him, “we don’t do that sort of thing. It simply isn’t done.”
Spider McCann, HMS Talavera’s Master at Arms had listened to most of the Mayor’s outpourings. Afterwards, he accompanied the Executive Officer onto the main deck. The two men walked unhurriedly to the bridge.
“Sometimes I wonder what’s happened to the World, sir,” the older man admitted wearily. “It has got so everybody is afraid of their own shadow.”
The two men went onto the open bridge.
The sky was clearing to a perfect azure, the sun was warm on their faces and the nearby island seemed idyllic. The flanks of the eroded ancient volcanoes were covered in vegetation, smoke rose lazily from chimneys beyond the harbour and crowds had come out to stare at the big grey warships moored and slowly parading close inshore. HMS Ocean’s helicopters came and went in an endless relay. Signore Simonelli had mentioned shortages of fuel and medicines, spare parts and the like but not alluded to hunger among his people, which was probably a good sign. Presumably, the survival of Pantelleria’s fishing fleet had keep starvation at bay since the October War.
Try as he might Peter Christopher couldn’t help but think of Malta, less than one hundred and fifty miles a little south of due east from where HMS Talavera rode on the gentle swell in the lee of Pantelleria. One hundred-and-fifty miles, less than five hours steaming at flank speed for the old Battle class destroyer. Not that the old girl had sufficient fuel in her bunkers for a run like that; the Old Man had burned their boats in the overnight rush to join the gun line.
“It would have been a pity to bombard this place,” he said distractedly.
“A waste of good ammunition, sir,” Spider McCann agreed.
Peter Christopher shook his head and chortled softly. Every mile Talavera steamed closer to the Maltese Archipelago he felt another tiny weight lifting off his shoulders, a lightening of his spirits, an optimism that he’d not known since before the October War. It was as if a new life was calling to him. In retrospect it was bizarre that until a few days ago he had never been to the Mediterranean, other than to spend a few hours ashore when his first ship, HMS Leopard, had touched at Gibraltar on the way to South Africa. A couple of months later he’d very nearly made a fool of himself with the sporty, blond younger daughter of a Cape Town lawyer while Leopard had been based at Simon’s Town. He’d been so shaken up by that experience that he had fallen easy prey to a pretty, very sensible Vicar’s daughter called Phoebe Louise Sellars soon after his return to England in late 1961. Luckily, nothing had come of the ‘engagement’ and he had no idea if Phoebe was dead or alive. Looking back he couldn’t believe he had been so one-eyed about Marija until it was almost too late, or that she’d waited so patiently and for so long for him to come to his senses.
HMS Ocean had moved to within about two miles of the coast. In the morning sunshine she looked like a great white flat-topped whale as the glare reflected back off her box-like high sides.
“Engineering request permission to damp down Number Two Boiler to conserve fuel, sir?”
“Negative,” Peter Christopher retorted patiently. “Notify me when the bunkers are below ten percent please.”
Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, the little invasion had been a bloodless walkover; but if he’d learned anything in the last few weeks it was that a wise man took nothing for granted.
“Are both boilers on line?” Captain David Penberthy asked as he stepped back onboard just before two o’clock that afternoon.
“Yes, sir. I’ve warned the Flagship our bunkers are running low.”
“Very good. We’ll put our guests ashore as soon as possible. I don’t think we need to be hanging around here much longer.”
While the island of Linosa had fallen without a shot being fired, land-based artillery had engaged the gun line off Lampedusa and aircraft from Malta had been called in to support HMS Victorious’s weakened and untried air group in the suppression of ‘enemy’ resistance around the island’s airfield.
In mid-afternoon Talavera went alongside the Defender and took onboard fifty tons of heavy bunker oil; then, leaving HMS Nubian as a sentinel outside Porto Pantelleria, the old Battle class destroyer led the four ship gun line south-east at twenty-seven knots.
In the night the fires burning on Lampedusa were visible thirty miles away.
Chapter 21
Dr Margot Seiffert guided her young friend to the chair by her desk in her cramped but immensely organised, and ridiculously tidy first floor office overlooking the inner courtyard of the three storey two hundred year old merchant’s house at the heart of the hospital.
A decade ago she had started out with three ground floor rooms running a clinic two days a week exclusively for women and children. With the patronage of St Paul’s Cathedral, literally a few steps away at the other end of the square outside the front of the building, her little empire had grown, and grown; donations had trickled in and then dripped, eventually becoming a steady stream, and she had purchased the rest of the house. Later the Cathedral had leased her adjoining properties for a peppercorn rent and arranged for the residence behind the new hospital to be made available to La Dottoressa, as Margo was known in church circles and among the local people in Mdina and the sprawling hill top town of Rabat beyond the Citadel walls.
Marija was one of over sixty Maltese women she had trained — each over a period of at least three years of mainly practical, on the ward, tutelage — as ‘nursing auxiliaries’ in the last fifteen years. Although Margo’s nurses ‘qualifications’ were not recognised by the archipelago’s hide-bound medical establishment, none of her women were certified as ‘qualified to nurse at the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women’ until or unless she was personally satisfied that, given the opportunity, her auxiliaries would easily pass the final exams and interviews ‘mainstream’ or ‘ordinary’ nurses on Malta were required to pass to earn the sobriquet of a State Registered Nurse (Malta). Like most of the young women she had trained, Marija had been rejected by the medical schools set up by the British and latterly run by local doctors when she was nineteen. Marija had been rejected because of her childhood injuries and the likelihood they might impinge upon her capacity to perform standard ‘nursing duties’ as she got older. Other of ‘Margo’s auxiliaries’ had been turned down for irrelevant educational considerations or because their family backgrounds, or circumstances didn’t sit well with the all male Maltese Medical Establishment. For example, illegitimacy was apparently an irredeemable disqualification, as was being a young mother, as was having at some time in the past refused an offer of a place at a Medical School. None of that mattered at the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women. Marija had fully qualified — by Margo’s exacting lights — aged twenty-two and had been a practicing nurse at the hospital and as a visiting nurse and assistant midwife in Rabat and Mosta for the last four years.