Neither had Lilian.
There was still no sign of her at the office, and no one was answering the phone at her aunt’s palace in Mdina. There was nothing in the reports to worry about; two bombs had fallen on Rabat at about three A.M., but that was it.
An hour later, Maria put the call through to his office.
“Good of you to show up at work,” he joked.
“I’m not at work; I’m at home.”
She sounded tired, drained, downcast. And with good cause, it turned out. A childhood friend of hers, Caterina Gasan, had been killed by one of the two bombs that had fallen on Rabat, her family home receiving a direct hit that had made a mockery of the concrete shelter in the basement. Caterina’s mother and her younger brother had also perished in the ruins. Her father and her elder brother, the two men who had laid the concrete with such confidence, had both survived almost entirely unscathed.
Max had met Caterina only once, back in March, but he could see her clearly: short, voluptuous, full-lipped, and feisty. He could see her rapt expression, lit by the screen, while Dennis O’Keefe and Helen Parrish warbled their way through I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart Now at the Rabat Plaza. They hadn’t agreed on the merits of the film, but he had enjoyed her efforts to persuade him of the error of his ways.
“God …,” he said, pathetically.
“What God?” Lilian replied.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I? It doesn’t make sense, not Caterina.”
“It’s not meant to make sense.”
There was a short silence before she spoke. “I want to see you.”
“That’s lucky. I want to see you too.”
“Can you come to Mdina?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes—Luftwaffe permitting.”
Ena, the younger of Lilian’s two cousins, answered the door to Max. He could see from her eyes that she’d been crying.
“They’re in the garden,” she said simply, taking him by the hand and leading him there in silence.
They were seated at a tin table in the shade of an orange tree: Lilian, her aunt Teresa, and Ralph. It was a surprise to see Ralph there, and Max experienced a momentary twinge of jealousy.
“I saw Squadron Leader Tindle in the street and told him about Caterina,” Teresa explained. Like Lilian, she was dressed in black.
“I was just leaving,” said Ralph, stubbing out his cigarette and getting to his feet. “My sincere condolences again.” He graced both women with something between a nod and a bow.
“Lilian …,” Teresa prompted.
“No, stay,” said Ralph. “I’m sure Max will see me out.”
The tall glazed doors at the back of the palace were crisscrossed with tape, and as two men entered the building, Ralph said, “Bad blow for them. Caterina was a great girl.”
“You knew her?”
“Only to ogle. She used to come to the Point de Vue every now and then.”
The Point de Vue Hotel stood on the south side of the Saqqajja, the leafy square separating Mdina and Rabat. Like the Xara Palace, the hotel had been requisitioned by the RAF as a billet for pilots stationed at Ta’ Qali. The hotel barman was known for his John Collinses, the bar itself for the local girls who were drawn there come nightfall, like moths to a candle flame. For some reason the pilots called these flirtatious encounters “poodle-faking.” Well, that had all stopped the month before, when the Point de Vue had taken a direct hit during an afternoon raid, killing six.
“That place is cursed. When I think of the times we had there, and those who are gone …”
It wasn’t like Ralph to come over all maudlin—breeziness was his stock-in-trade—and Max wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Thanks for last night” was the best he could come up with.
“Might be a while before we get to do it again. Had a summons from the CO this morning, and the fly-in’s definitely set for the ninth.”
“Three days …”
“Believe me, I’m counting. He passed me fit to fly Spits again.”
“Congratulations.”
“It’s going to be one hell of a scrap. That bastard Kesselring’s going to throw everything he’s got at us.”
“But this time you’re ready. I saw the new blast pens when I passed by Ta’ Qali.”
“What counts is up there,” said Ralph, nodding heavenward. “If the new Spits really do have four cannons and are faster in the climb, we stand a chance. Who knows, we might even bloody their noses. We’d better, or it’s all over.”
“You think?”
“I know. This is it—the last roll of the dice.”
Max paused in the hallway at the front door.
“When we’re old and sitting in a pub somewhere, I’m going to remind you of this conversation.”
Ralph smiled weakly. “Tell me more about the pub.”
“It’s at the end of a long track, and there’s a river, with trout, and a garden running down to the water. It’s summer and the sun is shining, and there’s a weeping willow near the jetty where our grandchildren are playing. They’re naked, jumping off the jetty, flapping around in the river, splashing the people drifting past in punts.”
Ralph gave a sudden loud laugh. “Damn your detractors. Now I know why you got the job.”
“What detractors?”
“Come on, you’re at least ten years too young for the post.”
“I forgot to mention … at the pub, you’re in a wheelchair. You lost both legs when you got shot down over Malta in May 1942.”
Ralph laughed some more as he pulled open the front door. After the cool of the palace and its shaded garden the heat in Bastion Square hit them like a hammer.
“She’s a great girl, Max, war or no war. She’s the real thing.”
“She’s just a friend.”
“Then you’re a bloody fool.”
“If you say so.”
“Hugh says so too.”
“Hugh?”
“And Freddie.”
He knew Freddie was a fan of Lilian’s. The three of them had spent a raucous evening together at Captain Caruana’s bar in Valetta a few weeks back. He struggled to recall when Hugh had ever set eyes on her.
“Now go in there and look after her. She needs it.”
Lilian didn’t appear particularly needy. She sat there silent and grim-faced while he made the right noises, and the moment Teresa withdrew, leaving them alone together, she suggested that they head for Boschetto Gardens. Actually, it was more of a command than a suggestion, and there was something wild and reckless in her eyes when she issued it.
“On the motorcycle?”
Until now, she had always refused to be seen with him on the motorcycle.
“Well, I’m not walking there in this heat.”
It was a short trip, a few miles at most along the ridge toward the coast. He took it slowly, savoring the experience.
Lilian rode sidesaddle because of her skirt, and as Rabat fell away behind them, she shifted closer on the seat, holding him around the waist just that little bit tighter.
She was a good pillion passenger, not fighting the curves in the road, leaning with him.
“You’ve done this before,” he called over his shoulder.
“I’ve never done what I’m about to do.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, turning to look her in the eye.
“I think it’s a goat,” she replied calmly.
They missed the emaciated creature by a matter of inches.
It would have been a pity to kill it, a survivor like that. Most had gone the way of the pot long before now.
Boschetto Gardens offered the only genuine patch of woodland on Malta—a rare glimpse of what the island must have looked like long ago, before it was stripped of trees by early shipbuilders. Max had walked its weaving pathways a handful of times, often with Ralph, who loved to go there to paint. It was a tranquil, sun-dappled world where dark pines towered over groves of lemon, orange, and olive trees. There was an ancient atmosphere about the place, a whiff of dusty fables by classical authors you’d heard of but never read.