‘Bastards!’ Bryan’s cry squeezed out through clenched jaws.
A concussion hammered the air behind his head, knocking his senses into darkness…
Bryan groped back through his blurred vision, confused at a spinning world that pressed him into his seat.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled into his mask.
Kicking the rudder to kill the spin, he pushed the stick forward, pointing the nose directly down. The horizon tilted up past his windshield and gun flashes lit up the decks of the warships that were firing at him. Bryan snarled like a cornered cat, took a gasp of breath and rammed the throttle fully open. He pulled hard on the stick, his cheeks sagged with the g-forces and his vision edged towards grey. Darkness engulfed the cockpit as the fighter flattened out into horizontal flight and outran the searchlights.
Bryan swallowed hard against the nausea rising in his throat, blinking to re-focus on his instruments. He’d lost over half his altitude; the enemy was now hopelessly far above him. A line of flashes to his left snagged at his attention, a similar cascade erupted on his right side as bomb loads pounded into Valletta and its harbours. Bryan’s eyes snapped to his compass; he was flying due north – under the bombing raid. Something slashed the air on his starboard side like a whip-crack and his wing lifted with the compression. Gritting his teeth against his naked helplessness, Bryan pulled at the stick, steepening the bank of his aircraft to curve away from the bomber stream. Beneath his dipped wing, the dark cityscape sparkled with detonations, the carpet of glinting illuminations crept north like deadly phosphorescence in the flowing tide of the attack.
Bryan levelled out and flew unseeing into the dark. He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and closed his eyes like a penitent in a confessional. He drew in a deep breath and pressed transmit.
‘Pipistrelle Leader to Fighter Control. Request flare-path for landing. I think I have flak-damage. Suggest you have a fire crew stand by.’
Saturday, 26 July 1941
The RAF truck bumped and rolled down the hill towards Ta’Qali, Bryan and Ben rocked in harmonic sympathy, like swaying marionettes on the bench in the back.
‘I still don’t understand why didn’t you bail out,’ Ben said.
‘Because I didn’t want to put a socking great engine through somebody’s roof.’
‘It would’ve been safer for you.’
Bryan cast a sideways glance at his companion. ‘We didn’t come here to be safe.’ He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl out the back of the crawling truck to hang in the still afternoon air. ‘You say you didn’t get any contact at all?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t see a bloody thing,’ Ben said, ‘except you, wallowing about, lit up like a bloody fairy on a Christmas tree. I thought you’d bought it.’ He grimaced with chagrin. ‘I’m afraid I backed off when the flak came up, so I suppose I might’ve missed something. After that, all I saw were the explosions on the ground.’
‘Right’ – Bryan flicked his cigarette over the tailgate – ‘tonight we orbit over the sea outside the harbour, out of the way of the navy’s gunners.’
‘Aren’t we supposed to stop the Italians from bombing the navy?’ Ben asked.
‘With only four fighters in the air?’ Bryan shook his head. ‘No. Night-fighting is largely about revenge.’
The truck grumbled through the airfield gate and wheezed to a stop. Ben and Bryan jumped down and walked out across the hard earth.
‘There she is.’ Bryan pointed to a black Hurricane sitting between the airstrip and the perimeter, sagging like an injured bird.
They walked across to the fighter. Two fitters stood on stepladders either side of the naked engine, stripping out its vitals like skinny hyenas tearing at a near-dead behemoth. The Hurricane’s back was broken forward of the tail and the fuselage drooped onto the earth, rucking and creasing the fabric that held the two parts together. Around the break, and aft over the tail-plane, there were holes and rents torn by the spattering shrapnel of a flak shell.
‘I must’ve brought her down a bit hard,’ Bryan said.
‘The flak that broke the camel’s back,’ Ben smirked at his own joke.
A pair of armourers arrived to strip out the unfired guns and their ammunition, and the two pilots left them to their tasks, walking away towards the tatty group of tents that passed for the airfield’s nerve-centre, and the long wait for the sun to dip into dusk.
****
Bryan eyed his instruments more out of habit that necessity. The waxing moon’s strengthening light defined the island’s rocky edge and highlighted the splash of the low waves that broke against it. Circling a good mile north of Grand Harbour’s entrance he regarded the finger of land that bisected it and the dark mass of the capital’s ancient buildings that huddled there, exposed in the naked moonlight to the inevitable cascade of explosives that must be approaching in the pregnant bellies of labouring Italian bombers.
The engine’s level drone counted the passage of time and Bryan blinked drying eyes against its soporific persuasion. The wireless remained stubbornly silent and the island’s searchlights slumbered in the still-peaceful darkness. Bryan banked the orbit seaward, the horizontal horizon wheeled slowly across his windshield, the demarcation of sea and sky marked by a subtle change in the dark purple livery of the Mediterranean night. Something tiny moved away from that line, joined by other movements to either side.
‘Pipistrelle Leader to Pipistrelle Two.’ Bryan’s curiosity coloured his voice. ‘I’m going a bit further out to sea. Stay close.’
Bryan glanced into his mirror to see the dark bulk of Ben’s Hurricane locked in position behind him on his starboard side, its bobbing on the turbulence of his slipstream the only thing that defined its autonomy from the night. Bryan’s eyes dropped back to the horizon and he relaxed his pupils until the shimmering specks reappeared, each one followed by a suggestion of agitation on the water’s surface, a dark blue anomaly of torpid luminescence.
‘Pipistrelle Leader to Fighter Control. There’s a flotilla of small boats heading towards Grand Harbour. Are you expecting anything?’
‘Hello, Pipistrelle Leader, checking with the navy now, stand by.’ The wireless dropped to crackling inactivity.
As Bryan closed on them, the small boats grew more distinct, their positions locked in his vision by the lengthening disturbance of their wakes, like spindly digits of menace stretching across the open water towards the harbour and the half-disgorged merchant ships that wallowed there.
‘Fighter Control to Pipistrelle Leader. No such arrival is expected. Harbour defences have been alerted. Good work. Thank you.’
Bryan overflew the speeding vessels and curved around behind them in a wide arc. All along the shore on either side of the harbour entrance, searchlights flickered into life, reaching skyward for a moment before swinging down to probe across the water. One by one the approaching craft breached into the questing fingers of light, running on straight down the stark corridors of illumination, lacking the leeway to take evasive action. Speculative machine-gun fire sparkled along the coastline; gunners centred at the harbour were quickly joined by emplacements along the neighbouring seafronts. The flash of artillery blossomed from the dark coast and a crop of explosions fountained ahead of and amongst the flotilla. One boat spiralled away from a detonation, circling as it slowed.
As the survivors ploughed on, light anti-aircraft batteries pulled their elevation down to horizontal and a fearsome weave of tracer stitched in layered tendrils across the dark water, washing over and around their lighted targets. Exploding torpedoes erupted in their firing tubes, tearing three vessels to flotsam in quick succession. Others belched sheets of flame, careering onwards with no control. One vessel on the flank of the attack veered away, its sleek bows cutting a tight curve through the sea, cascading a sparkling wash into the yellow beams of light that clung to it, denying the crew the refuge of darkness. Tracers hosed after it, peeling
chunks of debris from its retreating stern, tipping it prow-up to bob like a monstrous fishing float.
A plume of water rose like a spindly crystal from a torpedo strike on the breakwater that narrowed the harbour entrance, followed by a corpulent splash as part of the structure collapsed.
Bryan tightened his orbit and scanned the scene below. No boat that remained afloat was making headway. Disabled vessels wallowed everywhere, pinned like specimens by merciless searchlight crews and taking bursts of fire that foamed the sea around them until they lurched, rolled and slid away beneath the water.
Sunday, 27 July 1941
Katie woke with a start; hands gripped her shoulder, shaking her roughly.
‘They’re invading!’
The hissed urgency in the voice cut through the last vestige of slumber and charged a thrill of adrenalin into her muscles. She blinked against her blurred vision and Stephanie’s gaunt face swam into focus.
‘Listen,’ the other girl croaked. ‘They’re coming.’
The crackle and thump of gunfire drifted across the island through the still night air.
‘Get dressed,’ Katie said, an undercurrent of fear frayed her voice. ‘There’ll be casualties. We’ll be needed.’
The two women bustled about the dorm room under the dim light of a single ancient lightbulb that dangled from a dust encrusted cable in the centre of the ceiling.
‘What are we supposed to do?’ Stephanie’s voice creaked with strain. ‘What if they come in shooting?’
‘They won’t,’ Katie said with a conviction she didn’t quite feel. ‘It’s a hospital, there are conventions.’ She grabbed her friend and placed firm hands on her shoulders. ‘The only people we have to care about are the ones who need our help. We can deal with the others later.’ Stephanie nodded once, though her eyes still flashed with fear.
‘Good.’ Katie released her grip. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
They left the dormitory room and skittered down the corridor towards the stairs. Katie slowed her pace and tilted her head.
‘Listen,’ she hissed, ‘the guns have stopped.’
They descended the stairs and pushed through the doors into the main hospital reception. The window blinds lightened with the onset of dawn and Stephanie moved to open them. Katie noticed a doctor seated at the reception desk, engaged in a hushed telephone conversation. She moved closer to listen.
‘– you say it’s over? There are no more?’ He glanced up and flashed Katie a reassuring smile, then hunched over the phone again. ‘How many casualties? I see. Thank you.’
The doctor dropped the handset back into the cradle and turned to Katie. ‘The Italians sent some boats to attack the harbour. Apparently, they were torn to pieces. So far, they’ve pulled one survivor out of the water. They’re on their way with him now. He’s suffered burns. Can you make ready?’
Katie nodded and hurried to the ward. Working quietly to avoid disturbing the still-sleeping patients, she pulled a screen around an empty bed. Then she visited the store room, returning with fresh bandages, Vaseline and tannic jelly. When all was set, she walked back to the reception where she found Stephanie perched on a stool, wringing her hands with worry.
‘It’s not an invasion,’ Katie reassured her friend. ‘It was a sneak attack on the harbour. They’re bringing us an injured Italian sailor.’
Both nurses settled down to wait.
After a while the earthy grind of a truck’s engine approached, rattling the windows as it pulled to a halt outside. The engine coughed into silence, its noise supplanted by a reedy, high-pitched wail. A man in army uniform opened the hospital door and held it back. Two more soldiers shuffled through carrying someone on a stretcher. The casualty’s screams filled the lobby.
‘This way, please.’ Katie pointed to the ward door and walked alongside the stretcher as the soldiers carried it through.
The young Italian man clenched his jaw against his own cries, staring at Katie with feral panic in his eyes. With an act of will, he compressed his screams into rasping gasps of breath, squeezing his eyes shut with the effort. His face, although streaked in oil and sweat, was uninjured, but from the neck down, his whole left side was blackened and burnt. Katie held her breath against the tangy odour of engine oil underlaid with the stink of seared flesh. With a sickening start she realised that what she took to be the burnt fabric of shirt and trousers flapping over the edge of the stretcher was in fact the disengaged skin of a naked man.
Awakening patients hauled themselves up in their beds to stare, pale-faced, at the injured apparition of youth brought before them.
At the bed, the soldiers held the stretcher level with the mattress. Katie braced under the man’s neck and undamaged right shoulder, Stephanie grabbed the man’s boots, and they hoisted him onto the cotton sheets. Katie noticed the canvas of the stretcher came away from the man’s back with patches of skin adhering to it, like crackling on a roasting dish.
The soldiers moved away quickly, glad to have passed their noisy burden on to somebody else, anxious to get back into the fresh air away from the cloying smell of burnt hair and skin.
Katie caught Stephanie’s eye; her friend’s face was drawn into a mask of appalled horror. She stood at the foot of the bed motionless and imploring.
‘Go and get the doctor,’ Katie said quietly. ‘Go!’
Stephanie hurried away and Katie swallowed hard against the awful smell that clung inside her nostrils. She reached down and took the man’s right hand in hers. His eyelids opened and his gasping redoubled. His eyes locked onto hers, a frightened realisation crept across his features and he squeezed her hand with the strength of desperation.
‘Shhh…’ Katie could think of nothing else to say. ‘Shhh…’
The doctor arrived carrying a small bottle and a syringe. Katie held the man’s gaze and gripped his hand while the doctor injected the liquid from the bottle into the young man’s upper arm, stepped back and waited.
The terror and pain she saw in the sailor’s eyes softened and dwindled. It shrunk back to a strange unfocussed introspection, drifting away from his agony. He blinked against the drift and re-focussed on her face for a long moment, a lover’s smile playing across his lips. Then the grip in his fingers grew slack and his eyes lost their purchase upon her face, grew distant and faded to opacity. Katie laid the dead man’s hand against his thigh and walked away.
****
Bryan stood near Valletta’s most seaward tip, allowing the breeze to cool the heat of the climbing sun. The swell swished and runnelled up and over the outcrop’s rocky edge, like the quiet breathing of a sleeping lover. Behind him the blank walls of Fort St Elmo rose, squat and implacable, their ancient demeanour debauched by the anti-aircraft guns angled skyward from the courtyard they protected.
This bulbous headland formed the western edge of Valletta’s Grand Harbour entrance, and afforded a view of the now-serene killing zone of the previous night. Bryan leaned to look over the sea wall. Fragments of wood and cloth sprinkled the swell, lodging in the rocks only to be liberated by the next wave and bobbing a few feet to their next temporary landfall. The wet stones shimmered with a kingfisher hue, slicked with spilled diesel fuel. Thicker patches of engine oil undulated languorously on the water and clung tenaciously wherever they washed up.
Bryan glanced at his watch; it was well past 11 o’clock. He hefted his kit-bag onto his shoulder and walked back along the harbour front. Carpets of shell casings littered the sand-bagged gun emplacements ranged along the sea wall, their scratched brass gleaming in the sunshine. The gunners’ eyes also glinted; it was a light that Bryan recognised and he dropped his gaze to avoid it.
He walked easily, sticking to the water’s edge, as long as he could, glad for the breeze that tickled his skin. Eventually he swung his track north to traverse the city. An old man sat on his doorstep and watched him pass, his face placid, but his eyes haunted. Bryan’s half-smile of greeting brought no response.
Bryan doglegge
d through the grid-like road system to reach the city’s obverse harbour overlooked by the now-familiar gardens that led him to the stretch of buildings that contained Jacobella’s home. He sat on the steps at the base of the empty plinth, placed his bag next to him, leaned back against the warm stone and allowed his eyes to close. The sunlight shone red through his eyelids, and sleep crept up and stole him away.
****
‘Good afternoon.’
The voice roused him and he turned to see Jacobella sitting beside him, Luċija perched on her lap, both looking at him, both smiling.
‘Good Lord.’ Bryan pulled himself out of his slouch. ‘I must’ve dozed off.’
‘We’re just back from church,’ Jacobella said. ‘Is that where you’ve been?’
Bryan shook his head. ‘No. My father is a vicar. I was required to attend church far more often than is good for one person.’
‘A vicar?’ She chewed the word. ‘In England?’ Jacobella tilted her head. ‘How romantic.’
Bryan regarded her for a long moment. ‘Is it? Well, if you say so.’ He shifted his weight on numb buttocks. ‘I came to make sure you were alright, after last night’ – he glanced sheepishly at the bag – ‘and to bring you some more washing.’
She nodded, pulling the bag up against her thigh. ‘Last night was very noisy, but it’s always noisy this close to the harbour. At least there were no bombs.’ Concern wrinkled her brow. ‘Do you know what happened?’
Bryan looked down at his hands clasped in his lap. ‘Somebody in Sicily thought it would be a good idea to send a fleet of little boats to attack a harbour where the defences are expecting a full-scale invasion. It was a massacre.’
Jacobella looked away across the gardens to where the bastion dropped down to the waters of Marsamxett Harbour. The distant murmur of waves counted like heartbeats. ‘Why did you come to Malta, Bryan?’
Bryan studied her profile. ‘I was sent here.’
She turned, catching his eye. ‘I have the impression you chose it.’
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 59