High-kicking his way across a crowded room while singing “Knees Up, Mother Brown” at the top of his lungs would never be Max’s idea of fun, but Freddie had announced to everyone present that he wouldn’t be banging out any more tunes on the piano until Max joined in. It was Iris who had dragged him from his chair into the fray, Iris who had hooked her arm through his and refused to release him until Freddie turned his gifted hands to some Cole Porter numbers.
At the time, Iris was still a member of the Arabian Knights, a concert party made up of six girls and two young men who walked from the hips down. They were one of the more popular outfits on the island, if only because their routines verged on the downright bawdy. What was it about the English that allowed them to find so much humor in men dressing up as women, and vice versa? Hugh would have said that Shakespeare was to blame.
Max had only once seen the Arabian Knights in action; they’d been mostly on the road in an old Scammell truck provided by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI), performing at airfields and forts and remote gun sites. The arrival of the Luftwaffe in Sicily in early ’41 spelled the end of the troupe, the Germans taking over from their Italian allies and teaching them the true meaning of a bombing campaign. Malta shook to a holocaust that left little place for frivolous entertainments, and the Arabian Knights were forced to disband.
Crueler tongues than Max’s had speculated about Charles Headley’s decision to employ Iris at the Information Office. What did Max care if Headley was getting his oil changed in return for offering her a job? She was a performer, fun to have around, and competent enough when it came to reading out the news bulletins for the Rediffusion. Moreover, she hadn’t fled the island when the opportunity to do so had still existed, which suggested a certain commitment to the cause.
Admittedly, there had been something slightly self-serving about this commitment. At the first opportunity, she had left the Information Office for the giddy heights of Fighter Control, but Max had never begrudged her her resourcefulness and ambition. She was a young woman from a tough neighborhood of south London who had pulled herself up by the boot straps, exchanging a sequin-encrusted brassiere for a key job at the heart of the military machine. He knew that the wives of the high-ranking officers with whom she now rubbed shoulders despised her for her pretensions, her efforts to dress more like them and improve her accent—and maybe there was something of the same thinking in their husbands—but as someone who had suffered at the hands of knee-jerk prejudice, Max knew whose side he was on.
His easy companionship with Iris had never been haunted by the spectre of physical attraction. On that score, Max did nothing for her. She had told him as much the day he’d accompanied her and her mangy dog to the blessing of the animals at the church of Santa Maria Vittoriosa.
“I don’t know why. You’re tall and dark and very handsome, and you have perfectly lovely green eyes, but I’m not in the least bit attracted to you.”
“That’s okay, Iris.”
“It’s just the same with Freddie. Something about him leaves me cold.”
“I’m sure he can live with it too.”
Sitting there in Monico’s, Iris ran him through an impressively long list of other men who had managed to stir something in her since they’d last caught up on each other’s news. Her current weakness was a Free French pilot named Henri who had purloined a Latécoère torpedo bomber in north Africa and flown to Malta to join the fight. As ever, she was in love, and this time it was the real thing.
Max waited for her to talk herself to a standstill before making his move.
“Iris, I need your help.”
“My help?”
“It’s a sensitive matter, for your ears only.”
It occurred to him only then just how difficult this might become. For a person bent on reinventing herself, she wasn’t necessarily going to appreciate being reminded of her seamy past.
“What was the name of that place you worked when you first came to Malta?”
He knew the name. And he knew the place. It was still there: an apology for a dance hall just off Strait Street where it dipped away toward Fort Saint Elmo. Like many other girls with a London show or two under their belts, Iris had been lured to Malta before the war with the promise of fame and fortune, only to find herself prancing around a postage-stamp stage for a baying mob of drunk and hormone-fueled sailors.
“Why?” she asked warily.
“I know it’s a world you’ve left behind—and good riddance to it.”
“It wasn’t such a bad life.”
He had heard enough stories from others to know she was stretching the truth.
“Well, maybe it’s got worse. Or maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“And maybe you should spit it out.”
“As I say, it’s probably nothing …”
This was a phrase he kept returning to over the next few minutes. He tried to remain as vague as possible, making out that he was only doing someone else a favor by approaching her. This person—he couldn’t say who exactly, they had asked him not to—was of the feeling that casualty rates were running unnaturally high among the sherry queens of the Gut. He was fumbling his way toward the request when she preempted him.
“You want me to ask around.”
“A few discreet inquiries to some of the people you know—knew. See if there’s any truth in it. As I say, it’s probably nothing.”
“Let me get this straight. You think someone’s killing sherry queens, and you want me to go in there and be discreet?” She seemed amused by the idea, and probably with good reason.
“I don’t think anything.”
“No, that’s right, this ‘person’ thinks someone’s killing sherry queens.” She made no attempt to conceal the heavy irony.
“Iris, look, he doesn’t know anything. He’s just doing his job, making sure. Forget I ever mentioned it, okay?”
He meant it. He should never have approached her with it.
Iris pulled a cigarette from the packet and waited for him to light it for her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.”
“Of course I’ll do it,” she said.
IT WASN’T A DIARY. HE HAD ALWAYS DISLIKED THE IDEA of diaries. They smacked of vainglory. What drove people to record the mundane drift of their ordinary lives for posterity’s sake? Did they really think that posterity didn’t have better things to concern itself with?
His scribblings were of an altogether different kind, a loose assemblage of thoughts and impressions and memories laid down for his own benefit. Not to mention the deeds. The deeds were anything but mundane.
He kept only one notebook, and the moment its pages were filled, he destroyed it, ritually, always with fire. He felt no sense of loss at the notebooks’ annihilation. Quite the reverse. He set about despoiling the virgin pages of a fresh notebook with renewed vigor, starting again, telling the story from scratch, reaching back to the very first days.
The years lent a proper perspective. He was continually evolving, and so should the record be.
What did the blinkered musings of some former self—some lesser self—have to offer him? Why revisit the youthful confusion of that long walk home through the rain from Mrs. Beckett’s house? Far better to see it in its proper context, as part of the overarching pattern, a necessary step in his metamorphosis.
If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Beckett, Bad Reichenhall would never have happened. That was the truth of it, the undeniable logic.