A Home in the Sun

by Sue Moorcroft

A silence drew out. As she turned away, he said, ‘I’m going to see if I can change my flight. Leave a bit earlier.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry you feel like that.’ And then, when he didn’t respond, she added, ‘Change both tickets, won’t you? I’ll go when you do.’ He quirked an eyebrow so she took that for assent.

  The sun was pounding the crown of Judith’s head by the time she climbed the hilly section of Tower Road to take the turn-off for the house of Agnello and Maria Zammit, not far from Cass and Saviour’s home. She was surprised how the temperature was making her head throb, considering it was only May. She was reacting like an English tourist, wiping sweat from her forehead with exaggerated care in case she increased the pulsing ache that was building there, making squinty eyes at the sun and cursing herself for not wearing her sunglasses and hat.

  The Zammit residence was in a tall and narrow street built of creamy limestone near the twin bell towers and cupola of the charming Stella Maris parish church, ‘the star of the sea’, built so that long-ago sailors coming to and from the harbour could always have it within their sight. Although several houses in the street boasted a traditional gallerija or enclosed balcony painted dark green or plum red, there was no comparison between these residences and Cass and Saviour’s. Agnello evidently hadn’t made the money that his little brother had. His house looked as if it would fit into Saviour’s four times.

  She sighed as she approached, remembering Maria Zammit’s barely contained fury at their last meeting and wondered, wryly, whether she ought to check that Stella Maris Church offered sanctuary to non-Catholics.

  The front door of the Zammit house was panelled. The highly polished brass knocker was in the shape of something that looked like the result of an intimate moment between a sea monster and a dolphin. Before she had a chance to change her mind, Judith seized it by its bulbous head and rapped sharply.

  And, in a few moments, she was face to face with Giorgio’s mother.

  Maria looked first shocked and then irritated when her gaze rested on Judith. Her dress bore a small, eye-aching geometric design, her hair was almost entirely silver now and she wore small wire-framed glasses that matched it. Her dark eyes narrowed into the lined skin around them and she gave a small, ladylike sniff of disapproval.

  The sniff made Judith feel like just giving the whole damned thing up. She was tired of being a target for antagonism. Why should she continue to knock on doors and force people to speak to her who blatantly didn’t wish to? She could return to Richard’s house and spend whatever time was left being a tourist with Adam before getting on the flaming plane for England whenever he’d arranged. Perhaps she should have done as Adam had suggested and shove the crucifix through the letterbox before running away.

  But that was ridiculous. For goodness’ sake, she was a perfectly respectable woman and not prepared to act as if she were ashamed of her existence. She pulled herself up to her full height – considerably more than Maria’s – and lifted her chin. ‘Good morning.’

  Maria Zammit’s muttered, ‘Good morning,’ was icy.

  It had been in Judith’s mind to suggest that they take coffee and cake together in a café, like mature and civilised women with a matter to discuss. But seeing Maria’s expression, she decided to save her breath.

  Instead, she reached inside her pocket. ‘I’ve brought you this.’ The gold cross and chain, getting duller by the day, hung between her fingers.

  Slowly, as if she couldn’t quite believe it wouldn’t be whisked away again, Maria Zammit reached out and took Giorgio’s crucifix. Kissing the suffering Jesus upon it she crossed herself, closing her eyes in an obvious moment of pain, as Judith had done so many times. The eyes reopened and she frowned, plainly baffled.

  Judith frowned back, shading her eyes against the harsh sunlight slicing into the street. Her headache was growing more intense by the second. ‘For a while I believed it was OK for me to keep it but I’m told it belongs to you. Saviour explained what was in Giorgio’s will.’ She turned to go.

  Then she swung back, ignoring the way her headache seemed to move separately, painfully, as anger fuelled a sudden desire to make her point. ‘I know that you blame me for his death but I made your son’s life happy for his final few years. Perhaps, in time, you’ll come to think of that.’

  Decidedly, Maria shook her head. ‘You take him under the sea.’

  Letting her breath out on a long sigh, Judith hunched her shoulders in frustration. ‘Not that day, I didn’t. I asked him to wait for me but he refused.’ And then, more gently, ‘I agree that if I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened. I believe that, as you obviously do. But I asked him …’ Her voice caught in her throat as a sudden vision of Giorgio blazed across her mind, the angry frown lines digging grooves between his black brows as he’d shrugged off her pleas to postpone his dive. She cleared her throat. ‘I tried to make him see he was a novice and would be safer with me. But he’d made up his mind. He made up his mind. If you want to blame me, I understand that it might help to make me a focus for your grief but I tried my hardest to keep him safe.’

  She’d probably said too much and said it too rapidly for Maria’s instant comprehension. And what use was there in pounding over the same old ground again, anyway? Maria hadn’t believed her a year ago in the hospital so why should she be more receptive now?

  Hitching her bag up on her shoulder, Judith thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, her fingertips finding the empty corner where the crucifix had lain in a tangle for the last days. She wasn’t sure yet whether it was a loss or a relief but she’d drawn a line under the whole saga, and would, in time, feel better.

  As she turned away, the ache in her head became a dagger of pain and the world suddenly shimmered and pooled around her.

  She halted, screwing up her eyes. The air was sparkling as if Tinkerbell had just flown around the edges of the buildings, making them glisten and warp. Her heart sank. It was a feeling she hadn’t had for a long time but … oh, no. Migraine. The sunshine on the fairy dust made her eyeballs hurt but she forced her feet to move, left, right, up the street, their echo launching lance-like pains above her eyes, across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Her ears began to ache, the chatter of nearby children making them hurt, car engines pounded as they passed in low gear and the voices of three women calling to one another from their upstairs windows sounded like howls.

  She hadn’t had a migraine since her teens but she hadn’t forgotten how savagely they used to attack. Shading her eyes, she felt the pavement turn to sponge beneath her feet. Bile rose up into her throat.

  Putting a hand to a wall to steady herself, she breathed in through her mouth, trying to quell the nausea as the world dipped and swung. Hopefully, she wouldn’t suffer the humiliation of being sick in the street. If previous attacks were anything to go by, she had a couple of hours of this misery before the sickness that would signify the end of the migraine swept over her. Sweat burst out over her face, in the hollow of her throat and down her spine. She swallowed hard and breathed deeply.

  Engrossed in her own discomfort, she didn’t notice that Maria had followed her until her voice came from behind. ‘Hey!’

  Pain cannoned about Judith’s skull as she half turned.

  Maria was holding out the crucifix to her. Agnello waited a step behind his wife. He’d lost a lot of weight since Judith had seen him last and deeper lines had dug themselves into his weathered skin. Grief did that to you.

  Dumbfounded, Judith squinted at the glint of gold, then at Maria’s expressionless face. ‘What …?’ She winced as the pain above her eyes grew boots and kicked at the top of her head.

  Impatiently, Maria shook the crucifix in Judith’s direction.

  Slowly, Judith put out her hand. Maria dropped it into her palm. The chain pooled with the cross lying crookedly on top.

  ‘But …?’ Nausea pulsed in rhythm with the pounding in her head. Focusing through the fairy dust became harder. ‘Are you givin
g it to me?’

  Maria gave a tiny nod, then a huge shrug, reminding Judith sharply of Giorgio. ‘It was give to you.’

  Judith tried to think through a band tightening around her forehead. ‘But should it have been given to me?’

  Maria began to turn away. ‘Perhaps yes. Perhaps no.’ Agnello sent Judith a curious look, nodded, and followed his wife.

  Shaking, Judith managed to cross into the shade but her pain increased until she felt as if massive talons gripped her head and her vision danced and fizzed. She sank down against the base of the wall, legs like water, desperate just to be still, to be out of the sun, to close her aching eyes. She prayed that the church bells wouldn’t begin to peal. Even the thought made her stomach heave.

  She was so taken up with her discomfort that she jumped as a hand grasped her shoulder. The movement made her feel as if her skull had broken into shards and rasped sickeningly against her brain.

  ‘You are ill?’ asked a gruff female voice.

  Judith opened her eyes to slits to see Maria Zammit had returned and was frowning over her. The pattern of her dress made Judith feel as if she was spinning. ‘A little,’ she mumbled. ‘Migraine, I think. I’ll have to wait for it to go off.’ She let her eyes close again.

  Maria clicked her tongue and made a noise, ‘Tsh, tsh. You don’t stay here.’

  ‘I’ll go soon. It’ll pass. I just need …’ Judith covered her eyes with her hands, craving darkness.

  With another click of her tongue, Maria turned away and then there was a man beside Judith. Agnello. ‘I put you in my car?’ he said.

  Judith swallowed convulsively at the thought of being shaken about on Malta’s busy roads. ‘Thank you, but I’m afraid of being sick.’

  ‘OK.’ She felt a hand under her elbow. ‘Come, you have a quiet room and lie down. Yes? We phone your friends.’

  She forced her eyes to open slightly to check it was really Maria and Agnello helping her as, one either side, they pulled her gently to her feet. All she could think about was the blinding headache and vertigo that was the migraine. It was certainly no time for a prideful refusal. ‘That would be … a relief. Thank you.’

  They helped her across the road, through their door and into a small room with a long sofa. She was pathetically grateful just to lie down and close her eyes as her unlikely white knights closed the thick russet curtains with stealthy movements and fetched her a blessedly soft pillow for her poor head. She managed to give them Richard’s home phone number, but they received no answer when they called. Adam must have gone out. She elected not to phone Richard Elliot Estate, although at least one of her cousins would no doubt be there. She could live without their cousinly ministrations. She wanted Adam.

  As she couldn’t get him, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to simple gratitude for the cool, dim room. Gently, gradually, she relaxed. Once she was motionless the pain in her eyes, temples, cheekbones and the top of her head settled to a lancing throb and the rolling nausea began to subside.

  She dozed uneasily, torn between appreciation and anxiety. She’d found a haven but it was in what had, until now, been hostile territory. Fervently, she wished she could click her fingers and find herself back in the bed she’d abandoned so late this morning … preferably with Adam’s comforting arms around her.

  The church bells began, sliding into her dreams as she dozed.

  Visions flickered through her mind. The graceful Stella Maris parish church. Giorgio’s funeral mass, which she’d only seen in her imagination. Dark suits and dresses. Solemn faces, lines of grief, tears.

  And, back down the years, Johanna beautiful in a white lace dress, Giorgio handsome in a new suit, impossibly young and smiling despite Johanna’s pregnancy lurking beneath her dress. Family members proud that they were doing the right thing. Nobody knowing that Giorgio and Johanna would grow to dislike each other and one day the implacable sea would take Giorgio away.

  Her eyes flickered. A frightening image formed of the sea welling up onto shore after him … Fresh pain banged through her head as she moved unwisely on the pillow. No. The sea wasn’t to blame but the jet ski, roaring, racing into a diving zone. And Giorgio surfacing at the wrong instant …

  Giorgio hadn’t taken every precaution possible. She swirled the idea around her mind, testing it for soundness. No one could argue with the fact that he’d committed the sin, for a diver, of not respecting the boundaries of his own limitations. Armed with his brand-new open-water certificate, really quite a basic qualification, he’d put himself in peril and flouted advice.

  Giorgio had known all about the consequences of the lapsed insurance policy. Perhaps fear at the consequences of his own mistake was what had made him reckless? They’d never really know but he’d risked a life that was good, a life containing her love. He’d paid the price. They all had.

  Because she’d blamed herself she’d let others blame her, too. The burden had been impossibly unwieldy.

  Giorgio’s image swam into her mind.

  She smiled because the image of Giorgio was smiling. Of course, it would be; he smiled so often. The smile the image wore was the apologetic one he employed when his enthusiasms had overcome his common sense and everything had gone wrong – when he’d tried to speed up the cooking and burnt the meat; when he’d tried to force his way into traffic and pranged the car.

  Sighing, she frowned, trying not to move her head although she was growing cramped, anxious not to reawaken the blinding pain.

  Something felt strange because she was used to abrading her wounds and making certain that she could still feel the blame.

  Forgiving herself was a new sensation. A relief. She smiled at the Giorgio of her imagination and said goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was an hour later when Judith awoke from restless, fitful dreams of headache, heartache and Giorgio.

  The tolling of the church bell was just reaching a resonant end and the house was filled with the aroma of frying onions. She could hear the murmur of voices, water running in a sink and the sawing of a bread knife. Experimentally, she opened her eyes. To her immense relief, the glittering fairy dust had gone. She tried rolling her head on the pillow. Bearable. Cautiously, she pushed herself upright. Error!

  Nausea rose like a tide. Desperately, she launched to her feet and staggered from the room, following the smell of cooking to the kitchen and surprising Maria into dropping a wooden spatula. Mutely, Judith slapped a hand across her mouth and Maria immediately grasped the urgent nature of the problem.

  ‘Hawnhekk! In here!’ She hustled her into a downstairs shower room and Judith fell to her knees in front of the loo as the door closed.

  Finally, when the last spasms had passed, Judith found the migraine had passed also. She felt a residual giddiness and a sort of hangover but her vision had steadied and the violent headache had subsided. Sleep was still beckoning but that could come later.

  Self-consciously, Judith made her way out to the kitchen. Maria turned away from wiping the table. She didn’t smile but she didn’t glare or frown either. Her voice was considerately soft. ‘Do you recover?’

  Judith’s voice sounded thin. ‘I’m much better, thank you. You’ve been so kind. I’m very grateful.’

  Maria shrugged and clicked her tongue dismissively. Any kindness on her part was not up for discussion, evidently.

  In the corner, Agnello shook out his newspaper and Judith noticed him for the first time. ‘It is good. You are not ill. You want food?’ He indicated a big saucepan.

  Judith looked away hastily, despite not having eaten since the brunch she’d eaten with Adam. ‘Really, no, thank you, I couldn’t.’ But she was grateful when Maria got her a tall glass of clear, cool water, which she made herself sip.

  When she’d drunk a little, she put down the glass. ‘Thank you for your kindness. I’ll leave now.’

  Maria nodded and walked her out to the street. ‘You know the way to go?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.�
�� And Judith did. During this uncomfortable day and the ones that had preceded it, her way forward had become wonderfully plain and simple.

  ‘We say goodbye.’ Unexpectedly, Maria held out her hand.

  Judith took it, gaining a curious comfort and feeling of closure from taking the small, rough and wrinkled hand of the woman who’d given Giorgio life. ‘Goodbye. And thank you. Really.’

  Maria took her hand back with a shrug, though her voice quivered with pain. ‘I think of Giorgio.’

  Judith settled her bag on her shoulder and prepared to head back towards Tower Road. ‘Of course. So do I. He’ll remain in our hearts and memories.’

  Maria almost smiled as she turned away.

  In a few minutes, Judith arrived once more at Johanna’s door. The impact of knocking on the wood stuttered up her arm and into her fragile head.

  She’d slept longer than she’d first imagined and it was evening now, mild and balmy. The sky had faded to the beautiful, ethereal lavender dusk Judith remembered so well. She waited on the top step. It probably wasn’t as long as it felt before Johanna answered, gazing suspiciously out, her features sharpening.

  Judith didn’t bother trying to summon a smile, but ensured that her voice was pleasant and polite before letting it out to duel with Johanna. ‘Would it be possible for me to speak briefly with Lydia, please?’

  ‘Why?’

  Judith evaded the question. ‘A very quick word. I don’t need to be alone with her but I do need to talk to her directly.’

  Johanna looked thoughtful and didn’t turn to call her daughter to the door. She stared silently at Judith, instead, as if trying to read her mind. Perhaps she would never have replied if Lydia hadn’t come running downstairs as Judith waited on the well-swept steps.

  ‘Hello,’ said Judith, carefully.

  ‘Oh!’ said Lydia, exactly as she had last time. She looked intrigued, eyes agog.

  Judith ignored Johanna’s impatient tuts and addressed Lydia, extracting her hand from her pocket, the crucifix looped between her fingers. ‘Lydia, you know who I am. I’ve been to see your grandmother, your nanna, this afternoon, and she said I could keep this. But I’d like you to have it, instead.’