by James Philip
“No.”
She laughed uncomfortably and stepped down into the garden, following the marbled path by the light of the crescent Moon in the perfect inky black cloudless night sky. The man followed, touched her left elbow and took her hand in his. Still, they were separate, from long habit occupying their own personal spaces even in their semi-intimacy.
“Did you know that there is a man who calls himself the ‘King of London’?” She asked, both amused and a little vexed.
“The ‘King of London’?”
“His real name is Harold Strettle. Before the war he was a trades union official with ASLEF. That’s the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. Nobody knows if he is really the ‘king’ of anything but he seems to represent a group of many hundreds, perhaps, many thousands of men and women who are living in the ruins of London.”
“Living in the ruins?” Julian Christopher could not hide his scepticism.
“Yes. We were all surprised. There were rumours about people who survived the October War in basements, and in the London Underground’s deeper tunnels but it is only recently that Royal Engineer survey teams reached Westminster, Lambeth and the docks in the East End, and encountered a relatively large number of people living in the ruins. The Home Secretary has sent emissaries into the city to make contact with ‘King Harold’, and others.”
They walked into the darkness, turned a corner and strolled carefully towards an arched opening in the inner garden wall. Two shadows, automatic rifles with muzzles pointed earthward moved in the shadows as they approached. Julian Christopher did not know if Margaret Thatcher’s Royal Marine bodyguards frightened potential assassins but they certainly scared him. Just one look at them told him these men would run through brick walls to protect their charge.
“What would happen to us here if that bomb that fell in the sea last month went off now?” The woman inquired.
In the sea nearby was a two to three megaton unexploded hydrogen bomb. Had it detonated the British presence in the Mediterranean would have been eradicated in a split second.
“We wouldn’t know much about it, Margaret.”
“Ought we to try to find it? Raise it and disable it, that sort of thing?”
“It would have gone off by now if it was going to,” Julian Christopher replied wanly. “Best let sleeping dogs lie, and all that.”
“I suppose so. We now suspect that several bombs fell on United Kingdom territory without blowing up during the war. It sounds odd to say it, but things could actually have been much worse than they were.”
“Things can always be worse than they actually are,” the man concurred dryly.
Margaret Thatcher squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be talking shop.”
The man laughed softly.
“Why ever not, Margaret? I am your liege man, and all that. Besides, neither of us can help ourselves. By all means carry on talking shop!”
Margaret Thatcher considered this for some seconds before taking him at his word.
“I can’t get a straight answer out of President Kennedy as to why the USS Independence is still docked at Malta. How long does it take to repair a damaged catapult for goodness sake! That ship should be here by now!”
The Fighting Admiral fought to keep a straight face.
“An aircraft carrier’s catapults are like a battleship’s big guns, Margaret,” he explained, hoping he did not sound condescending.
“How so?” She asked, her momentary pique dissolving as if by magic.
Julian Christopher had slightly – but only slightly – stretched the analogy between an aircraft carrier’s catapults and a battleship’s main battery. He conceded as much then quickly qualified the apparent exaggeration.
“In the same way the calibre and number of large naval rifles determines the rest of the design of a battleship; a carrier’s catapults determine significant aspects of a carrier’s design. Although an aircraft carrier might not be, strictly speaking, built around her catapults in the same way a battleship is built around its big guns, nevertheless, catapults are integral to the architecture and construction of a carrier operating fixed-wing aircraft. Basically, what we are talking about is the mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, physical structure of the catapult at flight deck level, and the linkage of that assembly with its steam source, located several decks down and perhaps hundreds of feet distant from the working parts of the actual catapult on deck.”
“You are telling me that the problem might not be with the small part of the catapult system visible on deck? That most of the catapult mechanism is like an iceberg, invisible?”
“Yes, something like that. The USS Independence is approximately twice the size of our biggest carriers, the Ark Royal and the Eagle. Therefore, the amount of kit hidden from view, and the distances between the critical catapult components and the ship’s fire rooms – boiler rooms, rather – are correspondingly larger, and farther separated. Rear-Admiral Detweiller, the commander of the US Navy units based at Malta, has told me that one of the Independence’s forward catapults was destroyed by an accidental explosion in a steam line when she was in the Indian Ocean. Her starboard catapult was also disabled in this incident. This means that the Independence’s only fully functioning catapult; is her angled amidships catapult which cannot be used when she is landing aircraft. Repair work is scheduled to take another sixteen days, after which an intensive five-day sea trial will be conducted. If the initial trials go well the Independence will sail for Malta and complete those trials en route. If all goes well.”
“I’m talking shop because I am nervous,” Margaret Thatcher confessed.
“We’ll carry on talking shop until you aren’t,” the man suggested, amiably, unhurriedly. “You aren’t feeling nervous, that is.”
Their hands parted as they turned to face each other in the night.
“What are the Americans doing wasting time getting that old Second World War battleship ready for sea?” She demanded, deciding that they would ‘carry on talking shop’ for the while. “Surely they’d be better advised speeding up the reactivation of one of their big aircraft carriers? Especially with the Enterprise on her way home and the Independence out of commission at Gibraltar?”
“None of their mothballed big carriers is going to be back in commission for six to nine months, Margaret. A carrier is a much more complicated weapons system than a battleship, and the big ones carry two to three times the crew of the biggest battleship. To get the Iowa back to sea as soon as possible the US Navy has called up every old battleship man on the Reserve List. These are men with years and years of experience actually crewing the USS Iowa and her three more or less identical sister ships. All four Iowa class ships were laid up; two at Bremerton in the American Pacific North West, the other two at Philadelphia. Iowa was in better condition than the Wisconsin so they opted to reactive her now because they knew they could do it in a hurry. If you asked me ‘why bother?’ Well, I’d be hard pressed to give you a sound military reason for prioritising the reactivation of the Iowa, other than to say that right now I’ll gladly accept any usable asset you give me. In a month’s time we will be embarking on the biggest combined operation since the Suez fiasco to liberate northern Cyprus. If that goes well we’ll move on to Crete. After that, well that’s more to do with politics than grand strategy. I’ll wait and see what you order me to do after we’ve liberated Crete, if and when it happens. I know that there’s a lot of loose talk about island hopping north across the Aegean but frankly, that will never be feasible unless the Americans take the lead. Honestly and truly, without the American nuclear subs guarding the flanks of the Cyprus invasion fleet and the long-range anti-aircraft capabilities of the US destroyers and frigates Rear-Admiral Detweiller is allowing me to integrate into the operation, I don’t know if –at this time - I’d be in a position to recommend that we proceeded with Operation Grantham.”
“Whoever thought up that name ought to be shot!�
� Margaret Thatcher decided ruefully. “A month’s time?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Three US Navy nuclear hunter killers will be in position by the early hours of 29th March – Easter Sunday - when the first units of Task Force Alpha, that’s the combined bombardment and assault flotilla, sail from Malta. Task Force Charlie, comprising the Eagle’s and the Hermes’s battle groups reinforced by Admiral Detweiller’s units not tasked with the defence of the Maltese Archipelago in the absence of the rest of the Fleet, will move into position as Task Force Alpha approaches Cyprus. If all goes according to plan our troops will begin to go ashore two hours before dawn on on Saturday 4th April. The Independence, and or the USS Iowa may be in theatre in time to take part in the opening phases of Operation Grantham; but my staff have been ordered to plan only on the basis of the ships, aircraft and men we definitely know to be available. If the Independence and the Iowa join the party nobody will be happier than I, but one fights wars with the navy, the air force and the army that one has not the ones we’d like to have.”
They walked on, completing one, then another circuit of the garden, neither speaking until the silence ceased to be a comfort and became by degrees, a little oppressive.
“We ought to go back indoors,” Margaret Thatcher declared.
“For what it is worth,” Julian Christopher said, his tone mildly self-deprecating, “I think we’d be a good team.”
“A good team?”
“Yes. You asked me what sort of marriage we’d have?”
“Yes, I did, I suppose. Yes, I think we’d be a good team, too.”
“Is that a ‘yes’ then?”
They had come to the steps at the foot of the veranda. The lights from inside the Verdala Palace seeped across their faces for a moment.
“Yes, Admiral,” the woman said. “That would be an unequivocal ‘yes’.”
Chapter 31
Saturday 7th March 1964
St Paul’s Cathedral, Mdina
Marija had prayed in the Cathedral for as long as she had been travelling to and living and working in the ancient Citadel perched on the highest ground on Malta. Doctor Margo Seiffert had first talked to her about a career as a nurse when she was still an infirm fourteen-year old. At first she had run errands, cleaned floors, gossiped with the other nurses and the women and children who passed through the happy, welcoming, comforting doors of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women; when she was sixteen Margo had suggested she was ready to begin her training to be a nurse and it had seemed to be the most natural thing in the World. As she had lain in her cages of steel for weeks and months each year of her infanthood and early adolescence, she had always hoped for a life in which she might repay the kindness shown to her by friends and stranger’s alike in the Royal Naval Hospital at Bighi and elsewhere.
She had found her vocation accidentally; not so her future husband. Whatever Peter now claimed she had always known that no other future had awaited him than the Royal Navy. Recent events had amply confirmed that he had been born to stand on the deck of a big grey warship, predestined almost, whereas, she had needed to be gently introduced to the vocation that she knew would forever be her joy and salvation. However, in all the years she had been coming to St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of the old city she had never seen it with the eyes of a woman on her wedding day.
The day had been a blur and yet, oddly, she remembered everything with crystal clear pin point clarity. Father Dominic from the Church of St John’s in Sliema, a wise, sanguine, gentle man in his sixties who had been seriously injured several times working with the rescue teams during the bombing of Malta in the Second War, had told her that ‘this is your day’ and that ‘on this day the World is at your feet’, but she had not understood what he meant until that moment. Her senses were so heightened that nothing eluded her notice.
She had had to calm her Papa, normally the most measured and composed of men – other than when her Mama was taking him to task, obviously – because he had been a bag of nerves and trembling with anxiety as they walked up the steps from the piazza to the doors of the Cathedral.
Marija had repeatedly squeezed his hand in reassurance.
The Archbishop had ‘interviewed’ Marija and Peter Christopher two days ago. He had ascertained, perfunctorily, that Peter intended for any children of the union to be brought up as ‘good Catholics’, and Peter had replied ‘oh, absolutely, sir’ and thereafter there had been no more talk of doctrinal matters. Instead, the Archbishop had proudly extolled the history and the tradition of the great church in which they were to be married.
On the spot where she and Peter stood – or close to it, nobody actually knew for certain – the Roman Governor, Publius had greeted St Paul after he had been shipwrecked off the north east coast of Malta. Publius, later beatified as St Publius, the first Bishop of Malta was martyred during the reign of Hadrian, the Emperor who built the ‘Scottish wall’, in Athens. A small church was built on the site around then and later a more substantial one which fell into disrepair and ruin during the Muslim period, before its reconstruction and re-dedicated by the Normans in the 12th century. When that building collapsed during the great earthquake of 1693 – few ‘Maltese people realise that very, very occasionally the archipelago suffers very, very big earthquakes’, the Bishop had smiled – a number of priceless and irreplaceable works of art had been saved: a Mattia Preti painting depicting the conversion of St Paul the Apostle, a Tuscan painting of the Madonna and Child, and frescos of St Paul’s shipwreck. The great Irish Oak doors of that earlier church had been incorporated into the current Cathedral, a masterpiece in stone of 17th century baroque architecture. Designed by Lorenzo Gafa, who was like Marija, Birgu born, St Paul’s Cathedral was the crowning glory of his long and illustrious career. Built between 1697 and 1702 at the eastern end of the rectangular piazza of St Paul’s Square, its facade was delineated by three Corinthian pilasters with bell towers at each end. Internally, the plan was of a classical Latin cross beneath a vaulted nave, with aisles and two small side chapels. The building was topped by an octagonal red dome, and underfoot the floor was richly tessellated, everywhere there were sculptures made of Irish wood, and paintings and sublime iconography adorned the walls of the interior.
“Do you, Marija Elizabeth Calleja,” asked the Archbishop solemnly, “take this man Peter Julian Christopher to be your lawful wedded husband?”
The words sounded odd, spoken in uneasy English rather than the Archbishop’s familiar mother tongue, or the Latin of the Church, in which he had already asked the liturgically correct form of words, not the corrupted version he had voiced in the only language understood by so many of those present in the great church.
Marija’s mother – constantly dabbing tears of pride, angst, relief and probably disbelief at her surroundings – and father sat in the left hand pews of the nave, Marija’s brother Joe in his best Sunday suite held his Mama’s hand, beyond him Rosa Calleja, her dead brother Samuel’s widow smiled and bit her lip, her estranged parents to either side of the daughter they had disowned only weeks ago when she had most needed their loving support. Marija did not know how if the rapprochement between the daughter and parents would last. She had never liked the elder Borg-Canteras because they cultivated too many airs and graces, and had been far too grand to welcome their daughter marrying into a ‘Dockyard Family’. Behind Marija’s own family was her army of friends, Margo and the women from the hospital, her sisters in the Women of Malta movement, and the top men from both the Maltese Labour Party and the Nationalists, both with large entourages. The politicians sat apart from each other, Dom Mintoff the prickly supremo of the Labour Party surrounded with his gang of toughs and bruisers; the Nationalist, Giorgio Borg Olivier, a quieter, gentler more scholarly presence who tended to gather about himself men of similar tastes and dispositions. Then there was the Marija’s bewilderingly complicated – almost entirely on her Mama’s, Sicilian side – family; the countless aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces, many o
f whom had spilled across onto the benches and chairs of the groom’s party.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sat beside the proud father, the Commander-in-Chief, resplendent in his immaculate dress uniform. Other senior officers flanked the Prime Minister’s companion, Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson and the ten year old twins, who both looked a little bored. Captain Nicholas Davey, Captain ‘D’ of the still mainly inactive – and under repair – ships of the 7th Destroyer Squadron had led what seemed like the entire company of HMS Talavera into the Cathedral.
The congregation waited with baited breath.
“I do,” she said clearly in English. In Maltese she added: “Iva!” Yes! There was a soft murmured of delight behind her.
Things got very confused after that.
However, the main thing was that Peter had been just as enthusiastic about the idea of marrying her as she was of marrying him.
The rings...
Fortunately, Lieutenant Miles Weiss, her beau’s second-in-command and best man, had been a model of grace under pressure and the rings had appeared without fuss, bother or mishap.
The kiss.
Marija had been terrified she would be hopelessly self-conscious about that; but in the event she was completely, unashamedly wanton. And then the newlyweds were on the steps of the Cathedral and the crowd was cheering. There was confetti, she was afraid she was going to trip over her dress. Her Mama had been careful to tailor it so it never fell below her ankles because if the hem had been any lower she would have constantly been falling on her face and that would hardly have made a very good impression on the day...
Her Mama, her Papa, Joe, Margo, and Rosa hugged her, Admiral Christopher shook her hand politely, smiled and bowed his head; Mrs Thatcher had also shaken her hand and made a pleasant comment about her dress which Marija forgot the instant she stepped along the line. There was to be a reception at the Pembroke Hall, a deliberately less formal, family sort of affair where people did not have to dress in their starchy best outfits and to which the politicians were uninvited.