Somehow, he couldn’t see it, though. She was older, too much of her own person to follow the flock simply for the sake of it. He knew immediately that this conclusion flattered him by lending weight to her feelings. It came to him more slowly that they were feelings he was quite happy for her to have.
Or maybe it was the whisky speaking. He had a tendency to turn dewy-eyed under its influence.
Hugh, meanwhile, was growing downright maudlin. He could just as well have been speaking about the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, so stirring was his account of the destruction by an enemy bomb of the premises of the Malta Amateur Dramatic Club.
No one had been in the building on South Street at the time, but Hugh had been there since and had picked over the rubble, pulling out props and costumes from the plays they’d put on over the years, each one unleashing a memory, many of which he now felt obliged to share with his friends.
The friends, meanwhile, did their best not to laugh. This wasn’t easy, especially when Hugh started to recite lines.
“Do you remember Return to Sender?”
Ralph leaned forward in his chair. “How could we forget, old man?”
This was said for Max and Freddie’s benefit, Hugh being too caught up in the moment to detect the irony.
“‘I say, Margaret, wasn’t that the doorbell? Or could it be that my ears are still ringing from our little contretemps earlier?’”
He gave a smile that said, Step aside, Shakespeare. You’ve had your day.
“Didn’t Olive Bratby play Margaret?” said Freddie.
“She certainly did. And with great authority. Margaret’s not an easy character to play. Remember when her poodle goes missing? That requires a deft touch.”
“Oooo,” said Max, “that’s a horrible moment.”
“It is, it is, and an actress of lesser ability would have over-egged the pudding. Far better, though, that Margaret is seen not to react. She buries the pain away. It’s what she does, you see? As with the poodle, so with life.”
This last line was a tough one to hold out against. They all managed it, though, rising to the challenge of the unspoken game: which one of them would crack first? Freddie, annoyingly, was the master of the poker face and the little glances designed to send you over the edge. Max’s only real chance lay in lighting Ralph’s fuse.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t I hear that Lord Mountbatten once attended one of your shows?”
“Absolutely. Just before my time, sadly. It was On Approval by Frederick Lonsdale, and he was extremely complimentary.”
Max already knew the story because he had heard it from Ralph, who had heard it from Hugh, who could, apparently, quote by heart from the letter Mountbatten subsequently wrote to the MADC.
He most certainly could. Verbatim.
Ralph had his mouth buried in his glass to hide his smile when Hugh leaned back, staring at the stars, and declared wistfully, “Lord Louis loved us.”
The whisky went everywhere, much of it up Ralph’s nose. The dam then burst for Freddie and Max.
Hugh’s bewildered expression took on a steely edge of realization before softening to one of grudging amusement.
“Bloody Philistines.”
Max was fairly accomplished at riding his motorcycle when drunk, and he knew from his little jaunt with Pemberton and Vitorin Zammit that it was just possible to squeeze three grown men onto the machine. He had never attempted to do both things at the same time.
Fortunately, it was a short trip across the valley to Mtarfa Hospital, where Freddie dismounted and stumbled off in search of his digs. Unfortunately, Hugh was growing more voluble by the minute. As they came down off the ridge onto the plain, he started to recite lines from Tennyson at the top of his lungs while slapping Max on the thigh and exhorting him to go faster.
“‘Forward, the Light Brigade! / Charge for the guns!’ … Faster, faster! …‘Storm’d at with shot and shell, / Boldly they rode and well, / Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / Rode the six hundred.’”
“Shut up, Hugh.”
“‘Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die.’”
They didn’t die, although a gaping bomb crater on the outskirts of Attard tried its best to oblige, swallowing them up before spitting them out again.
“Now that’s more like it!” trumpeted Hugh, clinging on for dear life.
On the outskirts of Floriana, they bore left through Pieta and Msida, taking the road that wound its way around Marsamxett Harbour, but as they approached Sliema, Hugh suggested that they carry on past to Fort Tigne’.
“No point in going home just yet,” he called into Max’s ear. “The coven will still be at their cards.”
Fort Tigne’ felt like the end of the known world, stuck out on its promontory at the harbor mouth. To the east lay almost a thousand miles of clear water and the low horizon where the sun rose every morning. It was a wild and lonely spot, and the gun emplacements there had taken a beating in the past few weeks, targeted attacks intended to annihilate them. A visit by a high-ranking officer from Royal Artillery HQ, albeit at such a late hour, was a timely and welcome thing.
Maybe it was the actor in him, but Hugh did a fine job of concealing his waterlogged state from the battery commander, seemingly sobering up at will. His handling of the gunners when he insisted on making a tour of the gun pits was even more impressive. There was nothing remote or routine about his handling of the men. He was relaxed, familiar, and amusing.
In one of the pits, a jug-eared young corporal was playing a mournful tune on a harmonica for his downcast comrades. A backfire had blown out the breech the day before and killed two men.
Taking the harmonica from the corporal, Hugh tapped it against his hand to clear it.
“There goes tomorrow’s water ration,” he joked, which got a big laugh.
Max experienced a flush of pride in his friend as Hugh proceeded to play a heartfelt rendition of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.” He then shook the hand of every man present, wishing them well in the fight ahead and assuring them that victory would be theirs.
Max and he wandered down to the slender strip of sand at the water’s edge for a smoke.
“I didn’t know you played the harmonica.”
“Don’t tell Rosamund. She thinks it’s an uncouth instrument.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the dark Mediterranean stretching out before them.
“‘What from the cape can you discern at sea?’”
“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that,” said Max.“Nothing at alclass="underline" it is a highwrought flood;
I cannot, ’twixt the heaven and the main,
Descry a sail.”
“You’ve got me there.”
“Othello. Montano is searching for the Turkish fleet with some gentlemen of Cyprus. It turns out the fleet’s gone down in a storm.”
“We should be so lucky.”
Hugh shrugged. “We don’t need luck; we need determination. History’s on our side.”
Hugh had always been taken with the idea that the siege in which they were caught up was not so very different from that endured by Malta in 1565, when Suleiman the Magnificent had dispatched forty thousand men to take the island. Malta had held out against the Ottomans on that occasion, saving Europe in the process, and the little seagirt sentinel of the Mediterranean was now engaged in a similar showdown against the Nazi scourge.
It was a romantic notion, and one that Max was quite happy to go along with in his capacity as the information officer. Hugh, on the other hand, embraced it with an almost mystical fervor, latching on to the parallels and ignoring the differences. It was true that in both instances there was much more at stake than a dust-blown lump of limestone in the middle of the Mediterranean. It was also true that in 1565 the defense of the island had been coordinated by outsiders, men from the north of Europe.