The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  A faint smile crept over Bryan’s lips. ‘Maybe.’ He returned his unfocussed gaze to his hands. She waited, watching his face.

  ‘Someone in England asked me to stop fighting. When I couldn’t do that, she suggested I should hurry up and die so that she could move on. I thought it might be pleasant to get a bit of sunshine while I was about it.’

  Jacobella laid a hand on his arm. ‘I hope you don’t die.’

  Bryan glanced down at her tanned fingers resting on his skin. ‘As it turned out, she didn’t wait for it to happen. She upped and moved on anyway.’

  ‘Is this the part of your story you missed out?’ she asked.

  Bryan scratched at the stubble on his cheek. ‘I think it’s one of the parts I might like to forget.’

  Jacobella lifted her daughter back onto the ground and grasped the kitbag. ‘I’ll do these this evening.’

  ‘I don’t want to impose,’ Bryan began.

  She held up a hand to silence him. ‘I want you to impose.’

  He swivelled on the stone step to watch her cross the road to her door. This time she turned and smiled before she went in.

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday, 5 August 1941

  ‘You want me to believe there’s nothing in it?’ Ben walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Bryan through the thickening dusk towards the operations tent.

  ‘I don’t care what you believe,’ Bryan said. ‘She does a bit of washing for me, that’s all.’

  ‘We have a laundry room at Xara. I used it myself yesterday.’

  Bryan remained silent.

  ‘So’ – Ben smirked – ‘what else is she cleaning?’

  Bryan wheeled on his heel and shoved Ben hard on the shoulder, sending him sprawling onto the ground.

  ‘She’s a married woman. Beautiful, yes. Desirable, yes. But, in the end, married.’

  Ben dragged himself back to his feet, brushing the dust from his clothes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m just having a laugh.’

  ‘Well it isn’t bloody funny.’

  ****

  The precise routine of take-off and the cradling confines of his cockpit cooled Bryan’s temper as he dropped into patrol orbit outside the harbour entrance. He glanced into his mirror to see his wingman sitting behind his starboard wing, the nearly-full moon transforming his spinning propeller into a shimmering disc. Ben’s words had struck a nerve he had not realised was so painfully exposed.

  Bryan pulled his nose up a degree to gain more altitude, suspecting the moonlight’s ghostly pallor might drive enemy intruders higher. He looked down at the island glowing a faint ochre under the moon’s radiance. It was a bomber’s moon, but it was a night-fighter’s moon too.

  ‘Fighter Control to Pipistrelle aircraft.’ The metallic voice of the wireless buzzed into Bryan’s earphones. ‘One dozen bandits approaching, heading due north. Estimate they will overfly Luqa, Marsamxett Harbour and Sliema. Angels sixteen, repeat, angels sixteen.’

  Bryan glanced at his altimeter and smiled in satisfaction; his flight was 1,000 feet above the raiders’ approach. He levelled out, tightened his orbit and scanned the sky to the south, waiting.

  In the distance, the southern searchlight battery beamed up pillars of light to penetrate the night, scratching away at the black dome, sweeping the blackness in search of enemy machines. A sudden jewel glowed at the top of one beam, glittering with reflected light. Two more searchlights angled in to bind the victim with illumination. From above the pinned bomber, a stream of tracer hosed around and across it, followed by a second burst from a different angle. The bomber nosed over and dived towards the ground, the searchlights flattening to follow it down like gleeful spectators.

  Moments later a cluster of explosions blossomed in the centre of the island’s girth, across the shallow basin that contained Ta’Qali’s sister airfield.

  ‘Stand by, Ben,’ Bryan intoned, ‘they’re getting close.’

  Searchlights flickered into life and slashed around over the capital’s harbour like saplings in a stiff breeze and AA batteries sent up a box barrage blanketing the southern approach to the docks. Bryan squinted across the brightness of the searching beams, willing them to find a target. Then a cold certainty hit him.

  ‘Ben!’ urgency stretched his voice. ‘They won’t be over the harbour, not now they’re empty. Follow me.’

  Bryan pulled out of their orbit and pushed his throttle forward into a shallow dive, following the coast north-west and straining his eyes to pick up any movement. Turbulence from propeller wash bumped the underside of his aircraft and he swung onto a northerly course, a grin of triumph creeping across his face. ‘Where are you?’ he muttered to himself.

  An undulation in the night’s fabric caught his eye. He let his pupils relax, looking through, rather than at, the anomaly. The blurred motion resolved into three ghostly discs; propellers reflecting the lunar glow.

  ‘Ben, are you still there?’

  ‘On your tail, Leader.’

  ‘We’ve got one cold. Ahead and to starboard. Follow me in. Break left.’

  Bryan banked slightly to lead his target and pressed his firing button. The trio of ethereal, shimmering circles drifted into his bullet stream and flashing strikes defined the lumbering bulk of the target. Then he flashed past above the bomber. Hauling away to port to avoid his wingman’s fire that flashed motes of light across his rear-view mirror, he pulled a wide circle, dragging his compass back onto a northerly bearing.

  Ahead, the Italian bomber illuminated itself with a fire that coursed over its port engine, licking banners of flame into its slipstream. The craft flew on for long moments, then the wing folded upwards and the fuselage rolled over into a spiralling dive towards the sea.

  Saturday, 9 August 1941

  Bryan left his room, walked down the corridor and pushed his way through the door onto the balcony. The light waned towards dusk and the panoramic view of the island softened around the edges as the sky transitioned from bright blue to a velvet purple.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Ben slapped his hand on the newly constructed bar set against the back wall.

  ‘Very nice.’ Bryan crossed to sit next to him. ‘Where did the wood come from?’

  ‘We found some floorboards in a room that no-one was using.’

  Bryan nodded at the bottles on the shelf behind the bar. ‘The wine and the whisky?’

  ‘They came from the cellar.’

  ‘I thought that cellar was padlocked.’

  Ben screwed up his face in chagrin. ‘It was.’ His features brightened. ‘But the beer is legitimate. The first production run since the convoy docked. The delivery man was very proud of it.’

  Ben skipped behind the bar and poured two beers from green bottles. ‘It should be a good night,’ he said, pushing one glass across to Bryan. ‘Most of the pilots from Ta’Qali and Luqa are coming, some girls from the control room said they’d be here, and the nurses.’

  Bryan paused with his glass halfway to his lips. ‘Nurses?’

  ‘From Mtarfa hospital.’ Ben swigged his beer. ‘I thought you knew them.’

  A group of pilots arrived and Ben busied himself serving their drinks. Bryan stood up and drifted away along the balcony to lean on the railing and watch the darkness swallow the landscape. The mounting hubbub of conversation washed over him, but the sharp chirps and clicks of nocturnal insects cut through like a percussive counterpoint.

  ‘Hello.’

  Bryan turned his head to see Katie leaning on the railing next to him, a glass of wine in her hand.

  ‘It’s lovely place you have here’ – a mischievous smile lit her eyes – ‘and now it seems we’re practically neighbours.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He returned his gaze to the darkening landscape. ‘It’s a shame I have to share it with so many erks.’

  Katie giggled, then pulled herself upright. ‘I’d like to apologise, for the other week, after the dance. I never meant to upset your girlfriend.’

  Bryan’s he
ad sagged slightly. ‘She’s not my girlfriend. In fact, she’s married. She wrote that article in the paper. That’s how she recognised me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Katie leaned back on the railing, her elbow touching his. ‘How is that going, the fight against the night raiders?’

  ‘We’ve got a few of them.’ Bryan lit two cigarettes and handed one to his companion. ‘But not enough to make a difference.’ He sighed. ‘Half my planes will be up tonight while the ground crews work through the day to make the other half fly well enough to go up tomorrow.’

  ‘We all do the job we’re given as best as we can,’ she said quietly.

  Bryan scanned the crowd at the bar. ‘Where’s your friend?’

  ‘Steph?’ Katie took a draw on her cigarette. ‘Oh, she’s mooning to herself in our dormitory. She misses her sailor. He’s out there somewhere in his submarine.’ She nodded in the direction of the harbour and the sea.

  ‘What do you make of him?’ Bryan asked

  Katie screwed her mouth up. ‘I think he’s a bit shady,’ she said, ‘but I suppose it takes a certain kind of man to get into little metal tube and sail it about under the water.’

  Out to the east, around the harbour, searchlight beams stabbed into the sky and the rumble of anti-aircraft fire rolled across the landscape. The knot of people at the bar moved over to the railing, like theatre-goers returning to a show after an intermission.

  Katie looked at them and tutted. ‘I’d love to look around your palace.’ The mischievous smile reappeared. ‘Why don’t you give me a tour?’

  They dropped their cigarettes over the balcony and Bryan led the way down the corridor to the main staircase. They descended to the entrance hall and walked through to the inner courtyard. The courtyard doors stood open, allowing a breeze to filter into the building, and they stepped through to look up at the bat-flecked panel of stars framed by the enclosing walls.

  They circled back to the entrance lobby and started up the stairs.

  ‘It’s all very lovely,’ Bryan said, ‘but I hardly spend any time here, except for sleeping and eating.’

  They reached the top of the stairs and walked down the corridor towards the balcony.

  ‘Where do you sleep?’ Katie asked.

  ‘It’s just along here,’ Bryan gestured down the corridor.

  Katie dashed ahead of him. ‘This one?’ She pushed open a door and entered the room.

  ‘Yes,’ Bryan spluttered, ‘Katie, stop it.’

  He followed her into his room to find her standing at its centre, casting her eyes around the decoration.

  ‘What a lovely bedroom,’ she said. ‘Close the door.’

  ‘Katie, please don’t.’ His voice was barely above a whisper.

  She undid the buttons of her blouse and shucked it off her shoulders. ‘Don’t make me do this with the door open.’

  Bryan closed the door, turning the key in its lock with trembling fingers.

  Tuesday, 12 August 1941

  The water flowed smoothly around the submarine’s prow as it crawled slowly towards its harbour approach. Albert Chandler stood to the port side of the foredeck, two other men stood with him, one on the starboard side and one facing forward. They scanned the water intently, each holding a sub-machine gun; the submarine’s last-ditch defence against un-swept mines.

  The sandy smudge of Malta’s coastline grew closer. The sun, gaining in heat as it climbed to mid-morning, and the concentration of his task, sent rivulets of sweat trickling down Albert’s back. He re-braced his legs and stared into the crystal-clear depths.

  ‘Machine-gun party, stand down.’ The shouted order came from the conning tower as the vessel drew close to the harbour. More men climbed through the hatch and clambered down the tower to the deck, stretching their backs and breathing deeply of the sea breeze. As U-Ulric nudged through the harbour’s mouth, the collapsed breakwater drew a hubbub of speculative chatter amongst the men.

  The submarine sailed past the entrance to Grand Harbour, around the tip of Valletta’s promontory and into Marsamxett Harbour on the city’s north flank. The men on the deck formed a line down the vessel’s starboard side as it pulled into Lazzaretto Creek and approached its docking space.

  The man next to Albert grunted. ‘Why is there no-one ever waiting for us?’

  Albert’s smile creased his oil begrimed face. ‘There’s one I know is waiting for me.’

  ****

  Bryan kicked the tyre on the Hurricane. ‘Bloody useless tractor!’ he shouted at the impassive black aircraft.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Ben wandered across from the next blast-pen, hands in his pockets, chewing on a matchstick.

  Bryan turned on him. ‘I won’t be alright when this thing falls apart and drops out of the sky. Look at this!’ He pointed at a propeller blade that differed in colour from the other two.

  Ben squinted at it for a moment. ‘It’s a replacement blade. So what?’

  Bryan’s eyes bulged with outrage. ‘Some bloke made this down at the docks.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘Some bloke’ – his voice dropped to a hiss – ‘some Maltese bloke, made this down at the docks with a hammer and an anvil.’

  Ben tapped it with his knuckles. ‘I’m sure it will be alright.’

  ‘Oh!’ Bryan raised his eyebrows. ‘And what good is your blithe confidence to me when it flies off in mid-air and I’ve got nothing to crash land on except piles of fucking rocks?’

  Bryan’s shoulder sagged with the weight of his disgust. He walked to the back of the blast-pen and sat down on the pebble strewn ground, his back against the hard rock wall. He rummaged in his pockets for a cigarette, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke through his nostrils.

  ‘Honestly, Ben’ – his voice returned to a conversational tone – ‘if we’d defended Britain last summer the way we’re defending Malta now, Hitler would have his feet up on a desk in Whitehall and we’d be speaking German in Messerschmitt cockpits on the Eastern Front.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, is it?’ Ben asked. ‘We are holding them off.’

  Bryan shook his head. ‘They haven’t come for us yet, not properly. Not like they did in France.’

  ‘But you’re talking about the Germans,’ Ben said. ‘And like you said, they’re in Russia.’

  Bryan looked up into Ben’s eyes. ‘Don’t think they won’t be coming back. They may come from Sicily or they may come from Africa, but they will come. They can’t let us stand in their way much longer.’

  The dusk gathered around them and the breeze cooled their cheeks.

  ‘Did I see Katie leaving your room on Sunday morning?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No,’ Bryan answered. He stared at his boots for a moment and narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, then hauled himself back to his feet. ‘Come on. Let’s see if we can find a mug of tea before I have to fly this bloody death-trap into the dark.’

  Saturday, 16 August 1941

  The golden sparkle of the beer in his hand layered comfortably on top of the whiskies he’d drunk before leaving Xara. The strains and tensions melted from his shoulders and his desperate exhaustion mellowed into warm fatigue, like the proto-pleasurable tiredness at the end of a day of hard physical labour. Katie stood next to him at the bar, not touching him, perfectly at ease with herself, implicitly with him, but fully self-possessed. His eyes lingered on the smooth skin of her cheek and the wisp of blonde hair that rested there. Then his gaze dropped along her neck, over the modest rise of her breast and down to her cocked hips and smooth, un-stockinged legs. Her foot tapped the wooden floor in time with the drummer and, with this visual reminder, the music flooded back into his consciousness. He looked up towards the stage and smiled in pleasure as the flood of melody washed over him. He turned to share the feeling with Ben, but his friend was engrossed in a conversation with Stephanie. He watched as Ben placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder and leaned close to her ear so she could better hear what he was saying.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  A weight struck B
ryan from behind, sending him lurching into Katie, cascading the remains of his beer down her dress. Bryan pulled himself upright in time to see the punch connect with Ben’s head, sending him reeling into the dancing couples. Adrenalin crystallised Bryan’s vision and he grasped the assailant from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. The man shouted something at Ben’s prone figure and the band ground to a discordant halt.

  ‘Shut up, Bertie,’ Bryan hissed through gritted teeth. ‘I’m getting you out of here before we all get bloody arrested.’

  He man-handled Albert away from the bar. ‘Stay here,’ he mouthed at Ben, then in his cheeriest voice said, ‘I’m very sorry – everything’s under control – slight misunderstanding,’ as he guided his captive to the door, through the beaded curtain and down the stairs to the street. Bryan released his grip and Albert spun around to face him.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Bryan held his voice level, but his anger prickled the hair follicles on his neck. ‘The bloody MPs will have you in the blockhouse if the owner reports this. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Your mate was trespassing,’ Albert snarled, ‘what would you do?’

  ‘Trespassing?’ Bryan’s brow wrinkled in disbelief.

  ‘That girl is mine.’

  Bryan looked into the other man’s eyes and shook his head. ‘She’s not yours, Bertie. Nobody in that group is anybody’s.’ He jabbed a finger into the other man’s chest. ‘Except you. You have a wife.’

  The clack of heels sounded on the pavement behind Bryan. Albert looked over Bryan’s shoulder and his face softened to a half-smile.

  Bryan’s voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned closer to the other man. ‘You live this thing out with the girl any way you choose, but do not’ – he paused until Albert’s eyes met his again – ‘do not touch my friend ever again.’

  Albert pushed past him and Bryan watched the matelot and Stephanie walk away down the street, his arm around the girl’s waist and her head resting on his shoulder.

  Katie emerged from the dance hall’s door and followed his gaze. ‘Don’t blame her,’ she said, ‘you can’t choose the people that move you.’