The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set

by Melvyn Fickling

  ‘No dancing tonight,’ Katie said. She reached across to squeeze Bryan’s hand. ‘Let’s go back to the palace. I could do with some cheering up.’

  PART 2

  RESISTENZA

  Chapter 12

  Monday, 8 December 1941

  Limpid sunlight filtered through the haze, bringing the slightest breath of warmth to the cool morning air. Bryan moved between the blast-pens, pausing at each black-painted Hurricane to hear a report on its airworthiness from the maintenance chief. The news was better than normal; half-a-dozen aircraft expected to be serviceable by nightfall.

  The sputtering chatter of a service motorbike drew his attention. The machine chuntered through the gates and headed for the cluster of tents that served as the airfield administration. The rider dismounted and stepped into one of the tents. Bryan lit a cigarette and kept an eye on the tent’s entrance, curious about the dispatch rider’s mission. After a minute or two an orderly emerged, walking quickly. He stopped to talk to two fitters on the perimeter track, before striding off. The two fitters exchanged a few words and split up, each moving in different directions with their news; a rumour mill was starting to grind.

  Bryan sucked the last of the smoke from his cigarette, dropped the butt into the dust and set off towards the administration tents. A small knot of anxiety gnawed at the base of his throat and he quickened his steps to cover the last few yards.

  Ducking through the tent flaps, Bryan saw the intelligence officer sitting at his trestle table, staring unfocussed into the middle distance, his pallor ashen.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Bryan asked.

  The man swivelled his head to look at Bryan, his Adam’s apple bobbed like a frightened animal.

  ‘The American fleet has been sunk,’ he said in tones stifled by the weight of the words.

  ‘By the Germans?’ Bryan sat down heavily on the chair in front of the table. ‘Where?’

  ‘No.’ The officer shook his head, his voice still lowered. ‘By the Japanese, in Hawaii.’

  Bryan whistled through his teeth. ‘That’s everyone then. It’s another world war.’

  ****

  Darkness lay like an inadequate consolation over the island. The night-fighter pilots hunched together in the readiness tent, smoking quietly.

  ‘But what does it mean?’ Ben broke the silence. ‘Does it make things worse… or better?’

  Bryan sat with his elbows on his knees, twiddling his thumbs. ‘In the long term?’ he said, ‘it makes the future a lot brighter. Our American friends will undoubtedly be forced to declare war on Germany and Italy as well as Japan. And I can’t imagine a war that America could fail to win once it gets its factories rejigged and its call-up papers printed. So, in five or six years we should see the whole thing come to a shiny, victorious end.’

  ‘What about us?’ Ben said. ‘What about now?’

  Bryan pulled a wan smile. ‘Well, it makes it all the more urgent for Rommel to break through in Egypt and secure the oilfields, which adds value to every packing case of supplies that gets lost on the way to Africa, which makes it all the more important that Malta is annihilated as quickly as possible.’

  An orderly ducked through the tent flaps. ‘Large raid, sixty-plus, crossing the Sicilian coast. Immediate scramble.’

  Bryan sprung to his feet, ‘Let’s go, lads. Let’s give them all the hell that we’ve got left.’

  Thursday, 18 December 1941

  Bryan and Ben leaned on the railings overlooking Grand Harbour. The scurrying of ratings preparing the vessels for imminent departure animated the warships that lay in view. Barrage balloons drifted over their pachydermal hulks in the teasing breeze, like shimmering puffer fish languishing at the end of their tether lines. A small patrol boat plied past the larger vessels, heading towards the breakwaters, its wake kissing the riveted iron sides of the battleships that dwarfed it.

  Bryan’s stomach churned with an undercurrent of jealous bile as thoughts of a sailor’s farewell to his wife forced their way into his head.

  ‘This must’ve been a wonderful place before the war,’ Ben mused. ‘Imagine taking a sailboat out and exploring the coast, dragging some lines behind you to see what you could catch.’

  ‘I suppose that would be one way to get away from the flies and the dust.’ Bryan pushed away from the rail and sauntered off along the pavement. Ben squinted across the water for a moment, then followed him.

  They walked along the harbour’s side, towards its mouth, ascending between the bastions where an anti-aircraft gun sat in its protective circle of sun-bleached sandbags. A soldier sat on the outside, with his back against the bags. He was absorbed with intense concentration over a tin object that gleamed dully as he moved it in his left hand whilst trimming a ribbon of metal from it with wire-cutters he wielded with his right. The two pilots paused to watch him as he placed his creation on the ground, picked an empty bully beef tin from the pile beside him and began carving a shape from its side.

  ‘What are you making?’ Bryan asked.

  The soldier looked up, taking the interruption as an opportunity to suck the blood away from a cut on his knuckle. ‘It’s supposed to be a toy truck,’ he said, talking around his finger. ‘It’s coming up to Christmas and the poor little buggers around here have got nothing to look forward to. Our commander suggested we make what we could for them.’ He smiled wryly, examining his cut. ‘Pity the poor little blighter that gets this one.’

  Bryan and Ben walked on. The breeze stiffened as their elevation increased, swirling sandstone grit and flakes of old paint around their ankles.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like Christmas, does it?’ Ben muttered. ‘Peace on earth… goodwill…’ He paused and pointed into the water below. ‘Look! A seal.’

  As they watched, the returning patrol boat diverted its course towards the black shape. As it drew closer, a seaman emerged from the wheelhouse and picked up a boathook from the deck.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a seal,’ Bryan said.

  The sailor prodded at the object and, gaining purchase with the hook, hauled it upwards. As it rolled and broke the surface, the two onlookers could make out the stained yellow fabric of an RAF Mae West. The wearer’s head sagged back towards the water, his fleshless face upturned towards the sky, his tongue-less mouth agape. The sailor signalled to the wheelhouse and the boat pulled away at a steady pace, the man bracing the boathook against the dead weight that splashed alongside them as they headed across the harbour in search of a slipway.

  Saturday, 20 December 1941

  Katie’s skin pressed warm against Bryan’s body. She lay with her shoulder lodged in his armpit and her chin resting against his collar-bone. Her palm lay flat on his belly, lifting and falling with his steady breathing.

  ‘There’s been a call for volunteers for a re-posting,’ she said. ‘Steph and I have put our names forward.’

  ‘A re-posting?’ Bryan grunted. ‘To where?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Katie rolled onto her back and gazed at the ceiling. ‘To the farthest reaches of the Empire,’ she added with a wistful flourish in her voice.

  A heavy silence descended between them.

  Katie pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, stretching out a leg to hook her knickers from the floor with her big toe. ‘It’s around about now a girl might expect some display of emotion from the man she’s leaving behind.’

  Bryan let his eyes wander across the sculptured skin of Katie’s shoulders and slip down the sinuous canal that marked her spine. She stood up and pulled her underwear over the smooth curve of her buttocks.

  ‘To be honest,’ Bryan said quietly, ‘there’s a girl I left behind in England, she’s been on my mind a lot – more than I expected.’

  Katie bent to pick up her bra and turned on him. ‘Don’t begin a sentence with “to be honest” and finish it with a lie.’ A wry smile spread over her face. ‘There’s a girl alright, but she’s somewhere on this island.’ She scooped her breasts into their cu
ps and pulled the straps up over her shoulders. ‘You’ve been with me only because you can’t be with her.’

  Bryan felt his face redden as he watched her squeeze her feet into her stiletto shoes. ‘I’m sorry, Katie,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been a complete heel. I’ve taken advantage of you.’

  Katie pulled her dress off the chairback, dropped it over her head and wriggled it down over her body. Her face emerged from the fabric and she gazed at him with a flat look. ‘Taken advantage?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll tell you what you’ve taken.’

  She went to her handbag on the dresser and unzipped a small side-pocket. Fishing out a simple band of gold, she turned back towards him and slipped it onto her ring finger.

  ‘You’ve taken everything I promised not to give away. But do you know what really breaks my heart?’

  The colour drained from Bryan’s face. ‘Please, don’t,’ he muttered, ‘please stop it.’

  Katie ignored him. ‘I wanted you to take it, I wanted you to have me. I needed to feel alive amongst all this shit and death, and I used you as the tool to get that feeling.’ She slumped into the chair, suddenly spent. ‘And together, in that bed, we each betrayed the ones we really love.’ She looked up into his eyes, weary resignation relaxing her features. ‘What does that make us, Bryan?’ She shook her head with short, sorrowful movements. ‘What does that make us?’

  Bryan sat up in the bed, pulling the sheets up over his waist. He hung his head. ‘Christ, Katie. You have a husband…’

  ‘Yes. I have a husband.’ She bit her lip for a moment. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to him, and if I do, I don’t know if he’ll be there to meet me. If he is, part of me hopes he’s been kind to himself, indulged in life without losing me from his heart. In this noxious bloody madness of war and killing, surely sanctity can be stretched a little.’ She picked up her handbag and clutched it to her chest. ‘It seems lives are cheap.’ She stood and shrugged, a sad smile curling her lips. ‘So what price fidelity?’

  She walked to the door and grasped the handle. She paused with her back to him and her shoulders sagged. ‘I might not have had all of you, Bryan. But I had all the bits I needed.’

  The door closed behind her and Bryan sank back onto his pillow.

  Sunday, 21 December 1941

  Bryan rummaged through his kit-bag, felt the soft, knitted weave of the object he sought, and pulled the pilot figure into the light. He brushed lint from the doll’s blue tunic and ran his thumb down the yellow stitches that mimicked golden buttons and echoed the shock of blond hair on the figure’s knitted head. The remembered chill of a London Christmas sent the ghost of a shiver across his shoulders. He pushed the doll into his tunic pocket and hurried out the door. Today he had the courage to face a Catholic Mass.

  ****

  His resolve wavered as he stepped from the bus onto the harbour-side. Across the blue-grey water, lolling vaguely at their moorings, sat two cruisers. Both leaned awkwardly towards a rent in their bows. Those dark holes, with ragged edges from which sea-water ebbed and flowed, witnessed mine strikes. Tug-boats flustered around one of the ships, beginning her transfer to a repair dock further down the harbour, nudging and pulling her into slow, painful motion.

  The sound of a klaxon split the air, and Bryan’s gaze shifted to the harbour mouth through which a seemingly undamaged destroyer sidled. The navy was back, this time battered and bloodied, and fewer in number.

  Bryan turned his back on the wounded vessels and started up the hill into Valletta.

  ****

  The doors to St Augustine Church stood open. Bryan skirted the rubble scree from a bombed-out building, crossed the road and stepped over the threshold. He slowed his pace, allowing his eyes to make terms with the gloom, then smiled in recognition; Jacobella sat on the back pew, exactly where he’d last seen her. He inclined his head briefly towards the altar and slid onto the worn wooden seat next to her.

  For a moment she stayed impassive, eyes closed and head bowed. He traced the line of her profile with his gaze, waiting for her prayer to end. She stirred, suddenly alert to his presence, and looked up. Surprise flashed across her face, but it only lived a fleeting moment on the shadow of her deeper distress. Her red-rimmed eyes were stamped with the passage of tears and she grasped a damp handkerchief to her chin. Still, from behind all this, the warmth of a smile softened her features.

  ‘Hello, Bryan,’ she whispered. ‘I was worried something might have happened to you.’

  Bryan leaned towards her, resisting the pressing urge to embrace her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘What’s happened?’

  Jacobella held a finger to her lips. ‘Shush.’ The ghost of the smile flashed again in sad reassurance and she turned to face the altar.

  The doors clunked shut behind them and the service began.

  Bryan took his cue from Jacobella, standing when she did, following her back down to the pew when she sat, bowing his head while she and those around them recited responses he did not know, using words he did not understand. Often, he stole a glance at her face, her smooth serenity an easy match for the alabaster Madonna that gazed untroubled from a gold-encrusted niche above them, her fidelity a flawless equal to the martyred saints in the paintings on the walls. All the time, the creeping half-knowledge of her misery’s source tugged at his conscience, begging unanswerable questions about his intentions, questions that he pushed aside because even here, even in a house of Catholic righteousness, his desire smouldered like a penance.

  ****

  The service drew to a close, the doors opened behind them and the congregation shuffled past, back out to their besieged and broken city. Bryan sat in respectful silence and waited, glancing occasionally at Jacobella, whose eyes were once again closed.

  The church emptied and she straightened her back and opened her eyes. ‘HMS Neptune has been sunk.’ Jacobella’s voice was low, but steady.

  ‘Neptune?’ Bryan had guessed, but he needed to hear.

  ‘Mikiel’s ship.’

  Bryan looked down at his feet, scared at what his face might reveal. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘They sailed straight into a minefield. Several mines exploded and the ship capsized. They tell me it happened very quickly.’

  Bryan stayed silent, clenching his muscles against the need to take her in his arms and comfort her, to give some release to the subsumed grief that burned behind her eyes.

  ‘I have said my prayers today.’ She looked up at the Madonna, her face momentarily matching the statue’s beatific half-smile. ‘Our Lady is the Star of the Sea. She will save him, if he can be saved, or comfort him if he is lost.’ A tear pushed from the corner of her eye, trickled down her cheek, curved along the line of her jaw before dropping onto the prayer book she clutched in her lap.

  ‘What will you do?’ Bryan whispered.

  She wiped the tear’s wet track from her face. ‘I am a wife and a mother.’ She regarded Bryan through tear-softened eyes. ‘I will go home, look after my daughter, and wait for my husband to come home.’

  Bryan stood and offered his hand. ‘May I walk with you?’

  She nodded, allowed him to help her up, and they left the church side by side.

  They walked the dog-leg in silence, slowing down to labour up the final gradient of Mint Street. Instead of turning towards her house, Jacobella gestured ahead; they crossed the road and entered Hastings Gardens.

  ‘I can ask at the airfield,’ Bryan ventured, ‘see if anyone has any contacts, try to get some news.’

  ‘By all means,’ she said.

  They reached the bastion’s edge and paused, looking out across the harbour to the arched waterside walkway where a group of figures manhandled a small rowing boat into the water. One of their number stepped into the rocking vessel, sitting in its centre, and his companions passed him a pair of oars. He pushed off and heaved at the water, leaning back with the effort of powering the tiny vessel out into the harbour.

&
nbsp; ‘But there is little to know that wasn’t seen from the other ships,’ she concluded.

  Bryan reached into his pocket and retrieved the knitted figure. ‘I thought Luċija might like this for a Christmas present.’ He held out the doll.

  ‘It’s you?’ She took it from him.

  ‘I believe that was the intention.’

  She tucked the toy into her jacket. ‘Thank you. I’m sure I have some coloured paper to wrap it.’ A frown rumpled her brow. ‘It will be a strange Christmas.’

  The incipient buzz of engines filtered into the air and Bryan glanced beyond Jacobella towards the harbour’s entrance. Four single-engine aircraft approached from the sea, barely one hundred feet above the water. They bucked over the headland and their leader dipped into a shallow dive. Lurid orange flashes sparkled along the edge of his wings and the calm water of the harbour erupted into a viciously cascading patch of roiling foam that spiralled around and then slashed through the rowing boat.

  Jacobella’s cry was drowned in the cacophony of engine noise as the assailant’s wingman cruised past the bastion, yards from where the couple stood. The yellow-nosed cowling bled into a mottled grey and green fuselage that bore a large black cross. Instinctively Bryan threw protective arms around Jacobella as the German fighter’s slipstream washed over them like the breath of a malevolent giant.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Bryan’s voice raised to combat the receding roar of the German fighters. Jacobella said nothing. Bryan followed her wide-eyed gaze across the water. There, in the middle of the harbour, amongst the splintered remains of painted wood, an object floated like a broken bundle of ripped rags in the centre of an expanding slick of bright red blood.

  Bryan grasped her chin and turned her face towards him, connecting his eyes to hers. ‘Go to Luċija and get under some shelter,’ he said. ‘I have to get back to Mdina.’

  Jacobella nodded stiffly and ran towards her house as a second flight of four Messerschmitts barrelled in over the breakwater. Bryan watched them fan out and head inland, then sprinted away into the streets of Valletta.