The recent upheavals on the archipelago had vindicated everything she had been trying to achieve. Her auxiliaries had performed, according to the letter the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean — and therefore, the de facto Military Governor of the Maltese Archipelago — ‘with great professional efficiency and dedication during the recent emergency’. Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher had asked her to make known his personal appreciation for her nurses ‘invaluable and selfless work to each and one of her angels of mercy’. Furthermore, he sincerely ‘hoped to be able to thank each and every one of them personally in due course.’ In lieu of this he had already ‘included my highest commendation for the work that you and your nurses performed in the days after the attack on these islands in my personal report to Her Majesty.’
Margo Seiffert had snorted an involuntary laugh at this; but ‘her girls’ had been touched to the quick by the idea that they had been ‘commended’ to the Queen for doing no more than what they had been trained to do.
“How is our little princess this evening?” Margo asked her friend.
Marija gave her a mildly vexed frown.
“I’m okay, I suppose,” she grudged with a sigh. That afternoon she had gone to the company house in Kalkara to pick up clothes and some toiletries for Rosa. Alan Hannay had insisted on providing her a car and a driver, he was a nice boy but every time she saw him she thought about Jim Siddall, with whom the youthful looking flag lieutenant had struck up an immediate, somewhat unlikely friendship. She had detoured to her home in Sliema to spend a little time with her Mama before returning to Mdina to meet her injured sister-in-law when the ambulance from Bighi arrived at the Citadel. She need not have worried about her Mama; the Sliema apartment was full of aunts and cousins she hardly ever saw. She’d gone for a walk down to the waterfront with her father, who had been forbidden to enter the Admiralty Dockyards while ‘investigations continued’. Arkady Rykov, Clara Pullman and several different Redcaps had interrogated him for over twelve hours the previous day and he was in a mild state of shock, unwilling and incapable of believing the ‘lies about Sam’. Her younger brother, Joe, was being ‘grilled’ today.
“Rosa says that the hospital at Bighi is on alert for casualties from a big battle out at sea,” she said, guessing that Margo would be a better judge of the veracity of this snippet of gossip than her sister.
Margo Seiffert nodded.
“There was a big battle when the British landed on Lampedusa and one of their frigates, HMS Puma was badly damaged. Lieutenant Hannay paid a house call while you were out this afternoon. He said he doesn’t think our services will be needed this time but that we might be asked to take in women and children to free up beds in other hospitals.”
Marija absorbed this.
“I think Rosa will be happier here. Surrounded by other women, I mean.”
Margo hesitated before asking what she asked next.
“She really didn’t have any idea Sam was…”
“A monster?”
“No, I didn’t mean that!”
“None of us had any idea, Margo,” Marija scolded her friend and mentor. “None of us. And now everything is ruined…”
“I’m sorry, that was me being famously insensitive,” the older woman apologised instantly. If she hadn’t been so anxious about her young friend’s state of mind she’d never have made such a stupid mistake. “But,” she groaned, “everything isn’t ruined, Marija.”
“No?”
The harshly self-accusative cry of pain cut to Margo Seiffert’s soul.
“No?” Marija said again, quietly, inwardly excoriating. “There must have been signs but I saw nothing. Peter Christopher will come to Malta one day soon and I won’t be able to look him in the eye. Everything that might have been between us is,” she shrugged helplessly, “is gone…”
“Marija, I…”
“Peter is Admiral Christopher’s son,” the young woman reminded her friend unnecessarily. “The Admiral’s son cannot have anything to do with the sister of the man accused of assassinating one of his predecessors. They think Sam blew up that ship that sank in the Grand Harbour, Margo!”
Margo wanted to throw her arms around her friend.
Suddenly, her thoughts were in a hopeless chaos. She’d never wanted children, never really wanted to be married although she’d tried it once and paid the price for her blunder. She’d had numerous affairs, but only one that gave her lasting emotional and physical comfort and by then she’d been too old to start having babies. Yet although she’d had no children of her own; she’d watched Marija grow from broken childhood to the full bloom of her womanhood, been with her every step of the way, shared her growing pains in ways only a mother would normally know, and loved the girl as truly as her own mother. Marija wasn’t the daughter she had never had, but in practically every way that mattered, she was her daughter.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of.” The bald statement seemed so lame.
“It doesn’t matter. Everything is over now. I shall not embarrass the Admiral. Or Peter. It is not as if there is any arrangement between us.” Marija steeled herself, very calm in that moment. “Besides, he deserves a woman who is whole, a wife who can be his wife in every way. Not a woman who will be a burden to him always…”
“Marija!”
The younger woman quirked a sad smile.
“You know what I look like under my dresses, Margo. How can a man take pleasure in a woman with…”
Margo had stopped feeling guilty. Her guilt was rapidly transforming into righteous anger.
“Marija, I won’t…”
“I have made my decision,” the younger woman said flatly. “I will write to Peter and tell him that it is over. He must forget me. It is for the best.”
Margo was about to say something that later she would probably have regretted. She was saved by the bell, specifically the ringing of the telephone on her desk. The ringing was unnaturally harsh in the dreadful silence filling the air between the two women.
“Yes!” The older woman snapped irritably into the handset.
“My apologies, Dr Seiffert,” Alan Hannay replied contritely, “I hope I haven’t called at an inopportune time.”