It brought to mind the architectural cross sections he used to run off, slicing through buildings to reveal the guts of his designs. For a fleeting moment he glimpsed himself perched on the high wooden stool, hunched over his drawing board, feverishly applying himself to the task. He wondered what had become of that well-meaning young man dreaming of a bright future in a top firm of architects. It seemed impossible to him that he could have traveled from that to this in such a brief time, from an airy studio in the Architectural Association to a Mediterranean bomb site, from enthusiastic student to cynical military official.
They were dangerous thoughts, the kind that built swiftly to an over whelming flood, and he pushed them from him before they could.
He gazed at the piece of material in his hand and told himself that his friendship with Freddie wasn’t at stake. Freddie had offered no resistance to his suggestion that he take the shoulder tab with him. If anything, he had seemed eager to rid himself of it. Take this, he was saying, and do with it what you will, because I don’t know what to do with it.
Shunting his conscience to one side, Max glanced around him to check that he was alone. Then he tossed the piece of material away. It was lost in the heaped rubble of what used to be 35 Pietro Floriani Street.
He set off at a brisk pace, not wishing to dwell on his actions. At the end of his street, he returned the salutes of the scruffy mob of Maltese boys at their flag station.
“No worries, Joe!” they called.
It was about all the English they possessed, that and “Speetfire.”
“Allura,” Max replied. No worries.
Many of them had older brothers who had been conscripted into the Royal Malta Artillery or the King’s Own Malta Regiment. Eager to emulate their heroes, they had rigged a flagstaff from a toppled telegraph pylon. The moment the red ensign appeared above the Castille in Valetta, the boys hoisted their own scarlet rag for the benefit of their little corner of Floriana. Amazingly, they never abandoned their post, even during an air raid, although they often strayed onto the pitted patch of earth near the bastion wall to play football against the crew of the Bofors gun site—Manchester men who liked the ball at their feet and who weren’t afraid to send a small child sprawling in the dust.
Max’s third-floor apartment at the end of Vilhena Terrace afforded a bird’s-eye view of these contests, and in the evening he would sometimes sit and observe the antics from his balcony, Grand Harbour and the Three Cities providing the backdrop. It was a corner apartment, and the other view, from the bedroom window, was to the northeast, across the open area of ground that separated Floriana from Valetta. Both towns occupied the peninsula, and both were well protected from the water by a bewilderment of bastions, but the mighty ditch on the landward side of Valetta proclaimed Floriana’s role as a first line of defense. The Knights of Saint John had engineered things this way against the possibility of another Turkish invasion of the island, and, four centuries on, the residents of Floriana were still left with the slightly uneasy feeling that they were disposable, that even in retreat the gates of Valetta, the all-important citadel, might not be thrown open to them. As things had turned out, the Turks never recovered from their first failed assault on Malta—a mere stepping-stone to mainland Europe, or so they had assumed—and the impressive fortifications built by the knights had never been put to the test. Not till now. Now they were useless. What good were soaring battlements against an enemy who assaulted you from the air with bombs? All you could do was cower and pray. The cowering had helped a little, saved a few lives, but the prayers had fallen on deaf ears.
In the past month, German bombs had laid waste to much of what mattered in Valetta, obliging the governor to flee his palace for his summer residence at Verdala, and causing extensive damage to the Auberge de Castille, the military and administrative hub of the island. The various departments had scattered like chaff before a stiff wind, seeking shelter wherever they could. Max no longer walked to work in Valetta. The Information Office had been relocated twice, from the museum in the Auberge d’Italie to the old audit offices at the top of the general post office building, and then to Saint Joseph’s, an orphanage for boys in Fleur-de-Lys, up on the hill beyond Hamrun. It was ten minutes inland by motorcycle on a good day, considerably more when the carburetor was clogged with rust from the old gas tank he’d been forced to scavenge from another machine.
He missed the bustle and activity of Valetta, the snatched lunches with friends at the Union Club or Monico’s, but there were far worse places to work than Saint Joseph’s. An ancient palace where, according to local lore, Napoléon had stayed during his brief dominion over the island, it had a spacious courtyard at its heart, planted with cypresses, which lent it the calm air of a convent or monastery. The rooms were large and light, the residents welcoming and unobtrusive. To ease their passage into the world, the orphan boys were taught a variety of skills and professions, one of which was printing, and a modern printing press filled a room on the ground floor of the south wing. This was the real reason the Information Office had been assigned to Saint Joseph’s; it allowed them to run off their daily and weekly bulletins for distribution around the island. The close proximity of the lieutenant governor’s office, which had been moved to the Vincenzo Bugeja Conservatory right next door, was an undeniable irritant—snooping and meddling came naturally to the penguins of the LGO. However, it was a small price to pay for personal safety. The Luftwaffe might have developed an uncanny knack for divining the exact whereabouts of key military departments, but for now at least, Saint Joseph’s was anything but a first-strike target.
Max glanced at his watch. He should have been at his desk an hour ago, and he could see the papers already piling up in the wire basket on the desk. Maria, his long-suffering secretary, would be fielding the calls and making excuses for his absence. Both the papers and the calls would have to wait. There was something else he needed to do first.
His motorcycle was propped against the wall of his apartment building, the kickstand having rusted away during the hard, wet winter. She was in a temperamental mood this morning, but after much cajoling, the engine finally fired. Some of the sweat from his exertions dried off in the wind during the short ride up the hill into Valetta.
Lilian wasn’t at the office. Or rather, she had come in early, and then she had gone out again, chasing up some story or other. Rita couldn’t be more specific, or didn’t wish to be.
Rita manned the front desk at the newspaper offices. She didn’t like Max. This wasn’t paranoia on his part. Lilian, with characteristic candor, had told him that Rita didn’t like him.
“Well, if you could tell her I dropped by …”
Rita leaned forward, placing her meaty forearms onto the desk. “Of course,” she said.
But she didn’t have to.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
It was Lilian, entering from the street. Her long black hair was pinned up in an unruly mess, and she was rummaging for something in her shoulder bag.
“I just wanted to check that you got the film.”
“She got the film,” said Rita flatly.
Max had dropped the film off with Rita the previous evening, Lilian having already left for the day.
“How did the photos turn out?”
“Good,” said Lilian. “You want to see them?”
“Have you got time?”
“Of course. Come.”
When Lilian made for the staircase, Max followed, glancing at Rita as he went. She peered back at him over the top of her spectacles with an impassive expression.
Max trailed Lilian up the narrow stone staircase to the newsroom. She was wearing a short linen skirt, fraying at the hem, which revealed the full glory of her legs. They had an aesthetic dimension, long and slender, tapering to ankles so narrow they looked as though they might break at any moment.